The Census Lie: How Washington Distorts Your Representation │ Wade Miller

[00:00:14] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. Jenny Beth Martin Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show brought to you by Tea Party Patriots Action. I'm Jenny Beth Martin. Today, we're discussing an issue that sounds technical but could fundamentally reshape political power in America, the United States census, congressional representation, and whether the federal government has been following the Constitution properly.

[00:00:38] Most Americans know the census happens every 10 years, but few realize that the results determine how congressional seats are appropriated, how electoral votes are distributed, and how hundreds of billions of federal dollars are allocated. My guest today argues that for decades, Washington has gotten this issue wrong and that the consequences have been enormous. Joining me is Wade Miller, Executive Director of the Center for Renewing America.

[00:01:07] Wade is a combat veteran and a U.S. Marine Corps infantryman who deployed three times to Iraq and the Horn of Africa. He's a longtime advisor to Russ Vogt, who is currently serving as the OMB Director. He brings over 15 years of conservative political experience, including roles as Political Director for Senator Ted Cruz's 2018 campaign and Chief of Staff for our good friend, Congressman Chip Roy. Wade, welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.

[00:01:36] Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. So you recently wrote an article that is called Primer and Actual Enumeration Means Enumeration. And people can find this over at your website for Center for Renewing America. Let's start with what does enumeration mean? I think most people hear it and they kind of immediately tune it out because it just sounds very much like government jargon. Sure. And this is kind of an advanced level primer.

[00:02:06] We've got some other ones that are kind of more introductory that will build into this. But at the end of the day, the enumeration, what are we actually seeking? We are seeking to have an accurate count so that when the various states get assigned their seats and that data is sent to the states, that the states can then redistrict accurately. And unfortunately, that has not been occurring. And we can dig into that. But that's a huge problem.

[00:02:32] So recently, we've heard a lot about redistricting from the Supreme Court case, the Calais case. We've seen before the ruling on the Calais case came out, we saw Texas redistricting because of a court case that they had. And then California responded and we saw what happened in Virginia. So I think a lot of people are thinking about redistricting in terms of what the courts are saying.

[00:02:58] What you are saying is that we need to be thinking about the districts, period, like from the beginning before we even start redistricting, how many people should be in each district for each state? Is that correct? Yeah. Most of that conversation is what has been occurring on the back end with the data that already exists and how should we utilize that data and how should it be looked at legally in terms of redistricting? The problem is that the underlying data is thoroughly corrupted.

[00:03:26] And I believe intentionally so. And I think I have a very good way to demonstrate that. But essentially, we had a totally new process put in place in 2020. And I suspect that ultimately the purpose of that, all of those new policies was to make it so that if the Trump administration had successfully asked the citizenship question, that they would functionally not have been able to do anything with it in terms of how that data impacts redistricting later on.

[00:03:57] So unsurprisingly, this is yet another part of the government that has been weaponized against the American people. Okay. So let's start with what happened before 2020 and 2021 that was supposed to happen and how should a census look?

[00:04:16] And then talk about what happened with the problems that you're talking about, where they corrupted and potentially intentionally, which you think you can prove the data. Sure. So let's start out with the simple premise of how do we think a census operates. And so what we think happens is that the government sends out a whole bunch of surveys and they get about 60, 70 percent response rates.

[00:04:42] And then they hire thousands and thousands of people to try to go collect the other remaining 30 to 40 percent of the responses, canvassing the entire country. And then that that data goes into a big file and that from that, that population data, we determine how many seats each state gets. And then that population data is sent to the states. The problem is, is that that is how it used to work. And in 2020, a new process was put in place. Well, actually prior to that.

[00:05:12] And it was, you know, starting in 2017, 2018, really. And so what happened is a whole bunch of leftist bureaucrats in the Census Bureau really used some highly technical, mathematical, algorithmic processes and snuck in all of these changes under the nose of the political appointees who, frankly, were not census experts and had no idea what was going on. And I think one could argue that they probably should have. But nevertheless, they didn't see it coming. They didn't stop it.

[00:05:42] And so it went into place. And so what did they do? Well, one, they used differential privacy. This is an algorithm to protect privacy. And yes, the census is required to protect privacy. They had used one method for decades and then all of a sudden out of nowhere decided to use this new method. And so what did this new method do? So in this 2020 census cycle, what they did is they went out, they sent the surveys out. They got all those responses.

[00:06:10] And then they sent Canvas, sent people out, Canvas the rest of the responses. And then that data went into a big file. And so, so far, so good. I mean, we could argue there's some other things that happened that were problems. We're just focusing on differential privacy right now. So, so far, the processes function essentially the way it's supposed to function. What happened in 2020, though, at this point is they put an algorithm in place called differential privacy. And what that did is it went into the data and within each state it scrambled it up.

[00:06:39] And it moved population numbers around. It moved urban to rural, rural to urban. And we think, based on some anecdotal mathematical reasoning, that this disproportionately impacted rural to urban movement. So what does that mean? Well, if a state like, let's just say Texas or California, they get population data, right? And now the state is tasked with using that population data to determine where all of these districts are going to be drawn.

[00:07:09] And that's accurate if your population data is accurate. The problem is that the population data was not accurate. So if you have rural to urban movement, fake movement in the data, what does that mean? Well, if you're Texas, what does a red state normally do when they redistrict? Well, they use rural population and they carve out sections of the cities to limit the amount of blue districts that can be created. If you're a blue state, what do you do?

[00:07:36] Well, you use urban population to carve out rural areas so that you limit the ability to create rural red districts. And this happens all over the country. It's a partisan exercise that the courts have, you know, gerrymandering to the degree that the courts have said this is up to the states to determine how they're going to do this stuff. The problem is, is that the Census Bureau put in place a corrupt process, which basically makes it easier for blue states to create blue districts and red states harder to create red districts.

[00:08:05] And so that is a huge problem then and there. And it's, it's more nefarious than that. So what we have done for decades and decades, and we don't have to do this, the government just decided to start doing it, is they decided to start using all population data for the create for redistricting. So that means illegal aliens, illegal immigrants and citizens are all included when they send the population data out and they make maps. Well, it doesn't need to be that way.

[00:08:33] And disproportionately, illegal aliens and legal immigrants live in urban areas. So what does that mean? Well, if you're making, if you're using population data that includes those two subsets, when you're, when you're drawing map lines, it's also going to disproportionately weight districts towards the cities, which again will help blue states and it will harm red states in terms of the way that they want to be able to redistrict.

[00:08:58] So, you know, one thing that the Trump administration wanted to do, and they can do this, they just, they ran into some APA, Administrative Procedure Act violations, but they can get it right. It's more of a, we just got to start the process sooner this time and not wait as long as we did last time. Although I would argue that they were fine last time, the courts just were wrong. But nevertheless, in the last Trump administration, it was clear that the Trump administration wanted to ask a citizenship question.

[00:09:23] So we think, and we have reason to believe that bureaucrats within the Bureau, the Census Bureau, one, wanted to switch over to differential privacy because if you ask the citizenship question, but you use differential privacy and move the population data all over the place, you don't functionally know where the citizens live. So you can't actually draw maps with this.

[00:09:47] And I think that this was their big end run had the Trump administration been successful in getting the citizenship question, even with all of the other election integrity reforms that could have gone into place and various laws that could have been passed. This essentially was their backstop to prevent and manipulate the census data to kind of mitigate a lot of those other election integrity moves.

[00:10:11] So long story short, if you get rid of differential privacy this time and you ask the citizenship question and you send citizen-only data to the states after the next census, and we can talk about other things that went wrong, the miscounts, undercounts, overcounts, imputations, all sorts of other things that were manipulated in the census process.

[00:10:31] When Stephen Miller goes out on TV or on social media and says that an accurate, objectively accurate and fair census would be a 40-seat swing to the right, he's not misleading people. That is, the totality of all of these various weaponized and manipulated processes in the census by leftist bureaucrats essentially created the conditions where the right was robbed of the ability to create a fundamentally different Congress.

[00:11:01] And again, it could have been dozens of seats difference right now if the process had been done fairly. And a lot of people like to say, well, you know, Trump was the one who did the census. Technically, that's partially true, but the census itself was published by Joe Biden. He could have gone in there, had them do the data revisions, but of course he didn't. He didn't do that. He could have insisted that citizen-only data be sent out.

[00:11:28] You could have done certain processes to back and figure that out. He could have corrected the overcounts and undercounts. He didn't do any of that, even though the Biden administration admitted that at least six seats went to Democrats that should not have just on the basis of overcounts and undercounts alone. So there's a lot of things in this census process that have been massively manipulated. And of course, we can talk more about that, but the implications are huge for how Congress looks in the next decade.

[00:11:55] And it's one of the most important policy heights I think that we should be engaged in. And I think it's when the reason we're doing this interview is because I think that most people, they're not thinking about it at all. We're hearing a lot about redistricting, but we're not hearing anything about the underlying population on which the districts are being drawn. Doesn't the Constitution require a certain number of people for congressional districts?

[00:12:22] So if you change that data and you hide it, how can a state draw a district constitutionally? Well, there's a couple of things that come to mind on the Constitution that are problematic. You nailed one of them. So if you're using, you know, the Constitution does require that districts be roughly the same size. Well, if you have corrupted fake population data, how do you know that those districts are roughly the same size? And so that's a constitutional problem.

[00:12:48] Another big one is just the idea of using legal and illegal immigrants in the formation of districts, especially since those populations are not evenly distributed throughout states and therefore impact congressional districts and other districts differently. So let me give you an example. If you have a rural district that has 750,000 people and 725,000 of those are citizens,

[00:13:16] and then you have an urban district with 750,000 people, but only 500,000 of those people are citizens, that's a constitutional issue. That's a—you are running into an issue where some citizens have a significantly disproportionate vote weight than other citizens. And that is, of course, a big problem with the way the data, the population data, has been sent to states. And I think that's been done unconstitutionally.

[00:13:42] Now, we can have a debate over what is constitutionally required with respect to the enumeration of how many—how much the population is and therefore which states get how many seats. But once that has been determined, I think it's unconstitutional to include anything other than citizens in the creation of a district because, in theory, the people within that district that are being counted should have a voting power. And if they don't, then why are we counting them? Well, and so why are we counting them?

[00:14:11] What is the argument that the left is making to say that the way they're doing this is valid? And how do we—what is our legal and constitutional counter to what they're saying? Well, on the first point, I would argue that it is unconstitutional count illegal aliens, even in the enumeration of figuring out how many seats each state gets. Although, in that case, because of the distribution of illegal aliens throughout the country,

[00:14:39] it's not really too much of a benefit to the right versus the left. It's—I think the right would benefit maybe a few seats in total if you were to cancel all that out. But what really matters is, you know, whether or not you're using illegal aliens for—and legal aliens for the map creation itself. And I think that this has happened mainly because the bureaucracy has just kind of been on autopilot. Like, we must get a count.

[00:15:08] And there's been no real thought about what that means. And the bureaucracy over time has changed that. And people just think that this is the way it's supposed to happen because this is the way it's been done for decades now. And the reality is, we didn't used to do this. It's just been so long since we stopped or have been doing it the way we currently do it. And so I don't think that there's much of a legal argument. I just don't think that it's ever been thought about deeply enough by the powers that be in D.C. to really change it.

[00:15:35] And remember, there's not really such a thing as a Hill staffer that's an expert on the census because the census happens once every decade. And there's a lot of turnover on the census. And this is the type of thing that usually you would give to, like, you know, someone like the third rung down portfolio. Maybe those people will be here in three years. Maybe they won't be. Maybe they go into private practice. There's just not a lot of people on the Hill that understand census policy.

[00:16:04] And so this is one of the reasons a couple years ago I really wanted to dig down deep and really understand it this time because there's – unlike immigration, I can go to a lot of people that know a lot about immigration policy or health care policy. We just don't have a lot of institutional knowledge in D.C. and the conservative movement on census policy. And I think that now that people are starting to realize this, I think there's more momentum and movement to do something about it this time. Okay.

[00:16:31] And then what can – well, before we go into what can be done, when you see that the counting was wrong and there were other issues with the counting, what – I do want to talk about what we can do to correct it, but what were the other issues with the counting? Sure. So there were – the Biden administration put out a report admitting that there were six states who were overcounted – well, there were lots of states who were overcounted, lots of states who were undercounted.

[00:16:59] The net result is that the left got six seats they should not have otherwise received. And by the way – excuse me – and by the way, all of those errors benefited the left. None of those errors benefited the right, which is in itself statistically odd. It's not impossible, but it's odd that all six of those discrepancies all benefited the left in terms of their overall seat count in Congress.

[00:17:28] And, of course, the other odd part of that is that they blame it on COVID. Well, why are blue states overcounted? They were the ones that were really locked down, and red states were undercounted, and they were mostly open. So I don't understand just technically how that could have occurred. How do we get – undercounts and red states were open and overcounts and blue states were all locked down? It doesn't make any sense to me, but that's their excuse. And maybe there's an excuse, a better explanation of that that I've just not seen.

[00:17:57] But either way, it's still an overcount and undercount. Did the Biden administration do anything once they admitted this to revise it and change the apportionment? No, they didn't. They admitted that it was – that they benefited from it and then didn't do anything to objectively and fairly correct the mistake. But there's other issues like imputations. So imputations is how you essentially count a home that you just don't have data for. And so the way that they will do this is they will, in theory, take statistical analysis of the people that live nearby

[00:18:26] and then just kind of infer who they think probably would have lived there. The problem is this often happens in urban environments, suburbs, and they will impute different – and also we don't have a lot of sunlight on any of this. I don't know how they imputed, and I don't know the degree to which they imputed. Are they making up disproportionately incorrect data on minority-represented households? I don't know. And why did that matter?

[00:18:52] Well, until recently, that could have very much meant a red district or minority-majority district according to various previous court cases and laws, which has, of course, been overturned. Or in theory, the most recent holding seems to imply that that can no longer occur, that you can't make a district on the basis of race. And so we'll see how the court continues to uphold that moving forward as other states challenge that.

[00:19:19] But that process was, of course, we could have been massively abused. And I've talked to a lot of people who know a lot more about imputations than I do, and they seem to think that it was manipulated heavily. And again, and we haven't talked about this yet, but the census data itself is one of the most secret files in the country. And it's easier to get access to some military top secret files than it is this one, because not only do you need the security clearance, but you also have to be Title 13 sworn.

[00:19:49] And so there's a very small number of people in the United States government that have access to this, and we don't know. So again, we talked about manipulating population data, but we don't know how they manipulated characteristic data. So the way this used to work is if there was like one person in a county, and that would be damaging for privacy purposes because it would be easily to deduce who that person was. So in those instances, what they used to do is they would do what's called a swap.

[00:20:16] And they would just flip me, put me in that district and take that other person and put them somewhere else without their name so that it would be impossible to associate that person's data with them. And so it was a means of limited movement of characteristic data in order to protect privacy. But what we don't know through differential privacy, which is what they've done now, is what else are they doing with characteristic data? So the way it works now is if we don't like the population data in this county,

[00:20:44] we're going to take every aspect of that person, their high income level, skin color, sex, whatever other questions they ask. We're going to cut it all out and we're going to throw it all over the map and it's going to be reconstituted elsewhere. And they did this with thousands, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people in every single state in order for the privacy to be upheld. And they hide behind privacy statutes, but you don't have to use differential privacy.

[00:21:14] In fact, in some of our papers, we have outlined various statistical privacy methods that could be used in order to comply with the law, but also not, you know, move the population data around in a way that corrupts the constitutional point of having a census in the first place. How was privacy protected before 2020, 2021? Say again? How was the privacy protected before they used differential privacy? Yeah.

[00:21:44] So they use what was called limited swapping. And so in instances, so if you have a county with a thousand people, you really don't need to do any, you just mask the name and the data. You don't really need to move anything because it's hard to infer, well, of those thousand people, which one is Wade Miller? Well, we don't know because one, my name's not associated, but you can't use like backwards methods to try to deduce that because the statistical protection is high enough in the population number.

[00:22:14] And the reality, most counties that are, you know, in this respect, especially urban counties have, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. But if you're in a really rural county, what they would do is they would just move that person, preferably in the next county over, and they just swap two people or three or four people until they had enough statistical. But it wouldn't necessarily impact the population or at very low level.

[00:22:40] It would be very small, small population movement that would have no real statistical impact on map creation because the population movement was so small. Now they just do this in mass. They do it at large scale, you know, and, you know, they would. And let me give you a case scenario where this is really problematic. Let's say you're a rural county or rural city and you've got 800 taxpayers and, you know, you've got school, a hospital there, and a community hospital, public schools.

[00:23:08] Well, let's say that the census moved 300 people or 200 people out of your city and into an urban environment. Well, now you only get tax money for, you know, 600 people instead of 800 people. So the federal tax dollars that go out for schools and hospitals and all of that, you're only getting partial credit. And this is not the way it used to work. It used to work if that were to occur for whatever reason.

[00:23:32] You could do a count question resolution and get the census to fix it so that you're getting your full amount of allocated tax dollars based on your population levels. So what we've seen is if rural districts' populations have been moved to urban populations through differential privacy, what does that mean? Well, it means that all of these urban big cities are getting more tax dollars than they're supposed to,

[00:23:55] and a lot of the rural or, you know, kind of further out suburban areas are getting less tax dollars than they're supposed to be getting. And, of course, what does that mean? Well, in most situations, it means that the left's government machine is getting more tax dollars than it's supposed to be, and rural conservative areas are not getting as much tax dollars as they're owed. And so you can see how – and there's hundreds of different funding formulas based on population data.

[00:24:18] So these people at the Census Bureau, you know, trying to make it so that you can't use citizen data for redistricting, being cute about it and thinking they could pull one over because it's so complex, you can see how this scales out into massive problems all over the country in terms of proper representation, proper allocation of federal tax dollars. I would argue that what they did is unconstitutional. I think I have reason to believe that the way they did it was illegal,

[00:24:46] and I think that the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau should do a lot of work to investigate all of this. I don't understand why they didn't just swap the demographics per household, but leave the number of people in a household. I don't see why they had to turn it into something where they're shifting the number of people who live in a certain area. That seems nuts to me. It just seems absolutely ludicrous.

[00:25:15] Yeah, and you can absolutely do that. You can also just mask the data, the characteristic data, until you get to a larger population size. So maybe you have it that, you know, the state of Kansas, you're not unmasking at the Sedgwick County level, but all of Southeast Texas or Kansas, you're unmasking it there from the characteristic data. So you can't necessarily know who is in what county from a characteristic data perspective, but you know where the population count is.

[00:25:43] And so you can absolutely do that, and that's why the fact that you can do that, and that it would give you a more accurate product for the constitutional purpose of the census, is one of the reasons why I believe they did this intentionally, to make it so that you cannot use citizen population data for redistricting. They know what that means. The bureaucracy knows.

[00:26:06] The statisticians, the leftist statisticians at Census Bureau understand fully what it means if you do a citizen-only redistricting process after the next census. They know. And they don't want that to happen. No, not at all. Okay, so what can be done about this? And I am assuming that we're not going to be able to go back and fix the problems that we currently are living under.

[00:26:36] If we can, let me know. You may be thinking more about what to do as we head forward into the future. Well, interestingly enough, I do think there are some things we can do backwards looking that might have an impact on the 2028 cycle. You know, so one, let's just, what steps need to be taken right now? They need a good census director. So far, to my knowledge, no one has been nominated for this. We need a good census director.

[00:27:03] You know, we've sent over names of people who are highly qualified. I believe they've had conversations, but nothing is moving forward. I don't know why that is. There could be good reasons. I just don't know. I don't have visibility into that process. But we need a good director. That's number one. If you don't have a good director who understands the mission and understand what needs to be done to conduct a fair census, an objectively fair census, then it's going to be harder to move the needle forward because you're going to be having to do this at the commerce level.

[00:27:33] And, you know, Lutnick is a very smart guy, but he's, you know, he has not spent years and years and years dealing with the census. And it's hard to go, you know, head to head with all of these census bureaucrats who are statisticians and have PhDs in mathematics and statistics because they're just going to, you know, pull the wool over your eyes. But I think he understands broadly what needs to happen. It's just harder to go up against the bureaucracy when he has so many other duties. So we need a good census director.

[00:28:01] And then we need that census director to start to end differential privacy. Now, the good news is the Commerce, the Census Bureau did put forward some guidance that is moving in that direction. That primer, the first primer you put up is now is kind of our analysis of that, which is overall complementary. We are pointing out that some small technical distinctions on things that they need to clarify. For instance, they're considering the census to be a statistical product.

[00:28:30] It is not a statistical product. There are statistical products at the Census Bureau. And this matters statutorily. It matters constitutionally. The census, because if it's considered a statistical product, there's all sorts of other things that it has to comply with. Now, I would argue that it's the statute and rules and regs don't overrule the Constitution and that they could still change this.

[00:28:53] But it's a lot easier if you define it as a count and an enumeration and that the purpose of that is to derive a population number that is accurate. And if we do that, then I think we sidestep a lot of the bureaucracy and the hurdles that they have tried to put in place. And there's other products that you can do, like the mid-decade counts, you can treat as a statistical product because it's irrelevant from a constitutional perspective. But that's the second part. Get rid of differential privacy. And then we've written at length you can go read more about what needs to be done.

[00:29:23] But if you get rid of differential privacy, if you have a good census director, what can we do going backwards? Well, I think you can republish the census. And I think you have enough timeline if you were to get someone in there now to direct it. And what does that mean? It means you use administrative records to go basically correct the last census. And based on that, you may not be able to do a reapportionment.

[00:29:46] But what you can do is provide the ammo that the states need in order for them to take another stab at a mid-decade redistricting process. Because if they have better population and accurate counts, then I think that that will enable the states from a population-level analysis to go and get a lot of the seats that were otherwise stolen from them from the last process that was corrupted.

[00:30:11] But that requires a census director who understands what can be done. And by the way, I also think you can derive a lot of the citizenship data. Now, if you know accurate citizenship data at the local level, you can actually analyze where citizens are located at in each state. And you can reverse engineer that through the last census process.

[00:30:34] Then I think you can get special governmental employees with classified access to go and look at data and say, what were the turnout rates in congressional districts throughout the country? And was there anything statistically interesting based on what we now know the citizen population data is? Because what if I have a congressional district in California and it had 130% citizen voter turnout?

[00:31:00] You know, I can't do that analysis right now because I don't know how many citizens are in each congressional district because the census data is not correct in this respect. And it doesn't actually give you that data publicly. So I don't know. I can guess that there are some shenanigans. But I can't statistically prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt because I don't have the proper data in front of me. But you can do that if we republish the data and have accurate citizen data.

[00:31:28] And I think that that opens up a whole can of worms in terms of lawsuits and things like that. Because now I can demonstrate that I have standing. You know, various entities could demonstrate they have standing based on statistical data, whereas they might not have that and may not be able to actually demonstrate standing right now.

[00:31:48] Could a state like Florida or Georgia or Mississippi, if they were misallocated because of the faults from the 2020 census sued to try to change the number of seats that they have until the next census? Or are we past the point of no return? I mean, I think there was a I think you could try it. I think it's worth trying.

[00:32:10] I think just the mere fact of having that exercise and suing on that basis, I think that the difficult part is right now is demonstrating standing. And even though we have a memo from the Biden administration, I think we would need some more concrete data. And I think this is where a new census director can help. And maybe we win. Maybe you can reallocate those seats mid-decade. I think the courts are going to be very careful on that. I think it's, you know, it may be an uphill battle.

[00:32:40] They don't want to be seen as being partisan. I don't think it's a partisan exercise. But I think you can do it. The real thing that I think is in the way right now is just the length of time it would take for this to wind its way through the courts. I think that if we'd started near the end of this or near the beginning of the Trump administration, that was more likely. The longer that this doesn't happen, the more unlikely it is for this to play out before the next elections. Wade, are you an attorney or not? No, no, no, no.

[00:33:08] No, I've worked for many attorneys. We have many attorneys on staff. Okay. You work with them. So maybe you can answer this. And if not, it's no big deal. And I understand you're not an attorney. But let's say that they could show these are the states. These are the states that were negatively affected. And these were the states that were positively affected from that report that the Biden administration put out, where they said they allocated at least six seats improperly. And they lean towards blue states.

[00:33:38] So if we could show these are the actual states that were harmed, could they sue to try to get prospective relief? Maybe they don't get any new seats for the rest of this decade. But they get something in place so that this cannot happen again in the future? Or do we just have to wait and see? And then maybe it happens in the future. Maybe it doesn't. If they get away with it, they're going to do it again.

[00:34:06] Yeah, I mean, I think that you're right, that you probably need a trained lawyer with some expertise in this field to fully answer that. My guess, though, is that because it's an analysis and they're saying that, you know, we think that these were undercounts and overcounts occurred. And they were not actual counts. It's just a mathematical analysis that they lack standing would probably be an argument. But I think it's worth looking into to see if there's any way to move forward and get standing.

[00:34:34] Why do you have to have security clearance in Title 13? What is Title 13? And why do you have to have that much to be able to look at the data? It's a section of code that has to do with statistical products and privacy. And so in order to get access, there's just additional loopholes because it has so much information on American citizens. And they just don't want it going out.

[00:34:57] And even if you're in another agency and you need certain data for payments, even then the data that you get is extremely curated and is basically as minimal as possible. So, you know, I was talking to a whole bunch of members of Congress about this and, you know, urge them to just ask the Census Bureau for the population data for your district, the, you know, the population level data. And they're not going to be able to give it to you.

[00:35:23] They'll give you the number that has been assigned, but they can't give you the population, the accurate population level. They certainly can't tell you how many citizens are in your district. And I'm not challenged. This isn't a hit at the current Commerce Department. They just don't. They're not allowed to by statute. They're just not allowed to do that. And I think this is one of the things that Congress should weigh in on to change some of these things on the back end.

[00:35:51] Now, the good news is I think most of what we want to get done can happen through the executive branch. It would be nice if Congress would come back in and kind of make quasi-permanent some of these changes and reforms. Like, for instance, considering, you know, define the Census as not a statistical product, but as a count and an enumeration.

[00:36:10] And just make the point that the overriding point of this as a constitutional end in mind and that no other regulation or rule can get in way of providing states accurate population level data so that they can create maps that are accurately represented by where people actually live. It is, by the way, we can pull up that article that you have for republishing the 2020.

[00:36:38] The Center for Renewing America has about six articles about the census that I can find. There may be more, but one, two, three, four, five. It may be more like seven articles about the differential privacy, explaining it, republishing the census data, responding to Wired magazine, fixing how to fix it. I'm pointing that out.

[00:37:07] So if you're listening and you want to get more information, we can include all these links in a comment to the show where we've posted it on social media live. But you've got a lot of information there. I don't know why I am surprised, because I have heard of this happening already. So it's not the first time that I've heard of it. But every time you hear it, it's just so shocking that it's maddening.

[00:37:35] And the fact that a congressman doesn't know exactly how many people are in their district is wrong. I know that you're not going to know down to the exact detail because people move and there is some movement within the district. But they should have an idea as to how many people were in the district when the district was drawn. Not some made up number that the Census Bureau just painted over. And how do you check the work?

[00:38:04] How do you know if California or Texas or New York and Florida, very, very big states, were they counted properly? It's just—and it's a big deal not just in terms of congressional districts. It also affects the number of electoral votes that each state has. So it's just—this is wrong. And one more thing, and then I will let you respond. I know I'm kind of just ranting.

[00:38:31] I do understand that we want—when you were saying this is very—it's classified and it's—they can collect so much information on a person. We don't want a situation where the government can go in and use this information about an individual or an individual household and weaponize it against them. And I suspect the privacy was set up so that they could guard against being able to do that.

[00:38:59] We don't—we don't want Big Brother having too much information that they can use to encroach on our rights. And at the same time, don't encroach on our rights when it comes to the number of votes that we have in the Electoral College or the number of votes our state has in the United States Congress. There are two sides of this equation when it comes to the rights that need to be protected.

[00:39:22] And there's a pretty elegant solution to this, which is that the census should only determine who you are for the purposes of a population count. And stop asking all of these other questions. There's all sorts of other census products and statistical products. They do out surveys for social research purposes. They can do those all—the entire rest of the decade. But it's like, just figure out where people live. There is a constitutional purpose for this process.

[00:39:51] And they have just jacked onto it all of these other things that they don't need to do. And by the way, that would also increase the response rate. People just don't want to answer all these questions. So that solves a lot of the problem. And here—you know, I always get—I always find myself surprised, even though I shouldn't, that everything that can be weaponized by the left is. And let me give you another example.

[00:40:13] For example, we're pretty sure that this differential privacy algorithm was put in place with no legal basis and that they just made up that they could legally do it. And in fact, we're pretty positive that there were legal arguments within the census that were made by lawyers that said that this is an unconstitutional deal. And that they—that they—the statisticians just went ahead and did it.

[00:40:35] And that, to me, is another indicator that if they're being told that it's illegal and they still do it, they have an agenda. They are—they know that they have to get this done. And the reason is, is that they were really afraid that the Trump administration was going to be able to ask a citizenship question and move to citizen-only redistricting. And they knew statistically that that—what that meant for Congress in the 2020s, this entire decade.

[00:41:02] It meant that the left likely would never have been even within arm's reach of controlling Congress or the Senate. And they know, again, if we—if this gets done, that if a census is fairly and accurately done, the left is not going to have an ability to be in control of Congress. And look, you know, I'm obviously a nonpartisan is how I come at this.

[00:41:24] If it was objectively obvious that a constitutionally run process was not in favor of Republicans, but it was mandated by the Constitution, then so be it. But the reason the left is freaking out about it is because they know exactly what this means, and they are doing everything that they can. They're weaponizing every single aspect of these processes to prevent it from happening because it implicates who controls Congress.

[00:41:49] And I—the census people should be conducting the census fairly without regard to who it will or won't benefit. Just get a count, leave the rest of the partisan stuff up to the states. They can do their own redistricting processes, and that fight can occur there. But what we have now is a de facto partisan effort within the Census Bureau bureaucracy to tilt the scales and corrupt the data so that it harms one side and helps the other. That shouldn't be the way the federal government runs. No, it shouldn't be.

[00:42:17] And they're trying to get too much out of the census. The census is supposed to be for exactly what you've just discussed. It is supposed to be a count so we know how many members are going to represent us in Congress and how many electoral votes we're going to have. That's the purpose of it, period. And to make sure that the congressional districts are equally districted. And you can't do that if you don't know how many people live in an area.

[00:42:47] It's just it's you're right. Just get rid of all these other questions and go back to the very basics. Figure out what was the original intent. What are we supposed to be doing and do it? If you need other statistical analysis, perhaps it's the Census Bureau or perhaps it's the IRS or some other government agency who's going in and doing that that analysis. Maybe it doesn't even need to be the Census Bureau. That's right.

[00:43:15] And the good news is we have time to fix this, although that time is shrinking. We're running into some hard deadlines. We need some significant movement the rest of this year and going into early 2027 in order for everything to be in place in time so that we don't run into APA violations like they tried the last time to stop the Trump administration from doing what they wanted to do.

[00:43:36] But again, Census needs to hire a great Census director, someone who understands the process, someone who is mathematically inclined, ideally a former statistician or someone with a Ph.D. And all of this understands differential privacy, understands how to get to a citizen only redistricting process. You know, there's names out there. There's people that we could recommend, but we need those people to advance.

[00:44:05] We need someone to be nominated because this is not something that commerce can quarterback by themselves and get it right. They can move the needle forward and start putting pieces in place. But you need a warrior in there to make sure that we have a fair census next time and that person is yet to be nominated. Okay. So what can activists do?

[00:44:25] Well, I think the big one is to make sure that they're publicly talking about the need to fully get rid of differential privacy, to make sure that the citizenship question is asked, to make sure that a Census director is hired, someone great, one of us that understands the process, that can get it done. And someone who's willing to challenge the bureaucracy and get it done right. And someone who can work with lawyers to make sure all the legalese stands up in court.

[00:44:50] And then ultimately make sure that apportionment is done accurately. And this is the big one. If we clear all those hurdles, we need to go back to the process of sending only population data, citizen population data to the states. So we do the enumeration with whatever population is legally required. But then the data that goes forward from there is citizen-only population.

[00:45:17] And if they have citizen-only population data, then the states can make maps that are constitutionally compliant and that represent actual voters only. Wade, you mentioned that there would be an incentive for the left to challenge the way the Census is going for as far as apportionment for districts go.

[00:45:44] And also there is an issue because it affects how much money is going to states. How would sending states only citizen population data rather than all of the population data affect the money that goes to states? It's a great question. And the easy solution is that we send them the citizen population data for redistricting, but that their federal funding formulas are based on the enumeration count.

[00:46:11] So whatever is legally determined to be the enumeration count, if you have to count legal immigrants and citizens for that, then that is the basis for how federal funding gets sent out. But listen, you can also just ask a residency status question. You can determine illegal, legal, or citizen. And if there are certain statutes that require payouts to the children of illegal aliens or whatever, and assuming that Congress doesn't change that, which they should.

[00:46:41] But if they don't, then there's ways to – so all the federal funding can go through one population data set, but the redistricting data set is different. And you can submit that to the states, and that's how they do the redistricting processes and not use the federal funding data set. Okay. All right. That makes sense.

[00:47:00] So you're saying that activists can talk publicly about the need to get rid of differential privacy, to have the census ask the citizenship question, to call for a census director to be nominated, and then to make sure that person actually understands what needs to be done and is willing to challenge your bureaucracy and get it right. And then also to make sure that the appropriations are done accurately.

[00:47:30] That's right. And, you know, someone like Dr. Nathan Cogley, who we've recommended, and I don't know where that's out in the process, and there may be reasons not to move forward with him. But he is someone who is technically capable of achieving this mission. And I'll leave the vetting to other people and determine if he's a good choice, but I really like him. But there's other people that could move forward that would be able to achieve this mission as well. I suspect people are thinking, oh, it's 2026. We've got an election.

[00:47:59] Why are we worried about the census right now? We've got four years before we have to count. You would argue – well, how would you answer that? Why is it important right now? Sure. So if the administration right out the bat had made some moves on census, it's possible they could have done a republishing of the census in time to inform all of the mid-decades redistricting that just went on. And it would have net resulted in favorable conditions for the right versus the left.

[00:48:29] Again, not a partisan statement. That's just what the process would have fairly led to. And so that's an example of something that could have happened. It didn't. And that's fine. I'm not going to side-seat quarterback in the past too much here. But there are things that need to start happening now. Like to do a republishing, a thorough republishing of the census in order to impact potentially how the 2028 cycle plays out, you need to start the process now. Now because it could take months. It could take a year.

[00:48:59] And before we start getting into another round of redistricting in 2027, leading into 2028, you would need that data. And like, for instance, Texas might be able to go get another two seats if they had the right population data to substantiate it. But they don't have that right now. And so they got five instead of seven. Just, you know, that was their decision on what they thought they could get away with and sustain. So there's reasons to start now.

[00:49:25] And again, a lot of these will require rulemaking authorities. And you know as well as anyone that that can take time. There may be lawsuits. It's better to start knocking out some of those lawsuits now so that there's not injunctions on some of this stuff when it's time to hit the go button later on. So I think that the sooner that some of this stuff happens, the better from a legal perspective, from a public policy perspective. And also it gives the Congress time to see what it needs to codify.

[00:49:54] And if there's anything that has been frustrating beyond, you know, I'll get out here is the administration keeps doing a lot of great things on a lot of good fronts. And we keep seeing appropriations come out of Congress, out of committee that don't seem to codify even simple little things.

[00:50:12] But, you know, if the administration moves on this, it gives us time to say, hey, you should be doing X, Y, and Z in the next appropriations bill to codify these changes, these rulemaking authorities, these definitions. So the census goes off without a hitch next time. Yeah, I think that you're right about that.

[00:50:31] So the time, even though we've got four years of runway, when you're working with a bureaucracy and all the rules, the regulation changes that have to take place, possibly republishing the 2020 census data, allowing states, if they need to sue, the opportunity and the time to sue. They don't have standing right now because they don't know whether they've been harmed or not.

[00:50:56] All of that is reason to get this done and get a census director nominated and through the Senate. Let me be in place, I would say, in the next year and a half, two years, because they have to. It takes a lot of time to get that rev that engine up on the census is a huge bureaucracy. So it's not four years in that classic census. It's more like a year and a half, two years that it needs to be ready by. Okay. All right. That makes sense.

[00:51:24] So you've got to be ready so that you can begin counting in early 2020. That means you've got to be ready by not 2020, but 2030. So you've got to be ready, absolutely ready to go by 2029. So you can start counting right away. That's right. Okay. That makes sense. Now, if they nominate someone and it goes to the Senate, we have a whole bunch of other issues going on in the United States Senate.

[00:51:49] And you recently wrote a primer, America first, not Senate first, which my producer can throw up on the screen just to show the headline for. But and it was at the bottom of the list that I sent them earlier. Talk about what you were. Why did you write this? What's in it? And the Senate is enough to just make most people really annoyed right now. Yeah.

[00:52:12] So throughout all these fights, whether it's the Save America Act, HR2, nominees, confirmations, all of these things, the Senate really has been acting with the Senate first and not an America first mentality. And it's been endlessly annoying. So we identified four specific things that the Senate could and should do. Number one, if you're not going to do an actual talking filibuster, you need to get rid of the filibuster. And the big problem here is the Senate calls itself the most deliberative body in the world, but it never debates anything. It's like the opposite of that.

[00:52:41] It's one of the least deliberative bodies in the world right now. So if you're not going to do a talking filibuster, then just get rid of the filibuster. And then the next thing is the blue slips. This is endlessly annoying. You basically empower one Democrat senator to block all U.S. judges and U.S. attorneys nominees to their state, and they get a de facto one-person veto. That's not how the Senate should work. It should be a majoritarian body. So we need to end the practice of blue slips. We need to do recess appointments.

[00:53:10] I know that they've recently changed things so that they can do on-block nominations. But I've never seen it where the party in power does this much to obstruct their own president in order to get their own recess appointments or their own appointments through. And it's really simple. In August, the Senate could actually recess so that the president can just say, okay, we're now in formal recess. Here's the rest of my team.

[00:53:37] It should not be that a presidency in year four is still trying to get their team in place. The way that these appointments are now operating is that the Senate basically neuters the Article II power to govern. And I would argue that we should put a hard timeline on this and say if the president's team is not in place within a year, then the president just gets to nominate the rest of his team. If you really want to have a debate, fine. You get a year. But after that, it's done.

[00:54:04] And I think what we have now is Republicans will just walk onto the floor, gavel in and gavel out in order to specifically deny the president the ability to do recess appointments. And then we've got a parliamentarian problem. This is an Obama-era holdover, someone who rules often in weird ways, and the Senate treats it as sacrosanct. It's just advice. We do not have to listen to the parliamentarian. We certainly can change parliamentarians as well.

[00:54:32] And so I think all four of those are things that the Senate should do in order to start getting moving on the agenda. And again, they're stopping nation-saving, nation-level-saving stuff from happening. There's no reason why the Save America Act shouldn't pass. It's so common sense. And I saw Cornyn saying there's not 50 votes. That's just nonsense. He's not even telling the truth with that. There are 50 votes. We had the vote in Voterama.

[00:55:01] Mike Lee offered the amendment. There are 50 votes for the House-backed version. He's lying. This argument is the full Save America Act. I still just don't buy it. And also, if that's the case, let's put it to a vote. I want to see which Republicans vote against that. Let's make them vote on it. Make them vote against their constituents.

[00:55:21] Yeah, and then if you can't get all of the five planks President Trump wants and you can get the two things that the House already passed, which we know for certain we have 50 votes on, then get that. I seriously doubt the president's going to be upset if we got that much done. And he's just not being truthful. He gets on TV and either he is willfully ignorant or he's lying to the American people. It's one or the other because he understands the Senate.

[00:55:50] I can't believe he doesn't know that the vote happened and it got 50 votes for the House-backed version. Yeah, it's been very illuminating to see some of these senators after they lose their election the way that they talk. Yeah, it confirms everything we've all known for 20 years. Yeah, I'm sorry. I interrupted you. You were saying that we're not getting it done. He thinks he doesn't have 50 votes. I interrupted you. I think I completed the thought. We can get it done and force a vote.

[00:56:19] Get people on the floor. That's how the sausage is made. Start making trade-offs. And if the trade-offs are worth it, let's just get it done. But at the end of the day, I want to see which Republicans will vote no on the Save America Act that is supported by 80% of the public. And let's stop protecting specific senators because the argument is, well, they have a tough election coming up. Well, they have a tough election coming up and voting no hurts them? Then vote yes. And let's go. Yeah.

[00:56:46] Well, and they have a tough election coming up. If they want to get reelected, they need to be voting for this. Americans want this. They think it's crazy that Congress hasn't passed it. We want to know, regardless of who wins the election, that it was only Americans deciding who's going to represent Americans. And we also want to make sure that our ballots are protected with voter ID. It's just the arguments are ridiculous.

[00:57:13] And most Americans, including over 75% of independents and Democrats, want the two provisions I just named. Just get it done. So those things that you just mentioned, the parliamentarian, the filibuster, recess, can those things, do you think that they can get done right now, given who is in the Senate and how the Senate has been functioning?

[00:57:42] Probably not all four of them. I think that all of them are going to be a little bit of an uphill battle. But I think that the point is, is that we make them have to have that discussion and they will incur political damage and saying no. Constituents will see this. And this is one thing that I think that you have to calibrate for in D.C. is that it's not always about winning today. It's about setting the conditions so that you win in a year and a half or two years from now.

[00:58:07] And I think that any opportunity to expose Senate weakness and to make them be accountable for it is ultimately in service of this long-term effort. And I think that if you look at the Congress of today, the House of today, and compare it to the House of 2010, it's way better today. It's now, is it great? No. But that was because of years and years and years of using every single fight to incrementally change the institution here and there.

[00:58:35] And you get rid of this speaker and you get rid of that speaker. And it doesn't change overnight. But these are the types of battles. If the American people start publicly demanding these things, over time you will change the institution of the Senate. So, folks, you need to publicly demand it. Check out his article. We'll post a link in our comments so that you can make sure that you see them. But we need to start working, making these changes to the Senate.

[00:59:02] Bring them to people's attention so they know how we can get things functioning again in the Senate. And Wade's title for this primer is perfect. America first, not Senate first. We need the Senate to put America first and the Constitution first. Wade Miller, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me on. It's been great talking to you again. This discussion reminds us that constitutional government isn't maintained automatically.

[00:59:30] It requires citizens who understand how our institutions work, why our founders designed them the way they did, and what happens when they drift away from those principles. My guest today has been Wade Miller, Executive Director for the Center for Renewing America. You can learn more about his work in these important constitutional issues, plus find the articles that I was mentioning by going to americarenewing.com, americarenewing.com. Remember, liberty doesn't preserve itself.

[01:00:00] We only have a republic if we can keep it. Let's make sure we do everything we can to keep it. I'm Jenny Beth Martin. This is The Jenny Beth Show, and we'll see you again tomorrow.

[01:00:36] For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.