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NEW: The U.S. Postal Service inspector general's office finds the self-funded mailing agency does not have a "comprehensive, risk-based strategy for identifying and mitigating counterfeit stamps," putting at risk $1.7 billion of revenue this fiscal year
Background
Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: “When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports."
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NEW: At their Senate confirmation hearing, U.S. Postal Service governor nominees Jeffrey Brodsky and William Gallo avoided directly answering whether USPS should have a role in deciding who gets to vote by mail, as called for by a contested executive order from President Trump
Nominations of Hal Duncan to be Deputy Director, Office of Management and Budget; Brian Cavanaugh to be Under Secretary for Management, U.S.
Brodsky said: "I understand that there was a proposal made, and I assume that that will be clarified. And we'll do whatever is required under the law."
Gallo said: "As far as I'm concerned, you have to have the courts and Congress make the decision."
Both Brodsky and Gallo said they believe USPS does not have the authority to refuse to mail absentee ballots that are sent to voters by election officials.
Brodsky said he's voted by mail three times and called it a "wonderful way to vote." Gallo said he has never voted by mail. Asked whether he believes mail-in voting now is safe and secure, Gallo said: "That's a very good question. I would say ... under the proper guidance and monitoring, yes."
On whether they support privatizing the mail and package delivery operations of USPS, Gallo said, "I would not privatize the post office. Brodsky said: "I don't really have a view on whether or not privatizing it would make any sense or not."
Both Brodsky and Gallo support maintaining the Postal Regulatory Commission. Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: “When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports."
NEW: Researchers and data advocates at the Association of Population Centers, Association of Public Data Users, Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan, and Population Association of America call for the Trump administration to rescind a ban on “noise infusion” as a way to protect people’s privacy in Census Bureau statistics or allow for public input before data changes
NEW: Two of President Trump's nominees for the U.S. Postal Service’s Board of Governors — Anthony Lomangino and Robert Steffens — were removed from a Senate confirmation hearing agenda. I've asked the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for comment
Nominations of Hal Duncan to be Deputy Director, Office of Management and Budget; Brian Cavanaugh to be Under Secretary for Management, U.S.
Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: “When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports.”
NEW: Multiple webpages on the Census Bureau's website are unavailable to the public more than a week after the Trump administration issued a ban on "noise infusion," one of the bureau's main ways of protecting people's privacy when it releases statistics
I've asked the bureau's public information office why these top search results for "noise infusion" on its website are no longer available to the public:
- https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/2014/adrm/ces-wp-14-30.html
- https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb/about/glossary.html
- https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2014/CES-WP-14-30.pdf
- https://www.census.gov/topics/business-economy/disclosure.html
These top search results for "differential privacy" on the bureau's website are also no longer available to the public:
- https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade/2020/planning-management/process/disclosure-avoidance/differential-privacy.html
- https://www.census.gov/library/fact-sheets/2023/dec/about-differential-privacy.html
- https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/decennial/c2020br-03.html
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NEW: A federal judge, who is overseeing a 2021 settlement agreement requiring “timely” delivery of mail for national elections by the U.S. Postal Service, plans to rule by the end of June on whether to block proposed USPS rules responding to President Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting.
Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: “When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports."
My latest NPR story: New public data for redistricting, policymaking and research may be reduced as Trump officials limit the ways the Census Bureau can protect people’s privacy when it releases statistics
New public data for redistricting and other uses may be reduced as Trump officials limit the ways the Census Bureau can protect people's pri
NEW: The Census Bureau has two new deputy directors — Michael Lachanski as deputy director for data, policy and science, and John Studds as deputy director for administration and operations
Dr. Michael Lachanski and John Studds Named as Deputy Directors for the Census Bureau.
NEW: A Senate confirmation hearing for President Trump’s four nominees for the U.S. Postal Service’s governing board — Jeffrey Brodsky, William Gallo, Anthony Lomangino and Robert Steffens — is set for June 17. The board currently has four Biden nominees
Nominations of the Honorable Bradford Wilson to be Archivist, National Archives and Records Administration; Hal Duncan to be Deputy Director
NEW: A federal appeals panel has agreed to fast-track its review of the Washington, D.C.-based lawsuits over President Trump's executive order that calls for restricting voting by mail. The court's schedule sets up a ruling that may come as soon as early July
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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NEW: A federal judge has sided with the Census Bureau in Detroit's lawsuit over how the bureau produces annual population estimates, which help guide the distribution of federal funding for public services
NEW: The U.S. Supreme Court is set to discuss on June 25 whether to take up a case that's part of the long-running legal saga over Pennsylvania's requirement for mail-in voters to handwrite a date on their ballot return envelopes
NEW: The Trump administration is banning one of the Census Bureau's main ways of protecting the confidentiality of people's responses to the #2030Census and other surveys — adding statistical "noise," or data for fuzzing survey results
Number: DAO 216-26 Effective Date: 2026-06-04 SECTION 1. PUR
Federal law requires the Census Bureau to keep people anonymous in its statistics. And for decades, the bureau has stripped away names and addresses from census responses before turning them into anonymized data.
But even in a sea of statistics, certain households — particularly those in the minority of a community — can stick out because they live in isolated areas or have other distinctive characteristics that could make it easier to reveal who they are.
Injecting statistical noise has been one of the additional privacy protections that the bureau has used for decades. Spokespeople for the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau, did not immediately respond to NPR’s questions about why the ban on noise was issued.
For the 2020 census, no statistical noise was added to the state-level population numbers used to redistribute congressional seats and Electoral College votes.
But last year, the bureau said it was planning to keep using noise for neighborhood-level results from the #2030Census.
I’ll keep monitoring how the Trump administration’s ban on statistical noise affects the #2030Census and other Census Bureau surveys. For now, some data experts are concerned that this could limit the data that the bureau can release.
For a deeper dive into how statistical noise was used in certain 2020 census data (as part of the hotly-contested privacy protection system based on a mathematical concept known as differential privacy), here's my explainer from 2021:
The Census Bureau must protect people's privacy when it releases demographic data from the 2020 count. Plans to change how it does that have
Questions I have asked the Commerce Department’s public affairs office:
- Why did the commerce secretary decide that any use of noise infusion is inconsistent with the department's policies?
- Why did the secretary decide for coarsening to be the preferred category of disclosure avoidance methods for all statistical products?
- Does the Commerce Department consider swapping a form of statistical noise infusion that is banned under DAP 216-26?
NEW: Former Census Bureau Director Ken Prewitt, who helped oversee the 2000 census, has died at 90, the bureau's acting director, George Cook, announced in a blog post
I am sad to share news of the passing of Kenneth Prewitt, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, at age 90.
My latest NPR story: After a major Supreme Court ruling, state-level voting rights acts and redistricting strategies in Democratic-led states are among the limited ways left for protecting racial-minority voters’ power
After a major Supreme Court ruling, state-level voting rights acts and redistricting strategies in Democratic-led states are among the limit
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NEW: The U.S. Postal Service is no longer expected to run out of cash and stop deliveries next year, the Postal Regulatory Commission's Acting Chair Robert Taub told a House oversight subcommittee, after regulators suspended USPS' required retirement payments
Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: “When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports.”
NEW: The Government Accountability Office raises concerns about how the Census Bureau is managing its schedule for modernizing how it stores and processes data through a program known as the "Enterprise Data Lake," flagging potential risks to the #2030Census and other future surveys