The methods that count the population are now set by political order.
A Commerce disclosure-avoidance order — the first political dictation of Census statistical methods — has indefinitely delayed the 2025 ACS and would redefine the 2030 apportionment base by citizenship, leaving the monthly CPS and its ±1 million error bar as the only timely measure of the largest foreign-born reversal in a century.
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Political direction of census residence criteria manufactures a definitional break in who counts, redrawing the denominator of every labor-market series.
With the ACS knocked out by political direction, a single monthly survey carrying a ±1 million error bar becomes the sole timely measure of the largest foreign-born reversal in a century.
Politicized methodology has indefinitely shelved the 2025 data year that would measure the post-surge retrenchment and now governs the 2030 census.