Hansi Lo Wang for NPR:
The director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Robert Santos, announced Thursday he is resigning, giving President Trump an early opportunity to nominate a new political appointee to lead the agency.
Arturo Vargas, chair of the bureau’s 2030 Census Advisory Committee, tells NPR that the committee’s members received an email announcement, a copy of which NPR has reviewed.
“It’s been such an honor to serve our nation,” Santos wrote Thursday in a LinkedIn post sharing NPR’s story after it was published. The bureau’s public information office did not immediately respond to NPR’s inquiries.
The decision by Santos, who started as the bureau’s director in 2022, cuts short a five-year appointment during key preparations for the 2030 census. The next constitutionally required head count of the country’s residents is set to be used to redistribute political representation and trillions in federal funding across the country over the next decade.,,,
Before becoming the agency’s director, Santos was a vocal opponent of how Trump officials handled the 2020 census — including a last-minute decision to end counting early during the COVID-19 pandemic and a failed push to add a question about U.S. citizenship status that was likely to deter many Latino and Asian American residents from participating in the official population tally