An official in the Trump administration on Friday indicated the government may revisit and possibly roll back racial and ethnic category changes approved for the 2030 census and other federal surveys.
Supporters of the 2024 revisions warn that undoing or altering the rules could reduce the accuracy of census data and future statistics used to redraw voting districts, enforce civil-rights protections and inform policymaking. Those standards were revised last year during the Biden administration after Census Bureau research and public input.
Among the changes approved in 2024 were a reformatted question asking, “What is your race and/or ethnicity?” and new checkboxes for “Middle Eastern or North African” (MENA) and for “Hispanic or Latino.” The revisions also directed the federal government to stop automatically categorizing people who identify with MENA groups as white.
At a meeting of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics in Washington, D.C., Mark Calabria, the White House Office of Management and Budget’s chief statistician, said the administration has begun a review of the standards and how the 2024 revisions were approved. “We’re still at the very beginning of a review. And this, again, is not prejudging any particular outcome. I think we just wanted to be able to take a look at the process and decide where we wanted to end up on a number of these questions,” he said. “I’ve certainly heard a wide range of views within the administration. So it’s just premature to say where we’ll end up.”
OMB’s press office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Calabria’s remarks are the first public confirmation that Trump officials are considering not using the latest category changes and other revisions. The review comes amid broader administration moves to curb diversity, equity and inclusion programs, efforts to stop producing data about transgender people that advocates say could protect rights, and questions about the reliability of federal statistics.
In September, OMB said the Biden-era revisions “continue to be in effect” when it announced a six-month extension to the 2029 deadline for federal agencies to adopt the new standards. Calabria said the extension gives agencies more time to implement the changes “while we review.”
The Trump administration previously stalled revisions to race and ethnicity data standards in time for the 2020 census. The conservative Project 2025 agenda from the Heritage Foundation urged a new Republican administration to “thoroughly review any changes” to census race and ethnicity questions, citing concerns that Biden-era proposals could skew data to bolster progressive political agendas.
Advocates for the 2024 changes argue they are necessary updates to better capture how people identify. “At stake is a more accurate and deeper understanding of the communities that comprise our country,” said Meeta Anand, senior director of census and data equity at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “I am not concerned if it’s reviewed in an honest attempt to understand what the process was. I am concerned if it’s for a predetermined outcome that would be to ignore the entire process that was done in a very transparent manner.”
Edited by Benjamin Swasey
