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BREAKING: Trump admin has put in a 3rd deputy director at the Census Bureau, an extraordinary political appointment in the final months of the #2020Census. Benjamin Overholt is an Army veteran & statistician who has worked at the EEOC & Justice Department. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/17/903222947/amid-partisan-concerns-another-trump-appointee-joins-census-bureaus-top-rank
2. @RepMaloney (D-NY), chair of House oversight committee, calls the Trump administration announcing another political appointee at the Census Bureau "counterproductive" and part of "scheming about how to rig the process for political gain.”
3. UPDATE: Neither the Census Bureau nor the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau, have responded to NPR's questions about who created the position of deputy director for data and why. It is also unclear what Benjamin Overholt's exact responsibilities are.
4. Benjamin Overholt's name surfaced during discussions in 2017 within President Trump's now-defunct voter fraud commission, which was led by VP Mike Pence & Kris Kobach, who urged Trump's 2016 campaign & administration to add a citizenship question to the #2020Census (H/T @srl)
5. In this August 2017 email (released as part of lawsuit against commission by Maine's secretary of state), Kris Kobach praised Overholt's "strong statistical abilities" & noted Overholt conducted analysis on Kansas after seeing Kobach interviewed on TV:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7038772-Presidential-Advisory-Commission-on-Election.html#document/p104/a576729
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7038772-Presidential-Advisory-Commission-on-Election.html#document/p104/a576729
6. "I really would like to get him on board," Kris Kobach wrote to Mark Paoletta, Pence's top lawyer at the time, about Benjamin Overholt, adding he "would like to personally elevate the request" to office of then-AG Jeff Sessions if DOJ, where Overholt worked in 2017, said no.
7. Kris Kobach connected with Benjamin Overholt through Christy McCormick, a member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission who previously served as an attorney with the Justice Department's voting section and recommended Overholt to Mark Paoletta.
8. "When I was at DOJ, we had numerous discussions that make me pretty confident...he is conservative (& Christian, too)," Christy McCormick said in June 2017 email re: Benjamin Overholt, who Census Bureau says is a deacon in Seventh-day Adventist Church:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7038772-Presidential-Advisory-Commission-on-Election.html#document/p105/a576728
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7038772-Presidential-Advisory-Commission-on-Election.html#document/p105/a576728
9. The Trump administration's 3 recent political appointments of Benjamin Overholt, Nathaniel Cogley & Adam Korzeniewski have stirred up confusion and anger among many of the Census Bureau's career staffers. Some worry they will further tarnish bureau's nonpartisan reputation.
10. Here's what a staff researcher at the Census Bureau, who agreed to speak to NPR on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation in the workplace for speaking out, told me in reaction to the Trump administration's latest political appointee:
11. "We don't need another guy to come, and if we were to have another guy come, it wouldn't be someone who has never worked for a statistical agency and who is manifestly unqualified for the second- or third-highest position," the staff researcher told me. "It just seems weird."
12. Meanwhile, it looks like Benjamin Overholt, who has not responded to NPR's request for comment, has made his new position at the Census Bureau LinkedIn official:
