Trump Officials Ask Supreme Court To Block Order That Extends Census Counting

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow counting for the 2020 census to end soon.

In an emergency request on Wednesday, Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall said that the Census Bureau must immediately wrap up its field operations, now that it's passed the bureau's internal target date of Oct. 5, in order to have a chance of meeting the legal deadline for delivering the first set of census results to President Trump by year's end.

"With October 5 having come and gone while the court of appeals was considering the stay application," Wall wrote, "every passing day exacerbates the serious risk that the district court's order to continue field operations and delay post processing will make it impossible for the Bureau to comply with the December 31 statutory reporting deadline."

The administration's move comes hours after a federal appeals court rejected its earlier attempt to block a lower court order that extended the counting timeline for the 2020 census in order to give the bureau more time to get an accurate count.