WILBUR L. ROSS JR.

Some Trump administration officials had initial doubts that it was legal to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census but pressed forward and attempted to add it.

A congressional ethics watchdog has concluded there is “substantial reason to believe” that the wife of Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly used nonpublic information gained through her husband’s position in Congress to purchase stock last year.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is on a mission to save American jobs — one computer chip at a time.

A House oversight committee and the Commerce Department have reached an understanding that could resolve a lawsuit filed after the Trump administration ignored subpoenas for records on 2020 census operations.

A watchdog agency investigating the origins of a failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form was unable to question top Trump administration officials because they either refused to cooperate or set unacceptable interview terms.

A federal investigation has found that President Donald Trump’s commerce secretary misled Congress about why he sought to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

FILE - This April 5, 2020, file photo shows an envelope containing a 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident in Detroit. As part of an order President Joe Biden signed Wednesday on the 2020 census, the Census Bureau said Friday that it would discontinue efforts to create citizenship tabulations at the city-block level using 2020 census data combined with administrative records. Trump's commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, had ordered the production of the block-level citizenship data in 2018. The Trump administration made several attempts to gather citizenship data through the 2020 census, including adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire, which was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2019. The efforts at gathering the citizenship data were challenged by civil rights groups in federal court in Maryland.

The Department of Defense added nine companies to its list of Chinese companies with military links, including Xiaomi and state-owned plane manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (Comac). U.S. investors will have to divest their stakes in Chinese companies on the military list by November this year, according to an executive order signed by Trump last November. Xiaomi said in a statement that its products are for “civilian and commercial use" and said it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military. Xiaomi Corp. overtook Apple Inc. as the world’s No. “CNOOC acts as a bully for the People’s Liberation Army to intimidate China’s neighbors, and the Chinese military continues to benefit from government civil-military fusion policies for malign purposes,” Ross said.

President Donald Trump on Sunday let slip the target date for transmitting the apportionment numbers to Congress as the U.S. Census Bureau continued to work toward fixing data irregularities from its number-crunching efforts. “The Census Bureau is committed to fixing all anomalies and errors that it finds in order to produce complete and accurate results," said Deborah Stempowski, an assistant director at the Census Bureau, in a court filing last week. Gina Raimondo will be his nominee for Commerce Secretary, which would make her responsible for the final 2020 census numbers instead of current Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, if census data processing continues past Jan. 20. assertions ... can never be fully tested," coalition attorneys said in a court filing. The Department of Justice attorneys have said sanctions are inappropriate.

Barr offered his resignation last Monday after weeks of tension with Trump brought about an early exit from his post. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)NEW YORK – President Donald Trump’s administration is ending how it began, with over-the-top declarations of praise for the chief executive. Attorney General William Barr offered his resignation last Monday after weeks of tension with Trump brought about an early exit from his post. In the six weeks since his defeat by Biden, Trump has been increasingly disengaged from his job. But with Trump largely in hiding, it fell to Pence to make a public show of meeting with those distributing the vaccine.

FILE - In this Tuesday, March 10, 2020, file photo, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Capitol Hill, in Washington. The Trump administration blacklisted Chinas top chipmaker Friday, Dec. 18, limiting the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporations (SMIC) access to advanced U.S. technology because of its alleged ties to the Chinese military. We will not allow advanced U.S. technology to help build the military of an increasingly belligerent adversary, Ross said. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)WASHINGTON – The Trump administration blacklisted China’s top chipmaker Friday, limiting the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.’s access to advanced U.S. technology because of its alleged ties to the Chinese military. Among them is Chinese dronemaker DJI, sanctioned for allegedly helping the Chinese government conduct surveillance on its own citizens.

Government attorneys had asked Koh over the weekend to reconsider her order to release the documents or put it on hold. Last week, Koh ordered the government attorneys to produce documents that show details of the Census Bureau ’s plans, procedures and schedules for the numbers-crunching phase of the 2020 census. Democratic U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the committee's chair, has alleged that the Republican Trump administration is blocking the release of full, unredacted documents she requested about data anomalies. The Census Bureau has admitted discovering data irregularities in recent weeks that put the Dec. 31 deadline in jeopardy. Besides being used for apportionment and redistricting, the 2020 census numbers will help determine the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending.

The congressional committee that oversees the Census Bureau issued a subpoena Thursday to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, seeking documents related to data irregularities that threaten to upend a yearend deadline for submitting numbers used for divvying up congressional seats. The anomalies will likely force a delay of several weeks past a Dec. 31 deadline for the Census Bureau to turn in the congressional apportionment numbers. In a letter last week, Maloney wrote that the Commerce Department — which oversees the Census Bureau — missed a Nov. 24 deadline to give the documents to the committee. The Census Bureau said last week that the data irregularities affect only a tiny percentage of the records and are being resolved as quickly as possible. The House committee has obtained three new internal agency documents showing the Census Bureau plans to deliver the apportionment numbers to the president no earlier than Jan. 23, which would be shortly after Trump leaves office and President-elect Joe Biden takes over.

Maloney wrote that the Commerce Department — which oversees the Census Bureau — missed a Nov. 24 deadline to give the documents to the committee. Maloney threatened a subpoena if “a full and unredacted set” of the requested documents are not given to the committee by Dec. 9. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Census Bureau switched its deadline for wrapping up the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident from the end of July to the end of October. The Census Bureau already was facing a shortened schedule of two and a half months for processing the data collected during the 2020 census — about half the time originally planned. The bureau has not officially said what the anomalies were or publicly stated if there would be a new deadline for the apportionment numbers.

His administration violated a judge's order on the 2020 census and could be held in contempt. And in the heat of a presidential campaign, that track record only adds to anxiety about whether Trump will abide by the results of the election. Beyond election law, government watchdog groups have been tracking a raft of other examples where they allege that Trump is flouting laws. Special counsel Henry Kerner, a Trump appointee, recommended that Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway be fired after repeated violations, but the White House ignored that. “If he is taking money from foreign governments without congressional consent, he is violating the Constitution,” said Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

Last week, the San Jose, California, judge suspended the U.S. Census Bureau’s deadline for ending the head count on Wednesday, which automatically reverted the deadline back to an older Census Bureau plan in which the timeline for ending field operations was Oct. 31. Her order also suspended a Dec. 31 deadline for the Census Bureau to turn in numbers used for apportionment, the process of deciding how many congressional seats each state gets. The New York judges' order prohibits Ross from excluding people in the country illegally when handing in 2020 census figures used to calculate apportionment. The Trump administration has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and asked for the judges' order to be suspended during that process. Under questioning from the federal judges, federal government attorney Sopan Joshi said the Census Bureau had no intention of using statistical sampling.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court for fast action on its effort, blocked by a lower court, to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the numbers used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets. In court papers filed Tuesday, the administration suggested the court hear arguments in the case in December, potentially with a new justice appointed by President Donald Trump in place. Trump said he would reveal his pick Saturday to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last week. In early September, a panel of three federal judges in New York said Trump’s order was unlawful. The census also helps determine the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding annually.

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)WASHINGTON – The United States slapped additional sanctions on Iran on Monday after the Trump administration's disputed unilateral weekend declaration that all United Nations penalties eased under the 2015 nuclear deal had been restored. “The United States has now restored U.N. sanctions on Iran,” Trump said in a statement issued shortly after he signed an executive order spelling out how the U.S. will enforce the “snapback” of the sanctions. “No matter who you are if you violate the U.N. arms embargo on Iran you risk sanctions,” he said. “The country that’s isolated today is not the United States but rather Iran,” Pompeo said. But few U.N. member states believe the U.S. has the legal standing to restore the sanctions because Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018.

TikTok won't face the most drastic sanctions until after the Nov. 3 election, but WeChat users could feel the effects as early as Sunday. The order, which cited national security and data privacy concerns, follows weeks of dealmaking over the video-sharing service TikTok. Trump had said this week that he does not like the idea of ByteDance keeping majority control of TikTok. The administration, however, has provided no specific evidence that TikTok has made U.S. users’ data available to the Chinese government. Some cybersecurity experts question whether the administration's efforts are more political than rooted in legitimate concerns about Chinese threats to data security.

It wasn't immediately clear whether an appellate court or the U.S. Supreme Court will get the case next since the Trump administration filed notices for both courts. A panel of three federal judges in New York last week said Trump's order was unlawful. The judges said that those in the country illegally qualify as people to be counted in the states they reside. After Trump issued the order in July, around a half dozen lawsuits across the U.S. were filed by states, cities, immigrant advocates and civil rights groups challenging its legality and constitutionality. The New York case was the first to get a ruling.

WASHINGTON – Companies seeking relief from President Donald Trump’s taxes on imported steel and aluminum ran into long delays and cumbersome paperwork, a federal watchdog found. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that the Commerce Department, overwhelmed by companies lobbying to avoid the tariffs, could not meet its own deadline for processing around three-fourths of the requests. The idea was to strengthen U.S. producers of steel and aluminum by shielding them from foreign competition. About two-thirds of the requests for relief were ultimately approved, GAO found. It also said that Commerce made it more difficult for companies to get exemptions after hearing objections from supporters of the tariffs.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, in Washington. From left, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Vice President Mike Pence, Trump, Jared Kushner and U.S. special envoy for Iran Brian Hook. "The Trump administration is eager to see this dispute resolved and to open Qatar’s air and land borders currently blocked by other Gulf states. The four countries cut ties to Qatar on June 5, 2017, just after a summit in Saudi Arabia in which Gulf leaders met with President Donald Trump. They say the crisis stems from Qatar’s support for extremist groups in the region, charges denied by Doha.

NEW YORK – A panel of three federal judges on Thursday blocked an order from President Donald Trump that tried to exclude people in the country illegally from the process of redrawing congressional districts. The federal judges in New York, in granting an injunction, said the presidential order issued in late July was unlawful and the harm it would cause would last a decade. The judges said that those in the country illegally qualify as people to be counted in the states they reside. The lawsuits challenging the presidential order were brought by a coalition of states led by New York and several civil rights groups. “President Trump has tried and failed yet again to weaponize the census against immigrant communities.

FILE - In this Feb. 28, 2015 file photo, a visitor views a beluga whale at the Mystic Seaport Aquarium, in Mystic, Conn. Mystic Aquarium is already home to three beluga whales, which are known for their white color and vocal sounds. That research is being led by the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A Mystic Aquarium spokeswoman, Dale Wolbrink, referred questions about the lawsuit to the NOAA and to information about beluga research on the aquarium website. On the website, the aquarium defends the research and says the beluga habitat there will provide a safe, healthy and spacious environment for the five new whales.

ORLANDO, Fla. A day after the U.S. Census Bureau said that it has already taken steps to wind down operations for the 2020 census, a coalition of cities, counties and civil rights groups is trying to stop the statistical agency in its tracks. The coalition asked a federal judge in San Jose on Thursday to issue a temporary restraining order stopping the Census Bureau from taking any further actions toward ending the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident. The coalition is asking a judge in a lawsuit to make the Census Bureau restore its previous deadline for finishing the census to the end of October, instead of using a revised schedule to end operations at the end of September. During the door-knocking phase, census takers go to households that haven't yet answered the census questionnaire online, by phone or by mail. In the letter, Pelosi and Schumer recounted a meeting with Trump administration officials during negotiations over coronavirus-relief legislation in which they raised their concerns about the changed census schedule.

WASHINGTON The U.S. is imposing another round of restrictions on China's Huawei as President Donald Trump renewed accusations that the company's telecommunications equipment is used for spying. We dont want their equipment in the United States because they spy on us, Trump told Fox on Monday. Those penalties were tightened in May when the White House barred vendors worldwide from using U.S. technology to produce components for Huawei. The Commerce Department said Monday that it's tightening restrictions because Huawei has continuously tried to evade" them. And it ended an exemption that had allowed some Huawei customers in the U.S. to keep using its equipment and software.

Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham wears a mask with the words "2020 Census" as he arrives to testify before a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on the 2020 Census on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, July 29, 2020, in Washington. Democrats on the oversight committee have asked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to withdraw the appointments of of Nathaniel Cogley and Adam Korzeniewski. The committee also wanted to ask Census Bureau officials about President Donald Trump's order seeking to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the process of redrawing congressional districts. Because of pandemic-related delays with the 2020 census, the Census Bureau had requested deadline extensions from Congress and had planned to end the head count at the end of October. But with the request stalled in Congress, the Census Bureau announced earlier this month that it would end the 2020 census at the end of September.

Without undocumented immigrants, California would lose two seats instead of one, Florida would gain one seat instead of two and Texas would gain two seats instead of three, according to the analysis by Pew Research Center. The bureau currently is in the middle of the 2020 census. Every resident of a state is traditionally counted during apportionment, but Trump last Tuesday issued a directive seeking to bar people in the U.S. illegally from being included in the headcount as congressional districts are redrawn. Trump said including them in the count would create perverse incentives and undermine our system of government.At least four lawsuits or notices of a legal challenge have been filed seeking to halt the directive. The Democratic-led House Committee on Oversight and Reform is asking Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham and other officials to testify about the Republican president's directive at a hearing next Wednesday.

Until recently, Nebraska had been the sole state to sign an agreement with the Census Bureau to share the information. Opponents of gathering the citizenship data worry it will be used by states and local governments to redraw legislative boundaries using only U.S. citizens instead of the entire population. South Dakota signed an agreement with the Census Bureau in April requiring it to send monthly drivers license information including names, addresses, birth dates and citizenship status. House Democrats have filed legislation that would nullify Trump's order on gathering the citizenship data. Democrats say the attempt to gather the citizenship information is part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to politicize the Census Bureau.

A new White House-backed ad campaign aims to encourage people who are unemployed or unhappy in their jobs or careers to find something new. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)WASHINGTON A new White House-backed ad campaign aims to encourage people who are unemployed or unhappy in their jobs or careers to go out and find something new.The opening ad in the Find Something New campaign beginning Tuesday features ordinary people sharing their stories. The campaign is a product of the White House's American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, which President Donald Trump created in 2018. The board is co-chaired by Trump's daughter and White House adviser, Ivanka Trump, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. The nonprofit Ad Council on Tuesday was announcing Find Something New, which it created in collaboration with IBM, Apple and members of the Business Roundtable, along with the White House and the workforce policy advisory board.

Former Obama NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco, a scientist at Oregon State University, said in an email that high level officials put politics and their own jobs above public safety. By the time the two tweets were posted, Alabama was no longer in the hurricane centers warning cone, although it had been in previous days. Jacobs said things went crazy in the middle of the night.Then-NOAA communications chief Julie Kay Roberts told the inspector generals office that Walsh told her there are jobs on the line. The report said there was no credible evidence found to say that jobs were threatened. The Inspector General instead selectively quotes from interviews, takes facts out of context.The White House declined comment.

The accusation comes from Peggy Gustafson, the inspector general for the Commerce Department, who wrote a memo expressing deep concern that release of the report was being blocked. The final publication of our evaluation has been delayed, thwarted, and effectively (stopped) by the Departments refusal to identify specific areas of privilege, wrote Gustafson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama. Gustafsons memo said communications with Commerce and NOAA officials were collegial throughout the investigation, but changed after her office submitted the final report for privilege review. This tone shift appears to be directly linked to the content of our report and the findings of responsibility of the high-level individuals involved, Gustafson wrote. I am concerned that the substance of our report and findings has resulted in this retaliatory posturing."

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump is preparing to direct the federal government to overhaul its hiring to prioritize a job applicants skills over a college degree, administration and industry officials say. The federal government is the nations largest employer with 2.1 million civilian workers, excluding postal service employees. Ivanka Trump predicted the change in federal government hiring would create a more inclusive and talented workforce. We are modernizing federal hiring to find candidates with the relevant competencies and knowledge, rather than simply recruiting based on degree requirements, she told The Associated Press in a statement. The White House isnt eliminating degree requirements altogether but instead will stress skills in jobs where having a degree is less important.

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump is preparing to direct the federal government to overhaul its hiring to prioritize a job applicants skills over a college degree, administration and industry officials say. The federal government is the nations largest employer with 2.1 million civilian workers, excluding postal service employees. Ivanka Trump predicted the change in federal government hiring would create a more inclusive and talented workforce. We are modernizing federal hiring to find candidates with the relevant competencies and knowledge, rather than simply recruiting based on degree requirements, she told The Associated Press in a statement. The White House isnt eliminating degree requirements altogether but instead will stress skills in jobs where having a degree is less important.

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leaders violated the agencys scientific integrity when they chastised a local weather office that had contradicted President Trumps inaccurate comments about Hurricane Dorian, an outside panel found. Twenty minutes after Trump's tweet, meteorologists in the National Weather Services Birmingham office tweeted Alabama will NOT see any impacts" from the storm. After a phone call to Jacobs from his boss, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and other conversations with Commerce Department political appointees, NOAA put out the statement chastising the Birmingham weather office tweet. The outside report said the violations of scientific policy were, first, issuing the statement without talking to the Birmingham meteorologists and, second, issuing it after political pressure. Roberts left NOAA for another high-ranking job in the Department of Commerce.

A women wearing a face mask walks past a bank electronic board showing the Hong Kong share index at Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Thursday, May 28, 2020. Asian stocks are mixed after an upbeat open, as hopes for an economic rebound from the coronavirus crisis were dimmed by tensions between the U.S. and China over Hong Kong and other issues. Shares rose in Tokyo, Sydney and Mumbai but dropped in Hong Kong, where tensions are flaring over Beijings effort to exert more control over the former British colony. Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are urging the international community to pressure Beijing to withdraw proposed national security legislation that could further reduce the semi-autonomous Chinese territorys civil liberties. On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Congress the Trump administration no longer regards Hong Kong as autonomous from mainland China.

BEIJING Chinas commerce ministry says it will take all necessary measures in response to new U.S. restrictions on Chinese tech giant Huaweis ability to use American technology, calling the measures an abuse of state power and a violation of market principles. China will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises, it said. Under the new rules, foreign semiconductor makers who use American technology must obtain a U.S. license to ship Huawei-designed semiconductors to the Chinese company. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Friday that Washington wants to prevent Huawei from evading sanctions imposed earlier on its use of American technology to design and produce semiconductors abroad. American officials say Huawei is a security risk, which the company denies.