A Trump administration official on Friday signaled a possible rollback of the racial and ethnic categories approved for the 2030 census and other federal surveys, raising concerns among advocates that changes could undermine the accuracy of data used for redistricting, civil-rights enforcement and policymaking.
The standards were revised in 2024 during the Biden administration after Census Bureau research and public input. Among the changes was a reformatted question asking, “What is your race and/or ethnicity?” that added new checkboxes including “Middle Eastern or North African” (MENA) and a separate “Hispanic or Latino” option. The revisions also directed federal agencies to stop automatically classifying people who identify as MENA as white.
At a meeting of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics in Washington, D.C., Mark Calabria, chief statistician in the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the administration has opened a review of those standards and how the 2024 revisions were approved. “We’re still at the very beginning of a review,” he said, adding that the administration has heard a wide range of views and it is too soon to predict an outcome. OMB’s press office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Calabria confirmed publicly for the first time that Trump officials are considering not using the latest category changes and other revisions. His remarks come amid broader administration actions targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, efforts to curtail collecting certain demographic data (including SOGI data used to protect transgender 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, a delay Calabria described as giving agencies time to implement the changes “while we review.”
Conservative policy documents, including the Heritage Foundation–linked “Project 2025,” called for a thorough review of Biden-era changes, arguing that the revisions could be politically skewed. The first Trump administration had previously stalled work to revise racial and ethnic data standards in time for the 2020 census.
Advocates of the 2024 revisions view them as necessary updates to better reflect people’s identities. Meeta Anand, senior director of census and data equity at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the changes support a “more accurate and deeper understanding of the communities that comprise our country” and warned against reviews that aim for a predetermined outcome rather than honestly examining the process. Edited by Benjamin Swasey.