The move paves the way for President Donald Trump to name a new Census Bureau director.
U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Santos confirmed he is resigning, clearing the way for President Donald Trump to change the agency’s leadership.
Santos, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, said in a letter Thursday evening that he made the decision “after deep reflection.” Santos, who was sworn in as the bureau’s 26th director in 2022, said in his letter that he planned to spend time with his family in retirement. His term, which lasts five years, was slated to end in 2027.
On Thursday, Santos released a short statement on LinkedIn in response to an NPR article that reported he would be resigning from his position. “It’s been such an honor to serve our nation,” he wrote, although his profile still says that he is presently the head of the Census Bureau.
The Epoch Times contacted the Census Bureau’s public information office for comment on Friday.
Before joining the Census Bureau, Santos was a vice president and chief methodologist at the liberal-leaning Urban Institute and had spent four decades in survey research, statistical design, and analysis, and executive-level management.
Civil rights groups on Friday urged Trump to appoint an impartial leader to head the nation’s largest statistical agency.
“The integrity of the U.S. Census Bureau must remain above partisan influence, ensuring that data collection and reporting continue to serve the American people with accuracy, transparency, and fairness,” the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said in a statement.
Besides planning for the 2030 census, Santos and other bureau leaders were overseeing changes to the questionnaires for the next once-a-decade head count and the annual American Community Survey when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as race and ethnicity.
Queries about sexual orientation and gender identity were planned for the 2027 annual survey of American life for the first time. The bureau also was implementing a directive from the Biden administration to combine questions about race and ethnicity and add a new Middle Eastern and North African category.
Before he was named to head the bureau, Santos was critical of the first Trump administration and how it handled the 2020 census, saying that year that “everything is adding up to one of the most flawed censuses in history,” according to an interview with the Center for Public Integrity.
Since his November 2024 election win, Trump has not made any comments on the U.S. Census Bureau or who he would like to lead the agency. Months before the 2020 census was carried out, the first Trump administration had sought to place a question about citizenship.
But its attempt to add the question was ultimately rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 in a 5–4 order. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said at the time that “reasoned decision-making under the Administrative Procedure Act calls for an explanation for agency action.”
Republicans have recently indicated that they would revive such efforts. Earlier this month, Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) reintroduced a bill that would “require a citizenship question on the decennial census, to require reporting on certain census statistics, and to modify apportionment of Representatives to be based on United States citizens instead of all persons.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.