In his first year in office, Donald Trump and his administration have launched a daunting number of direct and open attacks on long-respected American rights and freedoms—threatening immigrants, the media, health care, transgender rights in the military, and much else. But there have been other, indirect and behind-the-scenes attacks, too, which may be no less damaging to the United States in the long term.

Perhaps the most critical of these is aimed at the census. Under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, “the whole number of persons in each State” must be counted “every … ten years.” Based on these decennial census results, the government decides, among other things, what to spend on schools, where to direct funding for health care and infrastructure, and how to allocate our representatives in Congress and in state legislatures. But under the Trump administration, the census, which has serious implications for the rights and daily lives of all Americans, seems likely to prove to be both unfair and inaccurate, and its consequences will remain in place for at least the next ten years—until the next census.

Read more: The New Republic, February 20, 2018