For 2305 - Two stories that touch on national constitutional issues

Roll Call: Census Bureau: Apportionment data not expected until April.

The Census Bureau does not expect to deliver apportionment results until the end of April, an agency official told state legislators during a conference Wednesday. 

Kathleen Styles, the agency’s head of decennial communications and stakeholder relations, told the National Conference of State Legislatures that census officials are still tabulating results from the 2020 enumeration — weeding out duplicate responses and finding people who did not respond on their own. In the best-case scenario, she said states should not expect data used to divvy up House seats until the end of March, at the very earliest.

“The worst thing that we could do would be delivering data that had question marks with it, we need to give you the best data that we can,” Styles said.

Last year, Census staff identified problems with close to one million records that could result in the over or undercounting of thousands of people. Styles said those anomalies were not unusual compared to past decennial counts but still take time to fix.

The delay in delivering apportionment figures would line up with the Census Bureau’s original request last year for a statutory deadline extension following numerous delays due to the coronavirus pandemic. Census officials recently told a federal judge the data could not be delivered before the beginning of March.

Texas Tribune: Texas National Guard teams will vaccinate residents for COVID-19 in five rural counties, Gov. Greg Abbott announces.

Starting Thursday, state mobile vaccination teams staffed by Texas National Guard members will be deployed to five rural Texas counties to administer coronavirus vaccines to qualified residents.

National Guard teams will visit DeWitt, Marion, Real, Sherman and Starr counties as part of a newly created State Mobile Vaccine Pilot Program announced by Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday. The program aims to help vaccinate homebound Texans, Texans 65 years of age and older and other communities in need, according to a press release from Abbott and the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

On Wednesday, President Biden ordered full reimbursement to states that use the National Guard to increase the pace of vaccinations nationally. Part of Biden’s vaccination plan includes deploying FEMA and National Guard resources to reach a goal of 100 million doses administered in 100 days nationwide.

Though Texas became the first state to administer 1 million doses to residents, the state’s rural regions have been slower to vaccinate residents after rollout and distribution issues.