US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently let construction on President Donald Trump's White House ballroom continue in a temporary solo decision, but on Monday he sided with the three liberals against the five right-wingers who…
Page B1From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 1 September 2026
Supreme Court calls Trump's ballroom construction 'likely unlawful,' but allows it; administration then cuts its own political-interference ban.
As it ran on the front
POLITICAL INTERFERENCE BAN, a modest administrative safeguard at the Census Bureau, died this week after a brief illness brought on by an 'unusual' report. It was young, as these things go — younger than the Bureau itself, which has been counting Americans, more or less honestly, since 1790.
The ban is survived by the Census Bureau, which will carry on without it, and by the practice of using a decennial count that people actually trust, which may or may not make it to the next reunion. It was preceded in death, by about a week, by the notion that a Chief Justice calling a construction project 'likely unlawful' means the construction project doesn't get built — the Supreme Court, in a split decision, allowed the ballroom to proceed anyway, so that one went first, and this one followed it out the door like it was waiting its turn.…
…(cont) Neither death was an accident, and neither one was, technically, illegal. That's the part this reporter keeps coming back to. You can lose a thing without anybody breaking a law to take it from you; you just have to be the one holding the pen when the rule gets rewritten, or the one holding the gavel when 'likely unlawful' gets translated into 'proceed.' It's not a crime. It's just shit nobody has to answer for, which is its own kind of hogwash dressed up in a memo.
The Bureau says the change reflects updated guidance. This reporter has heard that phrase before, at a lot of funerals for a lot of protections, and it always means the same thing: somebody decided the fence was in the wrong place and moved it without telling the neighbors.
There will be no service. The census form will still show up in your mailbox next time around, same as always, asking you to count yourselves honestly. It'll just be doing it, from here on, without the guardrail that used to keep the count out of anybody's reach.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you fill out your census form anyway, completely, and mail it back — it's still the only headcount that decides how the money gets split, guardrail or no guardrail.
“A norm you never heard of until it's gone, a construction project a judge calls unlawful that gets built anyway — that's not two separate stories, that's one government finding out it doesn't need permission anymore. Notice which building gets to break the rules and which form still lands in your mailbox demanding you follow every one of them.”
“The Census Bureau's guidance update reflects standard operating procedure, nothing more — protections get reviewed all the time, that doesn't mean anything was 'cut.' And the ballroom ruling — the Court didn't say it was unlawful, the Chief Justice said 'likely' unlawful, which — okay, they let it proceed anyway, so I guess 'likely' didn't end up mattering much.”
The receipts
After the Census Bureau issued a report tied to a Trump-aligned think tank, the bureau's parent agency cut language banning political interference from its scientific integrity policy, NPR learned.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.