Hansi Lo Wang

Updated March 19 at 9:25 a.m. ET

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing the U.S. Census Bureau to temporarily suspend all field operations for the 2020 census for two weeks until April 1, the agency announced Wednesday in a statement on its website.

Updated March 15 at 6:47 p.m. ET

Already saddled with cybersecurity risks, hiring challenges and wavering public trust, the 2020 census now must contend with a growing public health crisis.

Updated on March 6 at 10:10 a.m. ET

Making sense of the census can be difficult.

In the U.S., the national head count comes around once every 10 years. That's enough time for memories to fade and for newcomers to settle into life here without ever encountering the constitutional mandate, which determines how political representation and federal tax dollars are distributed.

After centuries of putting pen or pencil to paper, the U.S. government is getting ready to rely on digital screens and the cloud for its first-ever primarily online census.

Starting March 12, households across the country are expected to be able to participate in the once-a-decade national head count by going to my2020census.gov to complete the online census questionnaire, which is set to be open to the public through July 31.

Cross the treeless, frozen tundra of southwest Alaska, over ice-covered lakes and ponds near the Bering Sea, and you'll find the first community in the U.S. counted for the 2020 census.

With just weeks before the 2020 census is set to roll out nationwide, the Census Bureau is lagging behind on recruiting temporary workers and addressing IT and cybersecurity risks tied to the first primarily online U.S. count, a new report by the Government Accountability Office warns.

Updated on Feb. 12 at 6:42 p.m. ET

In these final weeks before the 2020 census is rolled out to the entire U.S., the federal government is under pressure to hire and train around a half-million door knockers and other temporary workers by this spring.

Updated Feb. 11 at 10:04 a.m. ET

On the front lines of climate change, warming temperatures and thawing permafrost are making it harder to get an accurate count for the 2020 census in some of the most remote communities of Alaska.

Updated Jan. 22 at 3:41 p.m. ET

Near the iced-over Bering Sea, parka-clad workers for the U.S. Census Bureau are gathering in a remote fishing village along the southwestern rim of Alaska to resume a U.S. tradition seen only once a decade — a count of every person living in the country.

In California, officials are so concerned the U.S. census will undercount the state's residents this year, they want some neighborhoods counted not once, but twice — first by the U.S. Census Bureau, and then by the state government.

Starting Tuesday, California is sending out workers to knock on doors as part of a sort of mini-census the state is officially calling the California Neighborhoods Count.

More than a year after his death, a cache of computer files saved on the hard drives of Thomas Hofeller, a prominent Republican redistricting strategist, is becoming public.

Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina fought in court to keep copies of these maps, spreadsheets and other documents from entering the public record. But some files have already come to light in recent months through court filings and news reports.

The Department of Homeland Security has agreed to share certain government records from its databases to help the Census Bureau produce data about the U.S. citizenship status of every person living in the country.

Robert Alexander has been away from home for more than a decade. His days and nights are spent locked up behind walls topped with barbed wire.

"Prison kind of gives you that feeling that you're like on an island," says Alexander, 39, who is studying for a bachelor's degree in biblical studies while serving his third prison sentence.

Clad in an oversized gray sweatshirt under the fluorescent lights inside the visiting room of Wisconsin's oldest state prison, he is more than 70 miles from his last address in Milwaukee.

Updated at 6:15 p.m. ET

The citizenship question the Trump administration wanted to add to the 2020 census would have likely been especially sensitive in areas with higher shares of Latinx residents and noncitizens. That's among the Census Bureau's final conclusions from its recent experiment testing public reaction to the question.

Updated at 12:15 p.m. ET

Facebook is changing user policies for its social media platforms to explicitly ban disinformation about and ads trying to discourage participation in the 2020 census, the company announced on its website Thursday.

The company says it plans to enforce these specific bans on all users, including politicians — a departure from previous comments from Facebook officials who said the company did not want to restrict politicians' speech on its platforms.

With fewer than 100 days left before the 2020 census is fully underway, rural communities caught in the digital divide are bracing for a potential undercount that could make it harder for them to advocate for resources over the next decade.

Months after the end of the legal battle over the now-blocked citizenship question, the trail of emails and internal memos about the Trump administration's push to include the question on the 2020 census is getting longer.

Updated at 9:10 p.m. ET

Nebraska's Department of Motor Vehicles has agreed to share its state driver's license records with the U.S. Census Bureau, the bureau and the state's DMV said Wednesday.

The confirmation makes Nebraska the first state to cooperate with the Trump administration's efforts to produce data about the U.S. citizenship status of every person living in the country. So far, no other state has signed a similar agreement with the Census Bureau, Michael Cook, a spokesperson for the bureau, tells NPR.

Updated Nov. 13 at 3:50 p.m. ET

A prominent GOP redistricting strategist had direct communication with an adviser to the Trump administration concerning the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census, newly released emails show.

The emails were released Tuesday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which has been conducting an investigation into the origins of the citizenship question that the Trump administration failed to add to forms for the upcoming national head count.

Updated at 9:05 p.m. ET

If the Trump administration had been allowed to add the now-blocked citizenship question to the 2020 census, it likely would not have had a significant effect on self-response rates, the Census Bureau said Thursday.

Updated Oct. 25 at 10:19 a.m. ET

The federal government is widening its recruiting efforts for 2020 census jobs to include certain noncitizens for their non-English language skills, a Census Bureau official announced this week.

With less than five months until the 2020 census is fully underway, the federal government is already seeing signs of potential hurdles to staffing up in time for the national head count.

The low unemployment rate and delays in processing background checks have hindered hiring this year for early rounds of census jobs, including positions at local census offices and those involved with setting up outreach partnerships with local organizations.

Updated Oct. 24 at 9:39 a.m. ET

The Census Bureau is asking states to voluntarily share driver's license records as part of the Trump administration's efforts to produce detailed data about the U.S. citizenship status of every person living in the country.