Hansi Lo Wang (he/him)

I'm a correspondent at NPR reporting on voting, the census and the U.S. Postal Service. To send tips, Signal me at hansi.01 or email [email protected]

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NEW: The Trump administration is banning one of the Census Bureau's main ways of protecting the confidentiality of people's responses to the #2030Census and other surveys — adding statistical "noise," or data for fuzzing survey results

Number: DAO 216-26 Effective Date: 2026-06-04 SECTION 1. PUR

Federal law requires the Census Bureau to keep people anonymous in its statistics. And for decades, the bureau has stripped away names and addresses from census responses before turning them into anonymized data.

But even in a sea of statistics, certain households — particularly those in the minority of a community — can stick out because they live in isolated areas or have other distinctive characteristics that could make it easier to reveal who they are.

Injecting statistical noise has been one of the additional privacy protections that the bureau has used for decades. Spokespeople for the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau, did not immediately respond to NPR’s questions about why the ban on noise was issued.

For the 2020 census, no statistical noise was added to the state-level population numbers used to redistribute congressional seats and Electoral College votes.

But last year, the bureau said it was planning to keep using noise for neighborhood-level results from the #2030Census.

I’ll keep monitoring how the Trump administration’s ban on statistical noise affects the #2030Census and other Census Bureau surveys. For now, some data experts are concerned that this could limit the data that the bureau can release.

For a deeper dive into how statistical noise was used in certain 2020 census data (as part of the hotly-contested privacy protection system based on a mathematical concept known as differential privacy), here's my explainer from 2021:

For The U.S. Census, Keeping Your Data Anonymous And Useful Is A Tricky Balance

The Census Bureau must protect people's privacy when it releases demographic data from the 2020 count. Plans to change how it does that have

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NEW: Former Census Bureau Director Ken Prewitt, who helped oversee the 2000 census, has died at 90, the bureau's acting director, George Cook, announced in a blog post

Remembering Kenneth Prewitt

I am sad to share news of the passing of Kenneth Prewitt, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, at age 90.

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My latest NPR story: After a major Supreme Court ruling, state-level voting rights acts and redistricting strategies in Democratic-led states are among the limited ways left for protecting racial-minority voters’ power

The Supreme Court has left limited alternatives for protecting minority voting rights

After a major Supreme Court ruling, state-level voting rights acts and redistricting strategies in Democratic-led states are among the limit

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NEW: The U.S. Postal Service is no longer expected to run out of cash and stop deliveries next year, the Postal Regulatory Commission's Acting Chair Robert Taub told a House oversight subcommittee, after regulators suspended USPS' required retirement payments

Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: “When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports.”

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NEW: The Government Accountability Office raises concerns about how the Census Bureau is managing its schedule for modernizing how it stores and processes data through a program known as the "Enterprise Data Lake," flagging potential risks to the #2030Census and other future surveys

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NEW: The Government Accountability Office finds the Trump administration's last-minute changes to the "2026 Census Test" raise the risk of cost and quality challenges for the #2030Census as the Census Bureau struggles with agency-wide skills gaps after last year's slashing of the bureau's workforce

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NEW: In an effort to stop President Trump's executive order that calls for restricting mail-in voting, the NAACP, represented by the Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen, asks a federal judge to block proposed U.S. Postal Service rules as part of enforcing a 2021 settlement agreement requiring "timely" delivery of mail for national elections through 2028.

Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: "When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports."

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NEW: After weakening Voting Rights Act protections against racial discrimination in redistricting, the Supreme Court is set to discuss on June 18 whether to take up a case that could weaken enforcement of the law’s Section 208 protections for voters with a disability or limited language proficiency

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NEW: Democrats are appealing a refusal by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to block President Trump's executive order that calls for restricting voting by mail, as another judge in Boston prepares to hold a hearing Tuesday on the same order

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Starting today, households in parts of Huntsville, Ala., and Spartanburg, S.C., who haven't filled out an online survey for the "2026 Census Test" may get a knock at their door from a census worker or U.S. Postal Service letter carrier. My earlier reporting on this field test for the #2030Census:

A major census test faces cutbacks — with postal workers tapped to help count

The Trump administration has shrunk the number of locations for this year's field test of the 2030 census and has added plans to test replac

The bureau says households may get door knocks during the evening as late as 9 p.m. local time. Visiting census and USPS workers should have a bureau badge with their name and picture, plus a bag with the bureau's logo. Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: "When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports."

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NEW: The U.S. Postal Service is proposing election mail rules as directed in President Trump's executive order that calls for restricting voting by mail

Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: "When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports."

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NEW: The U.S. Postal Service's proposal to raise a first-class “forever” stamp's price to 82 cents, a 5% increase, starting July 12 has been approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission, which says it "remains concerned" about the self-funded mailing agency's finances. Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: "When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports."

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BREAKING: A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has declined to temporarily block President Trump’s executive order that calls for restricting voting by mail. Another judge may rule on the order as soon as early June

Here's my article on where the legal fight over the order currently stands:

A federal judge in D.C. declines to block Trump's executive order on voting by mail

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has declined to temporarily block President Trump's executive order that calls for restricting mail-in

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NEW: The U.S. Postal Service and the city letter carriers' union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, have agreed to extend negotiations over a new contract. The current contract, which is set to expire Friday, will remain in effect until a new one is finalized. “While good-faith bargaining with our counterparts from the Postal Service has brought progress in some areas, we have not yet reached agreement on terms that we believe properly reward NALC members for their hard work and value to the Postal Service," says Brian Renfroe, the NALC's president. Full disclosure: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. As a NPR journalist, I follow the NPR Ethics Handbook, which says: “When appropriate, disclose funding relationships in related reports.”

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My latest NPR story: After recently weakening the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court avoided for now taking up a legal question that may severely limit enforcement of the law's remaining protections for minority voters

The Supreme Court avoids taking up a fight over Voting Rights Act enforcement for now

After recently weakening the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court avoided for now taking up a legal question that may severely limit enforce

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NEW: The Supreme Court sends Mississippi and North Dakota state legislative redistricting cases back to lower courts to be reconsidered in light of its recent ruling that weakens the Voting Rights Act, effectively taking an off-ramp from taking up what could have been the next major fight over the landmark law. These redistricting cases out of North Dakota and Mississippi are about whether private individuals and groups — whose lawsuits have been the main way of enforcing the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 — can keep suing, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson notes in dissents from the Supreme Court's orders.

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My latest NPR story: The Supreme Court’s latest weakening of the Voting Rights Act may be felt most notably not in congressional redistricting, but in ongoing legal fights over at least 17 voting maps or election systems for state and local governments

Why the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling could play a big role at the local level

The Supreme Court's recent ruling threatens the power of racial-minority voters in Voting Rights Act cases about not just Congress, but also