Falling public participation in surveys and trust in government have plagued the U.S. Census Bureau for decades.

And some of the agency's current and former workers say there's a new complication to gathering enough survey responses to produce key statistics for the country.

The Trump administration's murky handling of data, which has sparked investigations and lawsuits alleging privacy violations, has become one of the reasons people cite when declining to share their information for the federal government's ongoing surveys, these workers say.

"I got more people asking me how I know information isn't going to be sold or given away," says a former field representative, who says they were met with "a lot of suspicion" and specific mentions of Elon Musk, President Trump's billio

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