I have been tracking the news of the deliberately racist, anti-immigrant, and highly partisan question about citizenship that Trump has been pushing hard to include in the 2020 census. I have posted updates several times to my blog’s section on IMMIGRANTS (http://parallaxperspectives.org/category/immigrants-and-refugees). See those previous posts for background on the controversy and why Trump’s citizenship question is such a horrible idea.
Even after the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly rejected it and exposed the Trump regime’s blatant lies, Trump wanted to find some way to add it anyway, but he could not. He even considered delaying the 2020 census (despite the fact that the Constitution requires it). Finally he ran out of time and dropped the proposal. But he is searching for other ways to screw immigrants, screw Democrats, and screw truth.
These recent articles can bring you up to date:
March 30, 2019, from www.moveon.org asked people to sign a petition opposing the census question. Here is their introductory message:
Donald Trump and his Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, want to add a question about citizenship to the census. The Constitution states that “all people” must be counted for the census, not just citizens. If this question goes ahead, all urban areas — and big states like California, Florida, New York, and Texas — will lose federal funding for public services like education, as well as representation in Congress. This is an attempt to subvert the census for blatantly political reasons, and to ensure that the votes of citizens in lightly populated areas count for more than the votes of the majority of citizens living in cities and big states. Sign the petition to show them that we’re all paying attention and won’t stay quiet:
May 15, 2019, from The American Prospect (www.prospect.org) said “A Trumpified census will deliberately undercount minorities and perfectly legal immigrants.” Read their article here: https://prospect.org/article/trumpified-census-wont-limit-its-undercount-undocumented-latinos
May 30, 2019, from the great public advocacy organization Common Cause (www.commoncause.org), which works to protect democracy, reported that it “has obtained new evidence confirming how political operatives have spent years plotting to rig our democracy with a Census citizenship question. Its e-mail said this:
“The New York Times has publicized this shocking document, written by the GOP’s chief gerrymandering mastermind Thomas Hofeller, that lays out a plan to add the citizenship question on the Census. Their purpose? Manipulating our Census and redistricting process to be, in Hofeller’s words, ‘advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.’”
Read their powerful report here: https://www.commoncause.org/page/read-the-gops-plan-to-supercharge-gerrymandering-with-a-census-citizenship-question/?link_id=0&can_id=1d662460c0abb8939c5044c82927552b&source=email-read-this-shocking-story&email_referrer=email_556137&email_subject=read-this-shocking-story
May 30, 2019: Common Dreams (www.commondreams.org) also reported that Trump’s citizenship question on 2020 census is a partisan scam by Republicans.
May 31, 2019: Mother Jones Magazine reported that the architect of Republican gerrymandering was behind Trump’s census citizenship question. Read their article here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/architect-of-gop-gerrymandering-was-behind-trumps-census-citizenship-question/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=political-mojo-2019-05-31
June 1, 2019: The non-profit organization Color of Change (www.colorofchange.org) reported this too. Their e-mail also reported what I’ve been seeing elsewhere as an additional lie by the Trump regime:
“Hofeller then urged Trump’s team to push for a citizenship question. But here’s the biggest lie– he suggested that they claim it was needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act, even though they planned to use the citizenship question to reduce voting power for the same marginalized communities the Voting Rights Act is meant to protect. It’s not surprising at all that Hofeller is the same person who helped draw the racist district maps in North Carolina that packed the majority of the state’s Black voters into just 2 districts. These maps were deemed unconstitutional by multiple federal judges and are now on trial before the Supreme Court. Surveys have already shown that the citizenship question will scare immigrant communities off from participating in the 2020 Census. But now we know that not only were they targeting immigrants; they wanted to silence anyone who doesn’t support Trump by taking away their voice. This was an intentional, malicious plan, and Trump and his Department of Justice have known about it from the beginning.”
June 6, 2019: TruthDig (www.truthdig.com) also reported the evidence exposing Trump/Republican racism and partisan bias in the 2020 census citizenship question. The citizenship question was devised specifically to help Republican candidates and promote white dominance in American politics. Read their article here: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-gops-white-supremacy-now-has-a-smoking-gun/
June 7, 2019: A judge blocked Trump’s citizenship question. Read this from Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/judge-deals-a-blow-to-efforts-to-block-census-citizenship-question-at-supreme-court/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=political-mojo-2019-06-07
June 7, 2019: Mother Jones reported that the Republican Party Paid Millions to Gerrymandering Expert Behind Census Citizenship Question.
June 12, 2019: A Democratic Party source (www.whendemocratsturnout.com) reported that Trump was claiming executive privilege in order to rig the census. Their statement said:
This morning, President Trump asserted executive privilege to prevent the House Oversight and Reform Committee from accessing vital documents regarding the rationale for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The census will be used to draw new maps for congressional representation and allocate $800 billion per year in federal funding. And it’s no mystery why Trump’s corrupt administration wants this census to have a citizenship question. Hard drives recovered this past March from the deceased GOP strategist Thomas Hofeller, who has been called “the Michelangelo of gerrymandering”, indicated that he had a crucial role in getting the question added to the census. Hofeller, who once stated that redistricting was “the only legalized form of vote-stealing left in the United States”, said that adding the citizenship question “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”
June 12, 2019: U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exposed racism and abuse in adding the citizenship question to the 2020 census. Read this: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/12/1864278/-Rep-Ocasio-Cortez-gets-down-to-business-demands-answers-about-the-magically-added-racist-census?detail=emaildksp
Here is another article about her denunciation of the census questions’ racist question about citizenship: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-blasts-trump-officials-for-census-citizenship-question/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=in-the-mix-2019-06-15
June 16, 2019: This article worried about democracy’s future if the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision were to go the wrong way: https://truthout.org/articles/supreme-court-ruling-on-census-could-deal-grave-blow-to-democracy/
June 27, 2019: The Supreme Court took the evidence about Republican partisanship bias seriously and send the census citizenship case back to a lower court. See this: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/27/1867146/-After-bombshell-new-evidence-Supreme-Court-sends-census-citizenship-case-back-to-lower-court?detail=emaildkbn
June 27, 2019: A news source that I trust reported this about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision and cited 5 reputable mainstream news sources:
The Supreme Court blocked the citizenship question from being added to the 2020 census. The court found that while the Department of Commerce had a right to reinstate the question, the administration provided a “contrived” justification for doing so. The Trump administration claimed the citizenship question was necessary to better comply with federal voting rights law, while critics argued it is an attempt to intimidate immigrant households. The Department of Commerce will now have to justify the addition of the question, which raises the question of whether the Trump administration will have enough time or the ability to add it before the forms have to be printed. The administration previously told the court that the questionnaire needed to be printed by the end of June. The Census Bureau found the question would reduce the response rate –especially in immigrant communities – and result in an estimated 6.5 million people not being counted.
June 27, 2019: The Coalition on Human Needs (www.chn.org) reported that the Supreme Court has rejected the corrupt, manipulative, cynical process to add citizenship question to 2020 Census. See their article here: https://www.chn.org/voices/supreme-court-rejects-corrupt-manipulative-cynical-process-to-add-citizenship-question-to-2020-census/?link_id=8&can_id=1d662460c0abb8939c5044c82927552b&source=email-this-week-on-the-voices-for-human-needs-blog-40&email_referrer=email_572504&email_subject=this-week-on-the-voices-for-human-needs-blog
June 28, 2019: The Campaign Legal Center (www.campaignlegalcenter.org) reported on the Court’s decision and posted a 1-minute video to its website. Here is the link for that very short video about why an honest, unbiased census is important: https://www.facebook.com/CampaignLegalCenter/videos/368331233886104/
June 28, 2019: The Supreme Court called Trump’s rationale “contrived” and struck down the citizenship question. Read this: https://truthout.org/articles/calling-trumps-rationale-contrived-supreme-court-halts-citizenship-question/
June 30, 2019: Although the majority decision was strongly worded, it was ONLY A 5-4 DECISION. Many diverse and good organizations have reported on the decision. This came from the National Education Association:
In a strongly worded 5-4 decision [SEE THE ACTUAL WORDING HERE: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-966_bq7c.pdf] , the Supreme Court refused to green light a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, finding that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s ostensible reason for including it-to improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act-does not hold water. “Several points, taken together, reveal a significant mismatch between the Secretary’s decision and the rationale he provided,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. Nearly 13,000 NEA members urged the Commerce Department not to include the citizenship question. The stakes are high: the 2020 Census will determine how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives and who gets $800 billion in federal funding for education, children’s health, and other public services. The Urban Institute [https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/100324/assessing_miscounts_in_the_2020_census.pdf] estimates that including a citizenship question will lead to a significant undercount-as much as 4 million-with African Americans, Latinos, and children under age five the most vulnerable, especially in California, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, and Texas. The Supreme Court’s decision is not final. The citizenship question could still be included if the Commerce Department, which determines both the process and deadline for printing Census forms, provides a defensible rationale and then, the district court approves that rationale. It is unclear whether these steps can be completed in time to conduct the decennial Census mandated by the Constitution. Stay tuned.
June 30, 2019: Here is another article about the decision: https://www.theatlantavoice.com/articles/supreme-court-shoots-down-trumps-census-citizenship-question/
July 2, 2019: The Supreme Court found that Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Secretary of the Dept. of Commerce, Ross lied in order to put the citizenship question on the 2020 Census. See this information from the American Civil Liberties Union (www.aclu.org): https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/supreme-court-finds-wilbur-ross-lied-put-citizenship-question-2020-census?ms_aff=NAT&initms_aff=NAT&ms=190629_freespeech_newsletter_newsletteraudience&initms=190629_freespeech_newsletter_newsletteraudience&ms_chan=eml&initms_chan=eml
July 3, 2019: DESPITE the US Supreme Court’s ruling preventing Trump’s citizenship question, Trump ORDERED the Dept. of Justice to find a way to add it back into the 2020 census. See this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/justice-dept-reverses-course-on-citizenship-question-on-census-citing-trumps-orders/ar-AADNTfD?ocid=spartanntp And another news report quoted him saying he is “absolutely moving forward to include the question, despite the Supreme Court. Several other news reports — as recently as July 8 — reported Trump’s firm determination to include the question.
July 6, 2019: When the Supreme Court caught Trump lying about census citizenship question, Trump made up another bogus excuse. See this article: https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/trump-administration-literally-tells-court-to-forget-about-previous-reason-it-wanted-to-include-citizenship-question/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=561
July 8, 2019: The Trump regime has changed its story on the Census citizenship question 10 times in the last 4 months. See this article: https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/the-trump-administration-has-changed-its-story-on-the-census-citizenship-question-10-times-in-the-last-4-months/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=577&recip_id=22838&list_id=2
July 11, 2019: A new report says Trump is planning to cave on the Census question. See this: https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/new-report-says-trump-is-planning-to-cave-on-the-census-question/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=668&recip_id=22838&list_id=2
July 11, 2019: Finally, Trump publicly said he will stop fighting for a Census question about immigration, but in his speech he ramped up the racist and anti-immigrant and highly partisan efforts. He ordered government agencies to hand over citizenship data related to reappointment and drawing legislative districts. Trump wants Republicans to continue gerrymandering and using data about citizenship to erase millions of people from political representation. See these resources from Common Cause (www.commoncause.org):
- https://www.commoncause.org/press-release/trump-drops-census-citizenship-question-but-sharpens-his-focus-on-discriminating-against-immigrants-through-redistricting/
- https://www.commoncause.org/hofeller
- https://www.commoncause.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2015-Hofeller-Study.pdf
Supreme Court rejects corrupt, manipulative, cynical process to add citizenship question to 2020 Census
