We would say this is unusual, but then again under the Trump administration, nothing is surprising anymore.
Despite a Supreme Court ruling and an announcement from his own administration, the president is pressing ahead with trying to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census form.
Tuesday we reported that:
The Justice Department announced Tuesday that the forms will be printed without the question, apparently ending a dispute going back to March 2018 when Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he planned to add one to next year’s survey.
But in a tweet Wednesday, Trump said: not so fast.
And by early evening, reports CNN, “Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge in Maryland … that they have been told to find out if it’s able to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census in a way that’s consistent with last week’s Supreme Court ruling.”
In keeping with Trump’s frequent use of chaos to “win” any dispute, CNN says, government lawyers “painted a picture of disarray within the administration, even as the Census Bureau moves ahead with printing the survey without the controversial question….”
The judge in the case made it clear he is exasperated with the back-and-forth over the citizenship question, which hasn’t appeared on a census form for nearly seven decades. He refused the government’s request to extend the hearing until after the holiday weekend.
A Justice Department lawyer, Joshua Gardner, “acknowledged he was now backing away from his statements made only a day earlier, when he suggested that a final decision had been made.
“Gardner said that he had ‘confirmed that the Census Bureau is continuing with the process of printing the questionnaire without a citizenship question, and that process has not stopped,’ but he said the President’s tweet Wednesday morning could change the government’s ultimate position,” says CNN.
Trump likely made the call to press ahead with the citizenship question — widely thought to be aimed at suppressing the Democratic vote next year — after being egged on by Conservatives like Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX). Roy basically said Donald Trump should ignore the law.
