Looks Like the Trump Administration Lied About the Census
A trove of documents brought to the attention of the Supreme Court on
Thursday makes it hard to see the Trump administration’s efforts to
include a citizenship question on the 2020 census as anything but a
partisan power grab.
The court will decide before the end of June whether Wilbur Ross, the
commerce secretary, was justified under federal law in adding the
citizenship question — a move that would nearly certainly lead to a
serious undercounts of Hispanics and in immigrant-rich communities.
During a hearing on the case in April, it appeared that a majority of
the justices was prepared to allow the administration to include the
question.
But the explosive new evidence disclosed by the plaintiffs in the case
ought to give the justices pause about the ruling they’re about to
issue. This is one of the most consequential cases before the court this
term. The decision on it will have far-reaching effects on the
distribution of political power and federal funding across the country
for the next decade and beyond.
According to the plaintiffs who brought the New York challenge to the
citizenship question, Mark Neuman, a key adviser to Mr. Ross on census
issues, and John Gore, a Justice Department official who oversees voting
rights enforcement, gave false or misleading testimony during the course
of the litigation about why the Trump administration was so intent on
including a citizenship query in the decennial count.
As detailed in The Times and in court filings on Thursday, Thomas
Hofeller, a longtime Republican expert on redistricting who died last
year, was a major force behind adding the citizenship question to the
census. The plaintiffs say in the court filings that Trump
administration officials concealed his role in the matter “through
affirmative misrepresentations” that may merit sanctions against
government officials.
Judge Jesse Furman of Federal District Court, the first of three judges
to strike down the citizenship question, has asked the Justice
Department to respond to the charges and has scheduled a hearing for
next week.
Lawyers challenging the citizenship question told Judge Furman on
Thursday that, according to a 2015 study written by Mr. Hofeller, adding
a citizenship question would create “a structural electoral advantage”
that would benefit Republicans and non-Hispanic whites. The documents
were unearthed last year by Mr. Hofeller’s estranged daughter, who found
them among his effects on four external hard drives and 18 thumb drives.
The files show that he wrote to President Trump’s transition team to
tack the question onto the census and helped to write a draft Justice
Department letter claiming that the question was needed to enforce the
1965 Voting Rights Act. That was the pretext the administration later
used to justify its decision to include it — and which Judge Furman
rejected.
Mr. Neuman admitted in a deposition last year that Mr. Hofeller was the
first person to suggest the addition of the citizenship question. The
plaintiffs accuse Mr. Neuman and Mr. Gore of providing false testimony
in their explanations for this whole charade.
“The new evidence demonstrates a direct through-line from Mr. Hofeller’s
conclusion that adding a citizenship question would advantage Republican
and non-Hispanic whites” to the rationale advanced by the Justice
Department, the lawyers wrote.
In a civil rights case, this would be powerful evidence that the Trump
administration took the action for the express purpose of disadvantaging
minorities. This, however, is a case dealing with administrative rules,
which require officials to act in good faith and offer legitimate
reasons for advancing a particular policy goal.
An accurate and fair count of everyone in America isn’t just any policy
goal. There’s much at stake with the 2020 census — from the future of
the next redistricting cycle to how billions of dollars in federal
funding will be allocated. The Supreme Court should see this new
evidence for what it seems to reveal: A blatant attempt to rig a
constitutional mandate.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/opinion/census-citizenship-supreme-court.html
Tut tut.
--
“I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can
become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of
Putin’s team to buy in on this”.
-- Felix Sater