Contemptible tactics
What do you call it when a public official simply ignores a court ruling ? Here’s what you can’t call it: Law and order.
That phrase is what President Donald Trump keeps repeating, of course. But it is lawless behavior that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross displays as he defies a judge’s order not to end the 2020 census count early.
Mr. Ross’ actions have left the administration once again scrambling to show there was a rationale beyond raw politics behind a key census decision. In an honest, accountable system of government, something as critical as how the constitutionallymandated decennial census is to be conducted can’t just be tinkered with on a whim.
With the census count that’s normally due by Dec. 31 hampered by COVID -19,, experts and advocates of a complete count have urged that the process be extended into next year.
But Mr. Ross wants to end it early. It is clear that he and Mr. Trump are using this as another way to try to shortchange Democratic areas like cities, tribal areas and poor rural
Black districts, which tend to be harder to count, in order to affect the balance of power in Congress.
Last week, in response to a lawsuit brought by the Urban League, NAACP and host of other plaintiffs, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in California temporarily blocked Mr. Ross’s plan, and demanded the government produce a record of how it reached this decision.
Such a record may exist — or it may not, if this decision was handled like Mr. Ross’ and Mr. Trump’s earlier stunt to try to slip a question on legal immigration status into the census, widely seen as a way to intimidate immigrants and discourage them from filling out the form. It turns out Mr. Ross lied to Congress in claiming the Justice Department had requested the question. Yet he still has his job.
Now, despite the judge’s clear order, the Census Bureau on Wednesday tweeted that Mr. Ross ordered field work to end Oct. 5. Judge Koh has called a hearing for Friday to consider holding Mr. Ross in contempt of court.
Who can be surprised? There is a pattern of lawlessness throughout the administration of a president now running on, of all things, a message of law and order. Mr. Trump rails against peaceful protesters, stokes fear of suburban crime and conjures fake vote fraud conspiracies even as he keeps a double-breasted thug like Mr. Ross in his cabinet.
Mr. Trump may well do what he’s done before — use the courts to drag this out for months, leaving the census in limbo and buying him time to push another Supreme Court justice through to give conservatives a 6-3 majority to review this case — three of those justices picked by Mr. Trump.
Law and order this is not. It’s an attempt by Mr. Trump and his party to manipulate the census and game the system to try to tighten their grip on power in ways the Constitution’s framers never intended. An administration that openly defies a court order in that pursuit might be better called a criminal organization.