House holds Barr, Ross in contempt
Action tied to citizenship question on 2020 Census
WASHINGTON - The House on Wednesday voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for not providing documents related to the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, escalating the fight between Democrats and the White House over congressional oversight.
The 230-to-198 vote along party lines came one day after the House approved a resolution condemning President Donald Trump’s racist remarks aimed at four minority congresswomen.
After a string of legal defeats, Trump last week abruptly retreated from his efforts to add the question to the census, announcing that he will instead order federal agencies to provide the Commerce Department with records on the numbers of citizens and noncitizens in the country.
But lawmakers continue to demand answers about the motivations behind the administration’s 19-month effort to ask about citizenship status on the decennial survey. In May, new evidence emerged suggesting that the question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites. The Trump administration has said it needs the information to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.
Barr and Ross wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., earlier Wednesday, saying they “strongly oppose” the resolution and asked her to postpone the vote so they could continue working through a legally mandated process toward a compromise.
“By taking this action, the House is both unnecessarily undermining inter-branch comity and degrading the constitutional separation of powers and its own institutional integrity,” the two Cabinet members wrote.
In a statement, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called the vote “ridiculous” and said it was “yet another lawless attempt to harass the president and his administration.”
“House Democrats know they have no legal right to these documents, but their shameful and cynical politics know no bounds,” she said.
Ross said in a statement that the vote was a “PR stunt” and that Democrats “made every attempt to ascribe evil motivations to everyday functions of government.”
Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec defended the department’s efforts and said that “holding the attorney general in contempt for working in good faith with Congress marks a new low for Speaker Pelosi’s House of Representatives.”
The impact of the contempt vote is largely symbolic. Those found in criminal contempt are normally referred to the Justice Department for prosecution; in this instance, the Justice Department would not prosecute itself.
During Wednesday’s floor debate, Republicans cast Democrats’ holding of the vote as merely a political show.
“We may be in July, but it’s Groundhog Day all over again,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said.