No rationale to distort census
The constitutionally mandated decennial census of the country’s population is a daunting undertaking. So is following the false logic of the Trump administration’s pretexts for distorting its outcome. This week, even after a Republicanleaning Supreme Court and his most loyal subordinates had given up on President Trump’s campaign to add a citizenship question to the census, he was still trying to tweet the scheme back from the dead.
On Wednesday, a Justice Department lawyer confronted with a presidential outburst that seemed to ignore every preceding event was compelled to reassure a judge, “I am doing my absolute best to figure out what’s going on.” As of Friday, census forms were being printed without the citizenship question even as Trump and other administration officials insisted they were still searching for a way to add one.
The administration’s sustained crackdown on legal and illegal immigration alike lends an unmistakably ominous cast to its proposal to quiz every resident of the country about his or her citizenship status. The citizenship question, which hasn’t been part of the census for more than a half century, would probably depress the count in California and other polyglot states along with their share of federal resources and political representation.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department includes the Census Bureau, told Congress and the courts that the question was devised several months into his tenure for the noble purpose of gathering data to help the Justice Department enforce voting rights — an explanation that seems to have been nonsense. Or as Chief Justice John Roberts more politely put it, “The secretary was determined to reinstate a citizenship question from the time he entered office; instructed his staff to make it happen ... and adopted the Voting Rights Act rationale late in the process. Altogether, the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the secretary gave for his decision.”
Roberts’ ruling had the virtue of being correct and the vice of straining to defer to an administration that has earned no such deference. Even as he deemed Ross’ account disingenuous, the chief justice inexplicably suggested that the administration could yet offer another rationale that would pass legal muster.
Having already put forward an obviously false pretext, however, Ross and other officials apparently lacked the imagination or audacity to try again. Not so the president.
Even as the printing of census forms proceeded, Trump told reporters Friday that he is considering an executive order among “four or five” ways to add a citizenship question. The president has also floated the possibility of attaching an “addendum” asking about citizenship to the regular census questionnaire. Government lawyers, meanwhile, told a judge in Maryland that they were looking for a “new rationale” for the question and pleaded for more time to do so.
At the same time, the president and other top officials continued to hint at the old, real rationale. Acting Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli said Friday that the data gleaned from the proposed question would fuel “the ongoing debate over how we deal ... with the burden of those who are not here legally.” And Trump said the question is necessary “No. 1 ... for Congress for redistricting.” Such comments reveal the administration’s determination to taint a timehonored factfinding process with bigotry and partisanship.