Trump backs off on census question

But he orders agencies to gather citizenship data

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Thursday dropped efforts to get a citizenship question on the 2020 census and said he would use other means to seek information about the number of noncitizens in the country.

Declaring an executive order directing every federal department to provide any citizenship information it has to the Commerce Department, which conducts the census, Trump said his administration still seeks to determine the citizen and noncitizen populations.

“We will leave no stone unturned,” Trump said in brief remarks in the White House Rose Garden.

Trump said he wanted a citizenship question on the census, but a Supreme Court decision two weeks ago blocked that effort. He attacked the decision in his remarks but said it would take too long to relitigate the question and his plan should yield the citizenship information anyway.

Though Trump said “we are not backing down” from efforts to count citizens and noncitizens, he is pulling back from a court fight.

Trump’s plan is similar to one the Commerce Department proposed a year and a half ago, said attorneys involved in legal battles against the citizenship question. But the administration decided instead to attach a citizenship question to the census itself.

“Trump’s attempt to weaponize the census ends not with a bang but a whimper,” said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project with the American Civil Liberties Union.

In its ruling June 27, the Supreme Court said the administration had not justified a citizenship question. The administration could come up with a new justification and relitigate the issue, but that could take months.

“We will leave no stone unturned.”

President Trump