Trump retreats from census plan
President instructs agencies to find ways to collect citizen data
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump abandoned his controversial bid to inject a citizenship question into next year’s census Thursday, instead directing federal agencies to try to compile the information using existing databases.
He insisted he was “not backing down,” declaring in a Rose Garden announcement that the goal was simple and reasonable: “a clear breakdown of the number of citizens and non-citizens that make up the United States population.”
But the decision was a reversal, after the Supreme Court blocked his effort by disputing his administration’s rationale for demanding that census respondents declare whether or not they were
citizens. Trump had said last week that he was “very seriously” considering an executive order to try to force the question. The government has already begun the lengthy and expensive process of printing the census questionnaire without it, and such a move would surely have drawn an immediate legal challenge.
Trump’s efforts to add the question on the census had drawn backlash from critics who complained that it was political, meant to discourage participation, not only by people living in the country illegally but also by citizens who fear that participating would expose non-citizen family members to repercussions.
Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, and the lawyer who argued the Supreme Court case, celebrated Thursday’s announcement by the president, saying: “Trump’s attempt to weaponize the census ends not with a bang but a whimper.”
Trump said he would be signing an executive order directing every federal department and agency to provide the Commerce Department with all records pertaining to the number of citizens and noncitizens in the country, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.
The Census Bureau already has access to Social Security, food stamp and federal prison records, all of which contain citizenship information.
Trump, citing Census Bureau projections, predicted that using previously available records, the administration could determine the citizenship of 90 percent of the population “or more.”
“Ultimately this will allow us to have a more complete count of citizens than through asking the single question alone,” he contended. But it is still unclear what Trump intends to do with the citizenship information.
At one point he suggested it could help states that “may want to draw state and local legislative districts based upon the voter-eligible population.” That would mark a change from how districts are drawn currently, based on the entire population, and could increase Republican political power.
Attorney General William Barr said there was disagreement over whether “illegal aliens” can be included for apportionment purposes. “Depending on the resolution of that dispute, this data may be relevant to those considerations,” he said.
The Census Bureau has stressed that it could produce better citizenship data without adding the question. The bureau had recommended combining information from the annual American Community Survey with records held by other federal agencies that already include citizenship records.
“This would result in higher quality data produced at lower cost,” deputy Census Bureau Director Ron Jarmin had written in a December 2017 email to a Justice Department official. But Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, rejected that approach and ordered the citizenship question be added to the census.
The American Community Survey, which polls 3.5 million U.S. households every year, already includes questions about respondents’ citizenship.
Trump’s administration had faced numerous roadblocks to adding the question, beginning with the ruling by the Supreme Court temporarily barring its inclusion on the grounds that the government’s justification was insufficient. Two federal judges also rejected the Justice Department’s plan to replace the legal team fighting for inclusion.
Trump had insisted his administration push forward, suggesting last week that officials might be able to add an addendum to the questionnaire with the question after it was printed. He has also toyed with the idea of halting the constitutionally mandated survey while the legal fight ensued.
Barr said he was confident the census question would have eventually survived legal review but the process would have taken too long to work its way through the courts.
Trump had offered multiple explanations for why he believed the question was necessary to include in the once-a-decade population count that determines the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives for the next 10 years and the distribution of some $675 billion in federal spending.
“You need it for Congress, for districting. You need it for appropriations. Where are the funds going? How many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens? You need it for many reasons,” he told reporters last week, despite that congressional districts are based on total population, regardless of residents’ national origin or immigration status.