New York City

Mapmaker’s secrets: Newly unearthed memos presented in federal court this week suggest a GOP operative inspired the Trump administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Gerrymandering mastermind Thomas Hofeller believed that asking about citizenship “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,” according to files found on hard drives at Hofeller’s home after he died last August. Those files indicate he urged the Trump administration to add the citizenship question, then wrote key portions of its rationale for doing so. With the Supreme Court set to rule later this month on whether the question should be allowed, plaintiffs claim the new evidence directly refutes the Justice Department’s argument that it added the question to enforce the Voting Rights Act. The department responded: “There is no smoking gun here; only smoke and mirrors.”