Posted on Jul 21, 2022
Documents detail the secret strategy behind Trump's census citizenship question push
1.19K
33
2
14
14
0
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/20/ [login to see] /census-citzenship-question-history-oversight-committee
Former President Donald Trump's administration spent years trying to add a census citizenship question as part of a secret strategy for altering the population numbers used to divide up seats in Congress and the Electoral College, internal documents released Wednesday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee confirm.
Long kept from the public, the Trump administration memos and emails were disclosed by lawmakers following a more than two-year legal fight that began after Trump officials refused to turn them over for a congressional investigation. Citing the "exceptional circumstances" of the case, the Biden administration, which inherited the lawsuit last year, agreed to allow House oversight committee members and their staff to review the documents.
The hotly contested question — "Is this a person a citizen of the United States?" — ultimately did not end up on the 2020 census forms. In 2019, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration's unprecedented efforts after finding its use of the Voting Rights Act as the stated reasoning for the question "seems to have been contrived," as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
Former President Donald Trump's administration spent years trying to add a census citizenship question as part of a secret strategy for altering the population numbers used to divide up seats in Congress and the Electoral College, internal documents released Wednesday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee confirm.
Long kept from the public, the Trump administration memos and emails were disclosed by lawmakers following a more than two-year legal fight that began after Trump officials refused to turn them over for a congressional investigation. Citing the "exceptional circumstances" of the case, the Biden administration, which inherited the lawsuit last year, agreed to allow House oversight committee members and their staff to review the documents.
The hotly contested question — "Is this a person a citizen of the United States?" — ultimately did not end up on the 2020 census forms. In 2019, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration's unprecedented efforts after finding its use of the Voting Rights Act as the stated reasoning for the question "seems to have been contrived," as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
Documents detail the secret strategy behind Trump's census citizenship question push
Posted from npr.org
Donald Trump
Citizenship
Strategy
Congress
Posted 2 y ago
Responses: 2
10
10
0
9
9
0
PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."During a House oversight committee meeting held hours after Wednesday's release of the Trump administration documents, Republican lawmakers attempted to dismiss Maloney's argument that the revelations underscored the need to pass the committee chair's proposals to better protect future head counts from any political interference.
Instead, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona introduced an amendment to Maloney's bill that would require adding a citizenship question to the census and excluding unauthorized immigrants from the census numbers used to reapportion Congress.
Research by the Census Bureau found that including a citizenship question on the 2020 census would have likely deterred many Latinx and Asian American residents from taking part in the national tally, which is also used to redraw maps of voting districts and guide the distribution of an estimated $1.5 trillion a year in federal money to local communities.
To produce citizenship data that would be more detailed than the estimates already produced through the bureau's American Community Survey, the bureau's researchers have also recommended using existing government records that would likely be less costly and more accurate than people's responses to a citizenship question."
..."During a House oversight committee meeting held hours after Wednesday's release of the Trump administration documents, Republican lawmakers attempted to dismiss Maloney's argument that the revelations underscored the need to pass the committee chair's proposals to better protect future head counts from any political interference.
Instead, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona introduced an amendment to Maloney's bill that would require adding a citizenship question to the census and excluding unauthorized immigrants from the census numbers used to reapportion Congress.
Research by the Census Bureau found that including a citizenship question on the 2020 census would have likely deterred many Latinx and Asian American residents from taking part in the national tally, which is also used to redraw maps of voting districts and guide the distribution of an estimated $1.5 trillion a year in federal money to local communities.
To produce citizenship data that would be more detailed than the estimates already produced through the bureau's American Community Survey, the bureau's researchers have also recommended using existing government records that would likely be less costly and more accurate than people's responses to a citizenship question."
(9)
(0)
Read This Next
Continue with Facebook 
Continue with Google