Yesterday, as Matt covered, Attorney General Bill Barr announced he has found a way through the Department of Justice to keep a question about citizenship status on the 2020 census.
Now the left, who thought they took home a victory when the Supreme Court pushed the matter back to the lower courts two weeks ago, is having a meltdown.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leading the way, arguing the only reason President Trump wants the question included is to "make America white again."
"This is about keeping, you know, make America, you know this hat Make America White Again. They want to make sure that people, certain people, are counted. It's really disgraceful and it's not what our founders had in mind. What they want to do is put a chilling effect so certain populations will not answer the form, that they won't answer the form, that they won't respond," she said. "Don't give them that victory. You must respond because otherwise, they win."
Funny Pelosi would mention voters. The U.S. Census is used to count the population of the United States. Those numbers are then used to allocated Congressional seats. It's no wonder why Democrats don't want more than 22 million illegal aliens knowingly questioned in the survey. From Census.gov:
How Our Data Are Used
To determine the distribution of Congressional seats to states.
-Mandated by the U.S. Constitution
-Used to apportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives
-Used to define legislature districts, school district assignment areas and other important functional areas of government
For the record, the Supreme Court did say the Trump administration has the legal authority to include a citizenship question on the census, but the majority argued lawyers for the Commerce Department did not adequately explain why it was being included.
The Court did not find the question to be a violation of the law, but instead didn't receive enough information from the Commerce Department and Secretary Wilbur Ross to make a decision. This leaves the door open for the citizenship question to be included on the census in the future.
Conservative justices ripped the opinion and argued the explanation is irrelevant.
Meanwhile Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch argue in their dissent the Supreme Court's only role was to determine whether Commerce Secretary Ross was breaking the law by including a question about citizenship. The court found he did not break the law in doing so.
"The Court’s erroneous decision in this case is bad enough, as it unjustifiably interferes with the 2020 census. But the implications of today’s decision are broader. With today’s decision, the Court has opened a Pandora’s box of pretext-based challenges in administrative law," they wrote. "In short, today’s decision is a departure from traditional principles of administrative law. Hopefully it comes to be understood as an aberration—a ticket good for this day and this train only."
"Because the Secretary’s decision to reinstate a citizenship question on the 2020 census was legally sound and a reasoned exercise of his broad discretion, I respectfully dissent from Part V of the opinion of the Court," they concluded.
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