A new report from the House oversight committee says the Trump administration's efforts to add a citizenship question to the decennial census in 2020 was to help Republicans win elections.
File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo
July 20 (UPI) -- New documents, released by the House oversight committee Wednesday, show former President Donald Trump's administration hid its true intent for adding a citizenship question to the decennial census that determines how the U.S. House of Representatives' 435 seats are divided among states.
The documents reveal the Trump administration's public reason to add the citizenship question in 2020, to protect people's voting rights, was false, according to members of the committee.
The internal memos and emails show the administration's actual intention was to help Republicans win elections, the House committee report concluded.
The documents' release Wednesday follows a two-year legal battle that began after Trump officials refused to turn them over for a congressional investigation. The Biden administration, which assumed the lawsuit, agreed to allow the committee to conduct a review.
July 20 (UPI) -- New documents, released by the House oversight committee Wednesday, show former President Donald Trump's administration hid its true intent for adding a citizenship question to the decennial census that determines how the U.S. House of Representatives' 435 seats are divided among states.
The documents reveal the Trump administration's public reason to add the citizenship question in 2020, to protect people's voting rights, was false, according to members of the committee.
The internal memos and emails show the administration's actual intention was to help Republicans win elections, the House committee report concluded.
The documents' release Wednesday follows a two-year legal battle that began after Trump officials refused to turn them over for a congressional investigation. The Biden administration, which assumed the lawsuit, agreed to allow the committee to conduct a review.
"For years, the Trump administration delayed and obstructed the oversight committee's investigation into the true reason for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, even after the Supreme Court ruled the administration's efforts were illegal," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who chairs the committee, said in a press release.
Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in congressional testimony that the administration wanted to add the questions because it needed more accurate data on citizenship to enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The question -- "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" -- did not end up on the 2020 census forms, after the Supreme Court ruled the administration's use of the Voting Rights Act as justification "seems to have been contrived," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
The U.S. Constitution says House seats shall be apportioned based on "the whole Number of free Persons." Excluding non-citizens from the census count could have cost California, Texas and Florida congressional seats, the report notes.
Included in the documents is a 2017 email from James Uthmeier, a commerce department attorney, who tried to push the Justice Department to add the question.
"Ultimately, everyone is in agreement with our approach to move slowly, carefully and deliberately so as to not expose us to litigation risk," Uthmeier wrote in the email, according to the report.
A revised memo said "there are bases for legal arguments that the Founding Fathers intended for the apportionment count to be based on legal inhabitants."
Kris Kobach, Kansas' former secretary of state, also advocated for adding a citizenship question.
"There are about 710,000 people in each congressional district. But, if half of the district is made up of illegal aliens, then there are only 355,000 citizens in the district. The value of each citizen's vote in such a district is twice as high. That is unfair," Kobach wrote in a 2018 op-ed in Breitbart News.
Maloney is calling for new legislative reforms to prevent future "unconstitutional efforts to interfere with the census."
"Today's committee memo pulls back the curtain on this shameful conduct and shows clearly how the Trump administration secretly tried to manipulate the census for political gain while lying to the public and Congress about their goals," she said.
Secret memo links citizenship question to apportionment
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
yesterday
This Sunday, April 5, 2020, file photo, shows an envelope containing a 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident in Detroit. A U.S. Census Bureau director couldn't be fired without cause and new questions to the census form would have to be vetted by Congress under proposed legislation which attempts to prevent in the future the type of political interference into the nation's head count that took place during the Trump administration. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
Trump officials tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census in a move experts said would benefit Republicans despite initial doubts among some in the administration that it was legal, according to an investigative report released Wednesday by a congressional oversight committee.
The report offers a smoking gun of sorts — a secret memo the committee obtained after a two-year legal battle — showing that a top Trump appointee in the Commerce Department explored apportionment as a reason to include the question.
“The Committee’s investigation has exposed how a group of political appointees sought to use the census to advance an ideological agenda and potentially exclude non-citizens from the apportionment count,” the report released by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said.
It has long been speculated that the Trump administration wanted the citizenship question in order to exclude people in the country illegally from apportionment numbers.
The report includes several drafts showing how the memo evolved from recognizing that doing so would likely be unconstitutional to coming up with other justifications for adding the citizenship question.
The apportionment process uses state population counts gathered during the once-a-decade census to divide up the number of congressional seats each state gets.
Experts feared a citizenship question would scare off Hispanics and immigrants from participating in the 2020 census, whether they were in the country legally or not. The citizenship question was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2019. In the high court’s decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said the reason the Commerce Department had given for the citizenship question — it was needed for the Justice Department’s enforcement of the Voting Rights Act — appeared to be contrived.
The Commerce Department oversees the Census Bureau, which conducts the count used to determine political power and the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year. Then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross testified before the oversight committee that apportionment wasn’t the reason for the citizenship question, even though the Commerce Department memo suggests otherwise, the House report said.
“I have never intentionally misled Congress or intentionally said anything incorrect under oath,” Ross said during a 2019 hearing before the oversight committee.
According to the House committee report, during planning for the citizenship question, an adviser to the Commerce Department reached out to a Republican redistricting expert who had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing of congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
The August 2017 memo prepared by senior political appointee James Uthmeier went to the heart of interactions by the Commerce and Justice departments to come up with a contrived reason for the citizenship question, the House report said.
An initial draft of the memo raised doubts that a citizenship question would be legal since it can only be added to the once-a-decade census if the Commerce Secretary concludes that gathering that information in survey sampling is not feasible. But a later draft removed that concern and added that the Commerce Secretary had the discretion to add a citizenship question for reasons other than apportionment.
An even later draft removed apportionment as an exception to the Commerce Secretary’s discretion and added “there is nothing illegal or unconstitutional about adding a citizenship question.”
An early draft of the memo also noted that using a citizenship data for apportionment was likely unconstitutional and went against 200 years of precedent, but that language also was removed in later drafts.
The Founding Fathers’ “conscious choice” not to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the count “suggests the Founders did not intend to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens” for apportionment,” Uthmeier wrote in the early draft.
The House report says Uthmeier researched using Voting Rights Act enforcement as a reason for the citizenship question three months before the Justice Department requested it, and hand-delivered his memo with that suggestion to the Justice Department in order to avoid a digital fingerprint.
Uthmeier, who now is chief of staff to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiry Wednesday.
In an effort to prevent future attempts at politicizing the census, members of the oversight committee on Wednesday debated a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that would require new questions for the head count to be vetted by Congress, prohibit a Census Bureau director from being fired without cause and limit the number of political appointees at the Census Bureau to three.
Even though many of the Trump administration’s political efforts ultimately failed, some advocates believe they did have an impact, resulting in significantly larger undercounts of most racial and ethnic minorities in the 2020 census compared to the 2010 census.
Republican lawmakers said the bill would make the Census Bureau director unaccountable and limit the ability to add important questions to the census form. They offered an amendment that would add a citizenship question to the next census and exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the apportionment count, claiming their inclusion dilutes the political power of citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that all people in each U.S. state be counted for apportionment.
Committee members voted down the amendment and passed the bill Wednesday afternoon.
“What this bill does, it more completely delegates Census Bureau activity to the bureaucracy,” said U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. “When you delegate to the bureaucracy, you are taking away the power of the American people.”
___
Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP
This Sunday, April 5, 2020, file photo, shows an envelope containing a 2020 census letter mailed to a U.S. resident in Detroit. A U.S. Census Bureau director couldn't be fired without cause and new questions to the census form would have to be vetted by Congress under proposed legislation which attempts to prevent in the future the type of political interference into the nation's head count that took place during the Trump administration. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
Trump officials tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census in a move experts said would benefit Republicans despite initial doubts among some in the administration that it was legal, according to an investigative report released Wednesday by a congressional oversight committee.
The report offers a smoking gun of sorts — a secret memo the committee obtained after a two-year legal battle — showing that a top Trump appointee in the Commerce Department explored apportionment as a reason to include the question.
“The Committee’s investigation has exposed how a group of political appointees sought to use the census to advance an ideological agenda and potentially exclude non-citizens from the apportionment count,” the report released by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said.
It has long been speculated that the Trump administration wanted the citizenship question in order to exclude people in the country illegally from apportionment numbers.
The report includes several drafts showing how the memo evolved from recognizing that doing so would likely be unconstitutional to coming up with other justifications for adding the citizenship question.
The apportionment process uses state population counts gathered during the once-a-decade census to divide up the number of congressional seats each state gets.
Experts feared a citizenship question would scare off Hispanics and immigrants from participating in the 2020 census, whether they were in the country legally or not. The citizenship question was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2019. In the high court’s decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said the reason the Commerce Department had given for the citizenship question — it was needed for the Justice Department’s enforcement of the Voting Rights Act — appeared to be contrived.
The Commerce Department oversees the Census Bureau, which conducts the count used to determine political power and the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year. Then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross testified before the oversight committee that apportionment wasn’t the reason for the citizenship question, even though the Commerce Department memo suggests otherwise, the House report said.
“I have never intentionally misled Congress or intentionally said anything incorrect under oath,” Ross said during a 2019 hearing before the oversight committee.
According to the House committee report, during planning for the citizenship question, an adviser to the Commerce Department reached out to a Republican redistricting expert who had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing of congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
The August 2017 memo prepared by senior political appointee James Uthmeier went to the heart of interactions by the Commerce and Justice departments to come up with a contrived reason for the citizenship question, the House report said.
An initial draft of the memo raised doubts that a citizenship question would be legal since it can only be added to the once-a-decade census if the Commerce Secretary concludes that gathering that information in survey sampling is not feasible. But a later draft removed that concern and added that the Commerce Secretary had the discretion to add a citizenship question for reasons other than apportionment.
An even later draft removed apportionment as an exception to the Commerce Secretary’s discretion and added “there is nothing illegal or unconstitutional about adding a citizenship question.”
An early draft of the memo also noted that using a citizenship data for apportionment was likely unconstitutional and went against 200 years of precedent, but that language also was removed in later drafts.
The Founding Fathers’ “conscious choice” not to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the count “suggests the Founders did not intend to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens” for apportionment,” Uthmeier wrote in the early draft.
The House report says Uthmeier researched using Voting Rights Act enforcement as a reason for the citizenship question three months before the Justice Department requested it, and hand-delivered his memo with that suggestion to the Justice Department in order to avoid a digital fingerprint.
Uthmeier, who now is chief of staff to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiry Wednesday.
In an effort to prevent future attempts at politicizing the census, members of the oversight committee on Wednesday debated a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that would require new questions for the head count to be vetted by Congress, prohibit a Census Bureau director from being fired without cause and limit the number of political appointees at the Census Bureau to three.
Even though many of the Trump administration’s political efforts ultimately failed, some advocates believe they did have an impact, resulting in significantly larger undercounts of most racial and ethnic minorities in the 2020 census compared to the 2010 census.
Republican lawmakers said the bill would make the Census Bureau director unaccountable and limit the ability to add important questions to the census form. They offered an amendment that would add a citizenship question to the next census and exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the apportionment count, claiming their inclusion dilutes the political power of citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that all people in each U.S. state be counted for apportionment.
Committee members voted down the amendment and passed the bill Wednesday afternoon.
“What this bill does, it more completely delegates Census Bureau activity to the bureaucracy,” said U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. “When you delegate to the bureaucracy, you are taking away the power of the American people.”
___
Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP
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