President Donald Trump took the extraordinary step Thursday morning of claiming executive privilege over documents related to his administration’s desire to add a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. Census. The GOP activist who came up with the idea to add the question specifically wrote it “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”
The House Oversight and Reform Committee had subpoenaed the documents. Attorney General Bill Barr reportedly asked the President to claim executive privilege over them if the Committee continued to move toward holding the AG in contempt.
The contempt vote, which is being held today, was described by the DOJ as “unnecessary and premature” in a letter (below) to Chairman Elijah Cummings announcing the claim of executive privilege.
The administration’s goal in adding the citizenship question would be to suppress responses from undocumented immigrants – the census is required to count everyone in the country, not just citizens – and those concerned the federal government might take action against them. Since the census is used to determine how many representatives a state is allowed in Congress, and how federal funds are allocated, accurately counting everyone becomes of primary importance.
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