Trump’s Latest End Run Is Around the Supreme Court
President Donald Trump is considering an end-run around the U.S. Supreme Court in what may become among his most blatant abuses of executive power to date. The nation’s top justices told Trump he could not add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, but late Wednesday DOJ attorneys told a lower federal court that based on “orders” from the president they were exploring options to include the question.
Axios reports “President Trump is considering an executive order to try to move forward with a citizenship question on the 2020 census.”
“We didn’t come this far just to throw in the towel,” an unnamed senior administration official with direct knowledge of the conversations told Axios’ Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen.
The goal of the question, as explained by a GOP activist who came up with the idea, is to benefit white Republican voters. That activist, now dead, was known as the “Michelangelo of gerrymandering.”
The DOJ and Commerce Dept. told the public and the U.S. Supreme Court the Census would not include the racist citizenship question and that the printing of the Census had already begun.
Trump isn’t hiding his contempt for the rule of law or the U.S. Supreme Court, as this tweet from earlier today shows:
On Wednesday he tweeted that it was “FAKE” he was acquiescing to SCOTUS, warning that he would continue to pursue other options. That tweet prompted a quickly-convened federal court hearing by one of the judges overseeing the case.