Stung by a Supreme Court action that has sent the census citizenship question back to a Federal judge that is unlikely to rule for the question…
Donald Trump is raising the idea that he would tell the Commerce Dept. to order the Census Bureau to hold up the presses on the 2020 Census form until the last minutes….
That could be sometime in October….
Trump hopes that by that time the Supreme Court would have the decision back in their laps…
For those who think this a certain win against the question being included which would probably result in tens of million ‘residents ‘ of this country NOT counted?
Think again…
Even with the case set back down?
A majority of the highest courts members wrote that the Commerce Dept. HAS the basic right to include the question…
Those judge have NOT considered the new compelling evidence that the citizenship question is a political action….
President Trump said Monday he’s looking “very strongly” at delaying the 2020 census if the administration is not allowed to add a citizenship question, an unprecedented move that would surely trigger new legal challenges.
“We’re looking at that,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about a delay. “So you can ask other things, but you can’t ask whether or not somebody is a citizen? So we are trying to do that. We’re looking at that very strongly.”
Trump first floated a delay of the census last week after the Supreme Court blocked the administration from including a citizenship question, demanding that the Commerce Department provide a more clear-cut explanation for the move.
The president said it’s crucial the question be asked because “it’s very important to find out if somebody’s a citizen as opposed to an illegal.” He said, without citing evidence, that immigrants living illegally in the U.S. are “treated better than the coal miner” suffering from black lung.
The high court’s ruling may preclude the question from being added to census forms. The Commerce Department has said it faces a July 1 printing deadline but that it could be pushed back to the end of October under extenuating circumstances.
Legal experts have said delaying the census would violate the Constitution, which says it must take place every 10 years and must count all people living in the U.S. Under federal law, the census must begin by April 1, 2020….
Censuses used to be taken in January, but were later (I’d guess from practical concerns) moved to April.
There’s no Constitutional provision that says when in a particular year the decennial census must be taken, only that one be done every 10 years.
If Congress (unvetoed by the President) wanted to change the start month to July or October, I see no constitutional block to their changing the law once again. But with a split Congress on such a loaded specifically-political issue, I don’t see House Democrats approving some delay that would favor the GOP or disfavor communities with large minority populations.
Breaking
Trump admin will NOT put the citizenship question on the 2020 census forms….
They have given up the court fight…
Stay tuned ….