Justice Department swaps legal team chasing census citizenship question

The Justice Department said Sunday it's changing the legal team representing the Trump administration in its legal effort to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census. A Justice Department official tells The Washington Post that the entire team, career attorneys and political appointees alike, will be replaced by new career and political lawyers from the DOJ's Civil Division and Consumer Protection Branch. At least some of members of the outgoing legal team had concerns about the administration's handling of the case, the Post reports.

"Since these cases began, the lawyers representing the United States in these cases have given countless hours to defending the Commerce Department and have consistently demonstrated the highest professionalism, integrity, and skill inside and outside the courtroom," Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement. "The attorney general appreciates that service ... and is confident that the new team will carry on in the same exemplary fashion as the cases progress." The Justice Department declined to say if Attorney General William Barr had ordered the shakeup.

The census is already being printed without a citizenship question, and the Justice Department and Commerce Department had said last week they were dropping the effort, until President Trump intervened and ordered them to try and find a path forward. On Friday, Trump said he is "very seriously" considering signing an executive order to force the question on to the census, though legal analysts doubt that would be effective.

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The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration's argument for including the citizenship question appeared "contrived," and blocked it pending a more suitable rationale. "The Census Bureau's own experts have said a citizenship question would discourage immigrants from participating in the survey and result in a less accurate census that would redistribute money and political power away from Democratic-led cities where immigrants tend to cluster to whiter, rural areas where Republicans do well," The Associated Press reports.