President Trump and Attorney General William Barr on Thursday announced that the White House would no longer pursue the effort to have a citizenship question added to the 2020 census, instead instructing the Commerce Department to seek the information through other means.
"We are not backing down," said Trump, who had promised to continue the fight to have the question added and was reportedly weighing a potential executive order. Trump emphasized his belief that the information is of monumental importance, saying, "We must have a reliable count of how many citizens, non-citizens and illegal aliens are in our country," and accusing Democrats of working to "conceal the number of illegal aliens in our midst," per Bloomberg. Critics argued the question would depress representation and funding appropriation in urban areas.
The Supreme Court last month ruled that the administration could not add the citizenship question to the census for now, a decision the White House criticized. Barr said the issue with adding the question was logistical, not legal, reports The Washington Post, as the printing and distribution of the 2020 census would need to be delayed to accommodate any changes. Trump said he would instruct every federal agency "to provide the Department of Commerce with all requested records regarding the number of citizens and non-citizens in our country."
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