Earlier today, President Trump sparked a leftist meltdown by tweeting that reports of the demise of the citizenship question on the census were “fake”…
The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE! We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2019
Questions immediately arose as to what legal strategy the administration would employ, given the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Immediately, groups challenging the question requested that Judge Jesse Furman, in New York federal court, hold an emergency hearing on the question’s status, citing the president’s tweet stating that the administration would continue to pursue adding the question to the 2020 census.
As The Hill notes, Obama appointee Furman quickly obliged giving the Department of Justice until 6 pm on Wednesday to state their “position and intentions” on the citizenship question.
Shortly before 6pm, a Justice Department lawyer has now told a federal judge that the agency was asked to consider ways to salvage the question.
And so, The Hill reports that Joseph Hunt, an assistant attorney general with DOJ’s civil division, said Wednesday that:
…the department has been “instructed to examine whether there is a path forward, consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision, that would allow us to include the citizenship question on the census.”
We think there may be a legally available path under the Supreme Court’s decision. We’re examining that, looking at near-term options to see whether that’s viable and possible,” Hunt said, according to a transcript of a teleconference held in federal court in Maryland.
U.S. District Judge George Hazel gave the U.S. until Friday at 2 p.m. to definitely answer what it doing. Hazel, an Obama appointee, said during the call that he scheduled the conference in light of Trump’s tweet.
“I don’t know how many federal judges have Twitter accounts, but I happen to be one of them, and I follow the president, and so I saw a tweet that directly contradicted the position” the DOJ had given the day before, Hazel said, according to the transcript.
“I think I’m actually being really reasonable here and just saying I need a final answer by Friday at 2 p.m. or we’re going forward,” the judge said.
Finally, as National Review notes, two-thirds of voters support allowing the U.S. census to include a question about an individual’s citizenship status, disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision to block the question.
In a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Tuesday, 67 percent of respondents said the question, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” should be allowed on the census. That number included about 88 percent of Republicans, 52 percent of Democrats, and 63 percent of independents agreed.
“The public here agrees with the administration that it makes sense to ask citizenship on the census,” said poll director Mark Penn.
“It is a clear supermajority of Americans on this issue.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XnKd4M Tyler Durden