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Report: Trump Mulls Executive Order to Get Citizenship Query on Census

posted onJuly 5, 2019
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Article snippet: Lawyers for the Trump administration are currently in talks discussing if a proposed executive order would meet “a constitutional need,” according to a report from Axios. “The administration is considering the appropriateness of an executive order that would address the constitutional need for the citizenship question to be included in the 2020 census,” a senior legal source in the administration told Axios. The Supreme Court held by a 5-4 vote on June 27 that asking the citizenship question is authorized both by the Constitution and by federal law. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion, with the four liberal justices dissenting. However, Roberts then switched sides to join the liberal justices to create a 5-4 on a third issue, sending the case back to the lower court for further proceedings to determine if the Trump administration had a hidden political motive for asking the citizenship question. While the case was theoretically a win for the Trump administration, these new court proceedings would push the lawsuit well past the deadline for starting the printing of census forms, likely making it impossible to include the question on the 2020 census. But the court, while saying that adding the question “was a distraction,” gave the Trump administration another chance to bring the issue to the court if it had a better explanation for why the question was necessary. Trump tweeted Thursday morning that the Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce ... Link to the full article to read more

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