{"id":26753,"date":"2019-07-09T17:22:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T23:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=368589"},"modified":"2019-07-09T17:22:01","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T23:22:01","slug":"opinion-mike-littwin-trump-lawyers-still-pushing-citizenship-question-and-they-still-cant-say-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/opinion-mike-littwin-trump-lawyers-still-pushing-citizenship-question-and-they-still-cant-say-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Mike Littwin: Trump lawyers still pushing citizenship question, and they still can\u2019t say why"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Mike Littwin<\/strong>
The Colorado Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

When the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration\u2019s explanation for why it wanted to put a citizenship question on the U.S. Census form was \u201ccontrived\u201d \u2014 meaning, you know, a lie \u2014 a better man (OK, a normal person) would have thrown in the towel, just be happy that no one had yet been charged with perjury in the matter, and decided to fight another day. <\/p>\n

But Donald Trump is not that man. Sure, the Treasury Department and the Department of Justice had already conceded defeat on the issue \u2014 a defeat that Trump called \u201cfake news,\u201d thereby admitting what we all know, that when he says \u201cfake news,\u201d he means news he doesn\u2019t like.<\/p>\n

He was furious that Treasury Secretary Wilbur Ross had given in so easily and, after talking to his, um, advisers, Trump decided to push on.<\/p>\n

You see, Trump thought he had a better idea. If the Supreme Court wouldn\u2019t accept his administration\u2019s lie \u2014 that the reason for the question was that it would help with enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, a lie which absolutely no one could believe \u2014 he\u2019d just think of another lie.<\/p>\n

I mean, who\u2019s better at lying than Donald Trump? No one, of course.<\/p>\n

But the problem is that we\u2019re not talking about some Trump rally, where the true believers accept whatever words tumble out of his mouth, or a phoned-in visit with the sycophants at Fox & Friends. This would be in a courtroom, where truth occasionally still holds sway. In the case of the citizenship question, Chief Justice John Roberts, one of the five GOP-appointed justices on the Supreme Court, is the one wrote the 5-4 contrivance opinion. <\/p>\n

The opinion did say, however, that the administration could come back with another rationale, which, if you think about it, had to be a setup. I mean, if you come back to court with a different rationale, you\u2019re basically admitting that you lied about the first one.<\/p>\n

So, what to do?<\/p>\n

Trump has suggested he might just use an executive order, his favorite Obama-era tool he regularly abuses. (And, speaking of Obama, did you notice Trump blamed the teleprompter \u2014 which he often mocked Obama for using \u2014 for the fact that he told the July 4th crowd the Continental Army \u201ctook over the airports\u201d<\/a> during the Revolutionary War? I think he might be telling the truth here. Whatever the gaps in Trump\u2019s knowledge of American history \u2014 and, as, say, Frederick Douglass would tell you, they are wide and deep \u2014 I\u2019m pretty he knows that the revolution predated the Wright brothers.) <\/p>\n

Some experts believe he lacks the constitutional authority to use an executive order in this instance, but why would that stop him? One Republican congressman has publicly encouraged him to simply ignore the Supreme Court, which might bring even Nancy Pelosi around on impeachment proceedings.<\/p>\n

In a Friday meeting with the press, Trump apparently told the truth again, offering some insight as to why he does it so infrequently.<\/p>\n

When Trump was asked why he was so insistent in pursuing the citizenship question, he offered up various possibilities, saying, \u201cNumber one, you need it for Congress \u2014 you need it for Congress for districting. You need it for appropriations \u2014 where are the funds going? How many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens? You need it for many reasons.\u201d <\/p>\n

Oops. Redistricting? Number one? That\u2019s what the question\u2019s opponents say it\u2019s about. The redistricting rationale is exactly the wrong one for Trump to reveal, and for several reasons. The Washington Post\u2019s<\/em> Aaron Blake has a pretty good take<\/a> on it, which has to do, of course, with electing Republicans. And if you want to go further in the weeds, Blake says to go here<\/a>. You might also note that when listing the reasons for pursuing the question, Trump, to no one\u2019s surprise, never mentioned the Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n

One reason that Roberts had to rule against the contrivance was that after the case was heard by the court, new evidence emerged that basically proved the rationale was a lie. It wasn\u2019t that everyone didn\u2019t already know it. But this was the real deal, written evidence by the the late GOP redistricting guru, Thomas Hofeller, found on hard drives by his estranged daughter after his death in August. She shared the information with the group Common Cause.<\/p>\n

According to The Washington Post:<\/em> Lawyers arguing against the citizenship question sent to U.S. District Court Judge Jesse Furman a letter saying that Hofeller \u201cplayed a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census in order to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, \u2018Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Even the Census Bureau has conceded that the question would cause some undocumented Hispanics to avoid being counted for fear of being deported. These census numbers \u2014 which count citizens and non-citizens alike \u2014 are used for a wide variety of purposes, including how to distribute $880 billion in federal funds and how to calculate the number of congressional districts each state receives.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration was given a Friday deadline by U.S. District Court Judge George Hazel to say whether it still plans to include the citizenship question on census forms. Hazel is overseeing a Maryland case to determine whether the question was discriminatory in that it could limit the number of minorities counted in the census.<\/p>\n

The lawyers told the judge that the administration still hopes to use the question, but they couldn\u2019t yet give a reason why. In other words, they\u2019re still trying to come up with a rationale for a plan that couldn\u2019t possibly have a good \u2014 or lawful \u2014 one that in any way resembles the truth.<\/p>\n

Mike Littwin writes the biweekly column \u201cFair and Unbalanced\u201d for The Colorado Independent. He previously worked at The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun. Contact him at<\/em> mike@coloradoindependent.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike LittwinThe Colorado Independent When the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration\u2019s explanation for why it wanted to put a citizenship question on the U.S. Census form was \u201ccontrived\u201d \u2014 meaning, you know, a lie \u2014 a better man (OK, a normal person) would have thrown in the towel, just be happy that no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 11:50:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}