Trump Steps Up Effort on Citizenship Question

“The Trump administration on Friday stepped up its effort to place a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, after the president said he was mulling an executive order to deal with the impasse and Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge they were still looking for a legal way forward,” the Washington Post reports.

“The Supreme Court has called the administration’s rationale for the question ‘contrived’ and said the government could not go forward without a solid justification. On Friday, Trump and a key official mentioned other possible reasons for adding the query in statements that added to a week-long swirl of contradictions and that could make the administration’s case even more difficult.”

Playbook: “If the administration goes in this direction, it will likely end up in courts again, and those courts have already blocked this.”