New documents have emerged in the census case before the Supreme Court challenging the Trump administration's decision to include a question on citizenship in the 2020 census, documents that show the real intent of that question—ensuring a structural advantage for "Republicans and non-Hispanic whites in our elections.
Longtime Republican gerrymandering guru Thomas Hofeller pushed to add the citizenship question to create that advantage, according to a cache of documents his daughter found on hard drives and thumb drives after his death last summer. The plaintiffs in the case say that the documents also show that two of the Trump government's witnesses perjured themselves: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Ross’s adviser Mark Neuman, and senior Department of Justice official John Gore. The two "falsely testified" under oath about the Justice Department's actions on the citizenship question, concealing Hofeller's role in creating the citizenship question and in cooking up a bogus argument that more detailed citizenship data in the census would help enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
Neuman testified that Hofeller, who happened to be an old friend, "told him that using citizenship data from the census to enforce the Voting Rights Act would increase Latino political representation" which was in fact precisely the opposite of what these Hofeller documents show. Hofeller had done a study of Texas legislative districts funded by the conservative site The Washington Free Beacon and Paul Singer, a major Republican donor, to determine how maps could be drawn based on data that included only the voting age population. He concluded "that such maps 'would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,’ and would dilute the political power of the state's Hispanics" because it would leave out Hispanics, who traditionally vote Democratic, and their children.
The rub, he concluded, was that restricted data didn't exist because the census counted everyone. So, he concluded, "Without a question on citizenship being included on the 2020 Decennial Census questionnaire the use of citizen voting age population is functionally unworkable." The remedy—getting the Trump administration to add it. He started pushing the administration to do so beginning with the transition and his buddy Neuman who in turn pushed the DOJ on the issue. Based on the documents, the plaintiffs are claiming in their new filing that Hofeller "ghostwrote a substantial part of the Newman DOJ Letter setting forth the VRA rationale."
"The new evidence demonstrates a direct through-line from Dr. Hofeller's conclusion that adding a citizenship question would advantage Republican and non-Hispanic whites to DOJ’s ultimate letter," they argue. They also include a chart demonstrating the instances of false testimony disproven by the documents. The challengers are urging New York-based U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman, who is presiding in the underlying challenge, to punish the government for concealing this evidence.
So that could happen. What's unclear now is whether these revelations will influence the Supreme Court, and particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, who seemed inclined toward allowing the citizenship question in the oral arguments in the case in April.