As Donald Trump held forth with reporters Friday morning, he admitted that the explicit reason his administration must have a citizenship question on the 2020 Census was for the purposes of redistricting. "You need it for many reasons," Trump said on the South Lawn, "Number one, you need it for Congress, for districting."
Fascinating. The idea that Trump and Republicans wanted to use the citizenship question to create an undercount of non-white people who mostly reside in blue districts is at the heart of the debate around adding the question. Trump's own Solicitor General, Noel Francisco, has called the argument that the Trump administration was intentionally hoping to increase the voting power of Republicans and non-white Hispanics a "speculative conspiracy theory." Except, Trump just made a liar out of Francisco.
This will handicap the administration's legal position in two ways. First, Trump's Justice Department will no longer be able to dismiss the redistricting claim out of hand since their client, Trump, unwittingly admitted the truth. Second, the citizenship question should have no bearing whatsoever on districting. The census in fact aims to count all persons residing in the U.S. and districts are later apportioned based on that count. As California Rep. Ted Lieu pointed out, “drawing congressional districts based on ‘citizens,’ rather than ‘persons,’ is unconstitutional.” Trump has now stated the real reason, and that reason is unconstitutional.
Anyway, thanks, Trump. The job of Justice Department lawyers scrambling to concoct a new legal rationale for the citizenship question just got a thousand times harder. And they already punted, notifying the court Friday afternoon that they are waiting on the Commerce Department to come up with something.