Trump Drops Census Fight, Excitedly Announces New Attack on Democracy
President Trump has given up on his bid to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, ending a naked effort to further concentrate political power among Republicans at the expense of immigrants and their communities. The question — despite the administration’s half-hearted and thoroughly unconvincing attempt to dress it up as a defense of the Voting Rights Act — was aimed at dampening immigrant and Latino participation to give Republicans another tool to further Gerrymander districts in their favor. And so with the 2020 attempt abandoned and the next Census not until 2030, the survey appears to have emerged largely unscathed by what should be its lone brush with Trump.
But, as the saying goes, when a would-be authoritarian closes a door, he opens a window — and that’s what Trump did Thursday. The president rolled out plans for an executive order demanding every federal agency hand over records outlining the number of citizens and non-citizens in the United States. Such a database would provide the administration a powerful new resource as it seeks to further tilt the scales of democracy in favor of the Republican Party, largely at the expense of immigrant communities. And it creates a bureaucratic Chekhov’s Gun, as, despite promises to the contrary, it leaves open the potential the information will be used to further the administration’s indiscriminate efforts to hurt undocumented immigrants.
As Trump himself put it, this new executive order, “will allow us to have an even more complete count of citizens than through asking the single question alone.”
“We are pursuing a new option to ensure a complete and timely count of the non-citizen population,” the president said from the Rose Garden. “I will be issuing an executive order to put this very plan into effect immediately. I am hereby ordering every department and agency in the federal government to provide the Department of Commerce with all requested records regarding the number of citizens and non-citizens in our country.”
“We have great knowledge in many of our agencies,” he added. “We will leave no stone unturned.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-census-defeat-democracy-858250/