We have our own Game of Thrones with Dems and Republicans battling it out. Who are the White Walkers? The latest battle... the census. Here's former AG Eric Holder saying that the other side is trying to "weaponize" the census question:
Following oral arguments earlier this week, I’m deeply concerned that the Supreme Court appears willing to allow the Trump administration to weaponize the 2020 Census to determine where political and economic power in the United States should reside. Allowing the administration to demand citizenship information from every household as part of the decennial census for the first time in more than half a century would dramatically depress the count in areas with significant Latino and immigrant populations and would reposition political representation toward areas more likely to elect Republicans. Yet a 5-to-4 opinion along ideological lines in this case would further erode the public’s trust in the Supreme Court as an apolitical body.
Litigation over the inclusion of a citizenship question has raised significant constitutional concerns. It has also clearly shown that the Commerce Department violated the Administrative Procedure Act in failing to appropriately test its proposed change to the census questionnaire. Part of the purpose of the APA is to ensure that federal agencies do not inject ideological considerations into what are supposed to be fact-based determinations, precisely what Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has done.
Ross falsely claimed that he added the citizenship question “solely” at the request of the Justice Department so that it could more effectively enforce the Voting Rights Act. Given the total lack of VRA enforcement by the Trump administration, this is both untrue and rank hypocrisy. And the litigation process revealed that in 2017, Ross planned the addition of a citizenship question with his staff, as well as former White House official Stephen K. Bannon and then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, two of President Trump’s radical, anti-immigrant political advisers, before broaching the subject with Justice Department leadership.
The Citizenship question is just like requiring a driver's license to vote - you can spin it any way you want but the bottom line is to keep brown people / poor people from voting so that the rich white vote counts more. That's how Florida and Georgia got it's governor and Florida got it's senator.
ReplyDeleteSurprised? The Republicans have weaponized every aspect of voting - campaign finance, gerrymandering, voter registration, ID, early voting, and polling places and times. And now the census. Not to mention the GOP Supreme Court and the Voting Rights Act.
ReplyDeleteWhat's Game of thrones?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Game of Thrones, great new Wm. Pryor/Rosenbaum face-off. Like usual, she gets the best of him. Some great lines.
ReplyDeleteHere is what I don't get about Florida Republicans. The number of people in a state determines the number of representatives that state gets. Not the number of citizens, but the number of actual people.
ReplyDeleteAdding the citizenship question means that the census will not accurately counts the population. Florida is riddled with immigrants, legal and not.
If Republicans cared about Florida, they would demand a proper count. Instead, they are all "don't count the illegals," even though that means Florida does not have the proper number of representatives in Congress. Why is that?