AG Barr Crashes Liberals' Party with Announcement on Census Citizenship Question
In the battle over the nation’s census, liberals shouldn’t count out the White House just yet.
A closely divided Supreme Court gave Democrats a reason to party when it blocked in late June the Trump administration’s plan to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.
But Attorney General William Barr said this week that the fight isn’t over.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Barr said the White House will take action soon that will allow the question to be asked after all.
The AG didn’t offer details, but speaking to reporters after a stop at a federal prison in Edgefield, South Carolina, Barr suggested liberal celebrations are premature.
AG William Barr: “I think over the next day or two you’ll see what approach we’re taking and I think it does provide a pathway for getting the question on the census.” pic.twitter.com/HtOG92BVeq
— The Hill (@thehill) July 8, 2019
“I think, over the next day or two, you’ll see what approach we’re taking and I think it does provide a pathway for getting the question on the census,” Barr said, according to The Post and Courier of Charleston.
The court’s June 27 ruling did not find it unconstitutional for the census to ask about citizenship. As even The New York Times reported, the decision rested on Chief Justice John Roberts’ conclusion that the administration’s rationale for the question “appears contrived.”
“But [Roberts] left open the possibility that [the Trump administration] could provide an adequate answer,” The Times wrote.
Joining Roberts in opposing Trump was the court’s liberal wing – Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Leading the dissent was Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote, in an opinion joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, that the court was setting itself up as the arbiter of the executive branch’s motives, rather than its actions.
“I do not deny that a judge predisposed to distrust the secretary or the administration could arrange those facts on a corkboard and — with a jar of pins and a spool of string — create an eye-catching conspiracy web,” he wrote, according to The Times.
“Now that the court has opened up this avenue of attack,” he continued, “opponents of executive actions have strong incentives to craft narratives that would derail them.”
Another conservative, Justice Samuel Alito, used even stronger terms, defending Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s authority over the citizenship question.
“To put the point bluntly, the federal judiciary has no authority to stick its nose into the question whether it is good policy to include a citizenship question on the census or whether the reasons given by Secretary Ross for that decision were his only reasons or his real reason,” Alito wrote, according to The Times.
For supporters of the citizenship question, the issue boils down to a matter of fairness and electoral integrity.
As conservative former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told Breitbart in a 2018 interview:
“[W]e use the census to decide how to portion congressional districts and that in turn affects electoral votes as well. And so, we have now districts, especially in states like California — other states with a large number of illegal aliens — where instead of having 710,000 citizens, which is the average, approximate average of the congressional district size — instead of having that number of citizens in a district, you may have half of that number as citizens and half of that number as illegal aliens, which means that the citizens in that district have twice as much electoral power as you and I do.
“It only takes 40[,000] or 50,000 votes to win a congressional election. Where it takes 100[,000] or 120,000 votes to win a congressional election in the rest of the country.
“And so, this vote dilution is unconstitutional.”
Since his nomination for the AG position, Barr has been a magnet for liberal critics – especially for his decision to investigate the investigators behind the “Russia collusion” frenzy.
If he has found a way to make the citizenship question work, Barr is only going to make the left hate him more. Get ready for liberal heads to explode in rage.
And from the way Barr handles himself in public, it’s a good bet that liberal rage doesn’t bother him at all.
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