Trump's malicious, lawless census change may be just the beginning of new outrages
President Trump believes he’s found a clever way to circumvent Congress and the Constitution while, for good measure, imposing his lawlessness on a subsequent administration.
Trump unveiled his fresh idea on Tuesday with a memorandum purporting to define a new federal “policy”: Unlawful immigrants must not be counted in the census.
There’s an obvious problem here. The 14th Amendment specifies that congressional representatives be apportioned according to “the whole number of persons in each state.” As the Supreme Court has held unanimously, that provision requires the census to take account of each state’s “total population” and include “all inhabitants.”
Trump’s declaration specifically excludes some inhabitants, and the courts can be expected to strike it down without breaking a sweat. Still, it’s worth unpacking Trump’s twisted logic, both to understand a power play the president will probably try again and to appreciate his boundless malice.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-23/donald-trump-john-yoo-immigrant-census
