President Donald Trump said Friday morning that he’s “thinking about” using an executive order to force the citizenship question onto the census for 2020.
“We’re thinking about doing that. It’s one of the ways — we have four or five ways we can do it,” he said. “We’re thinking of doing it very seriously. We’re doing well on the census.”
Trump says he’s considering using an executive order for the census pic.twitter.com/zXl0cJDkcG
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 5, 2019
He also floated printing the document now, and adding an addendum should the question be approved later.
The Supreme Court recently handed down a decision blocking the administration from adding the question, though the court left the door open for the addition later if the government could figure out a better rationale for adding it, among other things.
It looked like the citizenship question was dead in the water for 2020, until Trump started issuing a series of tweets implying that he wanted the Justice Department to revive the fight, totally blindsiding many of his own lawyers.
A judge has asked the government to shed more light on what exactly is going on in this process — that information is supposed to come out later Friday.
