Members-Only Article
Read this very closely.
It’s from an anonymous TPM Reader who I cannot identify but has a specific, professional experience with the questions at hand. The Census/citizenship question is highly consequential in itself. But it is also a critical signal about whether the Court will make any pretense of following a coherent jurisprudence or simply toss the pretense and make openly results-oriented decisions to entrench Republican power. To me this issue is more focused on what will almost certainly be a raft of upcoming cases testing whether the President can defy the the Congress’s constitutional oversight mandate. Will we have an executive power friendly third branch of government arbiter or will the five justice conservative majority remake itself into an off-site annex of the White House Counsel’s office?