Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross defends citizenship question on 2020 census

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross insisted Thursday that his decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census had nothing to do with politics and was done solely at the request of the Department of Justice.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee challenged that claim, citing calls, emails and memos to and from Ross showing that he was considering the citizenship question months before Justice made its written request in December 2017. 

The committee members unveiled a series of documents showing Ross engaged in discussions inside and outside his department exploring the citizenship question as early as April 2017. 

Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., pointed to discussions in July 2017 that Ross had with President Donald Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and the head of Trump's short-lived presidential commission on voter fraud, Kris Kobach, about the citizenship question.

Ross said all those discussions occurred early in his tenure overseeing the Census Bureau while he was simply doing a "deep dive" to learn about the census.

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"I have no control over what Kris Kobach or anyone else puts in an email sent to me," Ross said. "If you look at my emails during that period, you’ll find lots and lots of other questions."

Ross had testified before Congress that his addition of a citizenship question was done "solely" based on the Justice request. Thursday, he added a new wrinkle to his answer, saying he conducted intensive research beforehand because he understood that Justice might want a citizenship question, so he figured he should do his homework.

"I wanted to make sure that we had enough time to adequately consider any formal request that DOJ might make," he said.

Democrats doubted that story and the official administration line that the citizenship question is needed to accurately count minorities so Justice Department attorneys can protect their rights through the Voting Rights Act. 

"I do not know anyone who truly believes that the Trump administration is interested in enhancing the Voting Rights Act," Cummings said. "This administration has done everything in its power to suppress the vote, not to help people exercise their right to vote."

In March 2018, the Commerce Department announced the citizenship question would be added to the decennial Census for the first time since 1950. 

A wide range of critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the state of California, argued that adding the question was nothing more than an attempt to intimidate noncitizens from participating in the Census, which would lead to massive population undercounts in minority communities, costing them seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and billions of dollars in federal funding.

In January, a federal judge in New York blocked the addition of the citizenship question, calling the secretary's contention that he made his decision based solely on a request from the Justice Department a "sham justification." In a 277-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ruled that Ross made his decision for other reasons, then tried to conceal his motives by getting the Justice Department to make the request.

"The court can – and, in light of all the evidence in the record, does – infer from the various ways in which Secretary Ross and his aides acted like people with something to hide that they did have something to hide," Furman said.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in California struck down the question, ruling that its inclusion in the 2020 Census would lead to such drastic population undercounts that it "threatens the very foundation of our democratic system." 

The Supreme Court stepped into the legal minefield, ruling in October that Ross could not be questioned by lawyers for those seeking to block the citizenship question. The court agreed to take up the case on its April calendar and may resolve the issue by summer, when the Census questionnaire is scheduled for printing.

During Thursday's hearing, Republicans blasted Democrats for focusing only on the citizenship question, saying there are more pressing issues facing the 2020 Census, including the Commerce Department's efforts to improve cybersecurity and protect the integrity of the results from hackers.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Democrats politicized the process by focusing only on the citizenship question, even though it has been asked for decades as part of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey that polls a fraction of U.S. households during periods between the decennial Census. 

"For the life of me, I don't know why the Democrats don't want to know how many citizens are in the United States of America," Jordan said.