One day after senior officials publicly abandoned their ambitions to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form, the Trump administration abruptly reversed course and told a federal judge it would continue its legal fight.
Though government lawyers and census officials said the question would be excluded, President Donald Trump said by tweet Wednesday morning that his administration would press the issue.
“We at the Department of Justice have been instructed to examine whether there is a path forward, consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision, that would allow us to include the citizenship question on the census,” assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt told a federal judge in Maryland.
Government lawyers seemed bewildered when the Maryland judge asked them about the government’s rapidly evolving position.
“The tweet this morning was the first I had heard of the president’s position on this issue, just like the plaintiffs and your honor,” said government lawyer Josh Gardner. “I do not have a deeper understanding of what that means at this juncture other than what the president has tweeted. But, obviously, as you can imagine, I am doing my absolute best to figure out what’s going on.”
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