Trump Expected to Sign Executive Action Regarding Census Citizenship Question

President expected to lay out plan in news conference in the White House Rose Garden Thursday afternoon

WASHINGTON—President Trump is expected to sign an executive action regarding a citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. census, according to administration officials, a move that could prompt immediate challenges in court.

The president is expected to lay out his plan in a news conference in the White House Rose Garden Thursday afternoon.

The Trump administration has been considering several options to add such a question to the census in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that stymied its push to do so. Mr. Trump said last week the White House was working on a possible executive order.

“An executive order is the fastest way he can do something,” the administration official said Thursday.

Administration officials, who said the situation remained fluid Thursday morning, provided conflicting information about what the president planned to announce.

Congressional Democrats have already indicated they would oppose such a move. Sens. Jack Reed (D., R.I.) and Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) wrote in a letter to Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Tuesday asking that they “immediately cease consideration of an executive order or any other means of adding a citizenship question.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said Thursday the House would vote next week to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for ignoring a congressional subpoena seeking information about the citizenship-question effort. Mr. Trump invoked executive privilege over documents on how the question was added to the census after they were requested..

The news conference will be the latest chapter in a monthslong saga over the administration’s efforts to add such a question to the census.

The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling last month blocked the citizenship question on procedural grounds, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that the evidence that had emerged on Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision-making process “tells a story that does not match the explanation the secretary gave.”

The court’s decision said the Trump administration had the authority to ask about citizenship on the census—if it had valid reasons for doing so and could explain and support those reasons with candor.

After considering their legal options and facing a deadline to print the census forms, the Commerce and Justice departments announced last week that the fight was over and the forms were being sent to the printer without the question.

That night and the following morning, Mr. Trump called the accurate reports of administration statements in federal court “fake news,” adding that all possibilities were still being explored.

In private conversations with his advisers, Mr. Trump last week said he had never approved ending the effort to add a citizenship question to the census and blamed his administration for poorly communicating what was happening. Pointing to the Commerce Department’s announcement that it was starting to print the census without a citizenship question, Mr. Trump said, “Yeah, we’re printing, but we can always go back and add a question,” according to an administration official.

Government lawyers appeared surprised by the president’s tweets and apparent decision to continue pressing the issue. “I am doing my absolute best to figure out what’s going on,” attorney Joshua Gardner told U.S. District Judge George Hazel.

Since then, the Justice Department has reopened efforts to examine the president’s legal options for adding a citizenship question to the census. On Sunday, the department sought to shift the case to a different team of government lawyers, which Attorney General William Barr said was because some lawyers on the case felt uncomfortable continuing after telling courts the citizenship question would be dropped, only to be contradicted the following morning by the president.

Judges in Maryland and New York rejected the plan to switch legal teams in the census case.

The citizenship question hasn’t been asked on the main census form since 1950, although the Census Bureau collects citizenship data through its American Community Survey. The survey, which some 3.5 million households are required to complete annually, is used by federal, state and local policy makers, along with businesses, nonprofits and academic researchers.

Plaintiffs who challenged the citizenship question in multiple courts argued the Trump administration acted in bad faith to add a question that would disadvantage Hispanics and the communities in which they reside. The plaintiffs contend that recently discovered evidence traces the question to a Republican political strategist whose research indicated it would help shift political power to white voters and Republicans in redistricting.

Conservative lawyers in recent days have suggested several possible legal strategies the White House could rely on for the action.

Lawyers David Rivkin and Gilson Gray, writing in The Wall Street Journal opinion pages, suggested the president sign an executive order stating that a citizenship question is necessary to enforce Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 to deter former Confederate states from keeping African-Americans from voting. The provision reduces a state’s allocation of congressional seats in proportion to the number of citizens denied voting rights.

Congress never passed implementing legislation, and the federal government never has sought to enforce the provision. The official Constitution Annotated, a resource published by the Congressional Research Service, called the section “little more than an historical curiosity.”

Radio host Hugh Hewitt has proposed justifying a citizenship question based on the fact that many of the Democratic candidates in a televised debate last week expressed support for expanding Medicare to younger U.S. citizens and certain noncitizens.

Democrats have dismissed such proposals as absurd. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), a former law professor, said last week that there was likely no way to fix the flaw identified by the Supreme Court—that the administration flouted the policy-making process, which requires candor and a reasoned basis for agency decisions.