A major Republican redistricting strategist played a role in the Trump administration's push to get a citizenship question on forms for the 2020 census.
Thomas Hofeller, who died last August, concluded in a 2015 report that adding the question would produce the data needed to redraw political maps that would be "advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites," according to a court filing released Thursday.
Plaintiffs in one of the New York-based lawsuits over the question say that Hofeller later ghostwrote an early draft of the administration's request for the question and helped form a reason for adding the question to forms for the national head count.
The Trump administration has maintained it wants census responses to the question — "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" — to better enforce Voting Rights Act protections for racial and language minorities.
But Hofeller's documents uncovered through a separate lawsuit suggest administration officials were aware that including the question "would not benefit Latino voters, but rather would facilitate significantly reducing their political power," argue attorneys with the law firm Arnold & Porter, the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union in a letter to U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday moved to block Congress’ access to documents about how a citizenship question was added to the 2020 census.
Trump claimed executive privilege over subpoenaed documents at the urging of the Justice Department, as the House Oversight and Reform Committee was beginning proceedings Wednesday morning to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the panel’s subpoenas, which the committee issued in April.
“These documents are protected from disclosure by the deliberative process, attorney-client communications, or attorney work product components of executive privilege,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote in a letter to House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).
“Regrettably, you have made these assertions necessary by your insistence upon scheduling a premature contempt vote,” Boyd added.
Boyd’s letter came just minutes before the committee convened to vote on civil and criminal contempt citations for Barr and Ross. Talks between the Justice Department and the committee broke down late Tuesday night after both sides exchanged last-minute offers that would have staved off the contempt votes.
