Citizenship question being added to 2020 census; Planned Parenthood joins those protesting

There’s some breaking news late Monday night as the Commerce Department has announced that the Trump administration is adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 census.

Big deal: The Commerce Department just announced that the Trump administration is adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 census questionnaire pic.twitter.com/5wTRsABdnW

— Andrew Restuccia (@AndrewRestuccia) March 27, 2018

BREAKING: Trump administration to add citizenship question to 2020 census https://t.co/a59CVpt52r pic.twitter.com/pKxblCunCo

— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) March 27, 2018

The Washington Times reports:

The Trump administration announced late Monday that it will ask a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, moving to restore a critical but controversial piece of data from the decennial count.

Immigrant-rights groups had vehemently opposed the move, arguing it would rub some people the wrong way and scare them from participating, and would thus skew the count that is critical to doling out hundreds of billions of dollars in government aid and to fundamental democratic functions such as divvying up congressional seats.

Several minority-rights activists called it data “sabotage.”

But the Justice Department has asked for the question to be restored, saying they needed it to better enforce critical laws such as the Voting Rights Act.

Cue the doom and gloom:

The Census is the gold standard in government data. This will unquestionably degrade its quality. https://t.co/HJhhKvb45m

— Reid Wilson (@PoliticsReid) March 27, 2018

And the #facism continues. In all the chaos that Trump causes people are missing how important an accurate census is to so many aspects of our government. https://t.co/0Puf1yPvaE

— John Stephany Jr. (@johnnysteph) March 27, 2018

This has the potential to be vastly consequential: The census isn't a survey of citizens — it's a canvas of everyone in U.S. — and those here illegally are likely to rebuff answering if this question comes up, especially in current political climate https://t.co/ibRnfWDZWX

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) March 27, 2018

Local officials in Texas said adding a citizenship question would torpedo an accurate count, jeopardizing millions in federal funds & more congressional districts for TX.

Read more on that here: https://t.co/Uj3Fh7l6z8 https://t.co/pTvgFXpV62

— Alexa Ura (@alexazura) March 27, 2018

NYC and other cities are colossally fucked https://t.co/7MgxAGFSxj

— NYCBuildingsTroll (@NYbuildingtroll) March 27, 2018

This is bad news for our democracy. Hard to see how adding a citizenship question to the 2020 US census won't skew the data. And that sadly will affect policy and resource decisions for years to come. https://t.co/cHrbkPaTjP

— Gretchen Goldman, PhD (@GretchenTG) March 27, 2018

Weaponizing the census is so infuriatingly evil. https://t.co/PdZwUMsV22

— Cameron Scherer (@thecamron) March 27, 2018

Even Planned Parenthood is already protesting — not that that’s surprising. The organization was certain that the repeal of net neutrality rules was going to interfere with its business too.

Adding a citizenship question on the census will effectively silence and terrorize immigrant communities and could lead to inaccurate data that undermines funding for health services, education, and so much more. Here's why: https://t.co/tFbbkwMVJT https://t.co/UY9iA6r1si

— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) March 27, 2018

Why would a citizenship question “terrorize immigrant communities”? There’s nothing wrong with being an immigrant. Oh …