Atlantic writer accuses Trump administration of 'weaponizing' the census with citizenship question

Brett T. | 4:24 PM on March 28, 2018

California’s attorney general already laid out in the San Francisco Chronicle why he’s suing the Trump administration for “illegally” adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 census: non-citizens might choose not to answer and thus skew the results.

So, as many pointed out, it’s apparently illegal to ask illegals if they’re here illegally.

Now The Atlantic has provided its think piece on the citizenship question, accusing the Trump administration of “weaponizing” the census by adding a question on citizenship.

Adding a citizenship question is one step towards weaponizing the Census and warping democracy, @fivefifths argues: https://t.co/Js1vTM3UIA

— Priscilla Alvarez (@priscialva) March 28, 2018

Vann R. Newkirk II writes:

Really, what’s at stake here is the same hard knot of policy questions at the center of many of Trump’s most controversial moves. White-nationalist groups decrying “white genocide” and fearing demographic shifts, anti-immigrant populism, the long reach of old Jim Crow, and plain-old backroom political strategizing all come together here, at the unlikely nexus of the Census. Because the Census, at its core, is the key to democracy. If the Constitution gives power to the people, then the Census is the main mechanism to measure that power. That also makes it an incredibly useful weapon, one with the power to warp democracy in the right—or wrong—hands.