TRUMP TO TAKE EXECUTIVE ACTION ON CENSUS | Why Chief Justice Got It Right On Gerrymandering | Trump Gets A Win In Emoluments Case
July 11, 2019
IMA DO MY THING
|The president plans to announce today an executive action on the census. DONALD TRUMP tweeted that he plans to hold a press conference in the Rose Garden this afternoon about “the census and citizenship.” The administration has been looking for a path to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census despite the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, but time is running out and it’s likely any move it makes will get challenged in court.
DEAL WITH IT
|Meanwhile, Zoe Tillman with Buzzfeed reports that PRESIDENT TRUMP’S attempt to have the Justice Department switch out its lawyers on the census case isn’t going so hot. Federal judges in California, Maryland, and New York rejected DOJ’s first attempt at switching lawyers, saying the government didn’t submit enough information about the late change. She writes, “For now, the lawyers from the Federal Programs Branch who had been handling the litigation — some for more than a year — are stuck until the judges agree to let them withdraw. The new team of lawyers didn’t need permission to join the cases, so they can still be involved going forward.”
A DIAGNOSIS
|Aaron Blake with The Washington Post also looks at the Trump administration’s failed attempt to swap out the legal team working on the census issue — a failure Blake says is a symptom of a larger problem.
QUESTION FOR THE CONSTITUTION
|Bruce Ackerman argues in POLITICO that if DONALD TRUMP defies the Supreme Court and puts a citizenship question on the census through executive authority, the action would be “blatantly unconstitutional.” He writes, “If Trump moves ahead, he will be threatening a centuries-old consensus that puts Congress in charge of the Census. This legal foundation has been tested and reaffirmed repeatedly throughout American history—the last time when another Republican Party threatened by immigration considered modifying the census process to fit their political ends.”
TOP-ED
|In The Washington Post, Lawrence Lessig opines that CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS may have gotten it right when it comes to gerrymandering. Lessig argues, “Gerrymandering is obviously democratically obnoxious. With modern technologies, it’s also increasingly democratically dangerous. It is inconsistent with the principles of equality and free association. Without doubt, it should be excised from our republic. Yet the fury generated by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s opinion last month declining to end the practice shows precisely why Roberts may have been right.
OTHER NEWS
Federal Appeals Court Rules For Trump In Emoluments Case
The New York Times“In a legal victory for President Trump, a federal appeals court panel on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit claiming that he had violated the Constitution by collecting profits from government guests at his hotel in the nation’s capital. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., found that the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia had no legal standing to sue Mr. Trump.”