NO CITIZENSHIP QUESTION ON 2020 CENSUS | Why Gay Rights Is A Republican Value
July 3, 2019
KEEP YOUR QUESTIONS TO YOURSELF
|Yesterday — just days after being blocked by the Supreme Court — the Trump administration announced that a question about citizenship will not be on the 2020 census. The news came in a one-sentence email from the Justice Department to lawyers for plaintiffs in a New York lawsuit that sought to block the question from being added to the questionnaire. The email offered no explanation and seemed to finally put to bed a year-long battle over the census.
I'M GOIN' DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN
|For Slate, Jeremy Stahl explains that if the battle over the 2020 census is really, truly over, “it would be one of the biggest legal defeats of the Trump presidency.”
TO GERRYMANDER OR NOT, THAT IS THE QUESTION
|Now that the Supreme Court has essentially given the thumbs up to partisan gerrymandering, NPR’s Miles Parks reports that Democrats have to decide if they’re going to embrace the old phrase: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” Parks writes, “The question is, who will win out after 2020: Democrats who say they want to make the system fairer; or Democrats, like the ones in New Jersey or Maryland, who stand to gain more power from partisan gerrymandering?”
CONTROLLA
|CNN’s Joan Biskupic explains how CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS has taken control of the Supreme Court by finding compromise in difficult cases — the most recent example being his handling of the census case. She notes, “For years, Roberts’ 2012 Obamacare vote stood out. But the 5-4 census case and other moves in the recently completed session demonstrated Roberts’ new variability in fraught cases. The man in the center chair is now at the ideological middle of the bench and plainly more willing to break from his customary allies on the right to forge compromises with the left, particularly in cases with an outsized national impact.”
TOP-ED
|In The New York Times, Kenneth B. Mehlman responds to the more than 2,000 signatories who called on the Supreme Court to prohibit employment discrimination against LGBTQ people. He explains why gay rights is a Republican value — something he says isn’t all that new or controversial. “No matter political party or personal beliefs, treating everyone fairly is something we can all get behind.” Mehlman expands, “Members of the Republican Party are heirs to the legacies of Lincoln and Reagan. Our party should support people’s ability to reap the rewards of their labor — to earn a fair and honest living, and to work where they want to work. We are the party of economic freedom, personal liberty and limited governmental interference.”
HAPPY FOURTH
|Have a happy holiday tomorrow! We’re back to our regular programming Friday, July 5.
SCOTUS VIEWS
Trump Finally Gave Up On The Census Citizenship Question. Score One For The Nation
Los Angeles Times“The announcement late Tuesday by the Trump administration that it would drop efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census is a victory not only for a more accurate census but for the rule of law. The administration had insisted that it needed to ask everyone across the country next year whether they were U.S. citizens to help it enforce the Voting Rights Act, a laughably thin excuse for an administration that cares naught for voting rights.”
How The Liberal Justices Can Break Through The Conservative Hammerlock
The Washington Post“In past terms, the court repeatedly telegraphed that it was struggling to find judicial limits on the most rank and cynical gerrymandering schemes. Now it purports to have closed the door on that possibility forever, even while acknowledging the schemes’ unconstitutionality. That is a sobering, even brutal, result. It also augurs retrenchment in other areas involving the reaches of judicial power, most notably regarding unenumerated rights, including abortion. And yet, the near certainty of conservative majorities on basic questions of judicial power gives way in less-blockbuster cases in which, as this term illustrated, the four liberal justices have several possible ways of snagging a fifth vote.”