Inside the Trump Administration's Census Scam
Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, is a liar. And according to lawsuits brought by former business partners, a thief. Now he’s attempting his biggest swindle yet: rigging the 2020 census to favor the Republican Party.
A vulture capitalist with no experience in government, whose private-equity firm was fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission for bilking investors out of millions, Ross was a tidy fit for Donald Trump’s Cabinet, which the president stocked with tycoons despite campaigning as a champion of the forgotten man. “I just don’t want a poor person,” Trump said of his top economic posts. He saw Ross — supposedly the richest of the lot — as a fellow traveler, a self-made billionaire with few scruples. Touting Ross at a rally in Cincinnati, Trump boasted, “I put on a killer.”
As administrator of the 2020 census, the “killer” is overseeing a crucial tool for our democracy. The once-every-10-years population count determines how seats are allocated in the House of Representatives — and in turn, the Electoral College — and it will guide the distribution of trillions in federal spending over the next decade.
Ross has brought his trademark integrity to the task. The Constitution requires a count of “the whole number of persons in each state” — citizens and noncitizens alike. But Ross conspired with then-Trump-deputies Steve Bannon, Kris Kobach and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — heroes to white nationalists, all — to order the Census Bureau to include a citizenship question for the first time in 70 years. Then Ross lied publicly about his rationale for including the question — even under oath — to Congress.
This “unconstitutional and arbitrary” decision, according to a federal lawsuit brought in New York by the attorneys general of 17 states and the District of Columbia, was designed to intimidate millions of people of color. Undocumented immigrants and their citizen family members, the suit argues, will balk at disclosing citizenship status, fearing reprisal from the most anti-immigrant administration in generations. (Ross did not agree to be interviewed by Rolling Stone.)
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/2020-census-citizenship-question-wilbur-ross-767078/
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