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The Justice Department announced Sunday that it is replacing the legal team defending the Trump administration’s efforts to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census

According to The New York Times, the Justice Department will be replacing the legal team defending the Trump administration’s efforts to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. The Department released a statement on Sunday stating that it would be “shifting these matters to a new team of Civil Division lawyers going forward.” The Department offered no reasoning for the sudden change. ~

This comes just days after Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge in Maryland that there are still options being explored by the Trump Administration on the legality of including a citizenship question on the 2020 census via executive order. ~

According to The New York Times, critics of the Trump Administration’s efforts to include a question of citizenship on the 2020 Census say that the lack of reasoning for the replacement of the legal team leads some to believe that the “Department’s career lawyers had decided to quit a case that at the least seemed to lack a legal basis.” ~

Opponents of the citizenship question being included on the 2020 Census say that asking citizens of their citizenship status may lead to lower official population numbers due to immigrants who are not legal citizens opting not to respond. According to Fox News, these lower population numbers could lead to insufficient federal funding and fewer congressional seats in districts with high immigrant populations, usually those who tend to lead left than right in political voting. According to experts at the Census Bureau, an estimated undercount of 6.5 million people could occur if the citizenship question were to be included in the annual census in 2020. But supporters of the question argue that a question of citizenship status should be a mandatory question on the census because it ensures enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act which speaks about voting practices that discriminate based on race. According to the Trump Administration, the idea behind this is “that having this data would help prevent the drawing of congressional maps in ways that discriminate against minority citizens of voting age” (Fox News, 2019). ~

This is Fact Based America – WE have the FACTS, YOU have the OPINIONS. What do you think the effect of a new legal team will have on the Trump administration’s efforts to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census?

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