It seems like every week marks another controversy involving the left using lawfare to advance its goal of turning this nation into the proverbial Third World sh** hole and the Administration trying to keep that from happening. The Administration has chalked up some wins but last week it lost a major one.

One of the goals of the Administration had been to ensure the US decennial census enumerated the number of US citizens rather than the number of warmish bodies of uncertain provenance. The Census would have counted everyone, but it would have identified who was eligible to vote and who wouldn’t. There is nothing nefarious about this. The UN’s agency that advises nations on how do conduct censuses recommends that citizenship be a question. Up until 1960, citizenship was a standard question. The left didn’t like that idea at all because of two factors, one real and one illusory. The illusory reason was that illegal aliens would not fill out the Census forms because of fear of being deported or some such bullsh**. Think about that for a moment. People who entered the country illegally and who are more likely than not engaged in identity theft in order to get documents that allow them to work–or who work for cash and don’t pay taxes–would quail at the thought of lying on a Census form about their citizenship. Does that make sense to you? Didn’t think so.

The real reason is that rolling non-citizens into redistricting numbers is a clear violation of the Equal Protection clause. A district composed of 50% illegals gives greater weight to the votes of the citizens in that district than to that of a district that is 100% citizen. Basing congressional seats on having a bazillion illegals disadvantages states which have a low number of illegals.

The administration added the question to the Census…and they did it according to the old Army maxim of “if you want it bad, you get it bad.” The process by which the citizenship question was added as so half-assed and ad hoc that it was difficult to construct any kind of defense for why it was included. In fact, the Supreme Court plurality last week ruled that the Administration had the authority to add the question but their justification was a pretext. They were told to come up with a better reason if they wanted to add the question. This, quite simply, was an own goal. It was a decision that was either the result of someone being too cute by half or of deliberate sabotage of the decision.

Yesterday, the Administration made noises like it would persist in trying to add the question but it was really up against a pretty tight time window if the results were to be collected by the end of 2020. Just a few hours ago, the Administration bowed to the inevitable and pulled the citizenship question.

Here’s the email from DOJ pic.twitter.com/PdyfK0a1hJ

— Daniel Jacobson (@Dan_F_Jacobson) July 2, 2019

Make no mistake about it. This is a huge loss and sets back the cause of protecting the right to vote and ensuring that Congress represents citizens and not flocks of illegals. The Administration can gripe about courts and the left all they want, but the bottom line here is that they screwed the pooch by engaging in a haphazard process that they knew, or should have known, was going to end up in hostile courts. They have no one to blame but themselves.

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