Losing his census: Trump makes the right choice, after an exhausting and unnecessary fight
After months of telling courts that his administration had a kosher reason for forcing a citizenship question onto the 2020 census while concealing the true rationale — to depress the count in immigrant-rich states — the jig is up.
Thursday, rather than defying federal courts, President Trump surrendered, letting the formal count of all persons proceed uncorrupted and resorting to what Census officials and opponents of the question had offered as a better alternative all along: gathering existing federal data across executive departments to come up with a total of citizens and non-citizens. These days, we have to be grateful for small things.
While Trump spun the retreat as a victory, because of course he did, in backing down he revealed just how drenched in bad faith the months-long game of chicken has been.
“The Census Bureau projected that using previously available records, it could determine citizenship for 90% of our population or more,” claimed the president yesterday, resulting in “an even more complete count of citizens than of asking the single question alone.”
If that were the case, why did the administration put the administration through the costly and consuming drama?
Why did Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, in defending the push to add the question, lie to Congress last year by claiming he was only trying to enforce the Voting Rights Act at the direction of the Justice Department?
Why did a GOP redistricting expert tell the White House that a citizenship question on the census could be “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites”?
Last month, the Supreme Court sent the administration back to lower courts, insisting on a legitimate rationale rather than the long string of lies and evasions. With the clock having run out and clearly no such rationale to be had, the only remaining decision was whether to go rogue or back down.
For once, swaggering, bar-fight-picking president realized discretion is the better part of valor.
— New York Daily News
Don’t be a twit: Politicians who use their Twitter account for official purposes can’t block followers
Since well before he was a candidate, Donald Trump utilized the @realdonaldtrump Twitter account as a sword and a shield, a tool to taunt and to preen.
Having followed him into the White House, that private-citizen account has morphed into an official communications channel. He routinely announces personnel and policy decisions there. And he does it not only with his own two plump thumbs, but with aid of on-the-clock government staffers.
As such, the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals rightly ruled, Trump can’t willy-nilly block Twitter users who disagree with him.
When an individual is blocked, as one member of this Editorial Board is, he can’t even see the president’s tweets, short of going through frustrating workarounds. Nor can the blockee reply to the blocker.
When the originating account includes official pronouncements bearing on the future of the country, that adds up to an infringement on constitutional speech rights.
(We sympathize with politicians’ need to tune out truly awful trolls who engage in ad hominem attacks. That can be done through another Twitter tool, called muting, that doesn’t effectively stop those individuals from engaging.)
This isn’t just about Trump: No sooner did the decision come down than former Assemblyman Dov Hikind (hypocritically, as he blocked followers himself when in office) cited it in his own push to get Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to stop blocking him.
The rule fits in far less than 280 characters: If an official uses a Twitter account to do public business, everyone gets to see it.
— New York Daily News
