Trump Retools Citizenship Question on Census

President Trump announced today that he would be ending the fight to add a citizenship question to the upcoming census, and he delivered some remarks in a Rose Garden conference elaborating on his intention to not move forward with the question.

In his remarks, President Trump announced that he was “hereby ordering every department and agency in the federal government to provide the Department of Commerce with all requested records regarding the number of citizens and noncitizens in our country.”

He added by sharing that “they must furnish all legally accessible records in their possession immediately.”

And, he noted that the Government would “utilize these vast federal databases to gain a full, complete, and accurate count of the noncitizen population.”

In recent weeks, the President has been involved in a back and forth with Democrats who have pushed back on the addition of the citizenship question.

This verbal sparring match is something that the President noted in his speech, saying that “there used to be a time when you could proudly declare, ‘I am a citizen of the United States.’”

In turn, he called out Democrats, explaining that not only are they “trying to erase the very existence of a very important word and a very important thing: citizenship,” but they are “even coming after the Pledge of Allegiance.”

President Trump admitted that he is “proud to be a citizen,” that the people in attendance at the Rose Garden were “proud to be a citizen,” and that “the only people who are not proud to be citizens are the ones who are fighting us all the way about the word, ‘citizen.’”

Though admitting that the question will not be added to the census, the Trump administration is approaching it from a different perspective, arguing that it’s important to follow through because “knowing this information is vital to formulating sound public policy, whether the issue is healthcare, education, civil rights, or immigration.”