Documents released Wednesday by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform show the Trump administration’s failed effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census was part of one big gambit to rig congressional apportionment. Included in the nearly 500 pages of internal documents were several drafts of a 2017 memo that appear to show Trump officials scheming to use the citizenship question to influence how congressional seats and electoral votes are divvied up by census numbers. In one initial memo, a Commerce Department lawyer warned that a citizenship question would likely be illegal. But after several rounds of feedback on that draft from a Trump appointee in the Commerce Department, the lawyer, James Uthmeier, appeared to change his tune, telling then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in a new draft that there were “bases for legal arguments” to include the citizenship question, a move that critics warned would undercount Hispanic voters. A handwritten note obtained by the House committee also suggested that Ross, despite testifying under oath that his citizenship question push was prompted by a request from the Justice Department, was himself actually involved in concocting the DOJ request.
