Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
Census Citizenship Question: Fabricated Justification, Intended to Undercount Minorities
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross claimed the Census Bureau had been asked by the DOJ to add the citizenship question for Voting Rights enforcement. This explanation was false: Ross had asked the DOJ to request the question, not the reverse. The Supreme Court ruled the pretext was evident and blocked the question. In late May 2019, before the decision, documents from the hard drives of Thomas Hofeller — a Republican redistricting expert who died in 2018 — revealed he had written a study years earlier stating that a citizenship question would allow Republicans to draw districts based on citizen (rather than total) population, 'which would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.' The documents suggest the question originated in a redistricting strategy its author said would advantage Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.