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Originally posted:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/trump-administration-plot-to-entrenc
h-white-power-revealed/

Census Citizenship Question Was Meant To Aid Whites And GOP, New Documents Suggest
A Republican consultant believed adding the question would help the GOP during redistricting. He helped get it on the 2020 census, new evidence shows.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/thomas-hofeller-census-citizenship-ques
tion_n_5cefd3ece4b00cfa1967135e

A Republican consultant involved in the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census believed that adding the question would pave the way for redistricting that would increase the political power of “Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites,” according to explosive documents revealed in federal court Thursday.

The consultant, Thomas Hofeller, ghostwrote at least portions of what would later become the Justice Department’s formal request to add the citizenship question to the census, according to the court documents. The civil rights and immigration advocacy groups that oppose adding the citizenship question to the census and are suing to block it argue that the Trump administration added the question in order to dilute the political power of Democrats and minorities. The documents they filed in court Thursday are the closest they’ve found to a smoking gun.

Architect of GOP Gerrymandering Was Behind Trump’s Census Citizenship Question
The GOP’s longtime redistricting expert said the question would be “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/architect-of-gop-gerryman
dering-was-behind-trumps-census-citizenship-question/

The census determines how $880 billion in federal funding is allocated, how much representation states receive, and how political districts are drawn. A citizenship question is expected to deter many immigrants and Latinos from responding to the census. That—especially if combined with an effort to exclude noncitizens from being counted in redistricting—would result in a huge transfer of economic and political power to whiter and more Republicans areas.

Anti-immigration hardliners also lobbied hard for the Trump administration to add the citizenship question. In July 2017, former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach wrote to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross “at the direction of Steve Bannon” and said it was “essential” that the citizenship question be added to the 2020 census. Kobach told Ross that the absence of a citizenship question “leads to the problem that aliens who do not actually ‘reside’ in the United States are still counted for congressional apportionment purposes.”

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the census case by late June.

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