When Republicans confirmed Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia, it cemented a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
President Trump and his supporters expected to emerge victorious on all the major cases.
But Neil Gorsuch was just hit with this nasty surprise that could change everything.
One of the marquee cases the court is about to rule on concerns the Trump administration including a question about citizenship on the 2020 census.
Every ten years the government conducts a count of the population that all 50 states use to determine the maps for their Congressional districts.
An accurate count is important—which is why the Trump administration included the citizenship question.
But as always happens when the Trump administration tries to affect a policy change, the left-wing activists file a lawsuit.
Pro-open borders fanatics claimed the citizenship question was racist against Hispanics because it would exclude illegal aliens from the population count.
The Trump administration countered that an accurate count of Hispanics was mandated by the Voting Rights Act and the question would serve to benefit Latino Americans.
During oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the five conservative Justices appeared friendly to the administration’s argument that the citizenship question was nothing new.
In fact, the citizenship question had appeared on previous census forms.
However, liberal activists threw a monkey in the ring when the estranged daughter of doctor Thomas Hofeller dug up documents where he had written that the citizenship question would directly benefit the Republicans.
“The new evidence demonstrates a direct through-line from Dr. Hofeller’s conclusion that adding a citizenship question would advantage Republican and non-Hispanic whites to DOJ’s ultimate letter,” the groups opposed to the administration argued.
“The new evidence thus not only contradicts testimony in this case, but it shows that those who constructed the Voting Rights Act rationale knew that adding a citizenship question would not benefit Latino voters, but rather would facilitate significantly reducing their political power,” they continued.
The Department of Justice rejected any claims that the Commerce Department – which prepares the census – used any racial motivation in devising the census.
“These eleventh-hour allegations by the plaintiffs, including an accusation of dishonesty against a senior Department of Justice official, are false,” the Justice Department’s statement read.
“The study played no role in the Department’s December 2017 request to reinstate a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census. These unfounded allegations are an unfortunate last-ditch effort to derail the Supreme Court’s consideration of this case.”
This last ditch effort to smear the Commerce Department’s effort to accurately count every American citizen is aimed squarely at Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointments.
Liberal activists believe the accusations of racism will bully Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to side with the left in order to distance themselves from the supposed “taint” of the Trump administration.
Barack Obama waged a successful pressure campaign against Chief Justice John Roberts in the Obamacare case, so the left is rerunning that playbook here.
We will keep you up to date on any new developments in this ongoing story.