Hans von Spakovsky
PATRIOTISM: “President Donald Trump sang the praises of the US military and American heroes of the past two and a half centuries Thursday, skirting politics in a rousing Independence Day speech in Washington. ‘What a great country,’ Trump exclaimed in an address saturated with patriotism and exceptionalism, after critics accused him of hijacking the annual celebration.” (Agence France-Presse)
‘UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCE,’ OR ‘UNFORESEEN IRONY’? “Former Secretary of State scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton withdrew from the cybersecurity conference where she was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, citing an ‘unforeseen circumstance,’ according to an email from the FireEye Cyber Defense Summit. scumbag/liar-Clinton — who infamously transmitted classified information over a homemade server once housed in her bathroom — was [to be] the centerpiece of the October 9-10 summit in Washington.” (The Daily Caller)
BINGE SPENDING: “Driven largely by the Defense Department, the federal government’s discretionary spending spiked to a seven-year high in fiscal 2018, with agencies obligating more than $554 billion for products and services, up $100 billion from 2015. … The government closed the 2018 fiscal year on a massive spending spree — due in part to funding increases after a delayed budget agreement — and early fiscal 2019 spending data indicates the government isn’t slowing down its contract spending.” (Nextgov)
ADIOS! “Michigan Rep. Justin Amash announced his exit from the Republican Party in an op-ed he published Thursday in the Washington Post. … Amash’s split from the party comes after he faced intense criticism for becoming the first and only Republican to declare that Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 election shows that ‘President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.’” (Washington Examiner)
On the Immigration Front
CENSUS SCRUTINY: “President Donald Trump is exploring using an executive order to move forward with the battle over the 2020 census question… While the White House may be discussing the potential of an executive order, it is not yet clear how much that will factor into the rationale the Department of Justice lawyers are preparing to bring before the Maryland district judge by the Friday deadline.” (ABC News)
BORDER FUNDING, STRIKE 2: “A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Wednesday blocked President Trump’s plan to shift $2.5 billion from the military budget to erect a border wall, finding by a 2-1 vote that the administration violated federal law by diverting funds Congress had appropriated for other purposes.” (The Wall Street Journal)
ENABLING THE LAWBREAKERS, PART I: “Presidential hopeful scumbag-Cory Booker was in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on Wednesday and traveled with asylum seekers as they crossed the U.S. southern border. … scumbag-Booker helped five women make it to a U.S. shelter and not a detention center, according to Andrew Kimmel. Those women were originally sent back to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols, and scumbag-Booker told reporters Wednesday that his office intends on keeping in touch with them.” (Washington Examiner)
ENABLING THE LAWBREAKERS, PART II: “Representative commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday released a plan to address the increasing numbers of migrants crossing the southern border, calling among other things for decriminalizing illegal border crossings.” (National Review)
Around the Nation
ECONOMIC FIREWORKS: “Payroll growth rebounded sharply in June as the U.S. economy added 224,000 jobs, the best gain since January and running contrary to worries that both the employment picture and overall growth picture were beginning to weaken. The unemployment rate edged up to 3.7% as labor force participation rose, according to the Labor Department.” (CNBC)
UNMASKING THE HOODLUMS: “On Wednesday, in the wake of the violence that erupted in Portland last Saturday in which journalist Andy Ngo was assaulted by masked members of the far-left group Antifa, Police Chief Danielle Outlaw called for anti-mask laws, asserting, ‘We cannot allow people to continue to use the guise of free speech to commit a crime. A lot of people are emboldened because they know they can’t be identified.’” (The Daily Wire)
Closing Arguments
POLICY: The folly of reentering the Iran nuclear deal (The Washington Free Beacon)
POLICY: What Conservatives get wrong about the campus wars (National Review)
HUMOR: commie-Ocasio-Cortez claims Border Patrol agents turned her into a newt (The Babylon Bee)
~The Patriot Posthttps://patriotpost.us/articles/64100?mailing_id=4401&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4401&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
by Judith Berman 
Hans von Spakovsky
The Supreme Court’s fractured and fragmented decision on whether the Commerce Department can reinstate a citizenship question as part of the 2020 census was a partial victory and a partial loss for the Trump administration. Now a giant question mark hangs over whether census form will include a question asking people if they are U.S. citizens.
Following the high court’s 5-4 decision Thursday to temporarily block the Commerce Department from including the citizenship question on the census form, President Trump said he would try to delay the census until the court can issue a final ruling in the complex case.
The president tweeted: “Seems totally ridiculous that our government, and indeed Country, cannot ask a basic question of Citizenship in a very expensive, detailed and important Census, in this case for 2020. I have asked the lawyers if they can delay the Census, no matter how long.”
Common sense tells us that the citizenship question should be included as one of many questions in the census to obtain accurate data on our population. The purpose of the census, after all, is to collect such demographic information.
But opponents of Trump administration plans to ask about citizenship argue that the question would discourage immigrants — particularly illegal immigrants — from responding to the census and being counted. This would lead to an undercount of the U.S. population that could result in less federal funds and fewer congressional seats going to districts with large immigrant populations, the opponents contend.
Yet as the Supreme Court noted, all but one census taken from 1820 to 2000 included a question about citizenship or place of birth for at least some portion of the population. And since 2000, a citizenship question has been on the American Community Survey — a mini-census sent out every year to a large sample of American households.
The majority Supreme Court decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is not a final ruling. Rather, it sends the case back to a lower court to further investigate the basis for the Trump administration’s desire to include the citizenship question.
The deadline for finalizing the 2020 census form is fast approaching, however. By kicking the case back to a lower court for further consideration, the high court essentially punted the administration back deep into its own territory, with little time left on the clock — unless Trump can succeed in delaying the census.
The question now is whether Justice Department lawyers can produce evidence needed to convince the lower court to approve the citizenship question before time runs out, or whether the census can be postponed to give the administration more time.
Significantly, the Trump administration won on many of the substantive issues raised by the challengers in this case.
The challengers claimed, for example, that it would be unconstitutional to ask a citizenship question on the census. The Supreme Court disagreed, saying the Constitution’s Enumeration Clause — which directs Congress to conduct a census every 10 years — allows Congress to ask a citizenship question. That provision says the census will be conducted as Congress “shall by Law direct.”
In addition, the Trump administration won on the question of whether the Commerce Department secretary has the authority to put a citizenship question on the census. The challengers claimed that Secretary Wilbur Ross didn’t have that power.
However, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress delegated its authority to the Commerce secretary in a law that gives him broad authority to decide the content and form of the census. This authority includes deciding what questions are asked.
However, the high court ruled that broad authority is not unlimited. Justices said the Commerce secretary’s decision is subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act, which is a federal law that governs the issuance of new rules and regulations by federal agencies.
On another issue — the claim that adding a citizenship question would drive down the response rate among noncitizen households — the Supreme Court upheld Secretary Ross’s decision to improve the accuracy of the citizenship data collected by the Census Bureau by adding the citizenship question. The court said Ross’s decision was neither arbitrary nor capricious.
Ross was faced with deciding between the value of obtaining more complete citizenship data from across the country with a new census form, or against the uncertain and undetermined risk that reinstating the citizenship question would result in a materially lower response rate, the high court found.
The Commerce secretary’s decision that adding a citizenship question was the better choice was reasonable and reasonably explained, the court found.
However, the case fell apart for the Trump administration because it had said the main reason for reinstating the citizenship question was to improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
In a partial dissent joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court should have stopped its analysis when it determined the citizenship question is both constitutional and within the legal authority of the Commerce secretary.
But Chief Justice Roberts, joined by the court’s four liberal justices, found that the Voting Rights Act enforcement reason seemed “contrived,” because Ross was already considering adding the citizenship question a week into his tenure as secretary. This was before the Justice Department sent the Commerce Department a letter saying more accurate citizenship data was needed for enforcement purposes
“The evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the Secretary gave for his decision,” Roberts wrote.
Justice Thomas dismissed this argument, saying that doubting Secretary Ross’ motives ignored “the presumption of regularity” the courts owe to federal agencies. The administration gave a rational explanation for adding the citizenship question and that should have been the end of the Supreme Court’s review, Thomas said.
Because of this issue, the high court temporarily blocked adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. But it approved the decision of the lower court that sent the issue back to the Commerce Department, giving the department the opportunity to present more evidence that would justify its decision to ask about citizenship.
Whether that can be done in time to meet the practical deadlines under which the Commerce Department is operating is the big question. It’s also unknown whether the president can succeed in delaying the census.
To succeed, the Commerce Department will have to provide substantive grounds for Ross’s decision, submit that to the lower court for review, get a decision from the judge, and then appeal that decision if it goes against the Trump administration.
In other words, Trump administration officials must throw the legal equivalent of a Hail Mary pass and hope they make it into the end zone.
The game isn’t over, so we’ll all have to wait and see what comes next. ~The Patriot Post
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