How Should Liberals Fight a Citizenship Question on the Census?

Membership Ticker

BREAKING: Good journalism costs money.
And we need a lot of both right now. We’re short of our August goal of $163,000 in online donations, and it’s not going to get any easier next month when election noise and news will be even louder. You know what’s at stake. And you know Mother Jones is up for it. Will you pitch in now so we can do our best work?

We need to raise $163,000 before the month ends and the election noise and news get louder. You know what’s at stake. And you know Mother Jones is up for it. Please help if you can.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Let’s suppose, as seems likely, that the Supreme Court lets Donald Trump go ahead with adding an obviously partisan citizenship question to the 2020 census. How should liberals react?

Mount a big educational campaign telling undocumented workers not to be afraid of telling census takers that they aren’t citizens.
Mount a big educational campaign telling undocumented workers to just go ahead and lie about being citizens.

This is what makes the cynicism of modern conservatism so toxic. The best bet for liberals is almost certainly the second one, but that merely fights cynicism toward governance with yet more cynicism. When does it end?