On the bright side of things this morning, the Supreme Court did manage to kill the citizenship question on the 2020 census. Barely:
The first 20ish pages of Roberts’ opinion are in Ross’s favor. Only in the last five does the river turn. All with a dog’s breakfast of a line-up. pic.twitter.com/FcNSPJr0vx
— Matt Ford (@fordm) June 27, 2019
In the end, though, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had gone too far in treating them like idiots. If you’re going to claim that a citizenship question is necessary, you need to take at least a minimal bit of care in spinning your lies. Ross didn’t bother with that, and that was too much to swallow.
UPDATE: I went too far. The court left open the possibility of Ross cleaning up his lies and trying again. However, there’s virtually no time left to do that, since the census forms need to be printed very soon. This is most likely the end of the citizenship question.
