June 12, 2019

Trump Really, Really Doesn’t Want You to Know Why He Wants a Citizenship Question

Brian Cahn/ZUMA

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Donald Trump is obviously terrified that anyone might find out why he really wants a citizenship question on the 2020 census:

President Trump on Wednesday asserted executive privilege to shield documents about the administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census….Attorney General William P. Barr had a day earlier warned the House Oversight Committee that if it moved toward holding him in contempt, he would ask Trump to assert privilege to protect the materials….In the Justice Department’s view, the privilege assertion undercuts the contempt finding, because it prevents the attorney general from turning over materials lawmakers had subpoenaed.

This again? Surely this would fail in court, wouldn’t it? Documents are either protected by executive privilege or they aren’t. It’s not a weapon to be used simply to avoid a contempt charge. What am I missing here?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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