President Donald Trump defended the citizenship question on the 2020 census on Monday, saying that the process would be a waste of time and money without it.
“Can you believe that the Radical Left Democrats want to do our new and very important Census Report without the all-important Citizenship Question,” Trump commented on Twitter. “Report would be meaningless and a waste of the $Billions (ridiculous) that it costs to put together!”
The Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether the Trump administration has the right to ask households in the United States if they are citizens, as leftist critics of the idea have challenged it in court. The ruling could happen sometime at the end of June 2019.
Democrats fear that districts would lose out on important government benefits if illegal immigrants do not participate in the survey, for fear of deportation.
The census has not included the citizenship question since 1950.