The House passed legislation Thursday that would make the Census Bureau more independent from the White House, a move Democrats hope will prevent a future Republican president from adding census questions about citizenship. Lawmakers passed the Fair and Accurate Census Assurance Act thanks to near-unanimous support from Democrats who opposed former President Donald Trump’s failed citizenship push in 2018 and remain concerned that another Republican might try again. Trump’s team argued that a citizenship question was needed to determine where noncitizens live, which would help the administration enforce the Voting Rights Act. But the question was removed after the Supreme Court ruled that his administration failed to properly justify its inclusion. CENSUS TO RELEASE REPRODUCTION DATA, STARTING PROCESS THAT FAVES DEMOCRATS Republican opposition to the bill was not enough in the House, where Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, hold a slim majority and the bill passed by a vote of 220-208. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) But the decision leaves open the possibility that another Republican president could try to add it, and Democrats hope the bill passed Thursday will make that much more difficult. The legislation gives more decision-making power to the Census Bureau director, limits the number of political appointees to the bureau, and requires the Commerce Secretary to certify that new questions added to the census have been fully researched before they are included. JUSTICE LEAK UPDATE KAGAN, GORSUCH HINT SUPREME COURT MAY COME BY LATE SEPTEMBER It also says the Census Bureau director can only be removed for “inefficiency, dereliction of duty or misconduct in office,” another effort to make it harder for the White House to pressure the director. Former President Donald Trump’s team argued that a citizenship question was needed to determine where noncitizens live, which would help the administration enforce the Voting Rights Act. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) Democrats who supported the bill saw Trump’s effort as an inappropriate use of political power over what should be an independent office. Democrats wrote in the report language accompanying the bill that a congressional investigation showed how “a group of political appointees sought to use the census to advance an ideological agenda and potentially exclude noncitizens from counting apportionments.” On the House floor this week, Democrats repeated that language and implied that Trump’s team hoped the question would skew the census results and interfere with how the government uses census data to directs federal funds to all states. BOSTON CHALLENGED 2020 CENSUS FIGURES “The Trump administration and its partisan Census Bureau undermined this critical work in March 2018 when it planned to add a citizenship question to the Census that would violate the Constitution and lower response rates, and they knew it,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly. D-Va., wrestled on the floor. A federal judge on May 21, 2020, agreed to impose financial penalties against the Trump administration for failing to produce hundreds of documents during a lawsuit over whether a citizenship question could be added to the 2020 census. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, Archive) Republicans countered that Democrats have done everything they can to make sure a citizenship question is never offered on the census again, even though previous versions of the census included it. “The intent of this bill is clear,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. “It is to prevent a future Republican president from adding a citizenship question to the United States Census. And yet, the citizenship question was first proposed by President Thomas Jefferson in 1800, and since its introduction in the 1820 Census until 1950, that The question was included in every Census.’ CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP In the committee’s report accompanying the legislation, Republicans argued that omitting the citizenship question would only “guarantee that future censuses will be unfair and inaccurate.” Republican opposition to the bill was not enough in the House, where Democrats hold a slim majority, and the bill passed by a vote of 220-208. Passage sends the bill to the Senate, where Democrats face the difficult task of finding 10 Republican co-sponsors to advance the bill. Pete Kasperowicz is a political editor at Fox News Digital. He can be reached at [email protected] and his Twitter handle is @PeteKDCNews.
