Census Battle: Trump Signs Executive Order on Collection of Citizenship Information

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will take executive action to direct the Department of Commerce to obtain an estimate of U.S. citizens from records provided by federal government agencies.

“Today, I am here to say we are not backing down on our effort to determine the citizenship status of the United States population,” the president stated in the Rose Garden of the White House with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Attorney General William Barr by his side.

President Trump had previously said an executive action was one of multiple options he was considering in regards to adding the question after the Supreme Court ruled against it on procedural grounds.

“We’re thinking about doing that. It’s one of the ways. We have four or five ways we can do it. We’re doing well on the Census,” the president old reports last week when asked about the question.

“I have a lot of respect for Justice Roberts, but he didn’t like it,” he added. But he did say come back. Essentially he said, ‘come back.’ That’s what he was saying. So we’ll see what happens. We can also add an addendum on so we can start the printing now and maybe do an addendum after we get a positive decision.”

The high court said the administration did not provide adequate grounds for adding the question and called the government’s argument “contrived.” The Census Bureau has since begun printing the questionnaires without the inquiry about U.S. citizenship.

Two federal judges have also since blocked administration efforts to change Justice Department attorneys who had been fighting in court for the question’s inclusion.

The Justice Department initially said the fight to add the question was over, before President Trump intervened and said he

It matters not. If the question isn't in the official census it really won't count.

Congressional seats are awarded by census count. Currently there are at least 7 million illegals in California. That is about 11 congressional seats more or less. Without the question on the census, we have to assume that whatever number comes up is the correct tally of US citizens.

The decision of John Roberts to queer the census perhaps will rank as the most dastardly deed of his judicial career. This census could be the last chance to save the Republic.

This ruling is completely intrusive on the powers of the executive branch. Why in the name of God does SCOTUS have any say in the President's reason? "'Cause I felt like it!" should be good enough reason. The only question SCOTUS is entitled to ask is "Does the President have the authority?" He does indeed.

Emily Jane O'Dell is a Research Scholar in Law and Islamic Law and Civilization Research Fellow at Yale Law School and an editor of SHARIAsource at Harvard Law School, after having spent over half a decade teaching in the Middle East at the American University of Beirut as the Whittlesey Chair of History and Archaeology and at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman. Stateside she has taught at Columbia University, Brown University, and Harvard University—where she received an award for excellence in teaching. She received her B.A., M.F.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown and a M.A. in Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian Studies from Columbia. She completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University in the Humanities Center and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations under the direction of postcolonial theorist Professor Homi Bhabha. As a Research Fellow for the Islamopedia Initiative at Harvard, O’Dell collected fatwas from around the world in multiple languages. In addition to having taught Islam stateside and abroad in Beirut, she has also had the rare experience of speaking on Islamic affairs at the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Muftiate of Turkey.

For her in-country field research on Islamic law, O’Dell has been an Edward A. Hewett Policy Fellow (Tajikistan & Afghanistan), Fulbright Fellow (Indonesia), a Harvard Traveling Fellow (Iran), a Columbia University Pepsico Fellow (Uzbekistan/Karakalpakstan), an IREX Fellow (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic & Hungary), an American Center for Mongolian Studies Fellow (Mongolia), an American Council Fellow (Turkmenistan), and a State Department Fellow (Tajikistan). For her archaeological fieldwork in Central Asia, she preserved Sufi shrines on the Silk Road and excavated the medieval Islamic bazaar of Merv in Turkmenistan. She conducts research at the advanced level in fifteen languages.

Her writing on the region has appeared in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, NPR, Salon, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, and Jadaliyya, and she is a global mentor for the Coalition for Women in Journalism. In addition to her scholarly endeavors, she regularly performs the Javanese gamelan in concert at Lincoln Center, Asia Society, and with the masters in Java. She also does advocacy work in the Middle East with child refugees, young people with mental illness, and people with disabilities. She is a regular guest speaker for Harvard, Columbia, and the Commonwealth Club in the Islamic Republic of Iran, East Africa, India, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.

While a Resident Scholar at Yale Law School, O’Dell will be preparing a monograph on post-Soviet Islamic law in Central Asia for publication. Grounded in Islamic legal anthropology, this research explores the problematics of contemporary Islamic jurisprudence, surveys competing sources of Islamic legal authority, and investigates normative frameworks in cyberspace that dictate how Islam and Muslim identities are articulated through information and communication technologies. The book traces how Islamic law has been used since the fall of communism to demarcate the parameters of the national project and define the relationship between state and non-state religious actors. Highlighting specific conflicts of Islam with agendas of secularization and reform within a post-Soviet context, special attention is paid to gender, politics, terrorism, and mysticism.

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