THREAD: Newly produced documents by @CommerceGov show that Wilbur Ross sought to add citizenship question to Census on his own initiative for political reasons, not at DOJ's request to help enforce the Voting Rights Act. This directly contradicts Ross' testimony to Congress. /1
In a 3/26/18 memo, Ross claimed that DOJ "requested that the Census Bureau reinstate a citizenship question on the decennial census to provide...citizenship voting age population...to permit more effective enforcement of [Voting Rights Act]" /2 commerce.gov/sites/commerce…
At 3 separate congressional hearings in 2018 (March 20 & 22; May 10), Ross emphasized that DOJ initiated the request for citizenship question. At Ways and Means hearing on March 22, Ross said: "Because it is from the Department of Justice, we are taking it very seriously.” /3
In fact, the request came from Ross not DOJ. On 5/2/17, Ross emailed the head of Commerce's policy office asking: "I am mystified why nothing have been done in response to my months old request that we include the citizenship question. Why not?” /4 
In response to Ross' request, his policy office head emailed back on 5/2/17: "We need to work with Justice to get them to request that citizenship be added back as a census question...I will arrange a meeting with DoJ staff this week to discuss." /5
DOJ, however, was slow in responding to Ross' demand that DOJ request the citizenship question. After some back and forth, a DOJ staffer emailed a Commerce staffer on 9/1717: "we can do whatever you all need us to do" and "the AG is eager to assist." /6
Recognizing that most stakeholders would oppose asking about citizenship on the census, Commerce staff reached out to American Enterprise Institute on 2/13/18 to find someone to speak in favor of their proposal. /7
In response to Commerce's request for an expert to support adding a citizenship question to the census, an American Enterprise Institute scholar emailed on 2/13/18: "None of my colleagues at AEI would speak favorably about the proposal." /8
So if the request to add a citizenship question didn't originate with DOJ, who was pushing for it? Answer: Steve Bannon. He reached out to Ross on 4/5/17 to discuss the census.
This whole thing was cooked up by WH, and Ross has been misleading Congress and public ever since. /8
This whole thing was cooked up by WH, and Ross has been misleading Congress and public ever since. /8
Commerce Dept. has been trying to hide these and other records. They're only coming out now because of a court order in a lawsuit led by @NewYorkStateAG and a companion case filed by @thenyic and @aclu. Thanks to them for working to #ProtectTheCensus. Stay tuned. /END
