Thread by @Avi_Bueno

During the phone call today over the census citizenship question, Judge Hazel gave a parallel to the DOJ lawyer that almost implied he'd want Trump himself in court to explain what's going on because "...I don't think you speak for your client anymore."

drive.google.com/file/d/1M3Y6vj…

What a time to be alive.

The judge notes that what prompted him to request this emergency call was because he has a Twitter account and saw Trump's tweet.

The government attorney: "Your Honor, I am on vacation right now, I was being honest yesterday, and I have absolutely no fucking idea what is going on."

Again, what a time to be alive.

Judge Hazel is unsure what to do w/ the idea that he's being asked to stop the President of the United States from tweeting (the lawyers for the plaintiffs suggested that Trump's tweets are having the same effect that the question itself would).

Seriously, over and over and over the lawyer for the government found different ways to say "the President changes his mind constantly and we have no fucking clue what is going to happen next."

The conversations between the gov't & Thomas Hofeller (a GOP strategist focusing on redistricting) proved the rationale for the citizenship question was to depress census responses that would hurt the GOP, yet the gov't is literally saying they need time to fabricate a new lie.

Judge Hazel said he wants an answer as to how they're moving forward by Friday at 2PM & the gov't lawyer requested an extension through Monday (in light of July 4th) & the judge was having NONE OF IT.

"I've been told different things, and it's becoming increasingly frustrating."

One of the plaintiff's lawyers makes a great point about Trump admin dishonesty: the gov't said they had a hard deadline of 6/30, so they needed a rushed decision, yet "...they now think that they can even dither over the July 4th weekend & ask for more time to examine this..."

The judge's response to the great point by the plaintiff's lawyer (above) is basically: "They've been pretty clear that they have no fucking clue what is going on, so I don't think we're gonna have any more luck getting an answer to that one."

The call ends with the judge agreeing with one of the plaintiff's lawyer's contention that the injunction stands barring the government from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census until this is resolved.

And so we wait until Friday at 2PM to find out more. /fin