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#ELB: Gaming Out the Census Citizenship Question Endgame: What Comes Next, and How Will Things End? electionlawblog.org/?p=106084
From this @Arianedevogue @cnn report, it sounds like DOJ will tell Judge Hazel that they are still thinking of what reason they might have for including the citizenship question on the census, but not say what that reason IS. /1
If DOJ responds this way in census case, it will trigger an evidentiary hearing in Maryland on whether Administration acted (and continues to act) with racially discriminatory intent in seeking to add citizenship question. /2
There will also be further developments in the New York case, already heard by the Supreme Court. /3
Presumably in both cases DOJ will either give up or try to give a reason that is not pretext. Given the history, these reasons are almost certain to be rejected by the district courts /4
This means the issue could end up back before the Supreme Court in the next two months, where CJ Roberts is likely the decider. And, as I said in my earlier post, he'll be put off by this amateur hour. /5
Roberts, I suggested @Slate, would have been willing to go along with a professional better lie about why the citizenship question was included. But now he'd be buying into the Trump Administration shitshow, and that would impugn Court integrity Roberts cares about. /6
And new @nytimes reporting from @adamliptak and @maggieNYT suggests that AG Barr thought there was no path to including the question, and Trump went along, not realizing the political implications of his caving nytimes.com/2019/07/05/us/… /7
Here's that @nytimes reporting on why Trump apparently changed his mind on the census question /8 
Just reminded that when Hofeller docs came out showing that purpose of including citizenship question was to help white Republican voting power, a reason Trump parroted today, I wrote that SCOTUS conservatives would think that's just fine. @slate slate.com/news-and-polit… /9
