Abuse of Power

But even if it is likely the directive would lose in court, it is necessary to seek an immediate block to the directive because it could affect the 2020 Census count that is underway, said Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s national director of redistricting and representation. “It could affect response because most immigrant families have a mix of people of different status,” she said. The directive could also affect the Census Bureau’s process in deciding which households to go to, Feng said. Instead of attempting to count every household in the United States, she said, the bureau could “only go to households which they think fall into the category that the president wants counted.”

Groups led by Common Cause, a government watchdog group, have filed the first federal lawsuit against the Trump administration in response to President Trump's call to make an unprecedented change to the population numbers used to divide up seats in Congress among the states. The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, two days after Trump issued a memo calling to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the country that is used to redistribute seats in the House of Representatives.

Today, Common Cause filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging President Trump’s July 21 memo ordering the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from the apportionment of seats in Congress. In that memorandum, the President purported to exclude those undocumented immigrants from reapportionment for the first time in our nation’s history, and ordered the Department of Commerce to assist him in that effort, in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes. 

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said the census affects the fair distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding annually for “critical resources like food assistance, medical supplies for COVID-19 recovery, youth programs, and affordable housing.” “This memorandum by President Trump is a blatant attempt to skew how electoral districts are drawn, instill fear and chaos in immigrant communities, and send a message to his white supremacist base,” she said.

"It is a shocking day: The only thing that is clear to me is that pay-to-play is rampant in Ohio," said Catherine Turcer of the government watchdog group, Common Cause Ohio. "Utility money is the grease of the machine of the Statehouse."

The U.S. Constitution enshrines a uniquely American invention: to conduct a Census each ten years to count every person living in the United States of America in order to determine representation in the Congress. Today, counting every person also ensured that $1.5 trillion in federal funding for critical resources like food assistance, medical supplies for COVID-19 recovery, youth programs, and affordable housing is also fairly distributed. Today, President Trump has issued a memorandum ordering the Census Bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment base used to allocate congressional seats following the 2020 Census.