Ross refuses to appear at Senate hearing as census controversy accentuates

Ross clashed with Democrats on the watchdog committee last month, but these say he left unanswered questions unanswered.

"The committee is simply trying to figure out the real reason why Secretary Ross added the citizenship issue," said Elijah Cummings, Chairperson of the Oversight Committee, on Tuesday. "The documents and evidence covered by these summons are essential to answer this question."

Ross is scheduled to appear before the House's equivalent House Credits Subcommittee on Wednesday afternoon, but that could change. Platt's letter to Cummings indicated that the same officials who will testify in the Senate on Tuesday intend to appear in the House as well, unlike the original witness list.

"The subcommittee intends to do its job by holding this hearing, and we hope that Secretary Ross will also do so by coming to testify, as all Secretaries of Commerce have done before the Credit Committee for decades "said President Jose Serrano, chairman of the board. of the House subcommittee, said in a statement provided to CNN.

In a statement last week, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy said Ross's decision not to attend the Senate hearing was "a shame."

"I was anxious to ask him why he misled me when he last appeared a year ago, when he said that the Department of Justice was" the one who asked "the inclusion of a controversial issue about citizenship in the census," Leahy said. , the largest Democrat of the Credit Committee, who oversees the financing of the Commerce Department.

Opponents argue that polling citizenship could lower census participation rates among non-citizens, resulting in undercoverage in areas with large immigrant populations and a distortion of congressional representation.

Ross first told Congress that he had made this decision at the request of the Department of Justice. Court documents indicate that he was considering adding the question of citizenship to the census before receiving the note from the Department of Justice asking for the addition, and that Ross had also communicated about it with the Former White House strategist, Steve Bannon, and another White House advisor.

When Ross appeared in Oversight last month, Democrats sought to determine whether his motives went beyond his official explanations that the issue of citizenship was necessary to enforce the law on the right to vote. Republicans in the committee cited earlier censuses when the issue was included – most recently in 1950 – claiming that the Democrats were misrepresenting the issue.

"All my life, I do not know why Democrats do not want to know how many citizens are in the United States of America," said Ohio representative Jim Jordan, the most Republican of the panel, March 14 hearing.

Some Democrats mentioned a May 2017 email in which Ross had told his associates that he was "mystified" that nothing had been done to ensure that his request to include the issue did not occur. .

"We have to work with the courts to get them to ask for citizenship to be reconstituted as a census issue," he wrote at the time.

"You have lied to Congress, you have misled the American people and you are complicit in the Trump government's intention to suppress the growing political power of the non-white population," said at the time the Democratic representative of Missouri, William Lacy Clay, calling Ross resign.

The Democrats' subpoenas would include Ross's e-mails on the citizenship issue, as well as DOJ materials and related communications, including the White House, the Department of Commerce, the Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign and members of Congress.