House committee to rule on Barr and Ross's contempt for failing to provide documents on the citizenship issue of the 2020 Census

The chair of the House's Oversight Committee said on Monday that the panel would vote to have the Attorney General, William P. Barr, and the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, outraged for failing to comply with a bipartisan document subpoena. regarding a Trump administration project to add a citizenship issue. the 2020 census.

Commission Chair Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), Announced this decision Monday in letters to Barr and Ross. He gave them until Thursday to comply and raised the possibility of delaying the vote if they cooperate.

"Unfortunately, your actions are part of a pattern," Cummings wrote to Barr and Ross in the letters. "The Trump administration is engaged in one of the most unprecedented concealment operations since Watergate, which extends from the White House to multiple federal agencies and departments and to numerous investigations. "

At a vote of 23 to 14 in April, the committee authorized Cummings to issue subpoenas for the deposition of John Gore, Assistant Deputy Attorney General, and Barr and Ross for documents related to the decision of the 2020 census.

But the Justice Department said it would not bow to Gore's subpoena to testify on the issue, and that the Trump administration is committed to blocking all citations to appear. In his Monday letter to Barr, Cummings cited the "unprecedented order" of the Attorney General in Gore to challenge the subpoena as one of the reasons for the upcoming votes.

Democratic lawmakers have accused the Trump administration of defeating their efforts to investigate Ross's decision in March 2018 to add the citizenship issue the government needs to better uphold the law. on the right to vote.

Last week, new evidence emerged suggesting that the citizenship issue had been specifically designed to give Republicans and whites an electoral advantage.

The evidence was found in the records of Thomas Hofeller, Republican Republican strategist in charge of dismemberment, after his death in August. According to the lawyers who dispute the issue, this reveals that Hofeller "played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship issue to the decennial census of 2020 in order to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites. "

The lawyers also claimed that Trump administration officials deliberately ignored Hofeller's role in court proceedings.

A hearing on new evidence is scheduled Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan.

Opponents of the issue argued that this would remove responses to the survey of immigrant communities, which would result in undercoverage in the areas where they live.

The population of the decennial census is used to allocate $ 800 billion a year in federal funds, as well as to determine representation and division in Congress.

A key problem in challenging the citizenship issue is the way it has been added. Ross had initially told Congress that his decision to add it had been made only in response to a December 2017 request from the Department of Justice, but legal proceedings subsequently produced emails showing that Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, has been insisting on this issue for months.

In March of this year, the Democrats on the Oversight Committee interviewed him at length, several asking him if he had lied under oath and asking for his resignation.

The committee also met with Gore this month about this, but Cummings said he had refused to answer more than 150 questions, citing ongoing proceedings.

Three federal judges overturned the census question, claiming that Ross's actions to add it violated the law on administrative procedure.

On April 23, the Supreme Court heard the case. The evidence led to argument that day and it appeared that the Conservative majority seemed inclined to agree with the Government that the decision to add the matter fell within the competence of the Secretary of Commerce.

The escalation between the two members of the Cabinet de Surveillance and Trump comes just weeks after the Judiciary Committee of the House also voted to condemn Barr in defiance of the refusal to submit the full and unredacted report of the special advocate , Robert S. Mueller III. Judicial Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Urged Democratic leaders to announce this contempt quote to the House so that Democrats could bring Barr before a civilian court to try to force him to comply.