President Donald Trump is still considering whether or not to issue an executive order on including a question on citizenship in the next US census, Axios has reported, citing unidentified sources.
"We didn't come this far just to throw in the towel," an anonymous senior administration official with direct knowledge of administration conversations on the matter told the outlet.
Earlier this week, a Department of Justice official said that it was examining the possibility of including the long-debated citizenship question in the 2020 census, despite being banned from doing so by the US Supreme Court.
The White House and the Department of Justice have urged the question's inclusion as "practical" and necessary to evaluate the number of Americans eligible to vote. Critics, meanwhile, have said that including the question could lead to millions of people, including illegal immigrants, not being counted.
On Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that the Census Bureau has already begun printing the questionnaires for the 2020 census with the citizenship question left off. However, according to a recent New York Times report, the government could hold off doing so until as late as October.
The results of the 2020 census will impact the redrawing of the US's voting districts for future state and federal elections, and play a role in determining the doling out of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding for states.
The US Constitution requires a census every ten years to count every person in the United States, citizens and non-citizens alike. The survey's "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" question has not appeared on the US census forms on a national level since 1950. Critics of the question have argued that if it were to appear, Democratic-leaning states including California and New Mexico, which have major populations of immigrants, legal and otherwise, might be deprived of funding or face Republican gerrymandering of voting districts.
