Comment on Trump is right — citizenship is a big deal

In backing down from his plan to include a question about U.S. citizenship on next year’s census form, President Donald Trump gave credence to the claims of critics that his administration had an ulterior — and partisan — motive in pressing for inclusion of the question. During rambling remarks in the Rose Garden, the president let a very big cat out of the bag by suggesting that data about how many citizens and noncitizens there are — which he ordered his administration to collect “by other means” — could help states that “may want to draw state and local legislative districts based upon the voter-eligible population.” That, of course, isn’t the reason the administration cited for wanting to include a citizenship question: It had claimed that it needed data about citizenship in order to enforce the Voting Rights Act.