On Thursday evening, President Donald J. Trump announced that he would be issuing an executive order requiring every federal agency to furnish records relating to the number of citizens and noncitizens present in the country to the Commerce Department.

Democrats and the mainstream media have put the nail in the coffin on two key issues of past and future elections.  From two different sources within the Department of Justice, news came today the media may have prematurely closed the book on some very newsworthy issues. 

With the recent Supreme Court ruling on the question on citizenship status in the 2020 Census, legal scholars of all ilks have weighed in. In a recent opinion column from Hugh Hewitt, Hewitt takes an interesting approach to the implications of the decision requiring the Department of Commerce to provide a more conclusive rationale for including the question in next year’s census. 

The Supreme Court issued two opinions with direct implications for redistricting this morning, on the last day of the October 2018 Term.  In a consolidated opinion for Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek, the Court held that "partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts."  In Department of Commerce v. New York, the Court remanded the "census" case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with its rather confusing opinion that held both that it would be permissible for the the Department of Commerce to ask a question regarding citizenship on the census and that the Department did not provide an accurate reason for the question's inclusion.

This morning, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Department of Commerce v. New York concerning whether the plan to include a question on citizenship on the 2020 census violated either the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) or the Constitution's enumeration clause.  Solicitor General Noel Francisco represented the United States in defense of adding the question, and three advocates argued on behalf of Democrat-controlled states, liberal organizations, and the U.S. House against including the question.