Underwood said there was no evidence that Ross specifically needed to add the citizenship question to get the data he needed. But in this case, Ross had made the calculation that the benefits of asking the citizenship question specifically outweighed the cost of a declining response rate. WASHINGTON ― The Supreme Court appeared willing to allow the Trump administration to add a question asking every American household to identify citizens and noncitizens on the 2020 census . The career officials recommended that Ross use existing governmental administrative records to gather citizenship data instead of adding the question. The messages show Ross was interested in adding a citizenship question long before the Justice Department formally requested that he do so.

Source: Huffington Post April 23, 2019 15:46 UTC