Congress votes to hold Trump administration officials in contempt over 'racist' census question

'I want to know about racism and the very disturbing history that we're seeing here'

The House Oversight Committee has voted to push forward a resolution to hold attorney general William Barr and commerce secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt, marking an escalation in tension between congressional Democrats and Donald Trump‘s administration.

The vote followed after Mr Barr and Mr Ross refused to hand over documents to the congressional committee related to the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 US census. Just before the contempt hearing began on Wednesday, the Department of Justice notified committee chairman Elijah Cummings that Mr Trump had asserted executive privilege over the documents, which assistant attorney general Stephen Boyd said in a letter includes private communications.

The contempt resolution was approved with the support of every Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, alongside just one Republican, congressman Justin Amash.

“We must protect the integrity of the census, and we will stand up for Congress‘s authority under the Constitution to conduct meaningful oversight,” Mr Cummings said on Wednesday, before saying that the Trump administration’s executive privilege claim was “another example of the administration’s blanket defiance of Congress’s constitutionally mandated responsibilities”.

Referencing the Trump administration’s decision to assert privilege over all of the documents, Mr Cummings continued: “This begs the question: What is being hidden?”

The move sets up a legal battle between Democrats in the house and the Trump administration over the citizenship question, which some estimates say could dramatically reduce the representation of Hispanic populations in communities across the country. That, in turn, could benefit Republican politicians, who generally attract older and whiter supporters. The US census is used to determine a variety of important things, including the allocation of federal resources and voting representation.

Democrats on the house committee have expressed concern that the question was introduced with that reduction in representation in mind, with that theory backed up by recently unearthed documents written by the architect of the plan for the census question showing that studies “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites”.

During the hearing on Wednesday, representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted Mr Barr and Mr Ross over the census question.

“I want to know why this question was magically added after we have seen that a political operative knew and detailed an intent to intimidate racial and immigrant communities for a partisan purpose, saying this will hurt Democrats and help Republicans,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said. “I want to know about racism and the very disturbing history that we’re seeing here.”

Mr Trump, meanwhile, said that it is “ridiculous” that anyone would object to including a citizenship question on the US census.

“I think when you have a census, and you’re not allowed to talk about whether or not somebody is a citizen or not, that doesn’t sound good to me,” Mr Trump said during a meeting with Polish president Andrzej Duda.

Turning to his guest, Mr Trump continued: “Can you imagine, you send out a census and you’re not allowed to say whether or not a person is an American citizen? In Poland, they’d say they’re either Polish or they’re not. Right? So, I don’t want to get into this battle, but it’s ridiculous.”

The census question is also being challenged in US courts, and the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a ruling on the issue later this month.