He said he is ordering every federal department and agency to provide the Commerce Department with all records it requests pertaining to the number of citizens and noncitizens in the country.
Trump said he will sign an executive order to put this new plan into effect “immediately.”
His plan to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census was thwarted by a recent Supreme Court ruling on legal challenges to the effort.
Q: "Are you going to issue an executive order on the census?"
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 5, 2019
President Trump: "We're thinking about doing that. It's one of the ways, we have four or five ways we can do it. It's one of the ways we're thinking of doing it." pic.twitter.com/vp93GpFKQA
>> Read the latest from our Washington Insider, Jamie Dupree
The Supreme Court last month temporarily barred the inclusion of the question on the census on the grounds that the government's justification was insufficient. An executive order, by itself, would not override court rulings blocking the question, though it could give administration lawyers a new basis on which to try to convince federal courts the question passes muster.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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