The Supreme Court won't immediately allow a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, it announced on Thursday. Though the final fate of the ruling will likely be in front of the court at a later date, the government has stressed to the court that time is running out, and that the census questionnaire must be finalized by the end of the month.
President Donald Trump—a staunch supporter of adding the citizenship question to the census—announced that he'd push to delay the census all together "no matter how long," until the Supreme Court rules on the question once and for all.
There's just one problem: The United States Constitution, specifically Article one, Section two, which states:
"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States ... according to their respective Numbers ...within every subsequent Term of ten Years."
The census is constitutionally mandated to go out in April of 2020, but Trump appears to think that "every subsequent term of ten years" is somehow negotiable.
People are pointing out that that is not the case.
Trump's disregard for the constitution has many worried for what it could foretell.
Gulp.