The Justice Department’s efforts to replace the legal team defending the census citizenship question hit another obstacle on Wednesday, this time in the Maryland case challenging the question.
There must be a lot of folks running around the halls of the DOJ right now. The idea of replacing all the lawyers was doomed from the start - Barr and friends probably thought doing so would allow them to start fresh with their excuses, with no accountability for prior statements made in the case. One consistent and helpful factor is that the lawyers the Republicans depend on so often simply are really bad lawyers. At least most of the lower level federal judges aren’t being bamboozled or blinded by ideology. That can’t be said about those in the administration.
Hahahaha…they’ve both called Barr’s bluff now. And I love this:
“He is requiring that the department guarantee that “one or more of the withdrawing attorneys are remaining available to the new DOJ team” and if not, then the department must provide a “detailed reasoning for why such an arrangement is untenable.””
What a wonderfully subtle way to place them in a catch-22. Either have those other attorneys there and advising, which they can’t be if the new team is going to throw them under the bus, change the whole story, invent new arguments and make new representations, OR put it in a written filing that THAT is why you can’t have them present, i.e., because they’d be violating their ethics obligations to help with that nonsense. Check and mate.
ROPE.
Yes, they are screwed (and rightly so) no matter what they do from here on out. In fact, had they NOT demanded a quick trial on the June 30 print deadline, a false assertion they now deny, they may have eked out a win. But oh no, these jerks couldn’t find a tree in a forest, and their big lie is now laid bare.
Good luck you dummies!
The following day, President Trump launched a Tantrum. It’s all he f**king does.
“Defendants must realize that a change in counsel does not create a clean slate for a party to proceed as if prior representations made to the Court were not in fact made,” the judge said. “A new DOJ team will need to be prepared to address these, and other, previous representations made by the withdrawing attorneys at the appropriate juncture.”
Dear Bill Barr Flunkies Just Trotted In- Welcome to Law of the Case 101.
I don’t know who these freaks are in DOJ, these middling people willing to destroy themselves for this asshole. It seems to be the one department that is unabashedly on board with rump’s agenda. I know people who work in HHS and EPA and USDA and VA who are quietly pushing back, slow walking or even dragging their feet on enacting rump’s craziness. DOJ will have a hard time cleaning its butt after this. Stained for a very long time.
The department had argued that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was the sole decision-maker to add the citizenship question and thus any allegedly discriminatory motive or statements from President Trump were not relevant to Ross’ decision.
That argument worked well for John Roberts for the Muslim ban case.
This is what you get when you try to strain Trumpism through the legal system: a sodden mess resembling baby food or a regurgitated worm.
The DOJ aren’t sending the best
O T but entertaining…
Over on cnn.com Ted Cruz is yelling at trump telling him to “follow the damned law”.
Yeah, Ted Cruz. That Ted Cruz.
Three strikes and they’re out???
It’s the pivot - but the wrong guy pivoted.
Glad the judge reminded Barr et al of that. These hacks undoubtedly thought, “With new attorneys we’re good to go with new arguments.”
(Lays head on desk)
Government should stop wasting our money. The Republic will withstand one missing census question.
I thought Trump was going to stop this government crap. He doesn’t give a damn about census results.
Especially when “it ain’t broke.”
Wait, is it not the Feds who’re rushin’ like a Trump wife to get this case resolved stat? I’m confused why the judges wouldn’t just let the government take its sweet old time. There’ll be another Census in 2030.
Yeah but he’s doing it in CNN and not Fox.
Apart from the legal issues, it is no small matter getting Census forms to cover 360 million people, speaking dozens of languages, out on time. The logistics, even with plans to digitize this, create huge problems.
A friend of mine was a door-to-door Census enumerator in 1970. Knocking on doors to complete Census forms for people who did not respond by mail. Even with that hands-on approach there were complaints about undercounts of people of color. Undercount concerns have a long history.
I understand that Census hopes to have 80% of the 2020 respondents complete the Census forms online. Good luck with that in Census tracts populated with low-income and minority populations. At some point enumerators will also be called out to go door by door for non-respondents.
I guess I have two big concerns. One is that the undercount threatens to be massive this Census as low-income people without computer skills struggle to complete the form and immigrants (documented and undocumented) refuse to answer the door to enumerators.
The second is that the Census isn’t just another questionnaire from Survey Monkey. I suspect the June 30 deadline was established to provide the time required to do a good professional job on the 2020 Census. The longer the delay in approving the final Census documents (and translating them into dozens of languages), the greater the likelihood the Commerce Department will be forced to take shortcuts in testing the online systems—potentially leading to another fiasco on the magnitude of the Obamacare rollout.
Well, Fox is even less a minor Ivy than CNN is.