The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“CENSUS RIGGING: A CONFESSION” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H5172 on June 26, 2019.
The Department includes the Census Bureau, which is used to determine many factors about American life. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, said the Department is involved in misguided foreign trade policies and is home to many unneeded programs.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
CENSUS RIGGING: A CONFESSION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney) for 5 minutes.
Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, the clock is ticking down to the hour when the Supreme Court will make its initial decision on whether to include a citizenship question in the 2020 Census.
This administration has repeatedly told the American people, this Congress, and the Supreme Court that its reason for wanting to include the question is to ``help enforce the Voting Rights Act.''
It turns out, all that was a lie, and I have the documentation to prove it on my website.
Newly discovered documents and court records clearly show that the only goal was to achieve the desired effect of diminishing the representation of communities of color while also entrenching the power of ``Republican and non-Hispanic Whites,'' according to the masterminds of the citizenship question.
This may, understandably, sound to some like an outrageous claim to make, but we have the documentation to prove it. You can go to my website to see it. These documents were uncovered thanks to the courageous efforts of a woman who discovered and turned over thousands of documents from her father's hard drive to pro bono lawyers representing Common Cause in its litigation against gerrymandering.
In doing so, she uncovered evidence that is more powerful and convincing than a smoking gun. It is basically a signed and sealed confession.
The documentary trail of deceit begins on January 7, 2015, when a Census Bureau employee used her private email account to contact a Republican redistricting expert and urged him to push for a citizenship question in the 2020 Census.
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The Census Bureau employee, a Christa Jones, went on to become a political appointee in the Census Bureau. Ms. Jones then became part of Secretary Ross' core team on the citizenship question.
The redistricting expert she reached out to was Dr. Thomas Hofeller. Hofeller was widely known as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering for the Republican Party.
This conspiracy picked up steam in August of 2015 when Dr. Hofeller concluded in a secret study he had written that simply adding one question, a citizenship question, to the Census would facilitate a redistricting overhaul that would be, and I quote from his work:
``advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites.''
In late 2016, Dr. Hofeller became the first person to push the incoming administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Not long after, Hofeller ghostwrote a letter that became, word for word, the basis of the Justice letter that had been cooked up by Commerce to be sent to them that set forth the knowingly fake voting rights rationale.
In October of 2017, Secretary Ross' general counsel arranged for his key Census advisor to hand-deliver the Hofeller letter to a top Department of Justice political appointee at a secret meeting. That fake Voting Rights Act rationale then appeared in the letter that the DOJ political appointee sent to the Commerce Department, and the U.S. Secretary of Commerce sat before Congress and lied to our faces in an effort to cover up their illegal and immoral activities.
Let no one be misled about the purpose of these efforts. They are a concerted effort by the current administration to undermine the bedrock principle of one person, one vote. Its purpose is to undermine the ability of non-White, non-Republican people and communities of color to have equal representation here in the people's House.
These deceptive and anti-democratic efforts must not stand. Even if the Supreme Court rules against us, we will continue to fight for the principles of one person, one vote and the Constitution's requirement that all inhabitants must be counted. Democracy depends on it, our people deserve it, and we will fight until we achieve it.
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