Washington Post of June 1, 2019

I take the first two paragraphs and many of the ideas in what I have written below from Dana Milbank’s op ed piece. Trump’s Raison d’etre is White Power.

Milbank:
“We tend not to realize how much of the president’s appeal is about race. Studies show the primary indicator of support for Trump isn’t economic insecurity but racial resentment. This doesn’t mean Trump supporters are torch-carrying racists; it means they fear losing their place…”

“And this is largely why the daily mayhem of the Trump presidency has no discernible effect on support for Trump: not the petty (the White House ordering John McCain’s name covered on a Navy ship); not the ludicrous (the Energy Department rebranding liquid natural gas “molecules of freedom”); not the insidious (Trump continuing to allege a “Russian hoax” and his own innocence after special counsel Robert Mueller demonstrated otherwise); not the ugly (Trump resisting disaster aid for Puerto Rico for months, and GOP lawmakers this week blocking the legislation); and not the inhuman (migrant children held illegally, and dying, at the border). All of this pales against the existential threat to traditional white America from what it perceives as nonwhite interlopers.”

Yes, that’s right, Trump supporters live in “fear losing their place.” [place meaning white skinned supremacy] And they fear no less, if they’re Senators or Representatives, losing their jobs if Trump’s base were ever to turn from them.

The current brouhaha over the census question is an illustration of what Trump is continuing to do in support of white supremacy, not the same as gerrymandering but much like it in respect to the results. Both would put down the darkskinned immigrant populations. Although they will eventually fail they seem now that they would like to take others down with them in defeat.

Wilbur Ross, Trump’s man and toady at the Commerce Department, is proposing that a citizenship question be placed on the 10 year census questionnaire. Although it’s been tried before it’s never been been done. The constitution wants everyone counted (except the Indians who pay no taxes).

But you may ask what’s wrong with having a citizen question on the census? Why shouldn’t counting us involve counting us as citizens? Well, for one thing (other than the fact that it never has been) a citizens count would mean that millions of us would not be counted (how many, 11-15 million residents who are not yet citizens?).

And why is this important? Well the 10 year annual count does two very important things. It determines the number of representatives there will be to the House for each state. And since the non-citizen residents are mostly dark skinned immigrants their being removed from the census would favor the position of the remaining numbers of white skinned residents.
Then too you might ask, and I’m sure there will be judges on the Supreme Court who will be asking this, why shouldn’t citizenship be all important in the 10 year count? Well as I say it never was, nor was it ever intended to be so. And now if enacted it would definitely be favoring one race over other races. And I don’t think, at least I hope so, that we don’t want to do that. Shouldn’t a president’s only real job, or if you prefer most real job, be to bring us together and a citizenship question on the census would do just the opposite.

How many non citizens live in the United States? Here’s the answer I find on Wikipedia: Approximately 43.3 million foreign-born people live in the United States, that which includes 20.7 million naturalized U.S. citizens and 22.6 million non-citizens as of Apr 20, 2017.

We are told that within a quarter-century, white Americans will no longer be the majority. While this needn’t be a loss for white people — immigration isn’t zero-sum — but Trump’s GOP has convinced his followers it is. Therefore, preserving white power becomes essential, and the citizenship question buys time.

Here’s where we are now: The Supreme Court has just a few weeks left to decide whether to endorse the Trump administration’s proposal to add a citizenship question to the census.