legal challenge which may come from republicans and conservatives in some of these states and important to note how these two cases intersect because in the census case, the evidence from thomas, the deceased republican strategist files is that they want republicans, republicans want to juice the citiz use the citizenship data to change the way districts are drawn from all people, eligible south citizens of voting age, enormously compound the effect of moving diversification away to areas more prepont rattly white and republican. the census case could be, if they decide this census question, you ll see conservative states shift the way they redistrict and who they count. and elizabeth, to ron s point about how and what you said earlier, they are, you know,
chief justice john roberts argued to the fact that federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major parties with no grant of authority in the constitution. in other words, they can t get involved in a partisan political matter. the only thing confusing about that decision, whether you support it or not, whether it benefits democrats in one period or republicans in another period. they often come in the middle to resolve political disputes. absolutely. i thought that was confusing too. i ve seen court challenges and judges injecting them 70s in this process. it s an important point that you make. what is interesting and in which ari talked about, we talked about the gerrymandering part of what scotus decided on. in the decision about the census, justice alito made the same argument for the minority when he said judges should not be injecting them 70s into the census question, so that was i
mechanisms to avoid having to get to the merits of how that power is taken. with the census question, they re able to somewhat avoid the merits by utilizing this question of the record needs to be more fully developed but at the same time, interesting to see what roberts is doing. it s definitely a slight at the trump administration. you can sense a sense of distaste in terms of how controversial and how questionable ross statements have been. so i think you could read that in there. yeah, you can. in the passage that jessica read, john, when it comes to the census, fascinating. the sole stated reason, and this comes from the commerce secretary and justice officials defending it, seems to have been contrived. that seems another way of saying, i don t believe you. yes, because there s evidence they ve been lying. the argument they made to the court is they needed the citizenship question in order to further enforce the voting rights act, but the emails that
is nothing this president will not do to break up your family, cage your children, and every seer existence by weaponizing the census. trace: so when you see congress getting involved in this, you see the 2020 candidates using this as one of their platforms, what do you make of that as to how it plays into the rest of the argument? well, certainly. this is part of a question here, the role of congress. they can write the census questions if it wants, but in fact, delegated to the congress, that they will return the most useful results for the government. but this census question, the suggestion from rhetoric like that, that this is something n new, is not reflective of the actual history. the u.s. has after this very question or questions like it since 1820 and one form or
marshall will tell us when the court next meets. . two big decisions this week. jergerrymandering and the other case as well involving the census question, too. pete williams, we ll check back in with you. thank you much. appreciate it. and what s happening on the campaign trail. two days from now you will see the first democratic debate on msnbc. one of the most buzzed about candidates of the primary, pete buttigieg still plans to be there. typically this wouldn t even be a question. but he stepped off the campaign trail this week to deal with the biggest test of his campaign so far, fallout after a white police officer shot and killed a black man in south bend. the mayor s community is demanding answers. get the racists off the streets. it s disrespectful that i wake up every day scared. i don t want to seem defensive, but we have taken a