The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Turns Focus Back To Immigration; Citizenship Question On Census Ignites Controversy

Episode Date: April 3, 2018

President Trump said Tuesday that he's considering sending the military to guard parts of the U.S.-Mexico border, because of what he calls "weak" immigration laws. And, some two dozen states and cities are suing to try to remove a new citizenship question from the 2020 census. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political editor Domenico Montanaro, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, editor correspondent Ron Elving and national correspondent Hansi Lo Wang. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey guys, this is Patti Daniels. I'm in Marrakesh, Morocco at the Night Market downtown. This episode of the NPR Politics Podcast was recorded at 2.44 p.m. on April 3rd. And things have probably changed since then. Keep up with all your politics news with NPR's Up First Podcast at npr.org or by listening to your favorite NPR member station. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. President Trump said today he's considering sending the military to guard parts of the U.S.-Mexico border because of what he calls

weak immigration laws. Until we can have a wall and proper security, we're going to be guarding our border with the military. The president has been tweeting for days about immigration. We'll talk about why. And a whole bunch of cities and states are suing to try to remove a question from the 2020 census. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Hello. And Mara, you were in this press conference that President Trump just had. That's right. I was. It was an interesting press conference, at least to watch on TV, because it was President Trump and three leaders of Baltic nations. That's right. So there were four leaders all together in the East Room. But right before that, when he sat down with the

Baltic leaders in the Cabinet Room, he talked for 15 minutes. So he kind of had two press conferences today. And he kind of said a lot of stuff. Yes, he answered a lot of questions. And in particular, he talked a lot about immigration, which happens to be this thing that he has been tweeting about ever since he tweeted Happy Easter. Well, the president has been really focused on immigration for the last couple of days. He's been tweeting that there's not going to be a DACA deal. He's been very fixated on this caravan, this group of mostly Hondurans that have been traveling through Mexico headed for the U.S. border. That's something that he's been seeing a lot about on Fox News. And he announced today that he is going to be sending the military to guard the border with Mexico.

Until we can have a wall and proper security, we're going to be guarding our border with the military. That's a big step. We really haven't done that before, or certainly not very much before. Well, he knows that we have done it before, and that's why he added that qualifier, because both George W. Bush and President Barack Obama did deploy National Guard troops, at least, to the border. But he said he's going to be meeting with Defense Secretary Mattis to talk about the details of this. It's not as easy as he makes it sound because the U.S. military does not patrol in civilian areas unless the National Guard is called up by the governors of those states. And President Obama did that for a couple different reasons, most notably politics, because he was trying to get a comprehensive immigration reform bill through. So a couple of years after when he had sent more of those National Guard to go there,

but also because of the increase in border crossings. There were far more people coming across the border in 2010 than there are today. Except that they are anticipating a surge because we're getting to the summer season and they're anticipating a surge of unaccompanied alien children is what they call them, UACs. But, you know, what's really interesting about this is that if politics were behind President Obama deploying National Guard troops to the border, politics are definitely behind Donald Trump's current moves. He wants to be seen as being active. He's worried about his base. For the first time ever, Donald Trump did something that angered his base, which was he signed that big omnibus spending bill, which did not include full funding for

his border wall. And he's gotten a lot of pushback because of that. And now he's trying to show that he's an activist. He's working hard to stop illegal immigration. He's been talking about sending military troops to the border, talking about no DACA deal this story about President Trump and how he performs in depositions. And in 2016, he sat down for a deposition related to an argument over a restaurant and his hotel, and it stemmed from his comments about Mexico not sending its best people. It was a dispute about that. And in that deposition, he talks about how, you know, he's really tapped into something that talking about Mexico, talking about immigration, he has tapped into something in America and that it's working for him. And and he was very sort of clear eyed about the naked politics of it all in that deposition. And this just feels like he's going back to this thing that worked for him. Perdue from Georgia, Cotton being the senator from Arkansas, to talk about trying to reduce legal immigration. So he always seems to come back to immigration as the thing to try to fire up

his base. And let's be honest, Congress isn't going to do much of anything between now and November. So in order to keep the Republican base, the base that was behind President Trump, behind him and behind Republicans. He brings this up and brings up, it seems, immigration almost out of the blue to be able to, you know, have something that he can push a message on. This is something you're going to see, I think, regularly between now and November. He's going to look for every opportunity he can to gin up the base because, as we know from polling, the Democrats are more excited and

energized than the Republicans. And he needs, he's always paid attention to his base. He's never seemed to care much about expanding his base. But for those 30 to 40 percent of Americans who like him, he's going to be looking for opportunities, whether it's immigration, stories about a caravan. I wouldn't be surprised if you see other things like athletes kneeling during the national anthem, things that are cultural flashpoints that he can focus on because this is what got him to the White House. And he thinks this is what's going to help him and his party in November. So, Domenico, can we just quickly talk about this caravan? It is a caravan of people, of migrants that mostly came from Honduras. We don't even really know if they're headed for the United States necessarily. We do know that Mexico has

basically stopped it at this point. You know, President Trump noted in that press conference that it happened 12 minutes ago. As of 12 minutes ago, I don't think it was that specific. I think it had happened a little bit before that, but that I guess, you know, he was watching this supposed caravan of people coming from Honduras, which, by the way, Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries in this hemisphere. You might remember in 2014, there was the unaccompanied minors crisis because of the uptick in violence in some of those Central American countries. And those folks are, I guess, seeking asylum. And they're also, interestingly, according to

our colleague, Kerry Kahn, this is sort of a publicity stunt. Like in part, the caravan was about trying to generate publicity for the plight of these migrants. And then, bam, they get picked up by the president of the United States and it becomes. It's good politics all around. Right. I mean, they get to be able to raise the issue, get some attention. President Trump is always going to take this bait because he wants this to be an issue. The White House did this conference call yesterday where they were saying that they have concerns about the immigration laws, DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It doesn't seem like the White House feels like there is some sort of a legislative fix for that at this point. And it's caught up in the courts. But they are talking about maybe a new package of legislation.

Or does that just feel like not really? It almost feels like sometimes the president tweets something and then they have to backfill with substance and potential legislation. They also say that anytime the Congress is discussing conveying some kind of a benefit or relief on people who are in the country illegally, it acts as a, quote, poll factor. It encourages other people to come to the country and be here illegally. So that's their argument. But Donald Trump started this whole discussion when he ended DACA, when he lifted the protection from deportation on these kids, and started talking about perhaps legislating DACA, doing something he said he loved these kids. And the question this all raises is, when and if the courts resolve this, will he begin deporting them? Or will the courts not resolve it in that direction? We don't know. We don't know. OK, so there there was some other news or kind of a lot of other news, but we're just going to pick a couple of things from the various times that we heard from President

Trump today. One thing that he has alluded to before, but he put a finer point on today, was Syria. The U.S. has boots on the ground in Syria. We may not technically call them boots on the ground, but the U.S. has military operations in Syria. The United States just had a casualty in Syria. There was an American soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb, as well as several other coalition members in an area, by the way, that used to be fairly safe, according to our Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman. out of Syria very soon. And this is not just something that the president blurted out. He had already frozen about $200 million in assistance for Syria in the effort to kind of rebuild the country. And he has said today, I want to get out of Syria. I want to bring our troops home. I want to rebuild our nation. We've spent $7 trillion in the Middle East over 17 years. We haven't gotten anything out of it. He has said that many, many times. He said we've got nothing except for debt and destruction. But the interesting thing to me

is this is exactly what he campaigned against. Pulling U.S. troops out of Syria now would be a huge gift to Iran and Russia and potentially ISIS, which the president says one of the reasons he wants to pull out is we're pretty much done with our job of decimating ISIS. But he campaigned against Obama putting an end date on military involvement in certain countries. He said the bad guys just wait you out when you tell them that you're leaving. And this is something that I know he's getting pushback from the Pentagon about. But this is his deep instinct. He ran against getting involved in foreign wars.

His base doesn't want the U.S. spending money abroad. They want the U.S. government spending money here. So this is something that he feels very strong about. It's kind of along with immigration and trade, not getting bogged down or involved with boots on the ground in other countries is something that's really part of base Trumpism. But it almost sounds like it sounded like you were just contradicting yourself, Mara. I mean, it almost. Mara's not contradicting herself. It's the president of the United States. The fact is, this Trump doctrine is unclear. This foreign policy doctrine is inconsistent when it comes to the ideological doctrine of like, what do you wind up doing? What do you believe you should do? It's very unclear

for the United States and for its allies around the world. It's unclear because it's hard to be a hawkish isolationist. I mean, that's why it's unclear. And he wants to project strength. Strength and toughness is kind of the bedrock of the Trump brand, as he sees it. He wants to be strong against Iran, against North Korea. But he doesn't like spending money and doing kind of the hard, slogging work of not just vanquishing enemies like ISIS, but once they're vanquished, what do you do to make sure they don't come back? What do you do to make sure that a country like Syria can be stable? What do you do to make sure that Iran and Russia don't fill the vacuum that you're creating by pulling out? So those are questions that he doesn't really have the answer to. But we know that Jim Mattis, Mike Pompeo,

and certainly John Bolton, when he arrives, do have opinions on this. You know, the thing is, I just wonder, looking at 2020 and the president going up for reelection, how he might have to wind up twisting himself into something of a pretzel in trying to make the case. Because it's really easy when you run against something that you're so the polar opposite of to be able to make a very simple argument rather than a nuanced one, trying to defend what you've done. Because he was able to say then we should just bomb them and take the oil. You know, you can't just say that today again. He said, yeah, I always said we should keep the oil. We didn't keep the oil. ISIS got the oil. Right. But when you look at what the United States is undergoing with emissions that they're trying to put in place, he owns this stuff now.

And it's not as simple as saying bomb them, take the oil. And then people look and see what is actually happening on the ground in a place that's very complicated, like the Middle East, like Iraq, like Syria. Those are areas that don't have never had simple solutions, yet Trump campaigned on those. But what's so interesting to me is I get why he's talking about Mexico and the caravan. His base is upset and he wants to show them with his signature issue that he's still working hard to build the wall, stop illegal immigration, etc. Syria, to me, is more interesting because it kind of came out of the blue. It's not like we're seeing Syria in the headlines every day. It's

not like there's a kind of big discussion in the United States about whether we should be in Syria. I think we have a couple thousand troops in Syria. That's pretty interesting. That's just his deep instincts. All right. There is one more news item, and we will keep this brief. But this week, all eyes are on Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator. Now, we have no reason to believe that he is imminently leaving. However, he is clouded in controversy. There are a number of stories about potential ethical lapses around him. And there, Mara, has been some word coming from the White House on that. Well, we know that Donald Trump talked to Scott Pruitt. And everything else that I have heard is that Pruitt's on thin ice. I think if you had a White House pool and

asked White House aides whether he would survive or not, they would be betting heavily against him. There are people in the White House who feel that his ethical problems are just too many. You know, he was accused of renting a room at a below market rate from a lobbyist, and he'd made a ruling that was in favor of that lobbyist's client. He's been criticized for high price travel and other expenses. And these things, the kinds of things that are mounting up are very similar to the kinds of problems that put an end to the career of Tom Price, the HHS secretary. So I wouldn't bet that Scott Pruitt is going to stick around for very long. Though this is all coming at this really interesting time at the EPA. Just today, Scott Pruitt announced a rollback of emissions standards, vehicle emissions standards.

This is a reversal of Obama era environmental policy. It's a big win for President Trump. This is part of his regulatory rollback. And, you know, Pruitt is doing exactly what President Trump and many Republicans want the EPA administrator to do. However, the other stuff is getting more headlines. In many ways, there's been no more important time, if you're a supporter of President Trump's, for what's happening at the EPA right now because of the rollbacks that they are undergoing. And yes, of course, they could put in place somebody who, you know, could, you know, push through President Trump's anti-regulation agenda. But, you know, Scott Pruitt is somebody who knows where the

bodies are buried at the EPA. He's sued the EPA several times when he was the attorney general in Oklahoma. This is a job he was made for, the sort of undoing of the regulatory structure at the EPA. And I think President Trump and people within the White House know that. And maybe, maybe they're going to push through some of these rollbacks and then you might see him depart. Who knows? Yeah. And, you know, the other thing is that one of the keys to surviving in the Trump cabinet is to not have a higher profile than the president on anything. And there has been some grumbling in the White House about Scott Pruitt's obvious ambitions to either be the attorney general, if Jeff Sessions should ever be removed from that position. And he also wants to run for higher office in Oklahoma.

And I think that he hasn't kept his head down and played by the rules. should ever be removed from that position. And he also wants to run for higher office in Oklahoma. And I think that he hasn't kept his head down and played by the rules. Yep. Because there have been a lot of rumors that if Jeff Sessions goes, because remember, President Trump had his sights focused on Jeff Sessions for quite some time on Twitter. And there are a lot of blind quotes in a lot of places floating Scott Pruitt's name. And there's a lot of suspicions within the White House of where that came from. I was talking to a Republican yesterday who was telling me, you know, it's probably not a coincidence that all of these articles are coming out about Pruitt right now, that all of these documents are being leaked, that in this environment with this level of backbiting, that Scott Pruitt has found himself in the crosshairs. Also, remember, a week before H.R. McMaster was ousted from the White House, President Trump had said that he has confidence in McMaster. Sarah Sanders said that there was

no problems, that they both get along. So maybe it's a little bit like, you know, a scene from one of those mob movies. You bring him close, you give him a big kiss on the lips. Might be close, but he's never been further away. Yeah. So let's hear what that sounds like. President Trump was asked today about his feelings about Scott Pruitt. I hope he's going to be great. I hope he's going to be great. Remember what he said about Rex Tillerson after he fired him? I'm sure Rex is going to be happier now. Has anyone checked in with Rex Tillerson? I bet he's happier now. Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

We're going to say goodbye to Domenico and Mara. Bye. Bye, guys. Thank you. And when we come back, we will talk census. You know you guys want to hear about the U.S. census. And the Trump administration has announced it's adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. And it's causing a lot of controversy.

You got to knock some census into this podcast. Oh, goodness. That's pretty good. Be right back. I'm Linda Holmes. There's more stuff to watch these days than you can ever get to. That's why we make Pop Culture Happy Hour. Twice a week, we give you the lowdown on what's worth your time and what's not.

Find Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back and we are going to talk about the U.S. census. There are a whole bunch of cities and states suing to try to remove a question from the 2020 census. The Trump administration said last week that every single person filling out the census this time around will be asked whether or not they're a U.S. citizen. The Justice Department had asked for that information. And I am joined now by none other than Ron Elving. Hello, Tam. Hello, Ron. And we have a very special guest, Hansi Lo Wong. Hello, Hansi. Hey, Tam. Hey, hey. So we have you here with us because you cover everything census. I do. And you've been very busy. Yeah.

So we're going to dig into the controversy surrounding, in particular, this one question about citizenship and some other things. But first, let's just bare bones. Why does the census matter so much? The census matters so much because it's one of the few requirements the founding fathers wrote in the Constitution, something that we actually have to carry out, which is a headcount. Every person living in the U.S. every 10 years in order to reapportion the seats in Congress every 10 years. Yeah. And so, Ron, the politics part of this. Yes, it matters enormously how many people there are in your state because that determines how many seats you get in Congress above the minimum of one. And it then matters within the state, because where these people are

then becomes the guide for drawing the maps for determining how you're going to elect those representatives from among the people in your state. So that's the first thing. And then after that, the federal government relies on this highly important statistical base to distribute all kinds of funds, basically all kinds of discretionary funds that are spent domestically. Things other than Social Security and Medicare are distributed on the basis of where the people are, where the population may live. So these numbers guide the dollars for the next 10 years. And by the way, we should mention, because it might be of more than casual interest to some people, that how many seats a state has in the House of Representatives also determines how many votes it has in the electoral college that chooses the president of the United States. The analogy I like to use is that, you know, the census is like

the plumbing that makes our democracy work. You don't think about it, but when it's not working, you know, it's a big deal. Okay. So I want to get to this controversy, this thing that was sort of sprung last week and was, I guess it wasn't a surprise to you, Hansi, because you've been covering the census, but there is going to be a new question on the form that goes to every American. What is that question? So this question is going to ask, is this person a citizen of the United States? And you'll have five options, one of which obviously is no, not a U.S. citizen. But if you are a U.S. citizen, you can specify if you're born in the United States, born in Puerto Rico, Guam, or other territories, born abroad of U.S. citizen parent or parents, or you're a U.S. citizen by naturalization and you print the year of your naturalization.

And this is the wording that's currently used in a smaller Census Bureau survey known as the American Community Survey that goes out to more than 3.5 million people a year in the United States. Now, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, last week when this announcement was made, she sort of downplayed it. And let's hear what she had to say. Look, this is a question that's been included in every census since 1965, with the exception of 2010, when it was removed. We've contained this question that's provided data that's necessary for the Department of Justice to protect voters and specifically to help us better comply with the Voting Rights Act. There's some nuance here. What is true is that the last time the census asked all U.S. households about citizenship was in 1950. And after that, the census that was presented to all U.S. households did not have a citizenship question, but there was a thing known as the long-form questionnaire.

The census was broken up into what was known as short-form and long-form questionnaires. And beginning in 1970, the long-form questionnaire included a citizenship question, but but that long form did not go to every U.S. household. And that long form is now known as the American Community Survey, which goes out to more than 3.5 million households every year. But 3.5 million is not a hundred. How many households do we have in America? 115,227,000. Thank you, Ron. But I think the point is, is that for more than a half century, every household in the U.S. has not been required to answer a question about citizenship. So it is a really big deal. You know, and it's a sensitive question, too, because the fear on the part of many who advocate for the community of immigrants and people who are

recent immigrants is that if you do have anyone in your household who has any question about their legality, you are going to be highly wary of filling out a form that identifies that fact and identifies that person. And then, of course, when someone comes to your door following up because you didn't turn in your census form, you're going to have the same set of fears. You're going to think, well, this is the law. This is ICE. This is the Homeland Security Department coming to look for that person in my home. So it's not going to be a great incentive to cooperate, to fill out this form completely and answer all those questions about everyone who might be in a home. And this is actually confirmed by Census Bureau's own research. It does research leading up to the

big count and its own researchers in the field testing out the questions, obviously not including the citizenship question because we only just got this news, but they have noticed an especially an increased fear amongst immigrants when just doing testing of the census. And we should say that it is, what, not legal to use census information for law enforcement purposes. Right. Federal law prohibits the Census Bureau from releasing any data that would identify an individual. But something to keep in mind is that the Census Bureau can release to federal agencies information about specific population groups. So it wouldn't specify someone's name, but it could identify specific characteristics of a group. And I guess a lot of people probably, I mean, like, wouldn't know that.

Well, this is part of the rollout of the census every 10 years, that there is a big advertising campaign to put that messaging out there. Yes, I'm from the government. I'm here to help you, and you can trust me. I won't use this data in any way that might be inimical to your interests, except, of course, that the reason we're asking this citizenship question is because the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, says he's doing it to help law enforcement. He's doing it to help the Department of Justice.

So what is one to conclude from that statement? What is one to conclude from that arrangement between justice and commerce, if not that this is being done in some sense to help law enforcement? Now, maybe people are going to be able to parse one kind of helping law enforcement, statistically speaking, from the kind of helping law enforcement that means turning people over to the man. And this is really the core of the arguments that New York and the 16 other states, as well as California, which filed a lawsuit last week, this is part of the argument they're trying to make in their complaints against Wilbur Ross and the Census Bureau. Yeah, let's talk about that. The suit is being filed today. There was the one filed last week

by the state of California. What is their main legal argument? What is their main concern? First, that adding a question about citizenship is unconstitutional because the Constitution requires the government to do what the actual wording is actual enumeration. And so they're arguing that we know that based on research and based on the current anti-immigrant sentiments, that this will, they allege, decrease the response rate to the census, especially amongst immigrant populations. And so therefore, the government can't carry out its constitutional responsibility of counting every person in the United States.

And so therefore, it's unconstitutional. And then the other main argument is that this is against what is known as the Administrative Procedure Act. And it essentially prohibits federal agencies from taking actions that are arbitrary and really is a misuse of discretion. And it's citing a number of reasons, these different complaints, of why it feels that this is very arbitrary, partly what I just stated about the decreased response rate. Also that this question has not been tested, which this is a point of contention between the Commerce Secretary and these different states here, as well as cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, that has this question been tested? Commerce Secretary argues that since we're using the wording of the citizenship question that is

currently on the American Community Survey,, we know how respondents may take to this question. But these states are arguing, these cities are arguing, the U.S. Conference of Mayors are arguing, is arguing that the Census Bureau has not tested this question in the context of what is known as the decennial census, has not tested it in the questionnaire that's going to go out to all U.S. households. So this is kind of new territory. And the Census Bureau generally does not do this because this could have big impact on data quality. And what Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, and his justification for this, what he said, I think, is that, well, there's no empirical evidence that it will do the bad things that everybody says it will do. And it sounds like what you're saying, there's no empirical evidence that it will do the bad things that everybody says it will do. And it sounds like what you're saying is there's also no empirical evidence that it won't.

That's the rub, essentially. And Secretary Ross is saying, and this is all in his memo that came out a Monday night, which kicked off all of this, proving the Justice Department's request. He basically said the need for a better count of U.S. citizens outweighs all these concerns. My impression is that there is a good deal of evidence that if you ask people questions that get them started wondering about whether or not answering them honestly is going to get them into trouble, you are almost automatically, and I believe there is evidence for this, you are almost automatically depressing the number of

people who you are going to find. So, for example, it's been estimated in past years, and I'm not talking about this next census or the last one, but that in past years, as many as 6% of all the African Americans in the United States were not counted because for one reason or another, they didn't cooperate with the census. Perception is a really, really big part of whether you get an accurate count or not. And the Census Bureau has, as Ron was mentioning, a long history of their number of what is known as hard to count populations. They include immigrant populations, especially unauthorized, undocumented immigrants and communities of color. So this is a big concern. And there's also another lawsuit filed by the NAACP last week, really concerned that the Census Bureau is not prepared to carry out a full,

accurate count, especially of communities of color. Now, these states and cities that are suing to try to block this, are they all blue states? Is this like another red state, blue state thing? Or what do these states have in common? A lot of these states are blue states, but it's also a number of cities like New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, but also includes a bipartisan group of mayors in the U.S. Conference of Mayors. I was at the recent conference of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a recent meeting in D.C., and you had Republican and Democratic mayors saying, we're really concerned this will affect our population counts and also affect the case that we can make, essentially, and saying,

you know, our population has grown or specific changes within amongst the demographics of our population. It's going to hurt them when they're trying to make that case for more federal dollars, for more services, and also affect them local, you know, for local planning, where to improve roads, where to invest more in schools based on the population count. But this doesn't quite answer your question, Dan, does it? Well, you know, there are a lot of blue states that are suing. It's true. But the effects that this would have might very well be more broadly distributed.

For example, Texas and Florida have very large populations of people who might have either an acquaintance who is undocumented or might have someone who is undocumented living in their home. Arizona also falls states that voted for Donald Trump or that would be considered red states, states with very high proportions of low-income households. Okay. So one question that I saw a bunch floating around online is this idea of, well, why should we even be counting people who aren't citizens? So let me pose that to you guys. Why is the U.S. counting people who aren't citizens. So let me pose that to you guys. Why is the U.S. counting people who aren't Americans? The Constitution doesn't make a distinction

between citizens and non-citizens when doing this headcount. Is that right, Ron? That is correct. I was going to say the simplest answer is because we always have. The fact of the matter is it's supposed to be measuring how many people are in the country, not how many people in the country are citizens. It's supposed to be measuring how many people are in the country, not how many people in the country are citizens. It's supposed to be measuring where people are and who people are, and that is what it is all about, an actual enumeration. So the Constitution is pretty clear, and people would like to be, well, people would like not to use statistical sampling to replace the actual enumeration,

because statistical sampling, if it's done scientifically, would not have a lot of the problems of inaccuracy or the problem of people's refusal that we have with the current enumeration. But the Supreme Court decided back in 1998 that the Constitution was plain about saying actual enumeration, a nose count, a head count, whichever you want to call it. Not statistical sampling, not the best evidence of what science can produce, but an actual head count. And the Constitution is also plain in terms of including everyone. So for those who want to stick with the Constitution,

they would have to take the part of that they don't like as well as the part they do. Although it's important to remember, originally, the Constitution required that all enslaved people be counted as three-fifths of a person. So before we lose you, Hansi, there are other questions that are sort of new. There's potential to learn new things in this census. That's right. Tell us about that. Well, one really interesting change is to the race question. For the first time, people who mark off the boxes for white or black are going to be asked

to write in their non-Hispanic origins. And on the form, the Census Bureau is going to provide as examples, something like German, Irish, African American, or Jamaican. And so that's going to be a really interesting set of data. And then the other interesting change, if we have time for it, is the relationship question. So the Census Bureau always asks within a household how people are related. And for the first time, among the boxes are going to be options that will differentiate between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Does it differentiate between married and not married? Yes. So there's a box for same-sex and opposite-sex husband-wife-spouse, and then also another one for same-sex or opposite-sex unmarried partner. And this is not the first time the Census Bureau has tried to count

the number of same-sex couples. In 1990, when it added a category for unmarried partner, it started basically taking how people responded to the relationship question and then matching that with how people answered the question about their sex and then figured out, okay, these are the people who are same-sex couples, these are people who are opposite- who are same-sex couples. These are people who are opposite sex or different-sex couples. And it continued in 2000 and 2010 actually put out reports about these numbers. And what it found was that some different sex couples accidentally marked the wrong box for their sex. And so they were accidentally counted

as same-sex couples in the Census Bureau's initial estimates. So this change of differentiating between same-sex and opposite-sex couples is a way, the Census Bureau says, is a way to collect more accurate data about same-sex couples, which for now is a really small percentage of the population. And so just having a few mistakes, demographers are telling me, that can really distort the numbers that we get about same-sex couples estimates that Census Bureau puts out. So in terms of controversy, these two changes do not rank anywhere near the citizenship question, or do they? Well, certainly we haven't seen any lawsuits over these changes. But I think the thing is,

is that it's only 2018. And unless you've been listening to NPR, you may not have heard about these changes. And so when I'm really curious, I'm really, really curious. Once all of America sees the actual form, you know, in the mail, on the phone, or, you know, when they try to answer on the phone

or they go online for the first time to respond to the census, what they will think about these new questions, these new checkboxes. All right. I think that is it for today. Hansi, thank you so much for joining us. You're very welcome. Bringing all that census knowledge. I suspect we will have you back talk demographics again. This was fun. Thank you for having me.

And for the rest of you, we will be back in your feed soon. Keep up with our coverage at NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, on your local public radio station. You can always catch one of us on Up First every weekday morning.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. Thanks for listening House for NPR. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. 50 years ago this week, two civil rights leaders were killed. One you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and one you may not. This week on Code Switch, the final days of the lives of two men devoted to fighting for justice. Find it on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts.