Well, Duh

I'm shocked! Shocked! To find that gambling is going on this establishment

Recent documents show that the Trump Administration in general and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross attempted to use a citizenship question to create a political advantage in redistricting and then lied about it.

This has been transparently obvious since they first proposed this:

Previously unreleased internal communications indicate the Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question to the census with the goal of affecting congressional apportionment, according to a report issued Wednesday by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The documents appear to contradict statements made under oath by then-Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who told the committee that the push for a citizenship question was unrelated to apportionment and the reason for adding it was to help enforce the Voting Rights Act.

The nearly 500 documents include several drafts of an August 2017 memorandum prepared by a Commerce Department lawyer and political appointee, James Uthmeier, in which he initially warned that using a citizenship question for apportionment would probably be illegal and violate the constitution, the report said.

In later drafts, Uthmeier and another political appointee, Earl Comstock, revised the draft to say there was “nothing illegal or unconstitutional about adding a citizenship question” and claiming the Founding Fathers “intended the apportionment count to be based on legal inhabitants,” the report said. In December 2017, the Justice Department sent a formal request to the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, asking it to add the question; in March 2018, Ross announced it would be added to the 2020 Census.

“Today’s Committee memo pulls back the curtain on this shameful conduct and shows clearly how the Trump Administration secretly tried to manipulate the census for political gain while lying to the public and Congress about their goals,” Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

The administration’s effort to add the question lasted two years. It was challenged by civil rights groups who blasted it as an effort to undercount Latinos and scare immigrant communities from participating in a survey that determines congressional apportionment and redistricting, as well as the disbursement of $1.5 trillion in federal funds annually.

It should be noted here that the actions of the Trump administration are in complete accordance with the actions of the Republican Party going back at least to Ronald Reagan.