How does the right benefit from skewing the census? What exactly does the GOP get out of it?

I think there are Republicans and conservatives who want to manipulate the census for their own purposes. They want to have fewer people of color, fewer immigrants, and by extension fewer Democrats to respond to the census so that those areas get less representation, less federal funding; they essentially count less in terms of the overall count of people in America. Then I think there are also people who want to use the census in particular to benefit Republican redistricting efforts. So instead of having a census that accurately counts everyone in America, this is turning into a tool of the Republican Party, which I think is very dangerous and not what the census is about.

“Some people in the Trump administration, and some in the Republican Party, want to add a question about citizenship because they know it will repress response rates in immigrant communities. That will mean that urban and Democratic communities will get fewer seats than more rural, white, Republican areas.”

So one of the big concerns is that this will make it easier to gerrymander states?

You have to take a step back and say first off the census is the basis for how seats are allocated. So before you even get to the gerrymandering, you get into the allocation of seats. And if there’s not an accurate census, some areas are gonna be prioritized over others and some communities will be prioritized over others. So if you’re a Republican trying to manipulate the census, the first thing you do is you would try to make sure as many white people who vote Republican are counted and as few minorities and Democratic communities are counted—therefore Republican areas get more seats and Democratic areas get fewer seats. And that’s how you would essentially gerrymander the census before any actual gerrymandering by state legislators begins.

The Justice Department is pushing for the 2020 census to explicitly ask about citizenship status, claiming that it’s important for preventing voter fraud, though they haven’t been able to back that up. With Trump turning on DACA recipients and ICE deporting even undocumented veterans, there's understandably a lot of reason for immigrants to be skeptical about turning over more information to the federal government. But on a broader scale, what would be the impact of a citizenship question?

I think some people in the Trump administration, and some in the Republican party, want to add a question about citizenship because they know it will repress response rates in immigrant communities. That will mean that urban and Democratic communities will get fewer seats than more rural, white, Republican areas. Also what I think they’re trying to do is gather data on citizenship so they can argue that districts should be drawn just based on citizenship and not based on total population, which is the way that it’s currently done. There was a unanimous Supreme Court case in 2016 that held that districts are supposed to be based on total population: if you’re here, you’re a functioning person in America, you work, you use public services, then you have needs that elected officials have to respond to. Republicans are going to try to get around that decision by saying, “Look, we have this citizenship data, why can’t we just draw data based on citizens only?” And that would further shift seats and resources from Democratic areas to Republican areas.

A lot of progressives seem enthusiastic right now about voting rights cases in the Supreme Court pipeline—lower courts ruled that both North Carolina and Pennsylvania had unconstitutionally gerrymandered their districts, for example. But this is still the Court that destroyed the Voting Rights Act, and John Roberts has famously been a crusader for limiting access to voting. Should we be skeptical about them weighing in on these issues?

The history of this Supreme Court when it comes to voting rights makes me very cautious about any sort of optimism about what they might do. I do think Justice Anthony Kennedy has signaled some kind of willingness, we don’t know how much willingness, to do something about racial and partisan gerrymandering. The Supreme Court has already said that too much racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional, and they’ve said that for a long time, including in places like North Carolina in the last year or so. What they haven’t said is whether partisan gerrymandering, where you draw districts for the sole purpose of benefiting one party, is unconstitutional. And that’s what we’re waiting to hear in Wisconsin, in Maryland, in North Carolina, and in Texas. It’s certainly clear that lower courts, state and federal courts, have signaled a willingness to strike down both partisan and racial gerrymandering, but the Supreme Court’s not there yet.