White House tight-lipped on census citizenship question

The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily protected Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross from facing legal questions about the 2020 U.S. census amid an ongoing battle over a question about respondents’ citizenship.

The Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce Department, plans to ask all U.S. residents about their citizenship as part of the once-a-decade population survey of every household in the United States.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia are challenging the move, along with multiple cities that claim fewer immigrants will complete the survey for fear of revealing their illegal status to authorities. An undercounting of residents in areas with large immigrant communities would affect congressional representation, federal funding, and other population-based policy decisions.

The Justice Department sought the inclusion of the question to better enforce the Voting Rights Act by getting a more accurate count of the number of residents who are eligible to vote, according to a letter to the Census Bureau published by news site ProPublica.

Ross, along with the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, could be deposed as part of the lawsuit. The Trump administration wanted to halt the depositions, but a lower court turned down the request. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Ross likely has first-hand knowledge of the decision that can only be learned from him. The court dismissed government claims that Ross, as a high-ranking official, should not undergo a deposition.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Tuesday stayed the depositions pending responses from the parties, which were due at 4 p.m. Thursday.

The Census Bureau itself has fought past efforts by Congress to inquire about citizenship on the census, claiming it would damage the accuracy of the survey by driving down participation in minority communities who already distrust the government. The bureau recently asked about citizenship on a separate, smaller survey that it uses to delve into greater detail about the U.S. population, but it has not asked about it on the census itself since 1950.

Google gives Pentagon cold shoulder

Google dropped out of the running for a lucrative U.S. government contract Monday, citing concerns that the project would violate the company’s commitment not to develop artificial intelligence that could cause harm.

The Pentagon requested bids for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), which would transfer Defense Department data to a commercial cloud system. The project could last 10 years and is estimated to be worth $10 billion.

“While we are working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many areas, we are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI principles,” Google said in a statement.

Employees protested Google’s involvement in the contract, and a handful resigned. Earlier this year, Google shuttered another defense contract, Project Maven. After learning that Google was involved with the project, which used artificial intelligence to improve drone strikes, more than 4,000 employees signed a petition in protest and asked for a policy change promising that “neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”

Google said it still planned to “help state, local, and federal customers modernize their infrastructure and meet their mission-critical requirements.”

The tech giant also announced Monday it would shut down its social media network Google Plus following a data breach that affected thousands of users. The breach happened in March, and Google drew criticism for not announcing it publicly until this week.

As tech giants have come under increasing public and governmental scrutiny, Google has acted aloof. Last month, at a U.S. Senate hearing attended by Facebook and Twitter executives, a company representative declined even to show up. Internal dissent, high-profile mistakes, and giving some government contracts the cold shoulder make the company’s attempts to keep out of the public eye increasingly likely to fail.

Final bids for the $10 billion contract are due Friday. Oracle, IBM, and Amazon are still in the running, and Microsoft shows signs of interest, too. —Harvest Prude

Haley on the Hill?

Nikki Haley’s resignation as U.S. ambassador to the UN this week surprised journalists and the public, but both she and President Donald Trump said the departure was planned. Now the question is, what are they planning next?

Trump said Haley, who has high public approval ratings and is well-respected at the UN, tipped him off six months ago that she could be leaving. At a news conference Tuesday, the president and Haley addressed reporters together while seated in the Oval Office like two old friends catching up.

“Hopefully you’ll be coming back at some point … maybe a different capacity,” Trump told her. “You can have your pick.”

His remarks fueled immediate speculation about Haley’s future ambitions. Some commentators surmised she might run for president in 2020, which Haley denied, though 2024 might still be on the table. CNN politics editor David Wright suggested Trump would fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions after midterm elections and replace him with Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, allowing Haley to step into Graham’s place. (Haley served as the governor of South Carolina for six years before taking her current job at the beginning of Trump’s presidency.)

In her resignation letter, though, Haley referenced the private sector, and Trump remarked Wednesday that Haley was “going to make a lot of money.” Her January 2018 financial disclosure listed between $25,000 and $65,000 in credit card debt, a personal mortgage, and a $250,000 to $500,000 line of credit—all good reasons for her to take a lucrative job outside politics for a while. As UN ambassador, she makes $179,600 a year. Haley’s UN office told The Post and Courier in Charleston that Haley’s debt has gone down since the disclosure was filed and had nothing to do with her decision to leave.

Meanwhile, the president said Wednesday he’s looking at five possible candidates to replace Haley, including former deputy national security adviser Dina Powell. Trump’s daughter Ivanka shot down rumors Wednesday that she was a candidate for the position. —Lynde Langdon