Power Station with John Yang

This episode of Power Station tracks the latest news on the lawsuit, filed by Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, challenging the inclusion of an untested citizenship question on the decennial U.S. Census. Guest John Yang, President of AAJC, explains what the lawsuit alleges: that adding the question represents collusion by President Trump, Kris Kobach, Steve Bannon and Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, to deprive Asian-American, Pacific Islander, Latino and Native Americans of their constitutional right to representation in the Census. Imposing a citizenship question on the Census will inevitably deter households from participation, and an accurate count of these communities will not be collected. As John explains, good data is not a partisan issue. The good data he refers to is what drives more than $600 billion in federal funding allocations annually to schools, hospitals, roads and all of the systems that make communities whole. It is also what determines how districts are drawn and the number of congressional seats each state has within the U.S. House of Representatives. The proposed addition, by the Trump Administration, of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census undermines the very purpose of this singular enterprise: to count all people (not only those who are citizens) in the U.S. and create a data-driven roadmap for public investment where and for whom it is needed the most. Learn what's happening and what we all can do.