Phoenix Joins Growing List of Cities Suing Over Citizenship Question

The Trump administration has proposed adding a citizenship question to the US Census, and a number of cities are suing to try to stop that from happening including: Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco. As momentum has increased for these suits, more cities have jumped on board from less blue parts of the country including El Paso, and Columbus Ohio. "Last week, the city of Phoenix became the latest to jump into the legal fray when City Council members voted to pursue a lawsuit against the federal government, a move that ran in direct opposition to their state’s decision in April to steer clear of the lawsuits," Sophie Kasakove reports for The Nation.

Phoenix's City Manager thinks the city could lose as much of 350 million in federal funding if the question makes it onto the census. The thinking goes that if undocumented people do not fill in their census the population of the city will be badly undercounted. Activists argue that the Trump administration knows this and aims to punish areas that have large populations of undocumented immigrants.