Wish In One Hand....

The escalation of GOP and WH rhetoric about protestors being a mob and Dems being “too dangerous to rule” is very serious. Such talk often precedes “exceptional” and authoritarian gov’t actions. Look for more of this in future.

— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) October 7, 2018

Match this up....

This health care plan is due to arrive tomorrow. Trump is golfing today. https://t.co/iCvHw9kc04

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 1, 2020

With this.  If you can.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about this:

Attempts by the bureau's workers to conduct in-person interviews for the census will end on Sept. 30 — not Oct. 31, the end date it indicated in April would be necessary to count every person living in the U.S. given major setbacks from the coronavirus pandemic. Three Census Bureau employees, who were informed of the plans during separate internal meetings Thursday, confirmed the new end date with NPR. All of the employees spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing their jobs.

"It's going to be impossible to complete the count in time," said one of the bureau employees, an area manager who oversees local census offices. "I'm very fearful we're going to have a massive undercount."

Asked why and when the decision was made to move up the end of door knocking, the Census Bureau replied in a written statement Friday: "We are currently evaluating our operations to enable the Census Bureau to provide this data in the most expeditious manner and when those plans have been finalized we will make an announcement."

Most likely the reason is this:

After the coronavirus outbreak scrambled the launch of the census this spring, the Bureau had reworked its operational timeline to give itself until the end of October to finish its data collection activities. To accommodate the need for this extra time, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in April requested that Congress postpone by four months the statutory deadlines for when the Bureau is required to deliver the data for congressional apportionment and redistricting. Those deadlines are normally Dec. 31 and March 31, respectively.

But with the announcement that President Trump wants undocumented immigrants excluded from apportionment data, it appears the administration is now walking away from that request — presumably because the delay would let a Joe Biden administration reverse Trump’s apportionment policy, which stands to reduce political representation for immigrant-rich states. The extensions were absent from Senate Republicans’ recent coronavirus legislation, even though House Democrats had already agreed to the delays in their proposal.

One wonders if the voters of Texas are listening.....

That it is political, is perfectly clear:

During a hearing Wednesday before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Steven Dillingham — the bureau's director and a Trump appointee — gave lawmakers little insight into why the timing change was made.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., repeatedly asked Dillingham whether he supports the bureau's request to extend the census deadlines.

But Dillingham did not answer the questions.

Asked by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., if he was aware that the Trump administration reportedly wants to wrap up counting quickly so that the president can receive the census apportionment numbers by the end of the year, Dillingham replied: "I'm not aware of all the many reasons except to say that the Census Bureau and others really want us to proceed as rapidly as possible."
.....

The director of the Census Bureau testified that he first learned about Trump's plans to attempt to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the census numbers used to reapportion seats in Congress not from any internal discussions, but from a news report "late on a Friday" that said "such a directive may be coming down."

"I will swear to it all day long under oath," Dillingham said after Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., looking incredulous in a remote video feed, reminded him that he was testifying under oath.

Gomez, another House member who joined the hearing remotely to question Dillingham, left the bureau's director with a stern warning before stepping away from the camera.

"It seems like there's an obvious pattern that you're not in control of the Census Bureau," Gomez said. "Your name will go down in history if this is the worst census ever conducted by the United States government. You're not going to run away and say that this was only because of the Trump administration later on. You will be responsible."

Trump isn't going to delay the vote or incite riots or take authoritarian actions.  He's all bark, no bite.  But he is going to fuck up basic government functions, and there's nothing more basic to our Constitutional system than the census.