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Ross claimed — both in a March 2018 memo and in congressional testimony around that time — that it was added at the request of the Justice Department to improve the Department’s voting rights enforcement. In fact, Ross was seeking the question well before the DOJ formally asked for it and his aides had actually pushed for the Department to make the official request.

One person who definitely cares about the census is Rep. Jimmy Gomez, a Democratic member of the committee whose California district would be particularly vulnerable to a census undercount if the question stays on the survey.

We chatted on the phone Wednesday afternoon about how he’s approaching Thursday’s big hearing.

“One of the things we want to do is really highlight the motivation that this administration has and really pull that out as much as possible,” Gomez said, while recalling the Trump administration’s original public justification for adding the question.

“[Ross] testified not once, not twice, but at least three times under oath that it was initiated by the DOJ,” Gomez said. Ross later admitted in court filings that in the spring of 2017 — many months before the DOJ’s official Dec. 2017 request — Steve Bannon put the Commerce secretary in touch with then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to discuss adding citizenship to the census.

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