GEORGE F. WILL COLUMN

Advance for release Sunday, Nov. 22, 2020, and thereafter

(For Will clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)

WRITETHRU: In 5th graf, 1st sentence, removes ", who" so it now reads "The Framers understood..."

By George F. Will

WASHINGTON -- This nation's empirical and inquisitive Founders considered information conducive to improvement, which is one reason the Constitution mandates a decennial census. And why James Madison soon proposed expanding the census beyond mere enumeration to recording other data. Today, the census provides an ocean of information indispensable to understanding this complex society. And it determines the disbursement of $1.5 trillion annually from the federal government.

On Nov. 30, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a census-related case concerning a question of large philosophic interest and practical consequences: Was it constitutional -- 22 states, 15 cities and counties and other entities say no -- for the president to order the exclusion of unauthorized immigrants from the enumeration of states' populations used for apportioning congressional seats? Apportionment was the initial reason for the census, and remains its only constitutional function.

The president says: Because the census' original and fundamental purpose concerns Americans as a political community, it would be incongruous to give congressional representation to illegal immigrants who are subject to removal from the country. Foreign tourists should not be counted, and military personnel stationed abroad should be, because the former are not, and the latter are, members of the political community.

This argument, though interesting for a political philosophy seminar, is insufficient for the Supreme Court, which must construe the two constitutional provisions concerning apportionment. One (in Article I) mandates an "actual Enumeration" of "persons" other than "Indians not taxed." The second (in the 14th Amendment) says seats in the House of Representatives shall be apportioned among the states counting "the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed." An amicus brief by two constitutional scholars, Ilya Somin of George Mason University and Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas, demonstrates that neither provision allows the exclusion of unauthorized immigrants.

The Framers understood "persons" broadly, with the sole exception of Indians not taxed because they were considered noncitizens with an allegiance to distinct political communities: their tribes. The Framers would not have expressly excluded Indians not taxed if "persons" excluded foreigners or others with an allegiance to a government other than the U.S. government. So, the Framers clearly meant "persons" to include immigrants.

Most of the Framers, say Somin and Levinson, did not believe the federal government had the power to exclude immigrants -- there was no significant federal immigration restriction until 1875 -- so they could hardly have intended to exclude from apportionment "illegal" immigrants. Furthermore, the Framers expected that the congressional apportionment count would include the more than half the adult population that was not entitled to vote because of gender, or property requirements.

Members of Congress, Somin and Levinson argue, have always been thought to represent the interests of many persons -- in 1790, at most 70% of white men, and few others, could vote -- "to whom they were not directly accountable at the ballot box." Today, most states deny the vote to children under age 18, and some felons, yet these groups are counted in congressional apportionment.

The 14th Amendment, which stipulates the enumeration of "the whole number of persons," elsewhere uses the term "citizens." So, by "persons" the amendment's authors denoted a broader category. The Supreme Court has held that in this amendment "persons" refers to the "total population," including immigrants, "whatever" their "status under the immigration laws."

The court has repeatedly held that the "person[s]" the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause protects ("No person" shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law") includes aliens in the U.S. population. And unlike foreign diplomats or tourists, the United States is the usual residence of unauthorized immigrants.

The 1787 Constitutional Convention's Committee of Style replaced "inhabitants" with "persons," so supporters of excluding unauthorized immigrants from the census' enumeration for apportionment argue, implausibly: The Framers considered the two words synonymous, and that foreigners by definition cannot be inhabitants. But Somin and Levinson say that in its original public meaning, "inhabitants" meant "people who intend to stay somewhere indefinitely." Therefore, these facts matter: More than 60% of the estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants have lived here more than 10 years, and more than 20% for more than 20 years.

Republicans would benefit from not counting illegal immigrants for purposes of apportionment: This would reduce congressional seats (and electoral votes) in mostly blue states (27% of such immigrants are in California) and shift power away from cities. Republicans generally say, however, that the Constitution should be construed according to the text's original meaning. Forced to choose between power and principle, well . . .

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George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

DAVID IGNATIUS COLUMN

Advance for release Friday, Nov. 20, 2020, and thereafter

(For Ignatius clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)

By David Ignatius

WASHINGTON -- Last summer, Christopher Krebs, the government's top election security official, began rebutting President Donald Trump's baseless claims about the danger of massive election fraud. This week he got fired for standing his ground. Bravo for that.

America needs more profiles in courage like this to ensure that a defeated Trump vacates the White House on Jan. 20. Trump is an opportunist. He knows his lease on power expires in two months, but as in his business career, he'll keep bargaining and threatening to rewrite the deal until the last hour. Trump's problem, in this case, is that the agreement he's trying to evade is the U.S. Constitution.

Krebs' story is a case study in how responsible officials who work for Trump can resist being manipulated. As director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, his job was to coordinate security for the 2020 elections. In the beginning, the main threat seemed to be from abroad -- adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran. But it turned out that the real danger was at home, in false allegations from Trump and his supporters.

As Trump spun his lies about mail-in fraud, Krebs countered with facts. He created a "Rumor Control" site to rebut some of the wild charges. Example: "Rumor: A malicious actor can easily defraud an election by printing and sending in extra mail-in ballots," topped by: "Reality: Safeguards are in place to prevent home-printed or photocopied mail-in ballots from being counted."

CISA also posted a detailed checklist of "election integrity safeguards" for state and local election officials to ensure that mail-in votes were received and counted accurately. These practical steps helped create the reliable vote counts that Trump is now trying so hard to challenge, without success.

Krebs told me in August that contrary to Trump's scaremongering, mail-in voting would be slow but solid. "Election Day may look different than you've seen in the past, and with more Americans voting absentee, it will take longer to tabulate and report complete results," he said. He stressed that the right response was patience and reliance on trusted information.

Trump supporters tried to undercut CISA's fact-checking. According to a CISA official, the White House, furious about the agency's debunking of the mail-in fraud allegations, told CISA to remove some content from its Rumor Control site. But it's still intact.

FBI Director Christopher Wray joined the effort to rebut Trump's false claim that absentee voting could lead to massive fraud. "We have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise," Wray told a Senate committee in September. As Trump supporters began spinning phony charges about rigged election software, CISA challenged the assertions. It provided a classified briefing in October for equipment companies and other vendors "in our shared effort to keep the nation's elections secure and resilient."

And when Trump and his acolytes cranked up a campaign alleging that a company called Dominion Voting Systems had stolen millions of votes, Krebs posted a prompt rebuttal. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," CISA said in a statement.

This last piece of truth-telling got Krebs fired, but for the country, it was an invaluable service. Before his ouster, Krebs' agency, working with the FBI and state and local election authorities, had created a record that should be strong enough to withstand the barrage of attacks from Trump supporters who want to reverse the election outcome. This evidence shows that, as CISA and a coalition of other election officials said last week, the 2020 election "was the most secure in American history."

The moral of this story is that officials can protect the country -- if they show some backbone. Emily Murphy, the head of the General Services Administration, could begin a proper transition process now, if she mustered the courage. Robert O'Brien, the national security adviser, could check the machinations of the team Trump has installed at the Pentagon after firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper, if he put the country first. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could reduce the ruin Trump has brought the GOP if he recognized President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

Trump, the great disrupter, can survive in power only by creating such a tempest at home or abroad that he has a pretext to cling to power as commander in chief. But this outrage cannot happen unless good people let him get away with it. Message for public officials: Be like Krebs.

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Contact David Ignatius on Twitter @IgnatiusPost

By DANA MILBANK

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FAREED ZAKARIA COLUMN

Advance for release Friday, Nov. 20, 2020, and thereafter

(For Zakaria clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)

By Fareed Zakaria

WASHINGTON -- The first time I met Barack Obama, he struck me as different from any other politician I had ever met. He was smart, well-read, affable and energetic, but that isn't what made him stand out. It was the way he asked questions. Most politicians ask a question to answer it themselves. After giving you a brief opportunity to respond, they jump in, "Well, here's what I think . . .," and proceed to deliver some packaged piece of wisdom they have doubtless recited dozens of times. But Obama would ask a question to which he actually wanted an answer. He would listen and ask another question. He genuinely wanted to understand how someone else might view an issue.

That unusual politician comes through clearly in his new book, "A Promised Land." It is well written, certainly the best-written presidential memoir I have read. Obama has an easy and stylish way with words. Describing walking through the West Colonnade of the White House, he says, "it was where each morning I felt the first slap of winter wind or pulse of summer heat." Describing a helicopter ride, he writes, "I gazed out at the rolling Maryland landscape and the tidy neighborhoods below, and then the Potomac, glistening beneath the fading sun."

The most notable feature of the book, however, is Obama's ability to see not just both sides of every issue but even to empathize with the side in vigorous opposition to his own. He writes that he could understand Hillary Clinton's frustration, after a long climb to power, to be confronting an upstart challenger for the Democratic nomination. He understands the motivations of Republican leaders such as John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and provides a short history lesson: "American voters rarely reward the opposition for cooperating with the governing party." He even has a "grudging respect" for the way the tea party gained passionate support and widespread news coverage.

This quality of fairmindedness is admirable in anyone, especially one who has risen to the top of a cutthroat profession like politics. And it gave Obama considerable advantages in both domestic and foreign policy. He could see the world with different people's eyes, which broadened his horizons and made him a better negotiator. But his memoir does have one gap, a lacuna in his vision, both as president and as a writer. He devotes little time in the book to the central political dynamic in his years in office -- the rise of an enraged, utterly obstructionist, Manichean opposition to his presidency, and himself personally, that eventually culminated in the election of Donald Trump.

A reminder: Barack Obama was a moderate Democrat -- "conservative in temperament," he acknowledges -- and governed as one. For his key economic advisers, he chose the most centrist, market-friendly experts of the party, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. He kept on George W. Bush's defense secretary and offered another key Cabinet job, commerce secretary, to Republican Sen. Judd Gregg. He sent in thousands more troops to Afghanistan and expanded drone warfare. And his health-care plan was modeled on the conservative Heritage Foundation's old proposal, one that also served as the basis for Mitt Romney's program when he was governor of Massachusetts.

This reign of moderation and compromise, however, elicited a reaction from the Republican Party that was furious and vengeful. Gregg, who initially accepted Obama's nomination to serve as commerce secretary, had to back down in the face of activist outrage that he was serving the enemy. Obama recounts the case of Charlie Crist, who as governor of Florida supported Obama's stimulus, which the state desperately needed because its economy was in free fall. His two-second handshake and hug with Obama made him so toxic within the Republican Party that by 2010 he had to become an independent and later a Democrat.

Despite many compromises, Obama got not one Republican vote for his stimulus or health-care bills in the House of Representatives. And opposition to his policies was often couched in blatantly racist ways, such as posters denouncing Obamacare with caricatures of him as an African witch doctor with a bone stuck through his nose. The man who succeeded him in office, Trump, rose to political prominence by casting doubt on whether Obama was born in the United States.

Obama talks about these hysterical reactions to him intelligently but briefly, never offering deep analysis or passionate anger. He admits he wasn't focused on the ominous undercurrents that were growing in strength. "My team and I were too busy," he writes. But it might also be that it would take him into deep and dark waters that are so different from the hopeful, optimistic country he so plainly wants to believe in. America remains for him a promised land.

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Fareed Zakaria's email address is fareed.zakaria.gps@turner.com.

RUBEN NAVARRETTE COLUMN

FOR IMMEDIATE PRINT AND WEB RELEASE. Normally would advance for release Sunday, Nov. 22, 2020, and thereafter.

(For Navarrette clients)

By RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.

SAN DIEGO - For Latinos - that mercurial group of swing voters that both parties supposedly want in their camp yet don't take the time to understand - the aftermath of this election has been marked by frustration and confusion.

Let's start with the fact that the 2020 presidential election wrapped up with equal measures of good and bad. The silver lining is that President Donald Trump was defeated for reelection. The cloud is that 73 million of our fellow Americans - including many of our friends and neighbors - tried to prevent that from happening. And they voted for Trump even though it was well known by Election Day just how dangerous, divisive and damaging his presidency has been to our country.

What are we supposed to do with that, the next time we bump into them at the grocery store or even on a Zoom call?

Meanwhile, in this era of social distancing, it seems some people still can't stop encroaching on the touchy subject of ethnic identity. As a Mexican American navigating through 2020, I'm accustomed to White people trying to tell me what to do, what to think, and how to behave. It's been that way my whole life. Now I have to put up with their sermons on the virtues of blending into the mainstream.

Let's get something straight. The nation's 60 million Latinos are really good at blending. More than 80% of us speak English. About 40% of us marry outside our ethnic group. And, if we're forced by flawed metrics such as U.S. Census forms to make the binary choice between "White" and "Black," about 60% of us choose "White."

If there were a blending Olympics, Latinos would win all the medals.

Maybe that's why some pro-Trump media commentators couldn't wait to gleefully insist that the roughly 36% of Latinos who voted for the president had stopped being "Latino" and started being "American."

It's a false choice. You can be both. The Irish in Boston pulled it off. Ditto for the Italians in New York, the Germans in Milwaukee, the Armenians in Los Angeles and the Chinese in San Francisco. Americans of all ethnic and racial backgrounds figured out long ago how to love both their country and their culture. Latinos accomplish that every day.

Still, I'm curious. Is that the goal now - to rapidly fold Latinos into the mainstream? If so, does that have anything to do with fear, and the fact that this group is projected to make up 25% of the U.S. population in a decade?

That's unexpected. Because, here in the Southwest - where the vast majority of Latinos live and identify as Mexican or Mexican American - the 20th Century was all about "otherizing" those folks to make it easier for them to be abused, oppressed and discriminated against. Given all that this group endured, you can understand if we're a bit surprised that you now want to welcome us into the American family. The long list of injustices includes everything from the murder of Mexicans by Texas Rangers, such as the infamous massacre in the small west Texas town of Porvenir in 1918; to the Zoot Suit Riots in 1943; to the countless cases of police brutality afflicted over decades upon the brown-skinned residents of cities like Albuquerque, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.

First, you want us far away from you. Now you want us close? Make up your minds.

And mind your manners. In an interview after the election, a conservative radio host in Texas told me that he is tired of hearing about race and ethnicity, and he was just as fed up with seeing people separate themselves into groups.

That's a legitimate beef. Many folks would agree with him.

But here's the punchline: The host had actually invited me on his show - as one of the few national Latino columnists in the country - to talk not about climate change or international trade but about the (BEG ITAL)Latino(END ITAL) vote. He wanted me to explain why President Donald Trump had done so well with (BEG ITAL)Latino(END ITAL) voters, and to break down why so many (BEG ITAL)Latinos(END ITAL) didn't vote for Joe Biden.

Once I caught the contradiction, I told him: "You can't have it both ways." Either we think of people as being part of a group, or we don't. It just can't be based on what's convenient at any given moment.

Now you see why, like many Latinos in this post-election period, I'm frustrated and confused.

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Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.

MICHAEL GERSON COLUMN

Advance for release Friday, Nov. 20, 2020, and thereafter

(For Gerson clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)

By Michael Gerson

WASHINGTON -- Is there always so much sobbing at Democratic victory parties?

For the first time in my adult life, I publicly endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate. He won in a convincing fashion. But now, my new comrades, after an initial burst of celebration, are in a deep funk.

The reason? While the country shifted away from Trump, it did not turn against the GOP. And the GOP has not turned against Trumpism. To the contrary, the Republican loser has convinced some 70% of Republicans that he was cheated out of a victory. Expected Democratic gains in Congress did not materialize. And large increases in Democratic turnout were nearly matched by Trump reinforcements -- 10 million more voters than he had in 2016 -- that seemed to emerge from thin air.

"Figuring out how Trump won an additional 10 million votes," argues my Washington Post colleague E.J. Dionne Jr., "is one of the most important questions in politics." His theory? "Given Trump's intemperate and often wild ranting in the campaign's final weeks and the growing public role in GOP politics of QAnon conspiracists, the Proud Boys and other previously marginal extremist groups, these voters may well be more radical than the party as a whole."

I am not usually the person others rely upon to cheer up a party. The bright side, in my view, is often the glow of an approaching meteor. In this case, the political party of George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney does seem well and truly gone. More than 73 million Americans voted for a presidential candidate excited by exclusion, attracted to authoritarianism and prone to conspiracy theories. Doesn't that indicate a party driven by prejudice and illiberalism?

It does, in part. Every Republican who did not support Trump because of his bigotry supported him in spite of it. But this is an incomplete picture of our politics: The facts do not refute Republican blame, but they do complicate it.

Complication No. 1: According to the 2020 exit polls, 35% of voters said that the economy was their most important issue. Of this group, the overwhelming majority -- 83% -- voted for Trump.

This may strike us as absurd, since Trump's failed management of the covid-19 pandemic is what deepened the recession. But a large number of voters in 2020 disagreed with this assessment. Plenty of Americans seemed to like Trump's economic management before the pandemic, didn't blame him for the pandemic itself, and believed he would do a better job after the pandemic lifted.

It is true that the overwhelming majority of voters -- 81% -- who saw the pandemic as their largest issue voted for Democrat Joe Biden. But this group constituted just 17% of voters -- less than half the number citing the economy. And Biden never even made much of a case against Trump's management of the economy during the pandemic. Trump won the economic argument against him largely because it was more assumed than made.

Complication No. 2: Trump did modify his 2020 message in a significant way. Except for absurdly claiming that his border wall was near completion, he did not focus on immigration as he had previously. During the 2016 presidential election and the 2018 midterms, Trump's final appeal was to stop an imaginary flood of Hispanic drug dealers, gang members and rapists from entering the country. In 2020, Trump's main appeal was fighting socialism and maintaining law and order.

The president's record on immigration is brutal and horrendous. But in the relative absence of anti-immigrant messaging, Trump made direct appeals to Latino voters across the country. And it turns out that a good number of Latino voters like border security, hate socialism and are vulnerable (like others) to populist demagoguery. In Latino-majority Miami-Dade County, Trump went from roughly 333,666 votes in 2016 to about 532,833 votes in 2020.

Complication No. 3: Some of the most respected voices in Democratic politics have located significant image and policy problems on the Democratic side. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (S.C.) has warned that Democrats lose electoral momentum when they are associated with issues such as socialized medicine and defunding police departments. Calls to defund the police, he argues, have the possibility of "doing to the Black Lives Matter movement and current movements across the country what 'Burn, baby, burn' did to us back in 1960s. We lost that movement over that slogan."

When intemperate activists control the image of the Democratic Party, it puts needless distance between Democrats and the political center of the country.

None of this justifies or excuses Trump's extremism or Republican cowardice. The GOP deserved to lose even worse than it did. But it would help in this cause if the Democratic Party had a more compelling economic message, didn't take Hispanic voters for granted and avoided being defined by its own excesses.

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Michael Gerson's email address is michaelgerson@washpost.com.