House Votes to Hold Attorney General Barr, Commerce Secretary Ross in Contempt

The House voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress in a 230-198 vote on Wednesday. The House held the vote after Barr and Ross withheld subpoenaed materials from the House Oversight Committee’s probe into the origins of the effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, which will no longer be a possibility after a Supreme Court ruling against the Trump administration. Before the vote, Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said the two “blatantly obstructed [the committee’s] ability to do congressional oversight into the real reason Secretary Ross was trying for the first time in 70 years, in 70 years to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census,” according to NBC News. Barr and Ross sent a letter House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) earlier Wednesday, calling the vote “unfortunate” when the question would not be included in the census.