Trump Withdraws Controversial Push To Add Citizenship Question To Census

President Donald Trump on Thursday backed down from his controversial push to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, effectively conceding defeat in a battle he had revived last week and promised to continue despite a recent string of legal defeats.

Trump announced that he instead plans to order every federal agency to give records to the Commerce Department that detail the numbers of citizens and noncitizens in the United States.

"I'm proud to be a citizen, you're proud to be a citizen," Trump said in the late afternoon event at the Rose Garden. "The only people that are not proud to be citizens are the ones who are fighting us all the way about the word citizen."