Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s effort to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census. Last week, the Commerce Department began printing census forms. But Trump announced by tweet that he would still include the question, and now administration officials are scrambling to find increasingly far-fetched options to force its inclusion. Last week, Trump said he’ll consider using an executive order to get his way. Sunday, the Justice Department announced it was installing a new team of lawyers to represent the administration in the ongoing litigation over the census. And Monday, Attorney General William Barr announced that he plans to announce an as-yet unrevealed new “approach” to doing the president’s bidding.

While these efforts are implausible, the fact that the debate continues is itself a threat to public trust in the census, said Thomas Wolf, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “Even if the question is taken off, if people are tweeting as if it may be a real possibility, it continues to raise fears and depress the count among immigrants and people of color,” he said.