WASHINGTON (TIP): President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, July 3, that  he was moving ahead with adding a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 US census in a dramatic reversal after his own administration including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced a day earlier that the plan had been dropped.

Following Trump’s announcement, made in a defiant Twitter post, a senior US Justice Department lawyer told a Maryland-based federal judge overseeing litigation in the matter that the administration was seeking a “path forward” to add a citizenship question after the Supreme Court last Thursday blocked it, at least temporarily.

The Supreme Court found that administration officials had given a “contrived” rationale for including the query in the decennial population survey, but the court left open the possibility the administration could offer a plausible rationale.

Facing a deadline to get the census forms printed, administration officials including Ross said on Tuesday they were going ahead without including the question.

Critics have called the citizenship question a Republican ploy to scare immigrants into not taking part in the census and engineer a population undercount in Democratic-leaning areas with high immigrant and Latino populations. That would benefit non-Hispanic whites and help Trump’s fellow Republicans gain seats in the US House of Representatives and state legislatures when new electoral district boundaries are drawn after the census, the critics said.

“The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE! We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The Justice Department on Tuesday had told Hazel that the administration had made a final decision not to proceed with the citizenship question, according to two lawyers involved in the litigation. The judge then held a call with lawyers in the case after Trump’s Wednesday announcement.

“We think there may be a legally available path under the Supreme Court’s decision. We’re examining that, looking at near-term options to see whether that’s viable and possible,” Hunt said.

Hazel said he wants a final response by Friday afternoon on whether the government will press ahead with adding the citizenship question. Otherwise, legal claims accusing administration officials of being motivated by racial bias in adding the citizenship question will move forward.