• Trump drops census proposal and blames ‘radical left’
• Executive order tells federal agencies to turn over citizenship data

Faced with a defeat in court and few viable options, Donald Trump on Thursday backed off his effort to place a question about citizenship on the next US census while announcing executive action by his administration to collect information on its own.

Trump ordered federal agencies to turn over records on the number of citizens, non-citizens and undocumented immigrants living in the US.