(Associated Press File Photo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just a week after insisting that he was “absolutely moving forward,” President Donald Trump abandoned his effort to insert a citizenship question into next year’s census.

He directed federal agencies to try to compile the information using existing databases instead.

“It is essential that we have a clear breakdown of the number of citizens and non-citizens that make up the U.S. populations,” Trump declared in a Rose Garden announcement, insisting that he was “not backing down.

But the decision was clearly a reversal, after the Supreme Court blocked his effort by disputing his administration’s rationale for demanding that census respondents declare whether or not they were citizens. Trump had said last week that he was “very seriously” considering an executive order to try to force the question. But the government has already begun the lengthy and expensive process of printing the census questionnaire without it, and such a move would surely have drawn an immediate legal challenge.

Instead, Trump said Thursday that he would be signing an executive order directing every federal department and agency to provide the Commerce Department with all records pertaining to the number of citizens and noncitizens in the country.

Late Thursday, Justice Department lawyers sent a copy of the executive order to the judge presiding over a challenge to the citizenship question in Manhattan federal court, saying they will confer with lawyers for the plaintiffs to see how to proceed in the case.