Trump and Republicans Aim to Update Census for Political Advantage
Republican efforts to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from numbers used to divvy up congressional seats among states have begun anew, with four Republican state attorneys general suing to alter the once-a-decade head count even before President Donald Trump’s second term in office began Monday.
Trump joined in the battle immediately upon returning to office, signing an executive order on Monday that rescinded a Biden administration order and signaled the possibility of a push by his new administration to change the 2030 census. Those efforts may get a boost from the GOP-controlled Congress, where Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards from North Carolina earlier this month re-introduced legislation that would put a citizenship question on the census form.
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During his first term, Trump signed an order that would have excluded people in the U.S. illegally from being included in the 2020 census numbers used to allot congressional seats and Electoral College votes to each state. The GOP president also mandated in a second order the collection of citizenship data through administrative records. A Republican redistricting expert had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
Trump issued the memos after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked his earlier attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire. The high court said the administration’s justification for the question “seems to have been contrived.”
Both Trump orders were rescinded when President Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation’s largest statistical agency.
“I think it’s an open question about how much energy the administration and Congress will try to bend the statistical system to its will,” historian Margo Anderson said about Trump’s second term. “Not because they wouldn’t like to, but because there are other parts of the national government that they are more interested in.”
The Fourteenth Amendment says that “the whole number of persons in each state” should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states based on population. The numbers also guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal dollars to the states for roads, health care and other programs.
The lawsuit filed Friday by the GOP attorneys general of Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia seeks to exclude people in the country illegally or temporarily from the numbers used to apportion congressional seats. It claims that Ohio and West Virginia each unfairly lost a congressional seat and an electoral vote after the 2020 census because people in the U.S. illegally were included, and that each of the four states stands to lose a congressional seat and electoral vote after the 2030 census if that doesn’t change.
Projections released last month by Election Data Services don’t show those four states losing seats after the 2030 census. The projections instead say California, New York and Illinois—states with Democratic majorities—are likely to lose the most seats and electoral votes.
The Census Bureau on Tuesday didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Opponents of the citizenship question on the 2020 census said it discouraged participation by immigrants and residents who were in the country illegally, resulting in inaccurate figures. A Census Bureau simulation released in 2023 indicated that a significant number of noncitizens were missed in the count, which took place during the last year of the first Trump administration and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Demographers and researchers expect the second Trump administration to change or reverse recent actions by the Biden administration related to U.S. statistical agencies. They include combining into a single question race and ethnicity questions that previously were asked separately on forms and adding a Middle Eastern and North African category.
Many experts also expect planned questions about sexual orientation and gender identity on the most comprehensive survey of American life to be on the chopping block. Some have concerns that Trump will politicize the Census Bureau with large numbers of political appointees, with little experience, as happened during his first term. The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” policy guidebook for a Republican presidential administration advocated putting “committed political appointees and like-minded career employees” in bureau positions so they could “execute a conservative agenda.”
“They could easily put in the same type of idiots they put in last time for political purposes,” said Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate School and University Center, who is an expert on the census. “I would assume that he will do what he tried to do before.”