(AFP) – US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered officials to work on a new census excluding undocumented immigrants, as the White House presses Republican states to draw more favorable voter maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Trump called for a “new and highly accurate” census that he wanted based on “modern day facts and figures” gleaned from the 2024 election.
“People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS,” he said in the social media post. The US Constitution since 1790 has required a census every 10 years that counts the “whole number of persons in each state” — including people in the country illegally. The next one is not due until 2030, although preparations for the enormous task are already underway. Trump did not make clear if he was referring to the regularly scheduled population count in 2030 or an earlier survey.
The census is used to determine how members of Congress are elected, and the Pew Research Center estimates that ignoring unauthorized migrants in 2020 would have deprived California, Florida, and Texas of one House seat each. It is also used for apportioning votes in the state-by-state “electoral college” that decides presidential elections and for allocating trillions of dollars in federal funding.
Trump attempted similar moves in his first term but was blocked by the Supreme Court from adding a citizenship question to the census. The court declined to rule on whether the millions of people in the country without legal status can be excluded for the first time. Adding a citizenship question would likely undermine the accuracy of the country’s population counts, a March study in the Journal of Policy Management and Analysis showed. Experts believe it would discourage households with Latino and Asian American residents from self-reporting.
Trump’s call for a new census comes with state-level lawmakers and officials in Texas locking horns over proposals for a new electoral map that would likely net Republicans up to five extra House seats in next year’s midterms. Republican governors in several other states are exploring new maps ahead of the 2026 elections in a bid to protect the party’s razor-thin majority in the House, which would flip with three Democratic gains. Democrats have vowed to retaliate with their own proposals, possibly in New York and California, the country’s largest states.
© 2024 AFP
