(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 unspecified “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 or if he wanted a special survey undertaken earlier.
The census is used to determine how many members of Congress are elected from each state, 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, including the addition of a citizenship question to the census, but was blocked by the Supreme Court. The justices declined to rule on whether the millions of people in the country without legal status should be excluded. Trump’s call for a new census comes with state-level lawmakers and officials in Texas locking horns over a new electoral map that would likely net Republicans up to five extra House seats in 2026.
More than 50 Texas Democratic lawmakers have fled to multiple Democratic states in an effort to block the passage of the proposed blueprint during a special legislative session. Texas Republicans have threatened to arrest them, and US Senator John Cornyn announced he had successfully petitioned the FBI to help state and local law enforcement locate them.
Republican governors in several other states are exploring new maps in a bid to protect the party’s razor-thin majority in the House, which would flip next year with three Democratic gains. Vice President JD Vance was scheduled to visit Indiana on Thursday to discuss redistricting with Governor Mike Braun and press local Republicans to eke out another seat for the party. Politico reported that Republicans could draw as many as 10 new seats ahead of the midterms and are targeting Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida.
In Indiana, Braun said any redistricting conversation would be “exploratory,” as the state’s maps were drawn fairly in 2021, Indianapolis public broadcaster WFYI reported. Democrats have vowed to retaliate with their own proposals, possibly in New York and California, the country’s largest states.
Texas legislators were evacuated from their suburban Chicago hotel on Wednesday morning following an unspecified threat. Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker authorized state police to guard the group and insisted that the FBI — which investigates federal crime — and Texas authorities had no power to return them. “They’re all allowed to visit Chicago or Illinois and take in the great view of our lake and our city and enjoy the great restaurants that we have,” he told the leftist MeidasTouch podcast. “But they won’t be taking anybody home with them or away from the state. We are protecting those Texas House Democrats, and they are protecting, frankly, the entire country, in what they do.”
© 2024 AFP
