WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has instructed the Commerce Department to change the way the U.S. Census Bureau collects data, seeking to exclude immigrants who are in the United States illegally, he said Thursday.
The census’ data collections will be based on “modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” the Republican president said on his social media platform, an indication he might try to inject his politics into a head count that determines political power and how federal funding is distributed.
Trump stressed that as part of the changes people in “our Country illegally” will be excluded from census counts.
Experts said it was unclear what exactly Trump was calling for, whether it was changes to the 2030 census or a mid-decade census, and, if so, whether it would be used for a mid-decade apportionment, which is the process of divvying up congressional seats among the states based on the population count.
A new census?
Any changes in the conduct of a national census, which is the biggest non-military undertaking by the federal government, would require alterations to the Census Act and approval from Congress, which has oversight responsibilities, and there likely would be a fierce fight. While the Census Act permits a mid-decade census for things like distributing federal funding, it can’t be used for apportionment or redistricting and must be done in a year ending in 5, said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues.
“He cannot unilaterally order a new census. The census is governed by law, not to mention the Constitution,” Lowenthal said. “Logistically, it’s a half-baked idea.”
It would be almost logistically impossible to carry out a mid-decade census in such a short period of time, New York Law School professor Jeffrey Wice said.
“This isn’t something that you can do overnight,” said Wice, a census and redistricting expert. “To get all the pieces put together, it would be such a tremendous challenge, if not impossible.”
Trump’s Truth Social post fits into an overall pattern in which he has tried to reshape basic measures of how U.S. society is faring to his liking, a process that ranges from monthly jobs figures to how congressional districts are drawn going into the 2026 midterm elections. But there could be legal challenges if he were to reshape the census, which also guides the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal funds to the states for roads, health care and other programs.
A census citizenship question
In a 2019 decision, the Supreme Court effectively blocked Trump from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The 14th 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 last time the census included a question about citizenship was in 1950, and the Census Bureau’s own experts had predicted that millions of Hispanics and immigrants would go uncounted if the census asked everyone if he or she is an American citizen.
Changes to the census could also play into the efforts by Trump to urge several Republican-led states, including Texas, to redraw their congressional maps ahead of schedule in ways that would favor GOP candidates.
Redistricting efforts
Redistricting typically occurs once every 10 years following the census, as states adjust district boundaries based on population changes, often gaining or losing seats in the process.
Despite Texas having redrawn its maps just a few years ago, Trump is pressuring Republicans in the state to redistrict again, claiming they are “entitled” to five additional Republican seats. Texas Republicans have cited population growth as justification for redrawing the congressional map. The state currently has 38 House seats, 25 held by Republicans.
Trump’s team is also engaged in similar redistricting discussions in other GOP-controlled states, including Missouri and Indiana.
Last Friday, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, after standard revisions to the monthly jobs report showed that employers added 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported in May and June. The revisions suggested that hiring has severely weakened under Trump, undermining his claims of an economic boom.
The White House insists that the problem was the size of the revisions and that it wants accurate numbers. But outside experts disagreed with that assessment.
“Trump is basically destroying the federal statistical system,” said Margo Anderson, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has written extensively on the history of the census. “He wants numbers that support his political accomplishments, such as he sees them.”
After the citizenship question was stopped by the Supreme Court in 2019, Trump made another effort in 2020, announcing a plan to exclude people living in the country illegally from the apportionment figures.
After states, cities and organizations sued, lower courts ruled the plan was illegal. By the time the Supreme Court weighed in, Trump had lost his reelection bid. The justices sidestepped a decision on the legality of Trump’s plan, throwing out the case on technical procedural grounds. The court said in an unsigned opinion that spoke only for the six-justice conservative majority that “we express no view on the merits of the constitutional and related statutory claims presented. We hold only that they are not suitable for adjudication at this time.”
The three liberal justices dissented, saying the effort to exclude people in the country from the population for divvying up House seats is unlawful.
“I believe this Court should say so,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
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AP writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report. Schneider reported from Orlando, Fla.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Census Bureau at https://apnews.com/hub/us-census-bureau.
