Trump Demands Census Excluding Undocumented Immigrants Amid Redistricting Fight...NYT
Molly Molloy
Trump Demands Census Excluding Undocumented Immigrants Amid Redistricting Fight
With the midterm elections looming, Republicans are trying to secure every advantage they can as they face the prospect of Democrats taking control of the House.
By Tyler Pager
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent. He reported from Washington.
President Trump said on Thursday that he had ordered the Commerce Department to begin work on a new census that excludes undocumented immigrants, as he and his allies press Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps to benefit the party.
A new census would be a significant departure from a process stipulated by the Constitution to occur every 10 years. Historically, the census has counted all U.S. residents regardless of their immigration status, a process that helps determine both the allotment of congressional seats and billions of dollars in federal money sent to states.
“People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on social media.
With the midterm elections looming, Republicans are trying to secure every advantage they can as they face the prospect of Democrats taking control of the House.
Congressional maps are redrawn after the census is completed based on the new data. The next census is scheduled for 2030, and planning for it is already underway.
Mr. Trump tried a similar move in 2020 to keep undocumented immigrants out of the census, but a federal court rejected that attempt, and the Supreme Court declined to intervene, saying at the time that doing so was premature. The president’s efforts to exert pressure on the Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce Department, were also unsuccessful.
Mr. Trump’s pursuit of a new census, and one without undocumented immigrants, would likely face legal challenges.
Legal experts criticized the president’s announcement on Thursday, arguing his move violated the Constitution.
“This flies in the face of Article I and its textual commitment that all persons in the United States be counted for the purpose of the census,” said Kareem Crayton, the vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington office. “It also, of course, hearkens back to a very unsavory part of our history where we chose to count people who were here partially or not at all. And I’m speaking specifically of people who were enslaved and Native Americans.”
White House and Commerce Department spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday about the specifics of Mr. Trump's request.
On Capitol Hill, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, introduced a bill last month that called for a new census excluding undocumented immigrants and a redistricting process before the 2026 midterm elections. Ms. Greene celebrated Mr. Trump’s announcement on social media Thursday.
“President Trump supports my bill Making American Elections Great Again Act which not only orders a new census counting American citizens only, it also orders reapportionment by the new U.S. citizen count, and requires proof of citizenship to vote!!!” she wrote on X. “Congress must pass my bill so that American citizens ONLY will be represented in Congress!”
Also on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance traveled to Indianapolis and met with Gov. Mike Braun of Indiana and other top Republicans in the state to discuss redistricting. Mr. Trump and his allies have grown frustrated with their resistance to redraw maps to benefit Republicans.
Mr. Braun and the other Republican leaders in the state showed no sign of an immediate agreement to move forward with a redistricting effort.
“We listened,” Mr. Braun told reporters after the meeting.
Mr. Trump and his allies are engaged in other pressure campaigns in Texas, Missouri and Ohio as they try to squeeze out any additional seats before the midterm elections next year. With Republicans holding only a narrow majority in the House, they are worried that Democrats will regain control, start investigations into Mr. Trump and his administration, and hobble any legislative goals.
“It seems his main drive is to remake the U.S House of Representatives through gerrymandering and potentially the census,” said John Bisognano, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “He wants to create an alternative reality where the people he wants to count count and the people he doesn’t do not.”
In Texas, Democratic state lawmakers left the state in an attempt to block Republicans from pushing through a redistricting effort aimed at giving their party five additional seats in Congress. On Thursday, Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said the F.B.I. had agreed to his request to help track down dozens of those Democratic state lawmakers.
In response to the Republican efforts, Democratic governors in blue states are considering their own plans to redraw their congressional maps.
Mr. Crayton of the Brennan Center said that taken together, the Trump administration “has attempted to make a mockery of free and fair elections.”
“Pressuring state legislators to draw maps that are rigged is a part of that,” he said. “And the statement about the census suggests that at least they seem committed to ignoring large parts of our population.”
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.