Trump calls for census to count only citizens; that's unconstitutional

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Aug 7, 2025

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President Donald Trump on Thursday called for creation of a new census that would count only U.S. citizens despite the Constitution’s edict that all people living in the country should be included.

Trump also hinted he might not wait until 2030 for the next census and said the count that is used for dividing up congressional seats and federal budget dollars should be based on “information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” without elaborating.

The government should “immediately begin work on a new … census based on modern day facts and figures,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “People who are in our Country illegally will not be counted in the census.”

Trump tried during his first term to exclude undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens from the 2020 Census, which was carried out while he was in the White House.

Federal courts rejected his effort, citing the Constitution, which says the census should take place every 10 years and count “the whole number of persons in each State,” without mentioning citizenship. The Supreme Court never ruled on the issue.

Any changes to the census could have enormous political and economic impact.

Most importantly, the population of each state is used to determine how many seats it gets in the House of Representatives. Within states, the figures are used to draw districts of roughly equal population, although state lawmakers of both parties draw the lines to favor either Democrats or Republicans.

The figures are also widely used by government agencies to allocate funds for a host of programs to states and regions, meaning places where more non-citizens live might lose funding if the census excluded those people from the count.

Trump did not specifically say if he is proposing a shift for the forthcoming 2030 census or a new unprecedented mid-decade count, which would not be authorized by the Constitution.

If he tries to launch a mid-decade count, it could be aimed at aiding his unprecedented effort to get several Republican-run states, including Texas, to redraw their congressional maps ahead of schedule to help elect GOP candidates in the 2026 midterm elections.

Democrats are threatening to retaliate by rejiggering the district lines in blue states, most notably vote-rich California.

Gov. Kathy Hochul says she’s open to doing something similar to New York’s congressional delegation, which is split 19-7 for Democrats, but any changes in the Empire State would likely not take effect till 2028 at the earliest.