Republican efforts to exclude people from the U.S. illegally used to be out of numbers distribute State congressional seats are back in session, with four state Republican attorneys general suing in a once-in-a-decade shakeup before President Donald Trump’s second term begins Monday.
Trump immediately joined the fray when he returned to the office, signing an executive order on Monday, he rescinded the Biden administration’s order and signaled the possibility of his new administration making a push to change the 2030 census. Those efforts could get a boost from the GOP-controlled Congress, where earlier this month U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-North Carolina, re-establish the legislation that would put a citizenship question on the census form.
During his first term, Trump signed an executive order that would have made it illegal for US persons to allocate congressional seats and Electoral College votes to individual states in the 2020 census. The GOP president also ordered the collection of citizenship data through administrative records in a second order. A Republican redistricting expert Using the voting-age population to redraw congressional and legislative districts could be beneficial to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
Trump released the remarks after a previous attempt was blocked by the US Supreme Court to add a citizenship question on the 2020 census questionnaire. The High Court said the administration’s justification for the question “appears to have been contrived”.
Both were Trump’s orders He canceled it when President Joe Biden arrived At the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures are released by the US Census Bureau, the nation’s largest statistical agency.
“I think it’s an open question how much energy the administration and Congress will try to bend the statistical system to their will,” historian Margo Anderson said of Trump’s second term. “Not because they would like to, but because there are other parts of the national government they are more interested in.”
The Fourteenth Amendment states that “the total number of persons in each state” must be counted for the numbers used in apportionment, the process of allocating seats in Congress and Electoral College votes among states by population. The numbers show $2.8 trillion in federal dollars distributed to states for roads, health and other programs.
The lawsuit, filed Friday by the GOP attorneys general of Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia, seeks to illegally or temporarily exclude people across the country from the numbers used to apportion congressional seats. Ohio and West Virginia unfairly lost a congressional seat and an electoral vote after the 2020 census because people entered the US illegally, and each of the four states will lose a congressional seat and an electoral vote after the 2030 census. if that doesn’t change.
Projections released Election Data Services last month did not show those four states losing seats after the 2030 census. Forecasts, on the other hand, say California, New York and Illinois, with the states Democratic majorities — is likely to lose the most seats and electoral votes.
The Census Bureau did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Tuesday.
Opponents of the citizenship question on the 2020 census said it discouraged the participation of immigrants and residents who were in the country illegally, leading to inaccurate numbers. A Census Bureau simulation The 2023 release noted that they lost a significant number of noncitizens in that count, which occurred in the final year of the first Trump administration and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Demographers and researchers expect the second Trump administration to reverse or reverse recent actions by the Biden administration related to US statistical agencies. They include combining them into a single question questions of race and ethnicity previously asked separately on the forms and adding a category for the Middle East and North Africa.
Many experts also expect anticipated questions sexual orientation and gender identity About the most comprehensive survey of American lifestyles. Some worry that Trump will politicize the Census Bureau with numerous political appointees with little experience, as happened in his first term. The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” policy guide for a Republican presidential administration advocated placing “politically engaged appointees and similar career workers” in office positions to “implement the conservative agenda.”
“They can easily put the same idiots they put in last time for political purposes,” said Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate School and University Center who is an expert on the census. “I would assume he’s going to do what he tried to do before.”
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