President Trump made a dramatic announcement on Truth Social recently: “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024.”
He added, “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”
It is not clear what impact “modern day facts and figures” would have on the nation’s headcount, but Trump’s determination to exclude undocumented persons from the count will change the numbers significantly.
You can bet there will be a great deal of attention paid to this proposal. Democrats who will howl that the shift is illegal, immoral, and probably racist.
But Trump is correct. It is clear the census needs drastic improvement and that undocumented people should not be included. The 2020 count was a mess, with even the Census Bureau’s own research arm concluding eight states were over-counted and six were undercounted. The census took place during COVID, and most likely the pandemic took a toll on the efficiency and accuracy of the report.
The errors in the headcount are especially newsworthy today, in light of the skirmish taking place in Texas over redistricting. Democrat legislators there have fled to blue cities around the country to avoid having to vote on the new political map, which reportedly would hand Republicans in the state an additional five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The fugitive Democrats are hiding mainly in Chicago, at the invitation of Illinois governor JB Pritzker (D), who is presumed to be contemplating a run for president in 2028. Like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and other Democratic hopefuls, Pritzker evidently considers performance politics likely to enhance his chances.
Ironically, Pritzker presides over what National Review’s Rich Lowry has described in a recent column as the most gerrymandered state in the union, citing the distorted configuration of District 13 as evidence.
Lowry points out that in 2022, Republican congressional candidates in Illinois won almost 44% of the popular vote but only secured 18 percent of the state’s House seats. Illinois is not alone. California, too, has skewed political representation, with some 40 percent of votes in the most recent election going to Republicans but only 17 percent of the seats. Lowry says that if Texas Republicans pass their new map, the state will only be roughly as imbalanced as California.
Democrat officials in other states have threatened retaliation for Texas’ maneuver, but in a number of big states, like California, Democrats have already pushed their advantage about as far as they can. The Republicans have been gaining control over state houses and legislatures in recent elections, which helps them force a remap. Republicans have 23 so-called “trifectas”, where they control both houses of state legislatures and the governors’ mansions, as in Texas; Democrats have only 11.
Following Texas’ lead, there is talk of a similar effort being considered in Nebraska and also in Indiana, where Vice President JD Vance recently met with Gov. Mike Braun (R) and Republican legislators to encourage the measure.
Redistricting is done usually once a decade in response to the Census. But the 2020 headcount was so flawed that some political leaders consider it appropriate to redo their maps mid-decade. Of the eight states that were overcounted, 6 lean left. Of the six that were undercounted, all but one lean right.
Some of the errors are significant; New York was overcounted, for example, by 3.4 percent, and Hawaii by nearly 7 percent. Ditto with the undercounts — they missed on Florida’s population by 3.5 percent. Consequently, Republicans argue that they should have picked up more House seats, Electoral College votes and also won more federal funds.
Given the slim seven-seat margin that Republicans currently hold in the House, the mistakes in the 2020 census loom large, as does the fight currently underway in Texas. Looking to next year’s midterm elections, redistricting could well change the balance of power. Normally the party that occupies the White House loses seats in the midterms; the Texas fight and others could prevent that, allowing the Trump agenda to roll forward.
Longer term, President Trump’s desire to eliminate undocumented people from the census could have similar repercussions. It is inappropriate for the decennial headcount to include non-citizens; those people are not allowed to vote and by the same token should not have representation in Congress. Leading up to the 2020 count, Wilbur Ross, who was Commerce Secretary under then-President Trump took steps to make the change by adding a citizenship question to the census form, but he was blocked by the courts.
Opponents claimed the question would deter illegals from participating in the census, which could cost Democrat-run states House seats, Electoral College votes, and federal funding. It was a poor excuse, since the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which annually asks some 3.5 million households questions about citizenship status, place of birth and year of arrival, scores about the same response in states with a high illegal population as those that do not.
Including undocumented people in the census incentivizes state officials to welcome people in the U.S. illegally. California, where high taxes and anti-business regulations have driven people and firms to flee the state, has been able to keep most of its House seats because it harbors more than 2 million non-citizens. This is wrong. Bad policies should be penalized, not rewarded.
The Census is established under Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution which reads: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers….” “Indians” were not part of the tally at that time because they were “not taxed” and therefore not considered legal citizens.
Trump is correct; we should follow that lead, and exclude people in the U.S. illegally.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.
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