The language of the U.S. Constitution is unambiguous when it comes to the decennial census: The government is responsible for counting “all persons” in the United States as part of a process that’s conducted every “ten years.” There are no asterisks. There is no fine print. The first census was in 1790, and the count has been conducted every 10 years since, including one in 2020.
Donald Trump, however, apparently has a new plan in mind that runs counter to our constitutional system. The president published a three-sentence missive to his social media platform on Thursday morning, which read in its entirety:
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. People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
As is often the case with the Republican’s declarations, it’s an open question whether this is an actual announcement about a policy to be implemented in the real world, or whether Trump simply shared a passing thought that his aides will ignore and that the White House will soon pretend never happened.
If it’s the former, and the administration intends to take such an endeavor seriously, there are a handful of elements to keep in mind.
Right off the bat, Trump didn’t come up with this idea on his own. On the contrary, as my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones explained in a piece last month, it was Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia who’s spearheaded an effort to force the Census Bureau to “immediately” conduct a new census — and not count undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. (The right-wing congresswoman has routinely referred to the 2020 census as “Biden’s crooked census,” putting aside the fact that the last count began in 2020, the final year of Trump’s first term.)
The idea was quickly embraced by assorted far-right partisans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and now the president himself.
As for the legality of such a move, there’s no reason to think such an effort would pass constitutional muster — not only because the plan would deliberately exclude people living on American soil, but also because there’s no legal mechanism to allow for a mid-decade process. There are also practical considerations. Conducting the decennial census is expensive. The Commerce Department doesn’t have $15 billion hiding in the couch cushions, and it doesn’t have time to throw together a plan to address the extensive logistical challenges. (Preparations for the 2030 census are already underway. The idea that Team Trump could somehow execute another one over the next year or so is plainly bonkers.) But as important as these elements are, let’s not miss the underlying point: The president and his party are so desperate to maintain power at all costs, they are exploring every possible avenue to rig the political process so that Republicans can’t lose, even if voters want them to. Indeed, the whole point of conducting a new, unnecessary and Trumpified census is to use a revised count to reshuffle the electoral map and give the GOP an additional advantage. It’s why the White House demanded Texas redo its map; it’s why the president and his team are pushing other red states to do the same — and it’s why Trump has ordered a new census.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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