Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump has instructed the trade department to change the way in which the US Civil Counting Office collects data and tries to exclude immigrants who are illegally in the United States, he said on Thursday.
The data collections of the census are based on “modern facts and numbers and, above all, the results and information that was obtained from the 2024 presidential elections,” said the Republican President on his social media platform, an indication that he could try to give his policy into a head count, which determines the political power and the distribution of federal financing.
Trump emphasized that as part of the changes, people in “our illegally illegal country” are excluded from the census.
Experts said it was unclear what exactly Trump demanded whether it was changes to the census of 2030 or in a census in the year, and if so, whether it would be used for a division in Middle December, which is the process of distributing congress seats between the states based on the number of population.
A up-to-date census?
All changes in the implementation of a national census, which is the largest non-military undertaking by the Federal Government, would require changes to the People’s Consuming Act and the approval of the congress that have responsibility for control, and there would probably be a fierce struggle. While the Counting Act enables a census in the middle of the decades to distribute federal financing, it cannot be used for distribution or redistribution and must be carried out in a year in 5 years, said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congress employee who advises on census questions.
“He cannot unilaterally order a new census. The census is ruled by law, not to mention the constitution,” said Lowenthal. “Logistically speaking, it’s a half -baked idea.”
It would be almost logistically impossible to carry out a census in the middle of the decades in such a compact time, said Jeffrey Wice, professor of New York Law School.
“You can’t do that overnight,” said Wice, a census and a redistribution expert. “To put together all parts, it would be such an enormous challenge, if not impossible.”
Trump’s truth -social post fits into a total pattern in which he has tried to change basic measures on how the US company goes according to its taste, a process that is due to monthly jobs to the figures of congress districts in the interim elections of 2026. However, there could be legal challenges if he redesigned the census, which also leads the distribution of 2.8 trillion dollars of federal funds to the states of roads, health care and other programs.
A census question question
In a decision from 2019, the Supreme Court of Trump effectively prevented the 2020 question from adding a question of citizenship. In the 14th change it says that “the entire number of people in every state” should be counted for the figures for the division, the process of assigning the sitting of the congress and the votes of the election college on the basis of the population.
The last time the census included a question about citizenship was in 1950, and the Census Bureau’s own experts had predicted that millions of Hispanics and immigrants would not be shown if the census was asked whether he or she was an American citizen.
Changes to the census could also adhere to Trump’s efforts to demand several states conducted by Republicans, including Texas, to re-draw their congress cards before the schedule, the GOP candidates prefer.
Efforts redistribution
The redistribution is typically every 10 years after the census, since the states adapt district borders based on population changes and often win seats or lose seats.
Although Texas only re -drawn his cards a few years ago, Trump puts pressure on Republicans in the state to rename again, and claims that they are entitled to five additional republican seats. The Republicans in Texas have cited population growth as justification for the realignment of the congress card. The state currently has 38 house seats, 25 of Republicans.
Trump’s team is also employed with similar redistribution discussions in other GOP-controlled countries, including Missouri and Indiana.
Last Friday, Trump released the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika Mcentarfer, after the standard disabilities of the monthly job report showed that employers were reported 258,000 fewer jobs than before in May and June. The revisions indicate that the attitude under Trump has been severely weakened and undermined his claims of an economic boom.
The White House insists that the problem was the size of the revisions and that it wants precise numbers. However, expert external experts did not agree with this assessment.
“Trump basically destroys the federal statistical system,” said Margo Anderson, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who wrote in detail about the history of the census. “He wants to pay numbers that support his political achievements, as he sees them.”
After the 2019 citizenship question had been stopped by the Supreme Court, Trump made another effort in 2020 and announced a plan to illegally exclude people living in the country from the number of distribution.
After states, cities and organizations sued, the preliminary dishes decided that the plan was illegal. When the Supreme Court entered, Trump had lost its re -election offer. The judges were able to describe a decision on the legality of Trump’s plan and eject the case for technical procedural reasons. The court said in a non-signed statement that only spoke for the conservative majority of six-judiciary that “we do not express the merits of the constitutional and relationship with the statutory claims presented. We only believe that they are not suitable for the decision at this point.”
The three liberal judges reflected and said that the efforts to exclude people in the country out of the population because they divided house seats is illegal.
“I think this dish should say it,” judge Stephen Breyer wrote together with the judges Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
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The AP writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report. Schneider reported from Orlando, Fla.
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