Trump Pushes Blatantly Unconstitutional Plan for New Mid-Decade Census
"Donald Trump has no power to alter either the timing or who is counted," said one prominent elections attorney.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday pushed for a new census to be drawn up in a move that would flatly violate the United States Constitution, which states explicitly that the census shall be conducted once every ten years and shall count all people within each state.
In a post on his Truth Social page, Trump said that he had "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."
The president then added that "people who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS."
Many constitutional law experts, however, were quick to point out that Trump lacks any kind of power to demand the creation of a mid-decade census that excludes undocumented immigrants under the United States Constitution.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor of constitutional law at Georgia State College of Law, wrote on X that the "Constitution's text is plain" regarding the census and it doesn't allow for anything resembling Trump's plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count.
Kreis specifically pointed to the changes to the census made by the 14th Amendment, which demands that the census count "the whole number of persons in each State," as a legal dagger in the heart of Trump's scheme.
"The 14th Amendment's mandate that the census 'count[s] the whole number of persons in each State' governs us in no uncertain terms," he argued.
Elections attorney Marc Elias similarly dismissed Trump's plan as a flagrant violation of the Constitution.
"The Constitution dictates that the census is a count [of] 'all persons' conducted every 'ten years,'" he wrote on Bluesky. "Donald Trump has no power to alter either the timing or who is counted."
The United States Supreme Court in 2019 blocked the first Trump administration from adding a question about residents' citizenship to the 2020 census, and it's not clear how Trump's order for a new census excluding undocumented immigrants would be different from his prior attempt.
In addition to questions of constitutional legality, Trump's plan also has issues when it comes to sheer logistics.
Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, argued that Trump's plan is wildly impractical given the resources and time needed to successfully conduct an accurate census.
"Just from a logistical standpoint it is not feasible to conduct a 'new' mid-decade census with accuracy," he wrote on Bluesky. "To give a sense of the scale of what is required, preparations are already underway for the *2030* census. This will add chaos to the Census Bureau and degrade the accuracy of the 2030 census."
CNN political reporter Aaron Blake also noted on X that it's unclear that excluding undocumented immigrants from the census would even be much of a political boon for the GOP. As evidence, Blake pointed to a 2020 estimate from Pew Research Center projecting that Republican-controlled states such as Florida and Texas would each lose a seat if their undocumented immigrant populations weren't counted, which would balance out projected GOP gains in Alabama and Ohio under such circumstances.
