A version of a federal rule proposing to exclude certain noncitizens from being counted in the 10-year Census was published to the federal register this morning, and is more aggressive in several ways than the draft version first revealed in full last month by TPM. The final version explicitly proposes a citizenship question on the census, excludes refugees and asylees from the count, and changes how members of the military are to be tallied.
It also narrows the list of immigrants the Census Bureau would classify as U.S. residents, as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to wield the decennial population count to benefit Republican states.
The administration is using the rule to remake how the census counts people and tracks where they live. These reams of data shape political power; they are used in congressional apportionment, determining the number of House seats for each state and a state’s power in the Electoral College. They are also often used in redistricting.
It does this in part by changing how the census defines a person’s “usual residence.” In 2020, that was where you might “live and sleep most of the time.” Under this draft, it’s narrowed to a place “consistent with, and evidenced by, their tax records.”
The rule states unequivocally that the Trump administration is considering whether to add a citizenship question to the 2030 census. “The Census Bureau welcomes comments on the inclusion of a legal-status question on the short-form decennial census questionnaire,” the final rule reads.
Such a rule would mount a similar version of an attack that failed under Trump I. That administration fought up to the Supreme Court to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census. The effort failed: In a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts found the administration’s reason for adding the question was “contrived.”
The administration’s efforts then weren’t helped by an odd bequeathal: a Republican strategist’s death revealed a trove of records detailing how the GOP realized that having the census systematically undercount non-citizens could weaken blue states’ representation in Congress.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
