Republicans Renew Efforts To Limit People In Us Illegally From Census Count

Republican efforts to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from numbers used to divvy up congressional seats among states have begun anew, with four Republican state attorneys general suing to alter the once-a-decade head count even before President Donald Trump's second term in office began Monday.

Trump joined in the battle immediately upon returning to office, signing an executive order on Monday that rescinded a Biden administration order and signaled the possibility of a push by his new administration to change the 2030 census. Those efforts may get a boost from the GOP-controlled Congress, where Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards from North Carolina earlier this month re-introduced legislation that would put a citizenship question on the census form.

During his first term, Trump signed an order that would have excluded people in the U.S. illegally from being included in the 2020 census numbers used to allot congressional seats and Electoral College votes to each state. The GOP president also mandated in a second order the collection of citizenship data through administrative records. A Republican redistricting expert had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

Trump issued the memos after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked his earlier attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire. The high court said the administration's justification for the question 'seems to have been contrived."

Both Trump orders were rescinded when President Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation's largest statistical agency.