Trump wants to use racist math to reshape elections
President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he ordered the Ministry of Commerce to start working on a new American census – one that excluded undocumented immigrants from the number of populations.
“I asked our Ministry of Commerce to start working immediately to work on a new very precise census based on modern facts and figures and, above all, using the results and information obtained from the 2024 presidential election”, Trump wrote on his social platform of truth. “People who are illegally in our country will not be counted in the census.”
If it was implemented, this decision will mark a significant break in the way in which the census has been traditionally carried out. For centuries, he has counted each living person In the United States, regardless of citizenship status.
Trump’s announcement comes when the White House urges the states led by the GOP to redesign their Congress cards to stimulate the chances of the Republicans to hold most of their house after the mid-term elections next year. Texas has begin This process, although Democrats have blocked run awaythus refusing to the legislative assembly a quorum.
Some of Trump’s criticism correctly criticize the plan of the census as another blatant takeover.
“The next part of the plan to steal the mid-term elections and / or the 2028 elections-an attempt to make an inventory in mid-December to take seats and electoral votes far from the blue states”, ” former republican and anti-pump Ron Filipkowski poster On X. “I knew it was going to happen.”
Naturally, Maga supporters are fully on board. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene de Géorgie republished Trump’s announcement while promoting it “Make a big American act“, Which would order” a new census with only American citizens “and would require a distribution according to this revised count.
However, this plan dates back to the Constitution. The law requires a national census every 10 years to count all residents, not only citizens. THE Official census website Clearly declares that the ten-year statement is “designed to count all residents in the United States”. This is how the seats of the Congress and the votes of electoral colleges are allocated.
But legality has never stopped Trump before.
During his first mandate, he tried to force the US Census Bureau to include a question of citizenship – “” “Is this person citizen of the United States?– Despite the warnings, this would discourage the answers. A federal court described the decision to “huge“Violation of the law and the Supreme Court ultimately blocked he.
Trump persisted. He Federal agencies directed To collect citizenship data without directly involving the census. Its main push then failed, before the 2020 census, but now it seems to want to restart the process in the middle.
In the event of success, states with large undocumented populations – such as California – should lose seats in the congress, while white and rural states could earn an influence. A 2020 Pew Research Center The report indicated that the exclusion of the non-citizens of the census could lead to certain states, including California and Texas, to lose seats in the house.
There is also the logistical aspect. The 2020 census Cost of almost $ 14 billion And took years to prepare. The idea that Trump’s trade department could produce a new census in a year or two is unrealistic. The preparations for the 2030 census are already underway, and the federal law requires that any proposed question be subject to the congress at least two years before data collection.
This raises another possibility: if Trump cannot make a new census, he could always influence the next one. With his mandate ending in 2029, he could manipulate how the 2030 census is carried out.
Earlier this year, The choice of former president Joe Biden to direct the census office, Robert Santos, resigned. He was the first Latino To occupy the post and leave halfway through his mandate, citing the desire to spend more time with the family. His departure creates an opening to Trump to install an ally which could be more willing to bend or break the rules.
By the way, Trump did not develop this idea. As Ja’han Jones of MSNBC underlinedGreene directed the accusation, falsely calling the last census of Biden “twisted census», Biddenly ignoring that he was mainly organized and led during Trump’s first term.
Trump’s Trump’s efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants were not the only factors threatening the 2020 census. disturbed the count. The results of the census were delayed until the beginning of 2021, when Biden blocked Trump’s attempt To exclude non-citizens from distribution total.
The census office admitted later These black, Hispanic and Amerindian populations were underestimated, while the white and Asian populations were overloaded – a common trend probably aggravated by the pandemic and political interference.
If the Trump’s census plan is really materialized remains uncertain, but it is almost out of purpose. For Trump, the objective is not precision; It is power. This is another effort to manipulate the system so that the Republicans can win even when voters promote democrats.
Undession the blue states, restart the district lines, remove the vote and modify the rules – is the GOP strategy. And when they can’t win honestly, they just change the game.
