Trump admin pushes sweeping overhaul of census that could exclude millions, reshape Congress and slash federal funding

By Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration on Wednesday proposed sweeping changes to the US census that could leave millions out of the count, dramatically altering the allocation of congressional seats and billions in federal funds.

The proposed regulation posted in the Federal Register would add a citizenship question to the 2030 census and exclude immigrants who are not legal permanent residents from the nationwide population survey, leaving out undocumented individuals, asylum seekers and refugees.

The proposal — similar to an unsuccessful effort from President Donald Trump’s first term — marks a dramatic shift from longstanding census practices which have historically counted all residents regardless of immigration status.

Critics and civil rights groups have long warned that Trump’s attempt to add a citizenship question would result in minorities being undercounted by scaring off even legal residents or naturalized citizens from completing the decennial questionnaire, which is also used to determine funding for an array of government programs.

It could take months for the proposed changes to become official, and they are likely to face legal challenges. The public has 30 days to submit comments in response.

The rules, which are not final, come just over a year after Trump directed the Department of Commerce to begin work on a new census that excludes undocumented immigrants and adds the citizenship question back to the census. The regulatory effort also arrives months after the administration installed a group of partisan analysts from the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute inside the Census Bureau, CNN reported in August. The agency has traditionally been led by career statisticians and operated independently of the White House.

The US Constitution requires a national census every ten years in order to determine how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives. The 14th Amendment requires a count of “the whole number of persons in each State.”

The administration is also seeking to not include questions about race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, claiming that the survey “should be colorblind and should not be distorted in any way by questions about immaterial personal characteristics.”

Trump has been trying to rewrite the census rules since his first term, when he attempted to reinsert the citizenship question which had been included in most census counts from 1820 to 1950. He has argued it was necessary to better comply with federal voting rights law.

The president’s move led to a lawsuit from a coalition of 18 attorneys general, six cities and the bipartisan US Conference of Mayors and was ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court.

After the high court’s ruling, Trump eventually backed away from the effort and went on to ask federal agencies to provide records that could determine a head count of citizens instead.

CNN’s Gabe Cohen, Fredreka Schouten, Ethan Cohen and Alejandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.

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