Overview

• President Trump directed the Commerce Department to plan an off‑cycle census that would exclude undocumented immigrants from apportionment counts.
• Election and census scholars argue the proposal violates constitutional and statutory requirements for a decennial count of the whole number of persons.
• Researchers Christopher Kenny and Tyler Simko say a rushed count would be infeasible, risking severe data quality problems and undercounts in hard‑to‑reach rural areas.
• Their ACS‑based simulation estimates California would lose four seats, Texas two, and New York one, with gains for Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia, while overall partisan effects appear uncertain and potentially limited.
• The Daily Wire published a piece by Rep. August Pfluger announcing the COUNT Act, a bid to require citizenship‑based counting for apportionment and federal funding using a block‑level citizenship database.