Overview

• On August 7, President Trump instructed the Commerce Department to develop a mid-decade census that omits undocumented immigrants from population totals.
• Howard Lutnick told Census Bureau staff that the Fourteenth Amendment’s mandate to count every person bars removal of noncitizens absent new legislation.
• Constitutional text and a 2019 Supreme Court decision blocking a citizenship question limit any off-cycle census from altering apportionment counts.
• Experts estimate a standalone census would cost about $15 billion, involve extensive logistical hurdles and face near-certain legal challenges.
• The Government Accountability Office found statistically significant coverage errors in the 2020 census, though analysts disagree on whether those errors shifted partisan advantage.