The next census in the United States is to take place in 2030, but preparations have already started for this colossal task in a country of more than 340 million inhabitants, and Donald Trump intends to print his brand on this operation which has electoral consequences.
The American president thus wishes to exclude from the national count the legal undocumented persons, while the constitution provides that a census is carried out every ten years by counting “All people in each state”including immigrants in an irregular situation.
“I asked our Ministry of Commerce to start working immediately to work on a new very precise census, based on current facts and figures (…). People who are illegally in our country will not be taken into account in the census ”wrote Donald Trump on his platform, Truth Social.
The Republican made this request because the census is used in particular to determine the number of members of the electoral college, State by State, for the presidential election, but also to determine the number of elected officials of each State at the Congress. The Pew Research Center estimated in 2020 that by withdrawing the undocumented immigrants from the American census, California, Texas and Florida each have lost a seat in the congress.
Rediscovering the electoral card
Some conservative figures called on Thursday not to wait until 2030 and to make a new census as soon as possible, such as influencer Charlie Kirk who said he wanted to correct the 2020 census, “Messed up”, According to him, against the Republicans in a context of COVID-19.
Donald Trump had already attempted during his first mandate to change the established rules, including including a question on citizenship in census documents. But this measure had been rejected by the Supreme Court, without it being pronounced on the basis of the question of the presence of clandestine immigrants in the census.
His proposal is a continuation of the pressure he exerts on the republican officials of several states, in particular in Texas, to rediscover the electoral map in their favor, a technique called “Gerrymandering”. The Republican acts upstream of the mid-term elections in November 2026, where the ruling party traditionally loses ground, and when it has only a thin majority at the House of Representatives.
“I won Texas”he boasted on Tuesday on the CNBC channel, explaining that with this advance during the last presidential election, the Republicans had obtained the right to win “Five more seats” In the Congress, hence the new electoral card presented last week by the Republican officials of this Southern State.
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In an attempt to prevent a vote in the Texan Parliament to ratify this new division, elected democrats fled the State on Sunday, taking refuge in particular in Chicago or New York. In their absence, the quorum was not reached, which pushed the republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to threaten them with arrest and forfeiture of their mandate if they did not return quickly.
JD vance at the offensive in Indiana
Republican senator John Cornyn, elected from Texas, announced Thursday that she had obtained from the federal police, the FBI, that she helps to find the Democrats who fled the State. But JB Pritzker, the Democrat governor of Illinois where Chicago is located, replied that “Neither Texas nor the FBI at the federal level are empowered to arrest” These elected officials. “There is no case law, no law in this sense”the billionaire Democrat told Meidastouch, who many lend aspirations for the 2028 presidential election.
Beyond Texas, the White House aims to redraw the map of many other republican majority states, such as Ohio or Florida. Vice-president, JD Vance, continues the offensive in Indiana on Thursday to convince Republican officials to operate this redistribution earlier than expected.
Several Democratic governors have threatened to rediscover their state electoral card, such as Californian Gavin Newsom, who said he wanted “Fight fire by fire”. But unlike Texas, where the legal process allows this relatively easily redistribution, the Democratic States have for many and even constitutional legislative safeguards. It will therefore be complicated for them to compensate for the seats potentially lost elsewhere.