WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has instructed the Commerce Department to change the way the Census Bureau collects data, seeking to exclude immigrants who are in the United States illegally, he said Thursday.
The census’ data collections will be based on “modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” the Republican president said on his social media platform, an indication he might try to inject his politics into survey work that measures everything from child poverty to business operations.
Trump stressed that as part of the changes people in “our Country illegally” will be excluded from census counts.
His Truth Social post fits into an overall pattern in which he has tried to reshape basic measures of how U.S. society is faring to his liking, a process that ranges from monthly jobs figures to how congressional districts are drawn going into the 2026 midterm elections. But there could be legal challenges if he were to reshape the census, which also guides the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal funds to the states for roads, health care and other programs.
The last time the census included a question about citizenship was in 1950, and the Census Bureau’s own experts had predicted that millions of Hispanics and immigrants would go uncounted if the census asked everyone if he or she is an American citizen.
Changes to the census could also play into the efforts by Trump to urge several Republican-led states, including Texas, to redraw their congressional maps ahead of schedule in ways that would favor GOP candidates.
Redistricting typically occurs once every 10 years following the census, as states adjust district boundaries based on population changes, often gaining or losing seats in the process.
Despite Texas having redrawn its maps just a few years ago, Trump is pressuring Republicans in the state to redistrict again, claiming they are “entitled” to five additional Republican seats. Texas Republicans have cited population growth as justification for redrawing the congressional map.
Trump’s team is also engaged in similar redistricting discussions in other GOP-controlled states, including Missouri and Indiana.
Last Friday, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, after standard revisions to the monthly jobs report showed that employers added 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported in May and June. The revisions suggested that hiring has severely weakened under Trump, undermining his claims of an economic boom.
The White House insists that the problem was the size of the revisions and that it wants accurate numbers. Trump’s census posting raised the question as to whether he would embark on a mid-decade census, or simply change the standards for 2030 or change how the estimates operate between censuses. It was unclear what his changes would be.
It would be almost logistically impossible to carry out a mid-decade census in such a short period of time, New York Law School professor Jeffrey Wice said. Any changes in the conduct of a national census, which is the biggest non-military undertaking by the federal government, also would require approval from Congress, which has oversight responsibilities, and there likely would be a fierce fight, he said.
“This isn’t something that you can do overnight,” said Wice, a census and redistricting expert. “To get all the pieces put together, it would be such a tremendous challenge, if not impossible.”
