“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures,” President Trump announced on Truth Social. “People who are in our Country illegally will not be counted in the census.” [all caps replaced with italics—ed.]
The national census has been carried out every decade, in accordance with Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states that census used to determine the number of representatives for each state must occur “within every … Term of ten years.” This does not exclude having an earlier census, but any such change would have to be made by the Congress.
Trump’s insistence on counting only people who are present in the country legally, appears to run directly afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that representatives shall be apportioned by the number, not of citizens, but “the whole number of persons in each State.” [Emphasis added.]
Perhaps he should acquaint himself with the highest law of the land before making impossible statements like this one.
