Democrats and civil liberties groups are threatening legislation and lawsuits to prevent President Trump from excluding undocumented immigrants from the population counts used to apportion House seats for the next decade.
The president directed the government on Tuesday to provide the states with census numbers that exclude millions of people living in the country illegally — setting up a potential balance of powers fight as well as a constitutional dispute over whether congressional districts should be drawn based on numbers of people, as has been the long-standing practice, or only citizens.
Civil rights groups gave notice in federal court Wednesday that they would fight Trump's effort. The American Civil Liberties Union readied a separate lawsuit. The House Oversight and Reform Committee announced it would convene an emergency hearing next week and may write a bill to thwart the president. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed that Democrats "will vigorously contest the president's unconstitutional and unlawful attempt to impair the census."
The Census Bureau is in the middle of its once-a-decade head count, among the most important and extensive bureaucratic undertakings of a functioning democracy. The results will not only determine how many of the 435 House seats shift to the fastest growing states at the expense of other places, but it will also provide numbers for drawing election lines at the state, county and city level. The numbers will also determine the distribution over the next decade of $1.5 trillion in federal spending that's allocated by demographic formula.
More than 62 percent of households have responded, and census takers last week started appearing at the homes where residents haven't responded. The bureau this week mailed out 34 million postcards to households reminding them to answer the census questionnaire as required by law.
"It is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status," Trump said in a memorandum Tuesday. It said that states with undocumented immigrants should not be given more representatives as this would only encourage them to continue to harbor such people.
If Trump gets what he wants, which could end up requiring the Supreme Court to disregard the consensus understanding of the Constitution, the effect would be more seats shifting to Republican states instead of Democratic ones.
"The Constitution requires that everyone in the U.S. be counted in the census," Dale Ho, the voting rights chief at the ACLU, said in a statement. "President Trump cannot pick and choose. He tried to add a citizenship question to the census and lost in the Supreme Court. His latest attempt to weaponize the census for an attack on immigrant communities will be found unconstitutional. We'll see him in court, and win, again."
Last year, Trump's effort to put a citizenship question on the census was derailed by the high court, making it difficult to determine how many undocumented immigrants are in he country.
In a statement accompanying his memorandum, however, Trump noted that federal agencies "have been collecting the information needed to conduct an accurate census and inform responsible decisions about public policy, voting rights, and representation in Congress."
Under that executive order, which civil rights groups are already fighting in federal court, agencies are to provide the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, with data and records that could be used to separate citizens and noncitizens.
The president's latest move, "if carried out, could upend the balance of power," said Sean Moulton, a senior policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight. "This move by the White House to ignore a significant percentage of the population and summarily redefine how we apportion representative power in this country is inappropriate and potentially unconstitutional."
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said Trump's action highlights his "inexhaustible contempt for our constitutional system and the rule of law. The U.S. Constitution requires 'an actual enumeration' of the 'whole number of persons' in the country for 'apportioning representatives among the states in Congress.'"
As evidence that his action is legal, Trump cited a unanimous 1992 Supreme Court decision that found the Commerce Department could apportion members of the military serving overseas at their home of record: "Congress has provided that it is 'the president's personal transmittal of the report to Congress' that 'settles the apportionment' of representatives among the States, and the president's discretion to settle the apportionment is more than ceremonial or ministerial and is essential "to the integrity of the process."
Groups in favor of less immigration praised the decision.
"The process of including illegal aliens in the census count for the purpose of reapportionment, as it has been practiced in recent decades, is fundamentally unfair to law-abiding Americans, and the president should be applauded for taking long overdue action to safeguard their interests and constitutional rights," said Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
However, the courts have rejected attempts by FAIR to remove undocumented immigrants from apportionment. The Supreme Court already struck down Trump's attempt to add a citizenship question to the census because it was added with the intention of undercounting undocumented immigrants and lowering the amount of funds and representatives these areas have.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.