Census helps determine the number of council seats each state will acquire. Here’s why new things are important:
Watch: Governor Pretzker speaks in Springfield in Texas constituency
Speaking to the media on August 6, 2025, Gov. Pritzker said Texas Democrats who fled the state would be welcomed in Illinois.
President Donald Trump announced his intention to “start new census work soon,” raising questions about whether the plan is a constitutional law and how it will affect Congress’ partisan composition.
His announcement comes amid efforts by the Texas Republicans to redraw the unusual midterm of Congress maps. This is usually drawn after the census and then drawn after it is drawn.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the GOP-led state legislature hope that the change in districts will add up to five new seats for the party.
Trump’s August 7 Social Media Post said the new survey “based on modern facts and numbers, and importantly, using results and information from the 2024 presidential election, “people in our country can’t count illegally.”
USA Today reached the White House for comment. Neither the US Census Bureau nor the Commerce Department responded to requests for comment.
“Do you think you have to see things start to move at some point?” said Sean Donahue, a professor of political science at the University of Buffalo. “Is it just a press release or is there anything the Commerce Department is trying to do?”
How often is the census taken?
The US Constitution requires that census be conducted every ten years, most recently in the year that ends in 2020 with zero. US Census Bureau., Some of the Commerce Department will conduct these resource-intensive surveys, hire temporary staff and conduct outreach to count as many people as possible.
The findings are used to determine how U.S. House seats are distributed to each state based on their population. This is a process known as allocation. These processes usually take place in the first two years of the decade.
The findings are also used to determine how well federal funds are distributed to states, and researchers have cited demographic studies widely to understand the country.
Who will support the implementation of the mid-term census?
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced a bill in July that would require a new census that would count only US citizens and direct the state to redraw Congressional districts based on new numbers. “Americans don’t feel represented in Washington,” she said.
Hans von Spakowsky, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Heritage Foundation, said that while he believes the state should redraw Congressional districts every five years, as long as data is available, it is not usually the case. He said there is mobile in the US and the population is growing when surveys are held every 10 years.
He also pointed to a 2022 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, which found 14 states had statistically significant differences between the number of stations and their actual population. Six states – Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas – had a shortage. He said the better data quality could have increased seats in Congress in Texas and Florida.
Who opposes the mid-term census?
John Visograno, chairman of the National Democratic Constituency Committee, criticized Trump’s proposal as “a comprehensive campaign to flutify the US Constitution to predetermine the outcome of the election, so he can integrate his powers and avoid accountability to Americans.”
Sophia Linlekin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, told National Public Radio that she “denies constitutional, federal law, and settled precedents,” her organization “will not hesitate to return to court to protect all community representatives.”
Why does Trump want to run a new census?
“The University of Florida has made it a great opportunity to learn about the world,” said Michael P. McDonald, professor of political science at the University of Florida.
Democrats are widely expected to win a seat in the House of Representatives in next year’s Congressional election, as the party occupying the White House is usually inadequate. Trump also has a low approval rate. That blue wave could turn over control of the home, where Republicans make up a majority of 219-212 Republicans.
McDonald said that if Republicans paint a new Congressional district, they might be able to ease the number of seats they lose.
For example, the Republican base in Texas saw such a rapid population growth when the 2020 survey announced it had won two additional seats in Congress. Republican-oriented states in Florida and Montana, Democratic-oriented states, and North Carolina, close-oriented states in North Carolina each won one seat.
Democratic population centers in California, Illinois and New York each lost one seat. So were the swing states of Ohio and West Virginia, as well as Michigan and Pennsylvania, which are leaning towards Republicans.
Are immigrants counted in the census?
yes. The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution states that representatives will be allocated in accordance with “everyone in each state.” This concludes the long-standing practice of counting three-fifths of those enslaved for the purposes of expression. There is no language in the 14th Amendment that limits these counts to citizens or those with legal entities.
During his first term, Trump tried to add questions to the 2020 census, asking if the person who completed the survey was a citizen. The Supreme Court defeated it in 2019. The following year, Trump issued a memorandum that undocumented immigrants should not be included in the count determining representatives of Congress.
Will Republicans win more seats if a new census is conducted?
Van Spakovsky said the mid-term census could increase seats in Congress in Texas and Florida. Both are red states with rapidly increasing population populations, both were covered by the 2020 census. For example, Texas hid nearly 550,000 people in 2020, adding another 2 million by 2024. By comparison, each council district has an average of 760,000 people living there.
Within hours of Trump’s statement, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, a Republican, said he was establishing a new district committee.
MacDonald said the council’s map is the most fair in nearly 40 years as it rezones reform efforts across the country to prevent unfairly drawn districts. He said the Congress maps are already drawn in the way that despite the practice of including undocumented immigrants in the Count, some districts are more relatable than democratic districts.
McDonald points to South Florida, where he said the current line has right-leaning Cuban-Americans with high voter turnout in the same district as democratic Hespanic voters. As Trump suggested, he said if the map was redrawn to include undocumented immigrants, he would only have two Congressional seats in the area. “Who’s in the music chair game?” he asked.
How will the new census affect 2026 or 2028?
Redistribution of seating seats affects two things. The number of seats in each state and the number of votes in each state are because the votes equal the total number of seats in each state of Senate and House seats. The House conditions are in the past two years, elections will take place for years, with the next presidential election being held in 2026 in 2028. However, this does not mean that a new census will be conducted or that the map will be relocated by then.
“It doesn’t seem like you’ll think you can do this in 2026. The government is also not allowed to speed up the process by being based on statistical sampling, he said. “It’s not something you can snap your fingers and that’s what will happen.”
Von Spakovsky proposed updating the form already submitted by the US Census Bureau and using it to conduct a medium-term census survey. “We couldn’t do that this year, but I don’t know why we couldn’t do that next year,” he said.
Will Trump’s order to carry out a mid-term census go to court?
“Absolutely,” Donahue said. “The Constitution calls for a 10-year census. That’s not to say you can’t (have more), but I mean you’re only going to do one every ten years.”
Donohue predicted that democratic conditions are most likely to challenge the mid-term census in court. However, the administration can argue that the requirement for doing it every decade is not a prohibiting it from doing it more frequently.
“There is no legal bar that says you can’t redeem more than once every 10 years,” Von Spakovsky said.
Contributed by Francesca Chambers
