The Trump administration proposed a federal rule Wednesday that would exclude illegal aliens and temporary foreign nationals from the 2030 census count—a move that would strip jurisdictions that defy immigration law of the extra House seats and Electoral College votes they currently enjoy by counting people who have no legal right to be here.

At stake is the basic arithmetic of American self-government. Census counts determine how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives and, by extension, the Electoral College. Right now, states with large illegal immigrant populations—California chief among them—receive more political power than their citizen populations warrant. Every extra seat awarded for counting illegal aliens is a seat stolen from a state whose residents actually follow the law.

The Census Bureau's proposed rule, published in the Federal Register, argues that illegal aliens "are not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a 'usual residence' in the United States due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States," according to Breitbart's citation of the rule. The bureau also preliminarily determined that excluding illegal aliens from the apportionment count is "a lawful and appropriate exercise" of its discretion.

The rule goes further than just targeting illegal aliens. It would also exclude foreign nationals on temporary lawful status—students, guest workers, and the like—and is reconsidering the race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation questions on the census. The bureau noted the "potentially sensitive nature" of such inquiries and the "reduced need for or usefulness of this information," as The Guardian reported. The New York Post noted that race and ethnicity questions have been included since the first census in 1790.

To determine respondents' legal status, the bureau is considering using administrative records from the Treasury, Health and Human Services, Defense, Homeland Security, and the Postal Service.

The political stakes are clear. A 2024 analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies found that each single percentage point increase in the foreign share of a congressional district's population correlates with a 1.8 percentage point increase in the Democrat share of the two-party vote. As Breitbart reported, CIS researchers noted that "voters who live around non-citizens tend to be Democrats, who end up having more voting power due to the presence of a large number of non-citizens."

Democrats and advocacy groups are promising a fight. The House oversight committee accused Trump of trying to "rig" the survey, insisting the 14th Amendment requires counting "ALL people living in the United States." Meeta Anand of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights told the New York Post the effects would be "earth-shattering."

The 14th Amendment calls for apportionment based on "the whole number of persons in each State"—language the administration argues was never meant to cover foreign nationals who are here illegally. Trump tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census in his first term, but the Supreme Court blocked it, calling the administration's rationale "contrived." This time, the approach runs through administrative rulemaking, not a questionnaire.

The proposal is open for public comment for 30 days. Legal challenges are all but certain. The question the courts will have to answer: whether the Constitution's framers intended foreign nationals with no allegiance to the United States to determine how political power is distributed among American citizens.