How MAGA's census fight would reshape political power

The battle over the 2030 Census is intensifying — and compounding concerns about President Donald Trump's broader moves to suppress the political power of the nation’s growing non-White population.

- Ronald Brownstein, Tribune News Service

As in Trump's first term, Republicans in the executive branch, in Congress and at the state level are advancing proposals to exclude undocumented immigrants — and possibly the much larger population of all residents who are not citizens — from the decennial Census count used to apportion House seats and Electoral College votes. Supporters typically frame those proposals as ways to prevent noncitizens from influencing the distribution of political power. But excluding either the undocumented or the broader group of all noncitizens would also shift influence between citizens — from non-Whites to Whites and from city residents to rural and exurban America.New research from the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California provided exclusively to me makes clear that eliminating either the undocumented or all noncitizens from the Census count would severely dilute the political clout of minority citizens. The reason is straightforward: although the immigrant population has diffused in recent decades, it still is concentrated mostly in states and counties that are already racially diverse. As a result, erasing immigrants from the calculations used to distribute political power will inexorably “disenfranchise citizen people of color,” says Manuel Pastor, the Equity Research Institute's director.