The 2020 Census handed Democrat-led states congressional seats they didn’t earn while robbing Republican states of representation they deserved. Now, more than 140 state lawmakers are demanding President Trump act before it happens again.
A coalition of Republican officials sent a letter Monday urging Trump to immediately appoint a director to the U.S. Census Bureau, which hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed leader since early 2025. The letter, organized by the State Freedom Caucus Network, warns that the agency responsible for determining political power in America for the next decade “has drifted from its constitutional mission.”
The stakes couldn’t be higher. The Census Bureau’s own 2022 report acknowledged that it undercounted five of six Republican-led states while overcounting six of eight Democrat-led states in 2020. The result: blue states received congressional seats and federal funding they weren’t entitled to, while red states lost out.
A January 2026 forecast by the American Redistricting Project estimated that an accurate 2030 count excluding noncitizens would shift the balance of power. California and New York would lose House seats. Florida and Tennessee would gain them.
The 142 lawmakers specifically targeted the bureau’s “continued reliance on differential privacy, statistical adjustments, and other methodologies that corrupt reported data to distort an actual enumeration of our citizenry.” They argued these practices “eroded public trust” in an institution tasked with a straightforward constitutional duty: counting Americans.
The citizenship question remains central to the fight. Lawmakers expressed concern about its removal from the household census form, arguing the policy “has empowered the non-citizen population count to deform congressional apportionment and state and federal redistricting.”
Trump fought this battle during his first administration. The Supreme Court’s 2019 Department of Commerce v. New York decision confirmed the federal government has authority to ask the citizenship question. But a 5-4 majority, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberal justices, ruled the administration hadn’t adequately explained its reasoning. The question never made it onto the 2020 Census.
The consequences of including noncitizens in population counts extend beyond congressional seats. As Federalist Senior Contributor Ben Weingarten previously noted, millions of illegal aliens and temporary visa holders distort Americans’ political representation by skewing the allocation of House seats, presidential electors, and trillions in federal funds.
With the 2030 Census approaching and no confirmed director at the helm, Republican lawmakers are making clear: the time for action is now.
