Trump Administration Proposes Excluding Non-Citizens From 2030 Census Apportionment and Dropping the Race Question
The week's biggest structural power move came not in a courtroom but in the Federal Register. On September 9–10, 2026, the Trump administration released its proposal — "Decennial Census of the Population of Americans: Proposed Residence Criteria and Proposed Regulations" — for how the 2030 census will be conducted, and it would fundamentally change who counts in American political power. Per NPR's report:
- Excluding non-citizens from apportionment. The proposal "calls for an unprecedented exclusion of non-U.S. citizens without a green card from a key set of 2030 census results that the 14th Amendment says must include the 'whole number of persons in each state.'" The administration argues in the Federal Register notice that the framers "did not intend for the term 'persons' to include certain people without U.S. citizenship." No U.S. census has ever excluded residents based on immigration status.
- Dropping the race question. The census would stop asking about race and ethnicity — a feature of every count since 1790 — citing the "(potentially) sensitive nature" of the topic and a "reduced need for or usefulness of this information." The proposal would also ban any census question on sexual orientation.
- The stakes. These numbers determine each state's share of House seats and Electoral College votes, the data used for redistricting at every level, Voting Rights Act enforcement, and federal funding distribution.
Civil rights groups are preparing to fight. The ACLU's Adriel Cepeda Derieux said the interpretation "would fly against centuries of constitutional tradition and law in the United States," adding: "The Constitution is pretty clear... It doesn't mince words. It doesn't say citizens. It doesn't say green card holders." NALEO Educational Fund CEO Erica Bernal-Martinez called it "an attempt to make Latinos and other communities disappear in the 2030 Census."
What it means: This is the apportionment-base endgame of the administration's power-consolidation campaign — rather than fighting over maps district by district (see Oversight Project's REPAIR Initiative Outlines 'Maximum Warfare' Strategy to Dismantle Over 100 Race-Based Congressional Districts and Republican Redistricting Victories in Florida and Virginia Lock in 2026 Midterm Advantages), it targets the population denominator itself, which would shift House seats and Electoral College votes from immigrant-heavy states to Whiter, rural ones. The constitutional obstacle (the 14th Amendment's "whole number of persons") all but guarantees litigation, and Congress retains final authority over the count — but the proposal also follows the administration's earlier moves to build citizenship data infrastructure (the SAVE database and voter-roll campaigns) that could make such an exclusion administrable. Public comments run through October 13, 2026, with a final rule to follow; a report on 2030 question topics is due to Congress by April 1, 2027.