TL;DR
The fight over political power moved this week from the courts to the census itself: the administration proposed excluding non-citizens from 2030 apportionment counts, targeting the population denominator that determines House seats and Electoral College votes. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's refusal to reinstate the mail-ballot rules triggered an extraordinary public attack by the president on his own appointees, and the electoral-map wars produced a split verdict — the Missouri gerrymander is dead for November, but Democrats opened a counter-front in Wisconsin.
The census proposal: redistricting at the denominator level
The biggest structural power move of the week bypassed the courts entirely and landed in the Federal Register. On September 9–10, the administration released its proposed 2030 census rules, which would exclude non-citizens without green cards from apportionment counts — something no U.S. census has ever done — and drop the race question, a feature of every count since 1790 (trump-2030-census-citizenship-exclusion-proposal).
"The Constitution is pretty clear... It doesn't mince words. It doesn't say citizens. It doesn't say green card holders." — Adriel Cepeda Derieux, ACLU, quoted in NPR's report (trump-2030-census-citizenship-exclusion-proposal
)
The proposal is the logical endpoint of the consolidation pattern we've been tracking: rather than fighting over maps district by district, it targets the "whole number of persons" language of the 14th Amendment itself, which would shift House seats and Electoral votes away from immigrant-heavy states. NALEO's Erica Bernal-Martinez called it "an attempt to make Latinos and other communities disappear in the 2030 Census" (trump-2030-census-citizenship-exclusion-proposal). The constitutional obstacle all but guarantees litigation, but the administration has already built the citizenship-data infrastructure — the SAVE database and voter-roll campaigns — that could make exclusion administrable.
What to watch: Public comments close October 13, 2026; expect ACLU litigation filings well before the final rule.
The president versus his own Court
Last week's Supreme Court rebuff on mail-in ballots now has a sequel, and it's the president attacking his own appointees. In U.S. Postal Service v. California on September 14, the unsigned order held the government "unlikely to succeed on the merits," with only Thomas and Alito dissenting (trump-public-war-own-supreme-court-justices). Trump's Truth Social response the next morning named Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett directly:
"They are merely a shell of their original selves." — Reason's full account (trump-public-war-own-supreme-court-justices
)
The Washington Post reports Trump frames the mail-ballot, tariff, and birthright-citizenship defeats as "a personal betrayal" (Washington Post). The operative posture is compliance-plus-escalation: AG Todd Blanche pledged compliance while vowing to stay "undeterred" on voter-fraud investigations, and the administration has already asked the Supreme Court to emergency-block a lower-court ruling on the federal voter-lookup tool (Seattle Times). The loyalty test now extends to the Court itself — even as that same Court keeps delivering structural wins on removal power.
What to watch: SCOTUS action on the emergency application over the SAVE voter-lookup ruling — the next data point on where the 6-3 majority balks.
The map wars: one front closes, another opens
The redistricting wave is being checked by courts in some states and weaponized through them in others. In Missouri, the Supreme Court rejected the state's emergency request to reinstate the Trump-backed gerrymander on September 10, and the November 3 election will run on the 2022 map (missouri-redistricting-supreme-court-referendum). Secretary of State Denny Hoskins was found in contempt for defying the state court before quickly complying — "my Office is directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map" (AP). But Republicans escalated immediately: the state's 8th Circuit brief argues the referendum petition that killed the map "is unconstitutional under the Elections Clause," with arguments heard September 17 (Democracy Docket).
The mirror image played out in Wisconsin, where on September 16 the state supreme court heard challenges to the GOP's 6-2 congressional map — one suit on classic partisan gerrymandering, and a novel "anti-competitive gerrymander" theory from Law Forward (wisconsin-congressional-map-gerrymander-challenge).
"This is a map that Wisconsin voters will vote under in 2026 and 2028 and 2030, and as long as that map remains in effect, the injury is incurred anew with every election." — Abha Khanna, quoted in WPR (wisconsin-congressional-map-gerrymander-challenge
)
This is Democrats using a newly liberal state bench to do what Republicans did with friendly legislatures — which is precisely why both parties are now fighting over state supreme court seats.
What to watch: The 8th Circuit's Missouri ruling, which could decide whether citizen referenda can suspend a congressional map anywhere in the circuit.
What surprised us
- The net redistricting score is a wash. For all the mid-decade map warfare, Decision Desk HQ projects "Democrats to make a small average gain across the nine states that redistricted their U.S. House maps" (Decision Desk HQ). The fight was never really about 2026 — it's about locking in 2028 and 2030.
- Kavanaugh is the swing justice twice over. He denied Missouri's emergency request and concurred against the mail-ballot stay on purely logistical grounds — and got attacked by MAGA figures for the Missouri call (trump-public-war-own-supreme-court-justices
- Missouri's contempt moment fizzled. The court found Hoskins in contempt and then imposed no consequences at all once he corrected course (missouri-redistricting-supreme-court-referendum
) — a stark contrast with the evidentiary sanctions in the FEMA case last cycle. Defiance carries little cost when it's quickly reversed.
- The census move also erases data, not just seats. Dropping the race question would end Voting Rights Act enforcement data at the source — a quieter change than apportionment, but harder to unwind.