Today Trump signed an order that would block illegal immigrants from being counted in the 2020 census:
THE HILL – President Trump on Tuesday issued an order that blocks undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2020 census for the purpose of allocating congressional representation.
The order, which immediately prompted legal challenges, amounts to something of a workaround for Trump after the Supreme Court last year blocked the administration from adding a citizenship question to the decennial survey.
The rationale for the memo rests on the argument that the president has final say over transmitting the final census report to Congress and that the constitution does not explicitly define which persons must be included in determining apportionment.
“The discretion delegated to the executive branch to determine who qualifies as an ‘inhabitant’ includes authority to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status,” the order states. “Excluding these illegal aliens from the apportionment base is more consonant with the principles of representative democracy underpinning our system of Government.
California…
The order implicitly calls out California — a state represented overwhelmingly by Democrats in Congress — in making the argument for discounting undocumented immigrants, noting that “one State is home to more than 2.2 million illegal aliens.”
“Including these illegal aliens in the population of the State for the purpose of apportionment could result in the allocation of two or three more congressional seats than would otherwise be allocated,” the order states.
In a statement, Trump framed the memo as an effort to push back on “the radical left,” an indication he believes it will appeal to his base of supporters ahead of November’s election.
“There used to be a time when you could proudly declare, ‘I am a citizen of the United States,'” Trump said. “But now, the radical left is trying to erase the existence of this concept and conceal the number of illegal aliens in our country. This is all part of a broader left-wing effort to erode the rights of Americans citizens, and I will not stand for it.”
Or maybe it’s simply an indication that he believes it’s the right thing to do, to not count illegals in the census! Everyone knows California would LOVE to have more seats in the House and they’d use illegals to make it happen.
I’d say Trump has a strong chance of winning the argument here, but given how John Roberts is all over the place these days, who knows. But I’m glad he’s going for this again.