By Mike Schneider, Associated Press
If President Donald Trump manages to get immigrants in the country illegally excluded from being counted in the restructuring of the districts of the US House of Representatives, California, Florida and Texas, they would end up with one less seat in Congress than if each resident was counted, according to an analysis by a group of experts.
Without that population, California would lose two seats instead of one, Florida would win one seat instead of two, and Texas would win two seats instead of three, according to the Pew Research Center analysis.
Additionally, Pew’s analysis shows that Alabama, Minnesota, and Ohio would each hold one seat in Congress that they likely would have lost during the process of dividing seats in Congress by the state known as distribution, which takes place after the Office from the US Census – counting the decade of every resident of the United States. The office is currently in the middle of the 2020 census.
Federal law requires the Census Bureau to turn over the final count numbers used for distribution to the president by the end of the year, but the office is asking Congress for an extension until April 30 due to disruptions caused by the pandemic.
Every resident of a state is traditionally counted during the cast, but last Tuesday Trump issued a directive seeking to ban people in the US illegally from being included in the template as Congressional districts are redrawn. . Trump said including them in the count “would create perverse incentives and undermine our system of government.”
At least four lawsuits or notices of a legal challenge have been filed to stop the directive.
The president’s directive breaks with nearly 250 years of tradition and is unconstitutional, according to a lawsuit filed by Common Cause, the city of Atlanta and others in federal court in the District of Columbia. Other challenges have been raised or are in the process of being raised by the ACLU on behalf of immigrant rights groups, a coalition of states led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, and civil rights groups that have already sued the Trump administration for an effort to collect citizenship data. through administrative records.
The Democrats-led House Oversight and Reform Committee is asking Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham, and other officials to testify about the Republican president’s directive at a hearing on next Wednesday.
