Missouri has fired the first round in the census wars, and it’s about time someone did.
As I wrote the other day, part of the fierce resistance to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action in Minnesota is not that everyone’s tender hearts are so affected that they can no longer stand the thought of murderers and rapists being dragged out of the state.
Oh, no, no, no.
It’s a numbers game. Minnesota almost lost one of its eight Congressional seats in the last census thanks to a disappearing population, and they need every illegal in jail or out counted to keep what they have.
The 2030 census was already shaping up as dreary for the state, if the expected outflow continued at the current rate.
The projections are derived using simple linear extrapolation using data from previous Vintage years in addition to 2025.
— The Redistrict Network (@RedistrictNet) January 27, 2026
It doesn’t help the state’s case of the yips over apportionment that the man in the White House is going after illegals being counted for census purposes with the same, if not increased vigor, that he did in his first term.
Those efforts were, of course, immediately blocked in the courts, but then Biden won and undid the entire effort.
2/ Trump’s new order:
📊 Launches a “highly accurate” modern census
🗳️ Taps into 2024 election data
🚫 Excludes illegal aliens from the population countThe Left is already panicking—because this hits them where it hurts most: raw political power. pic.twitter.com/a5BsiMJ7cn
— Rod D. Martin (@RodDMartin) August 7, 2025
This time, Trump has allies in a concerted effort to exclude illegal aliens from the count that determines representation, who are prohibited from voting for the representatives who legislate.
Missouri filed a lawsuit against the Census Bureau today in the first step of Round One.
United States citizens have a right to representation, NOT illegal aliens. United States citizens should decide electoral votes and congressional seats, NOT illegal aliens.
We are suing @uscensusbureau for unconstitutionally allowing illegal aliens to commandeer the path to The… pic.twitter.com/UzU4UIF74V
— Attorney General Catherine L. Hanaway (@AGCHanaway) January 30, 2026
In fact, Missouri is suing to have the 2020 census recalibrated without its ‘undocumented’ additions.
WOWSAHS
Missouri filed a sweeping federal lawsuit on Friday arguing the Census Bureau’s practice of counting illegal immigrants and visa holders is unconstitutional because it dilutes U.S. citizens’ votes and bolsters blue states’ representation in Congress.
The lawsuit, led by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, alleges that Missouri was robbed of one congressional seat after the 2020 census because the apportionment process, conducted every ten years, involves counting certain foreigners living in the United States.
Missouri lawyers made an ambitious demand that the Census Bureau redo its population count from 2020 and exclude illegal immigrants and visa holders, and then recalculate how many seats each state should have in the House.
The demand comes ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, as President Donald Trump is staring down the possibility of Democrats regaining House control.
The policy “steals federal representation from Missourians, and transfers it to States who artificially inflate their population by harboring illegal aliens,” Missouri lawyers wrote in the complaint, filed in federal court.
The impact of illegal bodies on the balance of power in Washington is gobsmacking.
…A GOP-founded research group called the American Redistricting Project compiled maps based on recent Census data that showed red states would gain more seats in 2030 if only U.S. citizens were included in the population count.
White House deputy chief of staff James Blair raised alarm on social media this week about the group’s maps, highlighting how they showed that red states would significantly benefit if the population count included only U.S. citizens.
“Translation: not counting illegals in the census for purposes of apportionment (E.g., doing it the Constitutional way) moves a net 22 House Seats & Electoral Votes from Blue States to Red States,” Blair wrote.
Missouri’s lawsuit alleged that the estimated millions of immigrants living in the country illegally are concentrated in blue states, making their populations appear bigger in the U.S. Census and allowing the states to gain more representation in Congress. Democrats have widely rejected excluding illegal immigrants from the population counts.
Folks knowledgeable in such matters say the Missouri case is well written and well reasoned.
This complaint Missouri just brought against the federal government challenging the constitutionality of counting illegal aliens in the census marks at least the 2nd pending case on this matter.
It is hugely consequential.
Like so many horrible things, the plaintiffs point back… pic.twitter.com/YWmjSq8ZlH
— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) January 30, 2026
…Like so many horrible things, the plaintiffs point back to the Carter administration for how we ended up in a place where House seats are apportioned, electoral college votes are divvied up, and legislative districts broadly are drawn to effectively represent millions of people who should not be in our country
Real Clear Investigations has a good background piece on the Census and the fight over removing illegals.
…The plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration contended that the 14th Amendment’s “persons” includes all residents irrespective of their immigration status; that the president lacked the discretion to deem otherwise; and that the process the administration had put in place to exclude illegal aliens was legally deficient. The president had issued a July 2019 directive in advance of his memo instructing the Census Bureau to collect citizenship data from various federal agencies, which would have been used to exclude illegal aliens from the apportionment count, raising additional legal questions.
Testifying opposite Eastman at the committee hearing, former Census Bureau directors warned that the president’s memo would spook potential respondents and suggested the memo would minimally create the appearance of politicizing the census.
Trump’s action reflected an “illegal desire of only counting citizens,” said Vincent Barabba, former Census Bureau director under the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. “[H]is real objective…is to make sure less people will be counted in states with large minority populations which did not support President Trump or the positions he has taken.”
When litigation over the Trump census policy reached the Supreme Court, it punted. In December 2020, the justices held by a 6-3 margin in Trump v. New York that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and that the case was not ripe for adjudication – with Justices Steven Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissenting.
I have to say I agree with the Missouri AG.
…”The framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment never intended an absurd system where 15 million illegal trespassers can hijack representation in the federal government and commandeer the path to the White House,” Hanaway said.
That’s totally supergreen.
And we was robbed.
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