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Trump administration proposes dropping huge swath of immigrants from US census
The plan would also drop race, ethnicity and sexual orientation questions, a change officials say could reduce response burden and improve accuracy.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration proposed 2030 census changes to exclude non-U.S. citizens without green cards from apportionment counts and remove race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation questions from future 10-yearly census forms.
These revisions follow the Trump administration's failed 2020 efforts to add a citizenship question and exclude undocumented residents; the Supreme Court blocked that attempt as a 'contrived' rationale.
Critics warn the proposal challenges the 14th Amendment's requirement to count the 'whole number of persons in each state,' and changes would affect Electoral College votes, potentially shifting political power between regions.
Meeta Anand, senior director of the census and data equity program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said census data 'undergirds so much of our democracy and our society,' as the proposal enters a 30-day public comment period.
The Heritage Foundation's 'Project 2025' agenda previously urged officials to 'thoroughly review any changes' to census data; while the Census Bureau claims demographic information remains collectable through other surveys, opponents fear this restructuring will undermine anti-discrimination protections.