Trump officials propose sweeping changes to the census that would reshape voting maps

0:00The Trump administration is making a new push to reshape voting maps around the country. This time, there is a proposal for sweeping changes to the next census in 2030. This could also affect how trillion of federal dollars are distributed to communities for public services. And Pierre Azhanzi, Loewong, joins us now to break down the proposal. Hi, Hanzi. Hey, Scott. Before we get to the new plan, I feel like I've heard you have this conversation on all things considered before. This feels like deja vu. All right, this is not the first time a trouble administration has tried to change a census. And during that first Trump administration, they tried and failed and made changes to some major policies for the 2020 census. And here we are again. So Trump is back in office now, walk us through what the current Trump administration proposal is for the 2030 census. Well, there are two main proposals. One is about who should not be included in a specific set of census numbers used for redistributing political power in Congress and the electoral college. And the other proposal is about what kind of questions cannot be asked on the census

1:03form. Okay, so let's start with that first one about Congress and the electoral college. What should we know? These are called the census apportionment counts. And the 14th amendment has instructions for who should be included in those counts. And that's the quote, whole number of persons in each state. But the Trump administration is proposing to exclude certain non-US citizens, specifically non-citizens who do not have a green card. So I'm hearing that that would mean excluding people who are not in the country legally. Is that correct? That is correct as well as refugees, visa holders, a list goes on. And this would be an unprecedented change because since the first US census way back in 1790, no person living in the states has been excluded because of their immigration status. And there is some nuance in the Trump administration's proposal. It calls for excluding non-citizens without a green card, specifically from the apportionment counts. Remember those numbers for the congressional seats and like total college votes.

2:04But the administration is also saying non-citizens should still be counted in the general census numbers. And there are some population counts that are used to guide how federal funding is distributed for public services. So the idea is different ways of counting non-citizens, not counting some of them for apportionment, but counting all of them for federal funding. Hansi, you mentioned another proposed change to census questions. What's the administration proposing there? They're proposing to stop asking about people's race and ethnicity and to not allow questions about sexual orientation, which the US census has never asked about directly. Now race has been part of this country's census since the very first one. So removing it from the census would be another unprecedented change. And it would jeopardize future statistics that are used for anti-discrimination protections, research, policy making. There are a lot of implications here. It's worth flagging. This is just proposal. We know that the courts did rebuff the first Trump administration's changes to the 2020

3:06census. So what is your sense of what happens next now that this plan is being put forward? I'm expecting more lawsuits. And you know, for the 2030 count, the Census Bureau has to produce a report on the proposed question topics for Congress, which by the way, has a final authority or the census. And the other thing to keep in mind is in 2029. There is a short window for a new presidential administration to reverse any census changes the current Trump officials make. That is NPR's Hansi Lo Wang. Thank you so much. You're welcome, Scott.