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With No Final Say, Trump Wants To Change Who Counts For Dividing Up Congress' Seats:
President Trump released a memorandum Tuesday that calls for an unprecedented change to the constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the country — the exclusion of unauthorized immigrants from the numbers used to divide up seats in Congress among the states.
The memo instructs Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Commerce Department, to include in the legally required report of census results to the president "information permitting the President, to the extent practicable" to leave out the number of immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization from the apportionment count.
But the move by the president, who does not have final authority over the census, is more likely to spur legal challenges and political spectacle in the last months before this year's presidential election than a transformation of the once-a-decade head count, which has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
[...] Since the first U.S. census in 1790, both U.S. citizens and noncitizens — regardless of immigration status — have been included in the country's official population counts.
The fifth sentence of the Constitution specifies that "persons" residing in the states should be counted every 10 years to determine each state's share of seats in the House of Representatives. The 14th Amendment, which ended the counting of an enslaved person as "three fifths" of a free person, goes further to require the counting of the "whole number of persons in each state."
It is Congress — not the president — that Article 1, Section 2 of the country's founding document empowers to carry out the "actual enumeration" of the country's population in "such manner as they shall by law direct."
In Title 2 of the U.S. Code, Congress detailed its instructions for the president to report to lawmakers the tally of the "whole number of persons" living in each state for the reapportionment of House seats. In Title 13, Congress established additional key dates for the "tabulation of total population."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @12:50PM (8 children)
The President's guidance is a check on those states who want their political power to grow by their policies of encouraging illegal immigration to increase their population and thus their number of votes in Congress. Democrats, it's how they roll.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:23PM (2 children)
Plus access to all sorts of Federal funding that is based on population. Population that is a result of deliberately flouting the basic law of the land. That's OK though. Their kids will be born in the USA and therefore totally legal and grateful to the Democrats. Replace Americans with an imported voter base.
(Score: 5, Touché) by helel on Friday July 24 2020, @02:18PM
Wait, is that why "red states" get so much more in federal funding than they put in?!? Damn, Democrat majority states really need to consider becoming sanctuary states so they can get a fair share of their tax dollars back!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:54PM
Fortunately for you it is still legal to have your head up your ass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @01:55PM
Classic dogwhistle; how's that wall coming along? Why would anyone illegally in the country allow themselves to be counted on a census, knowing they could be deported at any time by a different government agency?
Plenty of non-citizens in a country, legally, at any time, from ivy league foreign students to seasonal workers to musicians to Hollywood actors to silicon valley H1Bs.
Are you saying Republican states aren't capable of attracting immigrant workers to grow their economies? Why doesn't the president create opportunities that attract international talent; he could open a college and call it, say, Trump University.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:29PM (2 children)
Fucking neo nazi scum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @02:42PM (1 child)
Suck it Bolshevik cock sucker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2020, @08:16PM
Don't threaten me with a good time!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2020, @06:31PM
Right on, Bro! Even as we speak, North Dakota is encouraging South Dakotans to move into their state, to increase their Federal power! It is an insidious and subversive plot! Illegal Dakotans! I say, no Dakotans should be counted as person for the US Census!!!