The Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to ask the forbidden "citizenship question" on the 2030 Census. The question seems mundane enough. At one point in the census question now being field-tested in Alabama and South Carolina, the respondent is asked, "Is this person a citizen of the United States?"
There are five possible answers:
- Yes, born in the United States.
- Yes, born in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Northern Marianas.
- Yes, born abroad to U.S. citizen parent (s).
- Yes, U.S. citizen by naturalization — print year of naturalization.
- No, not a U. S. citizen.
🚨The Trump administration intends to ask a citizenship question on the 2026 census test in advance of the 2030 census🚨 pic.twitter.com/MVE7DIrl4V
— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) February 5, 2026
If you recall, the Trump administration attempted to place the "citizenship question" in the 2020 Census. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, with a four-justice liberal minority joined by Chief Justice John Roberts ruling that the reasoning was pretextual and designed to discriminate against Hispanics. How? No one knows. In the end, the administration was faced with an impossible task of doing again what they hadn't taken the time to do properly in the first place (this is a recurring theme in Trump 1.0) and abandoned the task: see Trump Administration Folds on the Issue of Counting US Citizens In the 2020 Census – RedState.
The argument against the "citizenship question" is facially ridiculous. The question was asked consistently from 1890 until 2000. The question the Supreme Court didn't address in 2019 was, "Why is a question that has been asked for about half the life of the census suddenly improper?" But that would have gone against the OrangeManBad narrative.
Everyone knows the real purpose of not asking the question. It is to bloat the number of legal residents and citizens in Democrat strongholds to protect the voting power of those areas. The clear intent of the census, as described in Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, is apportioning representatives because it appears in the section devoted to apportionment:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
The narrative pushed by the "Brennan Center for Justice," lololol, is that the "citizenship question" depresses census response by everyone. Again, facially bull... I mean nonsense, I can't use that word in RedState articles. To believe that the question "depresses" response by illegals, you have to believe that someone who has opened the envelope containing the questionnaire and is a) in the U.S. illegally, b) working using fake documents, and c) receiving federal benefits would balk at lying on a form. I mean, their honor and integrity just wouldn't stand for it, amirite?
You'll note that it counts legal residents while excluding Indians who were passing through the area. The three-fifths controversy that the DEI warriors like to drag out was a compromise between Southern slave owners who wanted to count slaves as residents and the North, which did not want to get swamped by the votes of a captive, servile population: sort of the same reasoning as today.
I personally think that there is a very strong argument that counting illegals for any purpose, other than deciding where ICE goes next, presents an insurmountable Fourteenth Amendment violation. If illegals are counted for apportionment, then the value of the votes of citizens is degraded. If federal funding is based on population, then jurisdictions with large illegal populations deprive citizens of a fair share.
I also think the quickest way to get Third World crap holes, like Minneapolis, to comply with immigration law and ditch the "sanctuary city" slop is to refuse to give them federal money for their massive illegal population. With no federal money coming in, you can bet the illegals are going to find the "sanctuary" light off.
This time around, the Trump administration seems to have done its homework and negotiated the bureaucratic hurdles of the Administrative Procedures Act. I'm sure there will be court challenges, but if there is a Republican administration in office to defend the "citizenship question," I think it will survive.
What happens next is a genocide of the electoral votes apportioned to heavily Democrat states. When combined with out-migration, immigration enforcement, stripping illegals from the number used for apportionment, cleaning up voter rolls, and regulating mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting, the 2028 presidential election could be the high-water mark for the Democrat party for generations...until they come up with a new grift to steal votes and manufacture voters.
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