The census makes politics. Representatives are allocated to states based on the count of the population, and states redistrict their maps accordingly. Thus, it’s perhaps not surprising that different partisan forces work behind the scenes to make census data in their own image. 

In advance of the 2030 Census, the Trump Administration has recently announced that it plans to drastically upend an esoteric set of rules known as the “residence rules.” These are the protocols that dictate who is counted where for the upcoming census. Although Congress is ultimately responsible for overseeing the census and determining the rules, it absconded with that responsibility decades ago. This has created a vulnerability that the Trump administration seeks to exploit. In changing the rules, the Trump administration is hoping to alter the political map. As TPM has reported, civil servants have been ordered to stay silent. 

Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census tells the story of what it took for dedicated bureaucrats to pull off the 2020 Census, despite a pandemic, natural disasters, financial constraints, and political interference. This book shows what it takes to make the census so that each and every one of us can fight to ensure that democracy’s data remain intact and legitimate. The ins and outs of who gets counted where might seem boring, but this is what makes the process so vulnerable to interference. When the public and our elected officials do not pay attention to details, technocratic moves become a form of policymaking by other means.

The state of Missouri early this year sued the Department of Commerce to force something that would have once been considered radical: That the federal government exclude certain immigrants from the population count when apportioning political power and distributing federal funds. 

Less than a year after the lawsuit was filed, however, the Census Bureau has proposed to do just that. 

On Tuesday, a judge granted Missouri’s request to dismiss the case.

A senior judge for the Eastern District of Missouri ordered the case dismissed without prejudice, meaning plaintiffs can renew their suit against the government, on Tuesday afternoon.

Missouri’s notice of dismissal came only after the Census Bureau published its controversial new rule which takes the first steps to exclude millions of immigrants from the census count by changing how the Bureau defines a person’s usual residence and by pitching a future immigration status question. But the rule is far from finalized. It must first undergo a 30-day public comment period which is sure to yield strong opposition to the rule, feedback which federal agencies have previously considered prior to finalizing a new policy. 

Nevertheless, it appears the unfinished Census Bureau rule has satisfied Missouri’s dubious legal argument that undocumented and other classifications of immigrants should not count toward a state’s population to be used for congressional apportionment or for the distribution of federal funds. The rule cites and incorporates legal arguments from Missouri’s suit.

In a statement provided to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office said it dismissed the case in light of the Census Bureau proposed rule.

“The proposed rule agrees with our understanding of the law and even cites our complaint,” Hanaway’s office told the publication in a statement. “Going forward, we will focus on assisting the Trump Administration defend what we anticipate will soon be a final rule. We will continue fighting to ensure citizens’ voices are never diluted in favor of illegal immigrant trespassers.”

In July and September, the Department of Commerce filed a motion to stay court proceedings in the case, suggesting its then-impending rule would address the plaintiff’s issues.

The Census Bureau’s latest moves represent an evolution of President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful first-term attempt to include a citizenship question on the census. Back then, the court found the administration lied about its reasons for wanting to include a citizenship question. The Trump administration maintained at that time that the question would be used to better enforce aspects of the Voting Rights Act.

This time, the mask is off. The Census Bureau in its new residence rule wrote that it found “merit in” legal argument that all immigrants except lawful permanent residents “should not be included in the apportionment count.” 

The rule would also dispense with recording race, ethnicity, and certain gender attributes. Race has been included on every census since 1790. 

Missouri filed its case in January to force the Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants and people with temporary visas from the census population count taken every 10 years. Including certain immigrants in that count, the suit argued, gave blue states with higher immigrant populations more seats in Congress and more Electoral College votes, and took away one congressional seat and an Electoral College vote Missouri would’ve otherwise received in 2020. The same harm, the suit alleged, would be perpetuated in 2030 unless the Census Bureau dramatically altered the way it counts U.S. residents by excluding a large swath of immigrants for the first time in history.

Missouri’s suit blames a 1980 policy by President Jimmy Carter which merely affirmed the historic practice of counting all residents of the country regardless of immigration status. The 1980 census sought to mitigate an undercount of these groups through intentional outreach, but not through the adjustment of any legal standard regarding the counting of all persons, as required by the 14th Amendment.

In moving to dismiss its suit even prior to the finalization of the Census Bureau’s embattled rule, attorneys for Missouri appear to expect that the rule will move forward in time for the 2030 Census.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to TPM requests for comment. The Commerce Department, Census Bureau, and White House also did not immediately respond to TPM requests for comment.

Leadership at the Census Bureau has ordered staff to halt all external events related to the 2030 Census amid the agency’s release of a controversial, unprecedented rule proposal aimed at excluding immigrants from the U.S. population count, according to a copy of an email obtained by TPM.

A New Republican Bill Brings Efforts to Meddle With Apportionment Into Focus

TPM has covered apportionment for years — in part, because right-wing activists are so intent on meddling with it, and in part because of the impact that meddling could have. As we’ve been reporting, the Census Bureau is currently attempting to exclude many categories of immigrants from the count used for apportionment, a violation of the 14th Amendment’s clear mandate that apportionment must count “the whole number of persons in each State.”

That, yes, is a set of phrases that might make the average reader’s eyes glaze over, but what it means is this: Republicans are trying to claim more power in Congress and the Electoral College by counting fewer people in blue states and regions. That power would shift to red states and regions. This plan violates the Constitution, though right-wing lawyers have mobilized a set of arguments they will use to argue before the Supreme Court that it does not. This is another power grab, albeit a wonkier and more statistics-focused one than such things as Stop the Steal. Unfortunately, the planning for this power grab within the executive branch involves terms and concepts that put most Americans to sleep.

Fortunately, President Trump’s allies in Congress are helping to make it all more explicit. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) this week introduced the “Make Apportionment Great Again (MAGA) Act.” It, too, would do what the Census Bureau is attempting to do: exclude categories of immigrants from apportionment. Clyde gave Fox News an exclusive heads up that his bill was coming. “‘MAGA Act’ could rip House seats from Dem states ahead of next presidential race,” Fox’s headline declared, perfectly accurately.

Super helpful in amplifying this drum we’ve been banging.

“While we wait for the Senate to finally take action on the SAVE America Act, we must also recognize that the ballot box is not the only way non-citizens can impact American elections,” Clyde said in a statement. “Counting all residents regardless of citizenship in the U.S. census allows non-citizens, including illegal aliens, to influence the makeup of congressional seats and the distribution of Electoral College votes.”

“Republicans have long warned that Democrats’ intentional illegal invasion and sanctuary policies are rooted in a desire to boost blue states’ power,” Clyde added, a nod to a version of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

To clear up something you might be wondering: non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections (and incidents of non-citizens voting are vanishingly rare). But, again, the Constitution explicitly states that the “whole number of people” in a state must be included in apportionment, which determines the number of seats each state gets in the House and, as a result, the number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College. Under the Constitution, members of Congress represent the people who live in their area, including immigrants — they do not, solely, represent their voters. Clyde’s bill distorts those constitutional realities.

It would mandate reapportionment ahead of the 2028 election.

Trump’s Fed Chair Goes Rogue

The Fed raised rates yesterday, despite Trump’s repeated demands that it lower them, attempts to exercise control over the Fed, and efforts to take U.S. trade policy hostage in order to force his preferred outcomes.

• “LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT… BE PATRIOTS for a change,” Trump had threatened the Fed earlier this month. He is also attempting to fire one of its board members, Lisa Cook.
• Nonetheless, the board, chaired by Trump-appointed Kevin Warsh, voted unanimously to raise rates one quarter of a percent.
• Warsh, who has reportedly spoken with Trump often, refused to comment on those calls in a press conference after the rate decision.
• Trump responded on Truth Social, invoking his threat to “stop trading,” sentiments he echoed almost exactly at a rally in the midterms swing state of North Carolina last night.

As the Census Bureau wades deeper into politics, governance changes at an agency committee that handles data privacy, scientific analysis and stewardship issues have opened the door for Trump administration interference, current and former agency staffers told TPM. Some of the most significant changes have put President Donald Trump’s political appointees in leadership roles on the historically nonpolitical committee, just as the Bureau has emerged as a hot-spot for right-wing-driven policymaking.

Denny Hoskins, Agent of Chaos

Readers of The Brief are likely aware of what’s going on with Missouri’s election maps, and of a character at the center of that drama, secretary of state Denny Hoskins.

As part of their overarching plan to reduce the power of blue states and promote myths about noncitizen voting, the Trump administration is pushing all types of changes to how the census operates. TPM reporter Layla Jones will talk to publisher Joe Ragazzo and executive editor John Light about what these schemes involve and what’s at stake.

Join them live at 2 p.m. ET on YouTube Live.

A Permission Structure for a Power Grab

As Allegra wrote over the weekend, this week stands to be a “uniquely cursed” one: We have the 25th anniversary of September 11. One day earlier, we have the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk being killed. And we have the Republican convention in Dallas — each an opportunity for various elements of the right-wing movement to work themselves into a lather about various perceived enemies, including Muslims, immigrants, and trans people. We are prepared for the media not to cover itself in glory as it handles these topics.

Against this backdrop, I wanted to zoom in on one particular, somewhat niche panic gripping the right, that TPM’s Layla A. Jones tried to unwind in great detail last week. Its a kind of nerd corollary to Trump’s claims about the 2020 election — that his victory was snatched from him by shadowy actors.

In the case of this similar reactionary conspiracy theory, the shadowy actors worked in the Census Bureau and supposedly stole not a presidency but several seats in Congress.

“The 2020 Census was a fraud,” Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) declared on X last year, one example of the claim. “The Biden admin used a shady ‘privacy’ formula that scrambled the data and miscounted 14 states. It included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats. Americans deserve a fair count and I’m fighting to fix it.”

Around the same time, an influential right-wing X account, @amuse, argued that a specific Census official “decided to use a secret algo to change the number of people living in each city and state in the name of privacy,” declaring that it “cost the GOP 9 sets and $60B.”

“Wow,” Elon Musk replied to the claim.

None of it, you will not be surprised to learn, is true. Former Census officials and researchers who work with Census data were adamant with Layla: this is not happening.

At the center of these claims is a technique used by statisticians who are dealing with large data sets to protect the privacy of individual respondents; it’s called differential privacy.

The technique, an online army and a handful of elected officials claim, messed with apportionment, the process through which officials determine, based on population, how many seats each state gets in Congress and in the Electoral College. The fact that differential privacy isn’t even used on the population numbers that underlie apportionment has not done much to dampen enthusiasm for this allegation. Other versions of the conspiracy theory allege differential privacy fuzzed up the data that underlies redistricting.

Trump administration Census officials banned the use of differential privacy earlier this year as they push to remake the Census, prompting an outcry among real data scientists.

I think part of what this conspiracy theory does, like so many others, is provide a kind of permission structure. If Democrats and their supposed aligned deep state bureaucrats weaponized the Census to accrue undeserved political power, Republicans can be excused for doing the same. And, through efforts to exclude immigrants from apportionment, to add a citizenship question to the Census, and to cease collecting the racial demographic information used to challenge discriminatory voting maps in court, that’s exactly what they are doing.

Party That Downplays the Holocaust Wins in Germany

The Trump administration’s German allies won big over the weekend. In a Saxony-Anhalt, west of Berlin, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s candidate, fragrance salesman Ulrich Siegmund, won a resounding victory at the state level.

• Its the party’s second state-level win since 2024, though it has never managed to form a governing coalition. This time it might. Most other German political parties refuse to work with it. It remains to be seen if that “firewall” will continue to hold.
• AfD stands out among far-right parties in Europe, of course, because of Germany’s history — and the party’s insistence on downplaying that history. German intelligence has classified the Saxony-Anhalt chapter of the party as “extremist.”
• Trump celebrated the results, posting on Truth Social a German graphic showing the election outcome without commentary (amid a spree of AI slop images, including several of maps with New Mexico re-labeled as “New America.”)
• The Trump administration has shown considerable support for AfD, with JD Vance endorsing many of its grievances during a speech in Europe in the administration’s early days and meeting with its leader, Alice Weidel, during that same trip.
• The Trump administration has also adopted AfD’s policies, most prominently the term “remigration,” which describes expelling immigrants.
• Two other German states are set to hold elections later this month, on Sept. 20.

Tabs

The Department of Justice has again gone to the Supreme Court to ask it to allow it to enact its Postal Service rule for mail-in ballots, which is currently enjoined by lower courts. Plaintiffs’ replies to that request are due tomorrow, after which point the Court may take action.

The Trump administration has removed a sign at Arlington Cemetery that critiqued a Confederate Statue that was removed in 2023, the Washington Post reports. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said the statue will soon be reinstalled.

Hunter Biden, amid a sometimes bizarre public reemergence that included an interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, has now launched a memecoin, $LAPTOP, that references the outsized attention paid to his laptop.

Man of the Hour

It’s Corey Lewandowski, who, according to a new investigation in the Wall Street Journal, approached officials in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, offering them side deals to exert influence, while he was effectively running DHS.