How much impact will Trump have on the Census?

[Very Legal & Very Cool]

How much impact will Trump have on the 2020 census and how will it effect states like California, Arizona, and Nevada?

[Strudelcutie4427]

Hopefully Cali can’t count illegal aliens and loses a few seats

[Lachi]

The president has power over the census???

[Oryxslayer]

Right now, the census is funded and can use available technology to the best of its ability. Therefore, there are two scenarios, one incredibly unlikely and the other almost guaranteed. The unlikely one is that Pubs get their long desired reform to make citizens count for reapportionment as singletx says, but this requires so much to get past a close or blue house that it's almost impossibe to imagine. The more likely scenario is Trump keeps his migrant question, and maybe adds more. In such a scenario, the census gets lower Hispanic response rates. Census technology prevents this from having too much of an affect, but it means that TX only gets 2 CDs rather than 3, that third belongs to MT. Which ironically benefits the Dems.

[Very Legal & Very Cool]

The president has power over the census???

Census is ran by the Department of Commerce which is under the executive's purview. Trump has proposed adding new questions that, when combined with his inflammatory rhetoric, are likely to underrepresent Latino residents.

[Gass3268]

Hopefully Cali can’t count illegal aliens and loses a few seats

"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,..."

That means everyone, not just citizens.

[muon2]

There's precedent for states overcoming anti-immigrant rhetoric on a Census with a citizenship question. In 1990 CA suffered a significant undercount and in 1994 passed Prop 187 which denied services to undocumented immigrants. Both the 1990 and 2000 Census had a citizenship question given to 1/6 of all households. CA did a major investment in Census education and despite the lingering effects of Prop 187 drove up the response rate among minorities (including immigrants) in 2000 compared to 1990.

So the impact of the rhetoric and citizenship question can be mitigated, but it will cost those states money to do so.