Trump official tells census workers Congress has final say over the count, not Trump

Source: NPR

Updated August 12, 2025 10:56 PM ET


Less than a week after President Trump said he has ordered a "new" census, the cabinet official who oversees the Census Bureau acknowledged Tuesday that Congress, not the president, has final say over the national head count that's used to reshape election maps and guide federal funding, NPR has exclusively learned.

Speaking at a town-hall event for the bureau's employees, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also suggested that when tallying the country's population, the census should differentiate people living in the U.S. without legal status from other residents, according to three Census Bureau employees, who asked NPR not to name them because they fear retaliation.

Lutnick said if a person has "broken into the country," they need to be counted in the census, but they should be counted as someone who has "broken into the country," the three employees confirmed to NPR. Lutnick's remarks come amid a Republican-led campaign to use census data to redraw congressional voting maps in Texas and other states ahead of next year's midterm election in an attempt to maintain GOP control of the House of Representatives.

Amid this rare mid-decade redistricting push, Trump, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and some GOP lawmakers in Congress have floated conducting a census before the next scheduled count in 2030 so that new results can be used to redistribute House seats among the states and redraw maps of congressional voting districts — all before the 2026 election.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/08/12/nx-s1-5500526/can-the-president-order-a-new-census-trump-congress