WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has instructed the Commerce Department to change the way the U.S. Census Bureau collects data, seeking to exclude immigrants who are in the United States illegally, he said last week.

The census' data collections will be based on "modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024," the Republican president said on his social media platform, an indication he might try to inject his politics into a head count that determines political power and how federal funding is distributed.

Trump stressed that as part of the changes people in "our Country illegally" will be excluded from census counts.

In Nevada, there were nearly 290,000 noncitizens and 2.7 million citizens, according to the 2020 census.

Excluding undocumented immigrants would have minimal impact on Nevada’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, said David Damore, a political science professor and executive director of Brookings Mountain West and the Lincy Institute. Nevada gained its fourth and newest congressional seat after the 2010 census.

“We are not positioned to get a new [House] seat and the likelihood of losing one is small given current [population] growth patterns,” Damore said in a statement.

He noted that Trump unsuccessfully tried to include a question on citizenship status in the 2020 Census and suggested this attempt was likely to be unsuccessful. Additionally, Damore noted, Trump’s presidential successor would have to carry out Trump’s plan.

Sondra Cosgrove, a College of Southern Nevada political science professor and executive director of civic engagement for the nonprofit Vote Nevada, agreed. She said the 14th Amendment clearly states “the whole number of persons in each state” shall be counted.

“[The amendment] does not say citizens, it does not say voters, it doesn't say men or women. It just says whole persons. And so the president is going to have the same problem if he tries to say to the Census Bureau, ‘Go out and only count people who are citizens,’” Cosgrove said in an interview.

What Cosgrove is worried about, however, is if Congress revokes or withholds funding from the Census Bureau to comply with Trump’s directives. That could be problematic right now as the bureau hires people and gears up for the 2030 census.

“Every state is basically going to be told we don't have enough money to accurately count the number of people in your state,” Cosgrove said in an interview. “So every state is probably going to have to then step up and backfill with enough money to make sure that the census happens.”

Cosgrove said that with other federal agency budget cuts, if Congress withholds funding for the census, Nevada will have to make difficult choices on which services the state can afford to provide.

If undocumented immigrants are not counted, the biggest impact to Nevada is how much federal aid the state gets, Damore said. Billions of dollars of federal aid are based on formulas that use census data to determine a state’s population.

Experts said it was unclear what exactly Trump was calling for, whether it was changes to the 2030 census or a mid-decade census. If it’s the latter, the question is whether it would be used for a mid-decade apportionment, which is the process of divvying up congressional seats among the states based on the population count.

A new census?

Any changes in the conduct of a national census, which is the biggest non-military undertaking by the federal government, would require alterations to the Census Act and approval from Congress, which has oversight, and there likely would be a fierce fight. While the Census Act permits a mid-decade census for things such as distributing federal funding, it can't be used for apportionment or redistricting and must be done in a year ending in 5, said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues.

"He cannot unilaterally order a new census. The census is governed by law, not to mention the Constitution," Lowenthal said. "Logistically, it's a half-baked idea."

It would be almost logistically impossible to carry out a mid-decade census in such a short period of time, New York Law School professor Jeffrey Wice said.

"This isn't something that you can do overnight," said Wice, a census and redistricting expert. "To get all the pieces put together, it would be such a tremendous challenge, if not impossible."

Trump's Truth Social post fits into an overall pattern in which he has tried to reshape basic measures of how U.S. society is faring to his liking, a process that ranges from monthly jobs figures to how congressional districts are drawn going into the 2026 midterm elections. But there could be legal challenges if he were to reshape the census, which also guides the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal funds to the states for roads, health care and other programs.

A census citizenship question

In a 2019 decision, the Supreme Court effectively blocked Trump from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The 14th Amendment says that "the whole number of persons in each state" should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states based on population.

The last time the census included a question about citizenship was in 1950, and the Census Bureau's own experts had predicted that millions of Hispanics and immigrants would go uncounted if the census asked everyone if he or she is an American citizen.

Changes to the census could also play into the efforts by Trump to urge several Republican-led states, including Texas, to redraw their congressional maps ahead of schedule in ways that would favor GOP candidates.

Redistricting efforts

Redistricting typically occurs once every 10 years following the census, as states adjust district boundaries based on population changes, often gaining or losing seats in the process.

Despite Texas having redrawn its maps just a few years ago, Trump is pressuring Republicans in the state to redistrict again, claiming they are "entitled" to five additional Republican seats. Texas Republicans have cited population growth as justification for redrawing the congressional map. The state currently has 38 House seats, 25 held by Republicans.

Trump's team is also engaged in similar redistricting discussions in other GOP-controlled states, including Missouri and Indiana.

Earlier this month, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, after standard revisions to the monthly jobs report showed that employers added 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported in May and June. The revisions suggested that hiring has severely weakened under Trump, undermining his claims of an economic boom.

The White House insists that the problem was the size of the revisions and that it wants accurate numbers. But outside experts disagreed with that assessment.

"Trump is basically destroying the federal statistical system," said Margo Anderson, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has written extensively on the history of the census. "He wants numbers that support his political accomplishments, such as he sees them."

After the citizenship question was stopped by the Supreme Court in 2019, Trump made another effort in 2020, announcing a plan to exclude people living in the country illegally from the apportionment figures.

After states, cities and organizations sued, lower courts ruled the plan was illegal. By the time the Supreme Court weighed in, Trump had lost his re-election bid. 

The justices sidestepped a decision on the legality of Trump's plan, throwing out the case on technical procedural grounds. The court said in an unsigned opinion that spoke only for the six-justice conservative majority that "we express no view on the merits of the constitutional and related statutory claims presented. We hold only that they are not suitable for adjudication at this time."

The three liberal justices dissented, saying the effort to exclude people in the country from the population for divvying up House seats is unlawful.

"I believe this Court should say so," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

Nevada Independent reporter Annie Vong contributed to this report, as did Associated Press writer Mark Sherman in Washington. Vong previously worked for Brookings Mountain West and The Lincy Institute as a student researcher from 2022 to 2024.