The U.S. Constitution begins with three powerful words: “We the People.” History immediately asks: Which people?
When those words were written, “we” did not include enslaved people, Indigenous people, women or many White men without property. Enslaved Black people were counted as three-fifths of a person for representation, although they had no representatives of their own. From the beginning, counting people has been about power.
Now the Trump administration is considering sweeping changes to the 2030 census. Its proposal could exclude undocumented immigrants and some people who are legally present—including refugees, asylum seekers and students—from population totals used to divide seats in the House of Representatives. The administration is also reconsidering questions about race and ethnicity, according to a recent Reuters report.
The census is not clerical housekeeping. It is a ledger of power. Numbers become congressional seats. Numbers become federal dollars. Numbers become schools, hospitals and highways. Change the numbers, and you change who gets what.
The administration says people without sufficient legal ties or allegiance to the United States should not be included in apportionment totals. Critics contend that this approach conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment. Its language says representatives must be apportioned according to the “whole number of persons in each state.”
Not citizens. Not permanent residents. Persons.
Excluding millions of residents could produce a census that does not reflect the population living here. It could also shift House seats and Electoral College votes away from states with large immigrant populations. Those states would not have fewer residents. They would have fewer residents counted for representation.
Census Bureau data help guide trillions of dollars in federal spending. The numbers inform decisions involving health care, housing, education, transportation, nutrition and emergency services. In fiscal year 2021, at least 353 federal programs used census-related data in distributing more than $2.8 trillion. The Census Bureau explains how its data inform federal funding.
The census is economic infrastructure. An inaccurate count can mean crowded classrooms, burdened clinics and inadequate transportation. Governments cannot plan intelligently for people who disappear from the data.
The possible elimination of questions about race and ethnicity raises another issue. Race is a social construct, not a biological fact. Yet racial data are used to identify disparities and enforce civil-rights protections. Race may be constructed, but racial inequality can be measured.
Without those data, how do we document disparities in employment, housing, lending and education? How do we identify differences in maternal mortality, unemployment, income and wealth? How do courts evaluate claims involving racially polarized voting? How do communities determine whether public investment is reaching them?
Eliminating racial categories would not eliminate racial disparities. It would make those disparities harder to measure. If the racial wealth gap is not measured, officials cannot track whether it is widening or narrowing. If Black women’s employment losses are not reported separately, their experiences disappear inside national averages. If racially polarized voting is not documented, certain forms of discrimination become harder to establish in court.
What does this have to do with the 2026 midterms? The November election will not use the 2030 census. But the Congress elected this year will appropriate money for the Census Bureau, conduct oversight, hold hearings and consider legislation affecting the count. The midterm connection is not rhetorical. It is institutional.
The question remains as old as the Constitution itself: Who are “We the People”?
Before America can answer, it must decide who will be counted.
Julianne Malveaux is a Washington, DC-based economist and author.