The Constitution says how House seats get divided among the states. You count "the whole number of persons in each State." Not voters. Not citizens. Persons.

On October 30, four days before the election, Mary Miller of Illinois led 44 House Republicans in a letter asking the Trump administration to stop doing that. They want the 2030 census to count only U.S. citizens when it hands out seats.

The people they want left out are not just people here illegally. The letter names them, among others: green card holders, refugees, people granted asylum, people on visas, and young people protected by DACA.

They want to go further than Trump

The letter is a reply to a plan the Trump administration put out in September. The Census Bureau proposed leaving out of the seat count anyone who is neither a citizen nor a green card holder. The Congressional Research Service noted that this could reach some people who are here legally.

So Trump's plan is already a break with how the count has worked. Even so, it keeps green card holders in. Miller's group says that isn't enough. "We recommend that apportionment count be limited to only U.S. citizens," they wrote.

A green card holder is a legal, permanent resident of this country. Under this letter, that person would count for nothing when seats are handed out.

The letter's reason is that people who are here temporarily or illegally "profess no allegiance to the United States." The same letter quotes the Constitution's command to count "the whole number of persons in each State." It then argues that the Commerce Secretary's power over the census "should include consideration of one's allegiance and permanency."

The word "allegiance" does not appear in that command. Two law professors told the Texas Tribune last year that leaving out all or some noncitizens would break the 14th Amendment, and they doubted courts would allow it.

Some of them signed a letter that could cost their own state seats

Texas and Florida are among the states that stand to lose. The Tribune named both, along with California, New Jersey and New York, as states with large noncitizen populations that could lose seats or gain fewer than they would have.

Pew ran the numbers in 2020 on a narrower idea: leaving out only people here illegally. It found California, Florida and Texas would each end up with one less seat than they otherwise would have been awarded. What Miller's letter asks for would leave out far more people than that. We found no current estimate for it.

Here are the Texans who signed anyway: Brian Babin, Michael Cloud, Brandon Gill, Chip Roy, Keith Self and Randy Weber. Here are the Floridians: Randy Fine, Mike Haridopolos, Anna Paulina Luna and Cory Mills.

Seats are not the only thing at stake. The National League of Cities warns that census data drives the formulas behind hundreds of billions of dollars a year in federal and state money, and that an undercount means fewer resources for everyone, not only the people who were missed.

They also want to stop asking about race

The second half of the letter is about what the census asks. The League's write-up says Trump's plan would also bar the census from asking about race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Race has been on the census since 1790.

The letter backs that and wants the same questions cut from the American Community Survey, the bureau's yearly survey. It calls their importance "fabricated" and says that dropping them "is a victory against these woke policies."

Those answers do real work. The Population Reference Bureau says race and ethnicity data are used to plan and fund government programs, measure gaps between groups and enforce civil rights laws. They also show who the census missed, like the Black and Hispanic children under 5 who were undercounted in 2020.

The bureau's plan leaves the American Community Survey alone. Take the questions off both, as this letter asks, and the government stops asking people directly.

Who signed

Forty of the 45 signers are candidates we track on this site. Along with Mary Miller and the Texans and Floridians named above (Roy and Mills are not among the 40), they are:

Stephanie Bice, Sheri Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Josh Brecheen, Tim Burchett, Ben Cline, Andrew Clyde, Eli Crane, Scott DesJarlais, Troy Downing, Russ Fulcher, Clay Fuller, Paul Gosar, Glenn Grothman, Harriet Hageman, Pat Harrigan, Andy Harris, Mark Harris, Diana Harshbarger, Clay Higgins, Brian Jack, Rich McCormick, Max Miller, John Moolenaar, Barry Moore, Riley Moore, Gary Palmer, Scott Perry, Michael Rulli, Marlin Stutzman and Matt Van Epps.

This is the same party that spent the year claiming hundreds of thousands of noncitizens were on the voter rolls, on numbers that didn't hold up. Now these members want to decide which people in your state count at all.

What the letter shows

Mary Miller and 44 House Republicans asked the Commerce Secretary to leave every noncitizen, including green card holders and refugees, out of the count that divides House seats, even though the Constitution says to count "the whole number of persons." That goes further than Trump's own plan, which keeps green card holders in. They also backed ending race and ethnicity questions on the census, and ten of the signers represent Texas and Florida, two states that could lose seats under the idea.

Sources

• Rep. Miller Leads 44 Members in Letter Calling for Citizenship-Only Census Count, office of Rep. Mary Miller