Howard Lootnick, who is now overseeing the Statistics Office as Minister of Commerce, is behind President Trump at the White House in Washington, DC in February before confirming the Cabinet Trump.
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Less than a week after President Trump said he ordered a “new” issuance, the cabinet official who supervises the Statistics Office, which admitted on Tuesday that the Congress, not the president, The final statement of the number of national head This is used to reshape election maps and direct federal financing, and I learned exclusively NPR.
Speaking at an event in the city hall of the office employees, the Minister of Commerce, Howard Lottenic, also suggested that when the population of the country determines, the statistics must distinguish people who live in the United States without legal status from other residents, according to employees of the Three Statistical Office, who asked NPR their name because they fear revenge.
Lootnick said if the person “stormed the country”, they should be calculated in the statistics, but they should be considered a person who “stormed the country”, and the three employees assured NPR.
Lutnick’s comments are amid a campaign led by Republicans to use census data to re -draw voting maps in Congress in Texas and other countries before the mid -term elections next year in an attempt to maintain the Republican Party’s control of the House of Representatives.
Amid the batch of re -dividing the rare circuits in the middle of the contract, Trump, the governor of Florida Republican Ron Desantis Some lawmakers of the Republican Party of Congress have offered a census before the scheduled number scheduled for 2030 so that new results can be used to redistribute the seats of the House of Representatives between the states and re -draw the maps of the voting areas in Congress – all of this before the election of 2026.
Lootnick admitted the legal obstacles facing any census before 2030
Looking at the short schedule, statistics experts rejected the idea of 2025 or 2026 census as practically impossible. It usually takes the office More than a decade of time to prepare The counting and planning for the next 2030 census began six years ago.
Lutnick’s comments on Tuesday determined the first known recognition of the Trump Administration’s High Administration for possible legal obstacles facing any attempt to implement the president’s call.
Notes also seem to refer to social media publications on August 7 from Trump, and call for the first time to count the United States in the country’s history, to exclude people without legal status.
the Fourteenth modification The “full number of people in every state” account requires the statistics division numbers for the year 2030, which is appointed to determine the share of each new state of the home seats and the votes of the electoral college.
It was witnessed by Congress, Lutnick faced questions from legislators about his position about who should be considered in the census. During it Senate confirmation session In February, Lootnick Democratic Senator Brian Shatz told Hawaii: “Since the first sentence of the fourteenth amendment of that item, it says we will count everyone all, and I promise that we will count every person.
The demonstrators gathered outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, in 2019, to protest the first Trump administration to add an American sexual issue to the 2020 census models.
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but Request in June Written by Republican del Strong of Alabama about his ideas about “consistency from one country to another not to allow non -American citizens to calculate” in the census, Lootnick said: “The consistency is logical.”
Some Republicans are still paying for the census before 2026
Article 1 of Constitution Congress gives the authority to implement a national balance “in some way that must be under direct law.” in Address 13 of the United States iconCongress, the Minister of Commerce, ordered that the schedule of the census once after the decade. This federal law also allows to count the middle of the contract in 2025, but it cannot be used to redistribute home seats and a legal deadline to prepare for such a number has already been done.
However, Trump said in the social media post that he ordered the Ministry of Commerce to “start work immediately” in a “new” statistics that exclude people who live in the states without legal status. Trump did not explain whether his post indicates the 2030 or earlier.
Hours after the Trump census invitation, the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement that the Statistics Office “will immediately depend on modern technology tools for use in the census to understand our strong census data better” and “accurately analyze data to reflect the number of legal population in the United States.”
The administration responded to the same statement when NPR was asked on Tuesday if Lottennik had informed the White House on the authority of Congress on the statistics and whether the Minister of Commerce was planning to propose to add a census question about the person’s migration, which the office has not yet tested.
Journalistic offices of the Statistical Office, which is part of the Trade Department, and the White House did not immediately respond to NPR inquiries.
Trump has Public supported A proposal from Republican Representative Margori Taylor Green from Georgia to change the current federal law, allow a new counting and redistribute the seats of the House of Representatives, and a new round of re -division of Congress before the mid -term elections 2026.
Green bill It also calls for excluding not only people who do not have a legal status, but all people who live in the United States without an American citizen, such as green card holders, from what requires the fourteenth amendment to be “the full number of people in each state.”
Last week, Republican Representative Randy Fine from Florida, A similar proposal. Together, in each of the bills is currently less than a handful of sponsors and attached to the committee.
On Monday, another Florida Republican official formed the census with a Message to Lootnick Referring to Trump’s “last census” by social media.
Florida State Prosecutor James Othiar – a former Trump administration official who helped reach a failed plan to exclude persons without legal status of the 2020 census distribution numbers – proposed.
Uthmeier suggested that countries get new shares from home seats before the mid -term elections, based on a “return” statistics in the areas Tryns in federal financing for public services In societies with these wrong estimates. the Office researchers and International Energy Agency Fears about the ability to use these estimates.
“We grew up by President Trump’s leadership,” Othiar wrote, and we look forward to listening to you and working together to solve these issues. “
Edit Megan Bratz