Democrats and Republicans across the country are drawing battle lines over district lines, while President Donald Trump is planning to ensure that the U.S. House of Representatives represents Americans — not illegal immigrants.

In a Truth Social post Thursday morning, the president announced, “I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024.” He emphasized, “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”

Illegal immigration has become a subject of particular concern in the context of the apportioning of congressional seats in recent years, particularly as former President Joe Biden and his administration ushered over 10 million illegal immigrants into the U.S. While the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are just over 342 million people living in the U.S., the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated that, as of the beginning of 2025, there are nearly 20 million illegal immigrants currently living in the country.

The census, conducted every 10 years, determines the number and apportionment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, based on the population of each state. At present, the census does not distinguish between U.S. citizens, legal residents, and illegal immigrants. At the end of his first term, Trump moved to ensure that illegal immigrants were not counted in the 2020 census, but was halted in his efforts by a barrage of lawsuits.

Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, hailed the president’s announcement as “welcome news” in comments to The Washington Stand. “The Census Bureau admitted they committed serious errors in at least 14 states in the 2020 Census. As a result, Florida did not receive two additional congressional seats that it should have, Texas did not receive one additional seat it was due, etc.,” Ries observed. She continued, “Conversely, because congressional seats are capped at 435, this is a zero-sum game. Mostly blue states benefited from erroneous extra seats, including Colorado, Minnesota, and Rhode Island.”

“Those 2020 Census errors are in addition to wrongly counting non-citizens for congressional apportionment, which also determines presidential electoral college votes per state,” Ries noted. “Since only U.S. citizens can vote for U.S. Congress representatives and the president, only U.S. citizens should be counted in the Census for such apportionment purposes.” She added, “Beyond just illegal aliens being excluded from that count, temporary visa holders and lawful permanent residents should also be excluded because they cannot vote for those offices.”

The president’s census announcement comes as red states and blue states are going to war with each other over the redrawing of congressional district maps. As TWS previously examined in depth, Texas Republicans are attempting to revise heavily-gerrymandered district maps in the Lone Star State — a move which would yield Republicans five U.S. House seats — on the advice of the Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ). In an effort to thwart the Republicans, Democratic state legislators fled Texas, hiding out in blue states like Illinois and New York and subsequently denying the Texas legislature the quorum necessary to vote on the redistricting.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) authorized state law enforcement to track down the absent legislators and return them to the state, threatening to remove the legislators from office if they refused to return by Monday morning. Subsequently, Abbott filed a lawsuit with the Texas Supreme Court, seeking the removal of Texas Democratic Caucus chairman Gene Wu from office. “Representative Wu and the other Texas House Democrats have shown a willful refusal to return, and their absence for an indefinite period of time deprives the House of the quorum needed to meet and conduct business on behalf of Texans. Texas House Democrats abandoned their duty to Texans, and there must be consequences,” Abbott said in a statement. The Texas Supreme Court quickly demanded that Wu respond to Abbott’s charges by Friday evening.

Democrats across the country are making hay of the situation, with many blue state governors threatening to further gerrymander their own often-already-heavily-gerrymandered states in response to the Texas Republicans’ move. As TWS previously reported, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) threatened to redistrict the Golden State and strip Republicans of five House seats, essentially rendering GOP gains in Texas moot. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy (D) has also threatened to redistrict her state, although, unlike California, the Bay State currently has no Republican-held House seats. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) called on blue states like Maryland and Washington to redistrict, arguing that districting “can’t be fair in one state with total outrageous conduct in another to protect Donald Trump.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D), who has offered refuge to several of Texas’s derelict Democrats, also suggested redistricting the Empire State. In an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, she called the Lone Star State’s redistricting plans “legal insurrection” and accused Texas Republicans of “torching our democracy to cling to power.” Hochul wrote, “Up until now, Democrats have treated our political system like it’s still governed by norms, guarded by limits and rooted in fairness. Rules were meant to be followed. It hurts to say it, but that era has come to an end,” faulting Trump for the end of that era. “Republicans have declared war on the American people,” she added.

FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter observed in comments to TWS, “Recent congressional majorities, whether Republican or Democratic, have often rested on just a handful of districts and a few thousand votes spread out across the country.” He added, “In recent cycles, Republicans have had to build majorities by winning districts in blue states like California and New York, often by just a few hundred votes in a couple districts. Naturally, this fact puts enormous pressure on red states to consider how they have drawn their congressional maps.”

“Redistricting is an inherently partisan undertaking. When Republicans attempt to redo their maps, the media decries it as ‘unfair!’ and ‘a threat to democracy!’, but when a blue state gerrymanders their maps to eliminate Republican seats, they are silent,” Carpenter pointed out. He continued, “Or, whenever Democrats are in power, they immediately start prepping the public for making D.C. and Puerto Rico states — and the media plays along. Obviously, adding new states to the electoral college is far more disruptive to our national political life than is Texas drawing new districts.” Carpenter went on, “And yet, Democrats have taken to extreme measures to prevent Texas from doing this in a futile attempt to deny Governor Abbott a quorum for a special session to enact new maps. Now, they are posturing for a full-on redistricting war, in which blue states respond to Texas redrawing their districts by going after the handful of Republican seats in their states.”

“Unfortunately for them,” Carpenter noted, “they are already far more gerrymandered than their Republican counterparts; the red states have far more to gain in a robust round of redistricting this summer than do Democrats.” The FRC Action director added that Republicans have “even more” to gain “if, or when, the federal government kicks off another census that only counts American citizens, limiting the reach of Democrats even further, and imperiling the party’s chances of being relevant at the national level for a generation.”