The Trump Administration Is Turning the U.S. Census on Its Head

The 2030 U.S. census is poised to look very different than the one released in 2020. It’s not necessarily because the country’s demographics are radically changing — but because the Trump administration is radically changing who it wants to count and how it’s counting them.

President Donald Trump has renewed his calls for the U.S. Census Bureau to not count undocumented residents — a demand that remains legally tenuous. And last month, the administration announced changes to field testing, reducing the locations it will run test surveys and only offering those surveys in English.

Researchers told NOTUS these changes could cause large inconsistencies in how certain populations are measured come 2030 and ultimately skew how taxpayer dollars are doled out.

“Census data [is] so foundational, and we rely on those data not just in the first year or two after the census, but rather, for an entire decade,” Mark Mather, the associate vice president of U.S. programs at the Population Reference Bureau, told NOTUS. “There’s trillions of dollars allocated based on those, so we need a good count for all sorts of reasons, and this current plan did not look good to us.”

The communities most at risk of losing access to government resources include those that have historically been undercounted: Native Americans, immigrants and “complex” households, which include college students and multigenerational families.

“In previous censuses, there’s been a net undercount with those groups, and what that means is that if you don’t have a good count of where people are, then you don’t know what resources are needed to serve them,” Mather said.

In 2024, the Biden administration announced six field sites for 2026 testing. The initial list included tribal lands in Arizona and Western North Carolina, urban areas in Colorado and predominantly rural counties in West Texas. At the time, the bureau said the federal government chose the range of sites to ensure that it could accurately count Americans in places with limited internet service, rural areas and places with dense multiunit housing, among other factors.

The Trump administration cut those field sites down to just two: Huntsville, Alabama, and Spartanburg, South Carolina. Both sites are in red states and in areas Trump won overwhelmingly in 2024.

The announcement came several months after Trump said the Department of Commerce — which houses the Census Bureau — should rewrite the census “using the results and information gained from” the 2024 election.

Census counts underpin the redistricting process that decides each state’s representation in Congress. Experts say that surveys that accurately count residents in red states while potentially undercounting residents in other regions could lead to district lines that disproportionately benefit right-leaning voters.

It’s “fair to suggest that this is politically motivated,” said Beth Jarosz, the vice president of the Association of Public Data Users. “There are attacks coming from a lot of different directions to try and affect the count in a way that benefits a certain political party.”

The Department of Commerce did not respond to questions from NOTUS about whether it is reviewing or rewriting any parts of the 2030 census. The Census Bureau also declined to comment on the record when reached by NOTUS.

The administration said last year that it is considering undoing Biden-era changes to the race and ethnicity questions that were meant to ensure recognition of Middle Eastern and North African respondents.

The Office of Management and Budget, which is overseeing the review of the Biden-era race and ethnicity questions, did not respond to a request for comment about whether the administration plans to move forward with any changes.

Researchers have identified more than 300 federal government programs that rely at least partly on census data in deciding how to distribute money across the country and where and how to structure certain programs.

“An accurate, complete count is really crucial for county governments and our residents,” said Eryn Hurley, the chief government affairs officer at the National Association of Counties, adding that census-based federal funding “spans everything from health care, economic development, infrastructure, education and other critical local services.”

The association joined several other groups in criticizing the changes to this year’s field testing process. Jeffrey Thorsby, a legislative director at the organization, said gaps in census data could leave counties and other regional and local governments in the dark.

Federal funding based on census numbers comprises everything from Medicare to grants for school and road improvements to funds for rural broadband access.

The changes to the census won’t lead to the only loss of federal data that normally drives policymaking. NOTUS reported last month on how dozens of incomplete or discontinued datasets have left gaps in solutions to food insecurity, maternal mortality, infrastructure funding and more.

The Census Bureau is also focusing on atypical issues in the field testing process this year, prompting further concerns about whether it will have the tools to accurately count hard-to-reach populations in 2030.

The bureau’s statement about the two testing sites included a note that it would conduct “limited activities” related to counting residents, and instead focus its field-testing efforts on ”evaluating the use of the U.S. Postal Service in various capacities typically performed by Census Bureau field workers.”

Trump has previously proposed absorbing the United States Postal Service into the Commerce Department, and the administration has pushed for postal workers to be involved in census counting since early 2025.

But that could pose legal, privacy and logistical hiccups, Mather told NOTUS, because collecting and conducting surveys is “way out of scope with what they’re trained to do.”

Jarosz added that the temporary Census Bureau staff employed to count Americans every 10 years is trained with specific guidelines that postal workers may not be able to replicate.

The administration’s push for USPS involvement comes amid large staffing losses at the Census Bureau. The agency has lost 15 to 20% of its staff since the beginning of last year due to the Trump administration’s workforce reduction efforts, as NOTUS reported last month.

Some of Trump’s other proposals, such as not counting undocumented residents, would likely invite legal changes. The Supreme Court previously punted on a case about that issue. Last year, the president once again pushed for the 2030 census to exclude undocumented immigrants, likely teeing up another legal fight if the Commerce Department follows through.

States with the highest shares of undocumented immigrants could see massive federal funding cuts if the census leaves out those immigrants. Counting undocumented people also helps provide a fuller picture of the country’s population, experts have said, and there’s little proof that doing so unfairly skews representation in Congress.

“There are constitutional reasons why every person should be counted,” Jarosz told NOTUS.