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Under Trump’s Project 2025 nothing is safe from politicization — not even the census

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2 years ago

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Under Trump’s Project 2025 nothing is safe from politicization — not even the census

By Ali Velshi

This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 21 episode of “Velshi.”

It’s difficult to keep track of all the scandals and legal fights that mired Donald Trump’s presidency. But one of his long legal battles that has been all but forgotten is his attempt to overhaul the Census Bureau and his desire to add a citizenship question to the census.

Less than a year into Trump’s presidency, he announced that the census would include a question asking whether you are a U.S. citizen. Immediately, lawsuits followed. The Supreme Court weighed in, eventually rejecting the effort to add the question.

Adding a question about legal status or citizenship to the census might not seem like a big deal, but it would have significant consequences.

Already, alarm bells should be going off.

The census, according to our laws, is supposed to count everypersonin this country, not every homeowner, voter or citizen. As directed by the Constitution, the data from the census helps to determine how congressional seats are allocated, how congressional district maps are drawn and how federal resources are distributed.

Although Trump’s attempt to include the citizenship question on the 2020 census ultimately failed, the effort to overhaul the Census Bureau is far from over.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the next conservative administration, has laid out detailed plans to exert strong political influence over the Census Bureau.

The section on the Census Bureau begins by stating, “Strong political leadership is needed to increase efficiency and align the Census Bureau’s mission with conservative principles.”

Already, alarm bells should be going off. The Census Bureau is a statistical agency and Project 2025’s chief recommendation, spelled out in plain English, is to appoint a politically motivated head to carry out conservative goals.

Among Project 2025’s other recommendations for the Census Bureau is that “Any successful conservative Administration must include a citizenship question in the census.” Again, the census is not supposed to count citizens. It is supposed to count everyone who lives here, so we as a nation can get an accurate picture of who we are.

According to testing, including this question in the census will deter people from answering. Immigrants might be scared of getting deported, which is a valid fear. Many immigrant families and advocates worry a citizenship question would be used for immigration enforcement, as Trump has promised the largest deportation operation in our history if he’s elected.

So, if people aren’t answering that question, or not filling out the census at all, we will have an inaccurate count and representation of our population.

Project 2025 also recommends the next administration, “Review forthcoming changes to race and ethnicity questions:”

A new conservative administration should take control of this process and thoroughly review any changes … There are concerns among conservatives that the data under Biden administration proposals could be skewed to bolster progressive political agendas.

The Biden administration proposed changes to the 2030 census to include more race and ethnicity options, so people feel accurately represented. For instance, the census used to include Middle Eastern, North African and some other identities under the “white” categorization, which they found led some populations to leave that question blank altogether.

Project 2025 goes on to recommend:

A new administration should work to actively engage with conservative groups and voices to promote response to the decennial census. Promoting response to the decennial census will ensure that the most accurate counts are conducted, leading to a more accurate apportionment of congressional representation and allocation of federal funds.

Here the document suggests using federal funds to engage with conservative populations specifically to ensure every conservative voice is represented on the census. Meanwhile, Project 2025 completely disregards historically undercounted groups like Native Americans, immigrants and low-income communities.

Without a focus on the communities that are routinely undercounted, the voting power of those districts, as well as federal funding allocated based on total populationwould be impacted even further. Communities could receive less funding for schoolsfor hospitalsand for public infrastructure like roads and bridges.

The census is not supposed to be a political tool. It’s supposed to be unbiased, apolitical, objective data. It’s supposed to be a trustworthy dataset by which we get an accurate read of what our country looks like. But Trump and Project 2025 have a clear agenda to skew that data.

The census is not supposed to be a political tool.

Beyond the injustice of depriving people of fair representation, and of fair funding for schools and roads, Project 2025’s plan for the census bureau is an attack on data and statistics. It’s another overt attempt by Trump and Republicans to manipulate systems that are supposed to be unbiased and trustworthy.

This post is part of “Inside Project 2025,” an ongoing series on BLN’s “Velshi.” Each week, host Ali Velshi explores some of the most outrageous proposals from the Heritage Foundation’s playbook for a second Trump presidency and explains how they could impact you. Read how Project 2025 would affect the gun crisis, presidential power and your family.

Ali Velshi

Ali Velshi is the host of “Velshi,” which airs Saturdays and Sundays on BLN. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award for Business & Consumer Reporting for “How the Wheels Came Off,” a special on the near collapse of the American auto industry. His work on disabled workers and Chicago’s red-light camera scandal in 2016 earned him two News and Documentary Emmy Award nominations, adding to a nomination in 2010 for his terrorism coverage.

Sophia Miller

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Allison Detzel

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‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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18 hours ago

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September 6, 2026

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‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

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2 days ago

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September 4, 2026

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President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”

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Missouri Supreme Court pauses GOP gerrymander, likely netting Democrats 1 House seat

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3 days ago

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September 3, 2026

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Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.

The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.

Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.

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