InfluenceWatch Podcast 375: Breaking Down the Census Citizenship Question and The Funding Behind the Fight

At the beginning of August, President Donald Trump took to social media and informed the world he had instructed the 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.” Most notably, he wrote, “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.” If Trump has his way, it will have significant repercussions on how Congressional districts could be drawn, even as Texas leads the pack and has already approved a new congressional map – leading to a very public walkout by Texas Senate Democrats and California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s retaliatory threat to redraw California’s congressional map. There’s also a SCOTUS angle here, as the Supreme Court squashed the citizenship question pertaining to the 2020 census when it came up in 2019. Now, CRC has learned that some hefty lefty funding is going into an effort to push a narrative on the census that runs counter to the Trump administration’s and is designed to last for the next 10 years to cover the 2030 census. And one prominent name in the mix is our old friend the Funders Committee for Civic Participation. Here to discuss are my colleagues, Mike Watson, and the President of CRC, Scott Walter.

Listen to “Ep. 375: Breaking Down the Census Citizenship Question and The Funding Behind the Fight” on Spreaker.

• Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation: A Blueprint for Census Philanthropic Engagement
• Capital Research Center: Some thoughts on the gerrymandering wars
• Heritage Foundation: Census Bureau Errors Distort Congressional Representation for the States
• Mike Gonzalez: Stop hyperventilating — census citizenship question makes good sense
• InfluenceWatch: Funders Committee for Civic Participation