Motus Mentis

Get ready for the next steel-cage match in American politics: President Trump’s plan to conduct a new census, one that doesn’t count the tens of millions who are here illegally. The census numbers are used to allocate representation in the House, so counting only legal residents will almost certainly reduce the number of seats held by Democrats, because illegal aliens tend to be more numerous in “blue” states.

This comes on the heels of the redistricting kerfuffle in Texas, where Democrat legislators have gone AWOL in order to prevent a vote on a redrawing of the state’s Congressional-district map that would likely cost them several seats in the House. Taken together, these changes could solidify Republican control of the lower chamber for the foreseeable future, and so the stakes are high.

This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has come up, During the Constitutional Convention, the Southern states wanted to count their slaves in order to increase their power in Congress. The Northern states objected, with the result being the infamous “three-fifths compromise” (which is now so widely misunderstood and misrepresented). Centuries later, the Democrat-dominated states now want to count their current-day pool of servile labor, for exactly the same reason. Plus ça change…

(In case you think that the census can only happen every ten years, the text of the Constitution says that “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years…”. I’m no lawyer, but I read that as setting a maximum interval, not a minimum. But I’m sure it will all end up at the Supreme Court anyway, so we’ll see.)

This should get interesting!