Top White House official admits Trump can't accomplish this key goal without Congress

12 August

President Donald Trump at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida on April 12, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)

Even though President Donald Trump's second term has been described as an ongoing test of "unitary executive theory," one administration official is now admitting that Trump's executive power has limits when it comes to his newest objective.

NPR reported Tuesday that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — whose agency oversees the U.S. Census Bureau — recently told agency employees that while Trump may want to conduct a new Census in the middle of the decade in order to exclude undocumented immigrants, he wouldn't be able to do so without Congress' blessing. During the town hall-style event at the Census bureau's headquarters, Lutnick reportedly told employees that even someone who had "broken into the country" would still have to be counted, but only as someone who has "broken into the country."

Lutnick's remarks come less than a week after Trump posted to his Truth Social that he "instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures" based on 2024 data. He added that undocumented immigrants "WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS."

Trump has notably been calling for a new Census by falsely claiming that the 2020 Census deliberately undercounted in red states and overcounted in blue states, and has suggested that congressional district boundaries should be redrawn as a result. A 2022 article by the Census bureau showed a more nuanced picture, with both red and blue states being undercounted like Florida and Illinois, and an overcounting in both red and blue states like Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Utah.

In addition to costing approximately $15 billion dollars and the logistical challenges that come with conducting a new Census five years earlier than expected, Trump's proposal also faces significant legal barriers. Even Lutnick himself said during his confirmation hearing that because the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the Census count every "person" rather than merely citizens, he would abide by the nation's founding document.

"I promise you we will count each whole person. That's what the Constitution says. And we will stick right to it rigorously," Lutnick said in February.

NPR also reported that Lutnick admitted that "consistency makes sense" when Rep. Dale Strong (R-Ala.) asked him in June about how the Census would address the issue of various states choosing whether to count non-citizens. States could also stand to lose resources with lower counts, making it less likely that even red states would back Trump's proposal if they were more dependent on federal money than other states.

Click here to read NPR's report in full.

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