Trump Announces New Thing He Is Not Allowed to Do

The Constitution, fresh off a little bout of “coding error” malaise on Wednesday, has other ideas. Article 1 section 2 mandates the “actual Enumeration” be made every ten years — the Census Bureau itself seems pretty clear about this too. And then, the fourteenth amendment is explicit about including “the whole number of persons in each state.” The last census was conducted in 2020; the president has literally no say over when it happens next, or who gets counted in it. Of course, that won’t stop him from trying.

And Trump tried this sort of thing before, you’ll remember. In his first term he made various efforts to suppress the count of immigrants and various minorities, in an attempt to skew Congressional maps in his and Republicans’ favor and reduce money and services sent in very particular directions. The timing of this new radically unconstitutional effort is notable for its proximity to the ongoing battle in Texas, where Trump instructed the GOP to rustle up five new seats in the House with an absurd mid-term gerrymander. They know they are dramatically unpopular, and getting more so — it seems increasingly true that the only way to win is to cheat.

It is, of course, foolish to assume that the blatant illegality of the move will be its downfall. It goes without saying that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is on board with the entire Trumpian project, so there isn’t likely to be much pushback there. The Supreme Court, in theory so enamored with those pretty words in the Constitution, has proven itself to have pretzel-like flexibility when it comes to granting this particular president nearly unlimited powers; could they find some justification for letting it move forward, even in the form of just delaying things long enough to render the unconstitutionality moot? Sure, probably.

But in the face of such potential disaster it remains a central project to keep that fundamental headline unit as prominently displayed as possible — Lawless President Orders Illegal Thing — with the hope that, at least in some cases, it becomes too much for even those allies to stand behind.