Vance Assails 2020 Census as Flawed, Demands Complete Do-Over as Redistricting War Rages

With the Texas redistricting battle entering its fourth week, Vice President Vance says the Trump administration is looking to “reset the scales” nationally on redistricting by having a complete do-over of a flawed decennial census. With large demographic population shifts among states since the pandemic and illegal immigrants contributing to state population counts, Republicans say they are being underrepresented in Congress. Mr. Vance, however, is blaming a U.S. Census overcount of blue states in the 2020 census — compounded by gerrymandered districts twisting boundary lines to favor Democrats — for the Republicans’ slim margin in Congress.The census takers made a “major statistical error,” the vice president said in a pre-recorded interview released Sunday. “What I understand is if you actually did the census anew right now, you would have 10 additional Republican seats and nine fewer Democrat seats,” he said.Mr. Vance gave the example that in the five bluest states, President Trump won 43 percent of the vote, but Democrats have 85 percent of the congressional representatives. He said Democrats got a leg up because Republicans have done little to push back on gerrymandering — until now. “What we’re living with … is a consequence of 40 years of institutional control in the Democratic Party,” he told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. “These guys have fought very dirty for a very long time.” The decennial census is a requirement of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which calls for a count of the “whole number of persons in each State.” The U.S. Census Bureau counts all people — citizen and noncitizen, as the constitution stipulates — living in America as well as Americans overseas.In 2022, the Census revised its survey to note that it undercounted populations in six states and overcounted in eight others. Undercounted states, according to the census, included Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. Populations in Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio,Rhode Island, and Utah were overcounted. The Census Bureau said no population count is perfect.The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, whose state is at the heart of the debate over apportionment maps, told Fox News Sunday that if GOP states redrew their lines the way Democrats had, Republicans would pick up “maybe as many as 25 seats.” He added that red states are becoming more populous “because people are fleeing the leftist ideology of New York, of California, of Illinois, and they’re coming to three states like Texas and Florida and Tennessee and others.”The governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, accused Mr. Abbott of “grandstanding” on behalf of President Trump. He said Illinois’ population count would have been 50,000 fewer if Mr. Abbot hadn’t “been a disaster for the country” and shipped illegal immigrants to blue states. Mr. Abbott started bussing immigrants to sanctuary cities in 2022. “Governor Abbott is the joke. … at a time when frankly all of us are concerned about the future of democracy, he’s literally helping whittle it away and licking the boots of his leader, Donald Trump,” Mr. Pritzker told CBS’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “They’re attempting to change the map. They know that they’re going to lose in 2026 the Congress, and so they’re trying to steal seats,” he said.“They want a Texas standdown. We’ll stand down as well,” added New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, who also appeared on Fox News Sunday. “They know they’re going to lose next year so now they’re desperate.”Acknowledging that the redistricting fight is central to control of Congress in the 2026 midterm election, Mr. Abbott said that the mid-decade redistricting proposal is legal in Texas, which only requires an act of the state legislature to change boundaries. That is not the case in New York, which requires a constitutional amendment. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that the debate that sent Texas’ Democratic lawmakers fleeing last month “could literally last years.” Mr. Abbott, who is authorized to call a special session every 30 days, said he will keep holding sessions until Democratic lawmakers who fled to California, Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts return. When they do, he said, they will be arrested. If they don’t, he will ask the state Supreme Court to declare them in violation of their oath of office under Article 3 of the state Constitution. “If they want to evade that arrest, they’re gonna have to stay outside of the state of Texas for literally years, and they might as well just start voting in California or voting in Illinois, wherever they may be,” said Mr. Abbott. “Because they are violating that constitutional mandate that means they are not fulfilling their oath of office, and they can be removed from office in this legal action I am taking,” he added. As state executives argue over whether redistricting is legal or not, Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, asked a court to rule on whether a former Democratic presidential candidate and congressman, Beto O’Rourke, can fund the Democratic lawmakers’ trips out of state through his organization, Powered by People. Mr. O’Rourke said that the situation demands normal rules of engagement be sidelined.“We punch first and we punch harder,” Mr. O’Rourke said, calling for Democrats in blue states to redraw their districts regardless of the law. “There are no refs in this game. F*** the rules. We are going to win, whatever it takes.”“These times call for fighting fire with fire,” added Ms. Hochul, noting that she would seek a constitutional amendment. “We’ll put it to the people. … They’re going to want us to use every tool in the arsenal to fight back.”

Vance Assails 2020 Census as Flawed, Demands Complete Do-Over as Redistricting War Rages

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