By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press

President Donald Trump on Thursday instructed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau start work on a new census that would exclude immigrants who are in the United States illegally from the head count which determines political power and federal spending.

The census will be based on “modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” the Republican president said on his social media platform.

Experts said it was unclear what exactly Trump was calling for, whether it was changes to the 2030 census or a mid-decade census, and, if so, whether it would be used for a mid-decade apportionment, which is the process of divvying up congressional seats among the states based on the population count.

Here’s some answers to questions Thursday’s post raises:

Can Trump do this?

It would be extremely difficult to conduct a mid-decade census, if not impossible, according to experts.

Any changes in conducting a U.S. census would require alterations to the Census Act and approval from Congress, which has oversight responsibilities, and there likely would be a fierce fight.

The federal law governing the census permits a mid-decade head count for things like distributing federal funding, but it can’t be used for apportionment or redistricting and must be done in a year ending in 5. Additionally, the 14th Amendment says that “the whole number of persons in each state” are to be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, and the Census Bureau has interpreted that to mean anybody residing in the United States regardless of legal status. Federal courts have repeatedly supported that interpretation, though the Supreme Court has blocked recent efforts to change that on procedural rather than legal grounds.

“He cannot unilaterally order a new census. The census is governed by law, not to mention the Constitution,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues.

Then there is the question of logistics. The once-a-decade census is the biggest non-military undertaking by the federal government, utilizing a temporary workforce of hundreds of thousands of census takers. It can take as much as 10 years of planning.

“This isn’t something that you can do overnight,” said New York Law professor Jeffrey Wice, a census and redistricting expert. “To get all the pieces put together, it would be such a tremendous challenge, if not impossible.”

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Has this ever been done before?

A mid-decade census has never been conducted before.

In the 1970s, there was interest in developing data from the middle of the decade for more accurate and continuous information about American life, and a mid-decade census was considered. But the funding from Congress never came through, said Margo Anderson, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has written extensively on the history of the census.

Decades later, those wishes for continuous data would develop into the American Community Survey, the annual survey of American life based on responses from 3.5 million households.

In his first term, President Donald Trump, a Republican, unsuccessfully tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form and signed orders which would have excluded people in the U.S. illegally from the apportionment figures and mandate the collection of citizenship data through administrative records.

The attempt was blocked by the Supreme Court, and both orders were rescinded when Democratic President Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released by Census Bureau.

Any attempt at a repeat would guarantee legal challenges.

“The census isn’t just a head count. It is meant to reflect America as it is – not as some would prefer it to be — and determines how critical resources are allocated,” ACLU Voting Rights project director Sophia Lin Lakin said in a statement. “Nobody should be erased from it. We won’t hesitate to go back to court to protect representation for all communities.”

What is a census used for?

Besides being used to divvy up congressional seats among the states and redraw political districts, the numbers derived from the once-a-decade census are used to guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government spending.

The federal funding is distributed to state and local governments, nonprofits, businesses and households, paying for health care, education, school lunch programs, child care, food assistance programs and highway construction, among other things.

Why is Trump doing this?

A Republican redistricting expert had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

Critics believe the writings of Republican redistricting expert Tom Hofeller inspired the first Trump administration’s attempt at restricting the apportionment count and guided legislation introduced this year by Republican lawmakers to add a citizenship question to the 2030 census questionnaire. Trump has been open about his intent to increase the number of Republican seats in Congress and maintain the GOP majority in next year’s midterm elections.

Even though redistricting typically occurs once every 10 years following the census, Trump is pressuring Republicans in Texas to redistrict again, claiming they are “entitled” to five additional Republican seats. Trump’s team is also engaged in similar redistricting discussions in other GOP-controlled states, including Missouri and Indiana.

Some critics see the effort as part of Trump’s wider effort to control the federal statistical system, which has been considered the world’s gold standard.

Last Friday, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, after standard revisions to the monthly jobs report showed that employers added 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported in May and June. The revisions suggested that hiring has severely weakened under Trump, undermining his claims of an economic boom.

“Trump is basically destroying the federal statistical system,” Anderson said. “He wants numbers that support his political accomplishments, such as he sees them.”

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and JOSH BOAK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he will nominate a top economic adviser to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors for four months, temporarily filling a vacancy while continuing his search for a longer-term appointment.

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Trump said he has named Stephen Miran, the chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, to fill a seat vacated by governor Adriana Kugler, a Biden appointee who is stepping down Friday. Miran, if approved by the Senate, will serve until January 31, 2026.

The appointment is Trump’s first opportunity to exert more control over the Fed, one of the few remaining independent federal agencies. Trump has relentlessly criticized the current chair, Jerome Powell, for keping short-term interest rates unchanged.

Miran has been a major defender of Trump’s income tax cuts and tariff hikes, arguing that the combination will generate enough economic growth to reduce budget deficits. He also has played down the risk of Trump’s tariffs generating higher inflation, a major source of concern for Powell.

By KEN SWEET, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order mandating a probe into whether banks have discriminated against conservatives and certain industries like gun manufacturers and cryptocurrency companies, invoking the vast powers to go after entities that the Republican president alleges have discriminated against him and his allies.

The executive order deals with an issue known as “debanking,” which is when banks close accounts of individuals or declines to go into business with certain industries. Trump has accused JPMorgan and Bank of America of debanking him and his companies in the past, something both banks have denied.

Trump ordered federal bank regulators to make sure banks do not discriminate against individuals or companies for their political or religious beliefs. He also ordered bank regulators to probe when banks may have allegedly discriminated and refer the cases to the Department of Justice.

The move could open banks to potential civil or criminal investigations, fines or punishments.

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When Trump and his party discuss debanking, they typically refer to banks closing the accounts of a person or company when they no longer want to do business with them. Banks usually say they close accounts or deny loans because the person or business is deemed too risky. The banking industry has long argued that it has a constitutional right to choose whom they go into business with, if it does not violate laws like the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

Th act, which was part of several pieces of legislation signed during the Civil Rights Movement, bans banks from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex and other protected statuses.

Another type of debanking is when government regulators tell banks to avoid doing business with industries or individuals. Democratic President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice told banks to avoid doing business with “high risk” industries, which included payday lenders and firearms manufacturers.

This type of government-directed debanking is also known as reputational risk, where the historic reputation of an industry prompts banks to be more careful about banking and lending. Historic examples include entities who did business in high-risk countries, did business largely in cash or were repeatedly flagged by bank regulators.

Conservatives have argued that reputational risk has become an umbrella term that allows banks to discriminate. The banking industry insists it does not actively debank and does not target specific industries or individuals. Banks have already been removing any mention of reputational risk from their policies and procedures, particularly since Trump returned to the White House.

“We don’t close accounts for political reasons, and we agree with President Trump that regulatory change is desperately needed,” said a spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase.

The Obama administration’s government-directed debanking has been a rallying cry for conservatives. It’s one reason why the cryptocurrency industry backed Trump in 2024. While the Biden administration did not explicitly force banks to debank the crypto industry, Democratic President Joe Biden’s bank regulators did express some public concern about it, a move that was read by banks as a reason to steer away from crypto. That phrasing by the Biden administration was often referred to as “Operation Choke Point 2.0” by Trump and his allies.

Republicans have introduced legislation to cut down on alleged acts of debanking as well. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, chair of the Senate Banking Committee, has introduced legislation that would require bank regulators to no longer consider reputational risk as a factor in how they measure a bank’s health and risk profile.

“In most U.S. states, parking within 20 feet of crosswalks is prohibited. Known as ‘universal daylighting,’ this is primarily a safety measure that increases visibility at intersections. It also creates hundreds of feet of empty, usable curb space at every intersection.”

A rain garden in South Ozone Park, Queens, designed to absorb water during storms. Freeing up street space through daylighting would allow the city to build many more, the authors argue. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

In mid-July, New York City experienced the second-wettest hour ever recorded in the city when more than two inches of rain fell on Central Park in the span of one hour. In the days following, experts predicted that New York City will face increasingly severe rain storms as the effects of climate change worsen. Last week, torrential downpours and flooding again deluged the city.

This problem has a solution hiding in plain sight: New York must embrace universal daylighting to create a direct pathway to repurpose curb space as rain gardens at scale.

More than 70 percent of New York City is impermeable surfaces, preventing rainfall from being absorbed into the ground. City streets make up an astounding 32,000 acres of this, totaling almost 40 Central Parks worth of space. 

In a city well-known for its walkability and good transit options, dedicating such a large amount of space to roadways doesn’t provide New Yorkers with the benefits they need. More than half of households in New York City do not own personal vehicles, and a far higher percentage of individuals—nearly two thirds of New Yorkers—don’t rely on driving for daily commuting.

Repurposing just a small portion of these 32,000 acres holds enormous potential for flood mitigation. In 2016, Philadelphia “greened” a mere 837 acres of city land over five years, reducing stormwater and combined sewer overflow by more than 1.5 billion gallons of water annually. Hoboken achieved comparable outcomes with its initiative to build and expand rain garden usage across the city.

New York can replicate this success. In New York City, sidewalk rain gardens hold up to 2,500 gallons of water each, and there is ample space in the 32,000 acres of roadbed to build rain gardens at scale. The challenge lies in securing the space for this purpose. 

The answer is right in front of us. In most U.S. states, parking within 20 feet of crosswalks is prohibited. Known as “universal daylighting,” this is primarily a safety measure that increases visibility at intersections. It also creates hundreds of feet of empty, usable curb space at every intersection. 

However, New York City does not enjoy this benefit. While New York State is among those where universal daylighting is the law, a decades-old loophole allows New York City to exempt itself from this standard, preventing curb space from being repurposed for rain gardens and other uses.

This creates challenges for reforming how New Yorkers think about and use curb space. New York City has nearly 3 million on-street parking spaces, which is far more than any other U.S. city or comparable global cities. Despite being heavily populated with transit-riders and walkers, space in the street is cemented in the minds of New Yorkers, and in our infrastructure, as reserved for parking. To fix this, city laws governing curb space must change.

Intro. 1138, a City Council bill that removes New York City’s exemption from state daylighting laws, is the common-sense solution. A simple change closing the daylighting loophole unlocks curb space for rain gardens at every intersection.

Intro. 1138 is broadly popular, enjoying bipartisan support from a majority of Council members. With no end to extreme weather events in sight, Speaker Adrienne Adams must move to pass the bill and clear the way for New York City to build much-needed green infrastructure.

New York City cannot create new land for this infrastructure; it has to work with the space it already has. That means rethinking how streets are used and converting existing impermeable surfaces into green, permeable surfaces that make the city more resilient to climate-change-driven storms.

Without universal daylighting, New York City has no realistic way to build green infrastructure at scale, manage worsening rainstorms and protect New Yorkers from the flooding that is sure to come.

Sara Lind is the co-executive director of Open Plans; Alex Morano is a communications professional and street safety advocate.

The post Opinion: How Daylighting Can Allow NYC’s Streets to Fight Flooding appeared first on City Limits.