While surfing the web I came upon an article posted on Christmas Eve by Jason Hopkins, of the rightwing outlet called "The National Interest." It cites a "study" by another rightwing outlet, the Center for Immigration Studies, as cause for alarm.

The article and the cited study falsely claim that the counting of illegal immigrants in the 2020 Census will result in a loss of 24 Congressional seats in states that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 --- Ohio (3), Pennsylvania (2), Michigan (2), and one each in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The only blue states to lose Congressional seats, according to the outlet's characterization of the "study", would be Minnesota (1) and Rhode Island (1).

The article also falsely claims that 19 Congressional seats would be gained by states that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 --- California (11), New York (4), New Jersey (2), Massachusetts (1), and Illinois (1). The only other states to gain Congressional seats, they report, would be the "red" state of Texas (4), and the swing state of Florida (3).

While conceding that non-citizens cannot vote, the article warns that counting them in the 2020 census will result in more Congressional seats for high-immigration districts, thus reducing political power in districts where almost everyone is an American citizen.

Predictably, almost all the more than 2,000 public comments in the version of the article republished by Yahoo News (the original version at National Interest does not allow public comments) allege that Democrats favor open borders and allowing illegal immigrants to vote. Almost nobody noticed that there is no basis for the statistical claims made by the Center for Immigration Studies...

I knew right away that this article was completely fabricated when it stated that New York would gain four Congressional seats due to the 2020 Census. New York State has lost Congressional seats after seven consecutive decennial Censuses because our rate of population growth in this state has been slower than that of the nation as a whole. I knew this long-term trend had not suddenly reversed. Since the 1940 census we have gone from 45 to 43 to 41 to 39 to 34 to 31 to 29 to 27. You can look it up. The electoral college maps for each presidential election are on Wikipedia.

The United States Census Bureau publishes population estimates for each state every year. The 2019 estimates are here: Divide the population for each state by the population for the fifty states, multiply by 435 (the number of U.S. House districts, as capped by the Reapportionment Act of 1929), and round to the nearest whole number. That tells you how many Congressional seats each state is expected to have, except for Alabama, with 6.51, which would be rounded down to 6 so that the total number remains the same at 435.

Here is how it looks. The gains in representation, according to the Census Bureau's own latest population estimate, would be in Texas (3), Florida (1), North Carolina (1), Arizona (1), Colorado (1), and Oregon (1). The losses would be for New York (1), Pennsylvania (1), Illinois (1), Michigan (1), Minnesota (1), Alabama (1), West Virginia (1), and Rhode Island (1). This would result in a net gain of four Congressional seats in states that voted for Trump.

California representation would remain the same, with 53 seats. There is utterly no basis for claiming that California would gain 11 seats, or that New York would gain 4. The average Congressional district would have 750,494 persons (326,464,979/435). The "study" is off by 8 million persons in California.

Like it or not, the Constitution requires that "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed." (Amendment XIV) It is not unprecedented for the Census to include questions about citizenship status; indeed, it did so from 1890 through 1940. But all persons are to be counted, whether citizens or not, and the Congressional seats are to be apportioned accordingly. The right to vote, under the Constitution, is for citizens only (Amendments XV, XIX, XXIV, XXVI).

If injustice is the issue, consider that the 702,455 persons in the District of Columbia have no voting member of Congress, and no Senators.

I searched the web for the sponsor of the "study" cited in the article above. The Center for Immigration Studies is an anti-immigration think tank. It favors far lower immigration numbers, and produces research to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton.

The article citing its false claims, according to a footer published at the bottom of the version at The National Interest, is "Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation [made] available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience." The Daily Caller is an Internet media outlet founded by Tucker Carlson, host of a prime-time program on Fox "News", on which he has repeatedly embraced white nationalism and has falsely charged white supremacy is little more than a "hoax".

Do not believe everything you read. Consider the source. And do your own fact-checking.

Richard Hayes Phillips is a published historian and genealogist whose books, Without Indentures, Birth and Shipping Records, and The Search for Survivors, are available in paperback from Genealogical Publishing Company, and in hardbound archival editions are available directly from the author for the same price as the paperbacks. He is also an election fraud investigator whose unprecedented forensic probe of the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio is documented in Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election. Signed hardcover copies are also directly available from the author.

                 

Article Categories: Tucker Carlson, U.S. Constitution, Mainstream Media Failure, U.S. House, Immigration, Census Bureau