Supreme Court Looks For Ways To Wait Out Trump On Key Census Question

At the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, the justices expressed doubts about a plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from a key census count — the first time unauthorized immigrants would not be counted for purposes of drawing new congressional districts.

The Constitution mandates that the "whole number of persons" living in each state be counted to figure out how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes are allocated to each state. But in July, President Trump issued a memorandum instructing the U.S. Census Bureau to exclude all undocumented immigrants from the count used for apportionment purposes.

At the high court Monday, acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall was in the unenviable position of telling the justices he didn't know how many "illegal aliens" Trump plans to exclude.

"As of this very morning," he said, "career experts at the Census Bureau confirmed with me that they still don't know even roughly how many illegal aliens it'll be able to identify, let alone how their number and geographic concentration might affect apportionment."