President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has directed the Department of Commerce to begin work on a new census that excludes noncitizens, likely setting up more legal challenges against his administration.

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump stated on Truth Social. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” the president added.

If implemented, Trump’s more accurate census would likely reshape congressional representation across the United States, with Democrats potentially losing dozens of seats.

Redistricting is the process of redrawing state legislative and congressional district boundaries every ten years following the decennial U.S. Census. The Texas GOP’s redistricting plan would reportedly deliver five additional Republican seats in Congress.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller told Fox News host Sean Hannity Wednesday night that “Democrats rigged the 2020 Census” by suing the Trump administration over its efforts to exclude illegal aliens in the Census.

The effort was ultimately blocked in the courts and sidestepped by the Supreme Court. In December 2020, the justices threw out a lawsuit seeking to block Trump’s plan to exclude illegal immigrants from the population count, but also said a “judicial resolution of this dispute is premature” because it was apparently not clear what the administration planned to do.

“At present, this case is riddled with contingencies and speculation that impede judicial review,” the 6-3 ruling stated.

Miller estimated that “20 to 30 House Democrat seats wouldn’t exist but for illegal aliens.”

He praised Texas for taking “a small corrective” redistricting step against the “ocean of fraud, this ocean of abuse, by the corrupt Democrat Party.”

Trump’s proposal to exclude non-citizens will likely face legal challenges, as his prior attempt was blocked by courts.