'Pay attention': Experts agree 'Trump has no power' to enact his latest big plan

President Donald Trump claims he's ordering a new, mid-decade census, but legal experts say he has "no authority" to alter a process that's plainly spelled out in the U.S. Constitution.

The president is calling for another census in the middle of the decade as multiple Republican-led states redrawing their congressional districts to favor their party, and the FBI has agreed to help locate and bring back Democratic legislators who left Texas to deprive the GOP majority of a quorum needed to approve a redistricting plan.

"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 posted Thursday morning 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!"

But that's not how the census works at all, according to legal experts.

"The Constitution dictates that the census is a count 'all persons' conducted every 'ten years,'" said election lawyer Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket. "Donald Trump has no power to alter either the timing or who is counted."

"Trump has no power to change timing of the census," agreed journalist Nancy Levine Stearns.

"Not only does Trump not have the power to call a new census - it’s also worth noting this authoritarian precedent: Comrade Stalin didn’t like the results of the 1937 Soviet census, so he purged the statisticians and ordered a new census, undertaken in 1939, which yielded numbers more to his liking," added John Slocum, executive director of the Refugee Council.

"A depressing number of news outlets are reporting this without mentioning the minor detail that it would be unconstitutional," posted writer Julian Sanchez.

"Trump wants to dictate new census numbers to pull congressional seats away from Blue states, justify Republican redistricting and the slashing of federal funding to areas and states of his choosing," said Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health. "Pay attention."

"The thing about this is that even by its own terms it would make the census less accurate and leave us with less information about who is in the country," pointed out law professor Evan Bernick.

"The Constitution's text is plain," added constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis. "The census is an enumeration of the 'whole Number of ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ Persons.'"

"We will also be announcing a 'Three-Fifths Compromise' that will apply to, um, certain people living the US," deadpanned journalist Bill Grueskin, referring to the odious constitutional provision that counted three out of every five enslaved people to determine a state's total population. "Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

"Just from a logistical standpoint it is not feasible to conduct a 'new' mid-decade census with accuracy," noted political scientist Michael McDonald. "To give a sense of the scale of what is required, preparations are already underway for the *2030* census. This will add chaos to the Census Bureau and degrade the accuracy of the 2030 census."