Trump Still Longs to be Caesar

.@alexazura: @realDonaldTrump executive order on undocumented immigrants could cost Texas several seats in Congress https://t.co/8VYl0J4qAS #txlege #tx2020

— Evan Smith (@evanasmith) July 21, 2020

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

from Art. 1, sec. 2, of the Constitution.

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. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Contrary to Trump's Executive order, the Constitution does define "which  persons must be included in the apportionment base.”  Art. I, sec. 2 excluded only "Indians [sic] not taxed," and included slaves under the now-infamous 3/5ths clause.  That clause was removed by the 14th amendment, the same amendment which codified birthright citizenship (another provision Trump would like to toss out of the Constitution by EO).  The "whole number of persons in each state" is consonant with the due process and equal protection clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments, which cover "persons" in the U.S., not just "citizens."  The interpretation that's out of order is Trump's; but it is, as I said, consistent with his xenophobic white supremacist reading of the Constitution, as it is with his xenophobic white supremacist "birtherism" campaign, one which he never really renounced.

Rome recognized a distinction between "citizens" of the empire, and those who just lived under the Empire's Pax Romana.  That distinction never existed in the Constitution, and has never been read into it by the courts.  Trump is a xenophobic racist who lost his chance to include a citizenship question in the census this year, which would obviously have been complemented with this EO.  His EO is not only illegal and unconstitutional (Congress, per the plain text of the Constitution, decides how the Census is conducted, not the Executive.  In this, the Executive only follows the will of Congress.), it is too late.  Any reapportionment conducted under Trump's scheme will be challenged in court in 2021 (if this EO is not challenged in 2020), and tossed out, if it isn't withdrawn by President Biden the afternoon of his inauguration.  And really:  who's interested anyway?

"Bottom line, the law for the Texas House and the Senate — and frankly the courts and the State Board of Education — requires it be done by total population, as does the U.S. Constitution with regard to congressional seats,” said state Rep. Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford who chairs the House Redistricting Committee.

Either way, Trump continues to prove himself unfit for office.  So unfit nobody's even intersted in what he has to say anymore.