Trump's Trials - The next redistricting battle might be who is counted in state legislative districts

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

A next potential front in the redistricting war could involve who is counted for state legislative districts, as NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detrow, and this is Trump's terms from NPR. Every episode, we bring you one story from NPR's coverage of the Trump administration with the focus on actions and policies that take the presidency into uncharted territory. Here's the latest from NPR. I'm Steven Ski. Some Republican states are waging a legal fight that could open a new phase in redistricting. NPR's Hansi-Low-Wong reports it would likely shift political power away from cities and toward rural communities.

Who should be counted in the district's state lawmakers represent? The norm for modern history has almost always been to count persons. Nick Stephanopoulos is an election law professor at Harvard University. All persons who are counted by the census. But some Republican-led states have called for using a narrower population based on the number of actual eligible voters in the relevant district, as opposed to an absolute population. That was Missouri's former Solicitor General, John Sauer, speaking at a state court hearing in 2020.

Missouri is poised to carry out a radical shift in who counts in its state legislative districts. Only U.S. citizen adults, no non-citizen adults, or any children. Whether that's legal is an open question that the Supreme Court may take up in the future. The test case may come out of lawsuits that Missouri and other Republican-led states have filed about the 2030 census. I think the chances are pretty good that we're going to get to the United States. Supreme Court. That was Missouri's Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanoway speaking with St. Louis Public Radio. Missouri's lawsuit could end up forcing the Census Bureau to release data for creating legislative districts based only on adult citizens. It's a kind of redistricting that would likely

lead to a power shift, away from urban areas that are younger and more racially diverse, and toward rural areas that are older and wider. And even though many Republican officials are calling for this change, Nick Stephanoplas at Harvard says, in most states, it likely will not help the GOP take control of state legislatures. But they're still pushing for it because it's become adopted as part of the current platform of Republican thinking about elections that we ought to have apportionment based on equal citizens, not based on equal persons. The current Trump administration has not made clear its thinking on this.

But starting next month, it's planning to carry out a test of the 2030 census that asks households about their U.S. citizenship status. That kind of question for the actual 2030 census could produce the data for redistricting based on only adult citizens. On Zila Wong, NPR News. Before we wrap up a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages.

You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's terms from NPR. Thank you.