Another red state has stepped up to right a wrong that, if successful, could mean the end of the Democratic Party as a power player in American politics.
In a first-of-its-kind legal move, Catherine Hanaway filed a federal lawsuit Friday that should send a chill through the political establishment — and strike fear into the heart of the sanctuary crowd. Missouri is suing the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau, demanding an end to the practice of counting illegal aliens in the decennial census and calling for a recount of the 2020 Census that excludes non-citizens from the population totals used for congressional apportionment.
United States citizens have a right to representation, NOT illegal aliens. United States citizens should decide electoral votes and congressional seats, NOT illegal aliens.
We are suing @uscensusbureau for unconstitutionally allowing illegal aliens to commandeer the path to The… pic.twitter.com/UzU4UIF74V— Attorney General Catherine L. Hanaway (@AGCHanaway) January 30, 2026
She tweeted:
United States citizens have a right to representation, NOT illegal aliens. United States citizens should decide electoral votes and congressional seats, NOT illegal aliens.
We are suing @uscensusbureau for unconstitutionally allowing illegal aliens to commandeer the path to The White House and compromise our elections.
The lawsuit argues that including illegal aliens and temporary visa holders in the census tally dilutes the representation of U.S. citizens, transfers political power to states that harbor large numbers of illegal immigrants, and undermines the principle that only the people governed should determine who governs them. Missouri’s complaint claims that the current system unfairly shifts congressional seats and Electoral College votes to states with higher illegal-alien populations — effectively “commandeering the path to the White House and compromising our elections.”
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“The State of Missouri and its voters can no longer ignore the ongoing denial of their right to self-government and fair representation,” said Hanaway in a press release. “United States citizens and lawful permanent residents have a right to representation, unlike illegal aliens and temporary visa holders. In America, the People, the members of the social compact, are the only legitimate source of the government’s power. We are taking a stand against those who are cheating our system.”
The 96-page complaint names as defendants the U.S. Department of Commerce, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the U.S. Census Bureau, and George Cook as Acting Director of the Census Bureau.
In demanding a recount of the 2020 Census and 2021 apportionment base, the state is asking the court not only to declare the current inclusion of illegal aliens unconstitutional and unlawful, but also to forbid counting such individuals in the 2030 Census and beyond. The lawsuit seeks to use “the best available methods,” including re-conducting enumeration if necessary, to strip illegal aliens and temporary visa holders from the apportionment base that determines House seats and federal funding.
Here’s more background regarding the suit, from the press release:
Federal representation is being stolen from states who uphold immigration law, including Missouri, and transferred to sanctuary states who artificially inflate their population by harboring illegal aliens. Attorney General Hanaway will not allow open-border states like California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland to steal an estimated 11 congressional seats, 11 electoral votes, and billions of dollars in funding.
Prior to the 1980 Census, the Carter Administration unilaterally decided that all illegal aliens and temporary visa holders should be counted in the decennial Census and included in the apportionment of congressional representation. The framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment would have been shocked by this policy. They could never have imagined an absurd system where 15 million illegal alien trespassers would receive representation in Congress and the Electoral College.
Think it’s just a crazy red state Hail Mary lawsuit? Not so fast. Here’s the twist:
In July of 2020, President Trump issued a memorandum requiring the Secretary of Commerce to exclude illegal aliens from the decennial apportionment base, even though illegal aliens were counted in the 2020 Census. California and New York immediately sued against the President’s action. Ultimately, the Supreme Court vacated all the injunctions, but these legal delays opened the door for the Biden Administration to reverse course and include illegal aliens in the apportionment base for federal representation.
If President Trump had succeeded in excluding illegal aliens from the 2021 apportionment, Missouri would have received an extra congressional seat and an extra vote in the Electoral College. Instead, the Biden Administration hijacked the representation of Missourians by reversing the Trump Administration’s action.
Mind you, the FBI just raided a ballot counting and storage facility outside Atlanta, Ga., earlier this week, following a report that some 315,000 ballots in Georgia were certified by the state without poll worker signatures – a huge legal no-no (Trump only ‘lost’ Georgia by about 12,000 votes and we ended with two Democratic senators from what had been a reliably red state). So Missouri’s aggressive legal gambit marks a major escalation in the national debate over who gets counted in our census, sure, but also how congressional power gets apportioned in Congress.
If the Trump admin finds the long-sought major evidence of 2020 election fraud and this lawsuit happens to result in the exclusion of illegal aliens in the Census, it will be huge for Republicans and a generational nightmare for Democrats. We’ll keep an eye on this one.
