Five Quick Things: Correcting A Botched Census? I Voted For That! | The American Spectator

This is one hell of a week for conservatives, isn’t it?

It’s a shame that time and space conspire to limit this entry of the 5QT to five, because this one could be a 20QT.

And it comes with a qualifier: these pickings are more or less first-come, first-serve and don’t reflect a particular priority. In other words, I’m well aware I’m leaving out lots of mighty fine developments since Monday.

Even so, these alone should give you a little buzz if you’re a patriot.

1. Team “Our Democracy” Gave Us a Trash Census. Trump Is Trashing It.

We’ve been waiting on this one, and it finally came down…

Hell, yes.

There are two problems here. One is, as Trump correctly notes, the inclusion of illegal aliens in the census population counts, which, as we’ve seen, is a structural deficiency that the Democrats have been using to their advantage at the expense of American citizens and taxpayers. I’ll let Vice President JD Vance explain…

The gerrymander in California is outrageous. Of their 52 congressional districts, 9 of them are Republican. That means 17 percent of their delegation is Republican when Republicans regularly win 40 percent of the vote in that state.

How can this possibly be allowed?

— JD Vance (@JDVance) July 30, 2025

Yes, but this is unconstitutional, says the Left, with no apparent sense of irony at all. Because the operative word in the Enumeration Clause is “persons” and not “citizens,” and it is therefore prescribed in the Constitution that the census must count illegals.

You really don’t care about the Constitution do you?

“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, ….”Amendment XIV https://t.co/RCiL074fqH

— Grace Lidia Suárez (@gracels) August 7, 2025

Let me leave that issue alone for our current purposes. Because there’s another part of this going on, which might well leap over the question of whether the Census can skip counting illegal aliens for apportionment. Let’s go back to last year when the House delved into the Census’s work product…

A key House committee has begun an investigation into Census Bureau overcounts and undercounts that favor Democrats in awarding congressional apportionment and Electoral College votes.

House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., wrote Census Bureau Director Robert Santos on Wednesday to inquire about its communications about the overcounts and undercounts of state populations with the Biden-Harris administration and its Commerce Department, which includes the bureau.

After the 2020 census, the Census Bureau’s 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey, or PES, released the following year identified significant errors in the counts.

Such miscounts did not occur in the 2010 census, Comer noted in his letter to Santos.

“Significantly, these errors likely led to an erroneous apportionment of representatives among the states,” Comer wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Signal. “Even relatively small differences in population count can affect congressional representation, as a single congressional seat cannot be divided among multiple states.”

“Undercounts or overcounts can be the deciding factor between a state gaining or losing an additional representative in its delegation,” the Kentucky Republican wrote.

There were states whose populations were overcounted or undercounted by as much as four or five percent, which reflected some pretty serious deficiencies in quality. Perhaps this was caused by COVID, perhaps not — the fact that the overcounts were almost all in blue states and the undercounts were almost all in red states tells you this was political.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. The 2020 Census was inaccurate. Period. And nothing in the Constitution says that the nation must be saddled with an inaccurate census that has the effect of denying American citizens equal protection rights based on congressional apportionment.

What’s the effect of all of this?

Here’s the fun part: Trump doesn’t have to get a new census to win on this. He wins, and the GOP wins, just by raising the issue. And this happens in three different ways.

First, by raising the issue of a corrupt census which gave Democrats more House seats in blue states than they should have, he puts them further on defense when they’re already trying to defend those Texas fleebaggers trying to delay redistricting in Texas. The Dems have been doing everything they can to rally their base behind these losers, and here comes Trump to raise the stakes by declaring that their entire House caucus is essentially illegitimate because of a corrupt apportionment process, and there simply isn’t any stable ground under their feet on any of this.

Second, the bait he put out there, which Democrats have taken hook, line, and sinker with these fresh constitutional arguments, is to get them defending the position that it’s desirable and proper for illegal aliens to be counted in the census and thus dilute the political power of U.S. citizens. There are a few less popular positions one can defend in America right now, but only a few, and by defending this one, the Democrats are further cemented as the party on the opposite side of the American people on the basic question of election integrity. This is just about as bad as the transgender issue for them, and with constituencies that they actually need.

And third, Trump now has another key justification for mass deportations, and public support of them — at a time when the Left is attempting to use sob stories (we had a post this week at The Hayride about Paola Clouatre, an illegal Mexican who married a Marine and spent a couple of months in an ICE detention center earlier this year because she’d done nothing to get a green card until May) to sap public support for ICE. Now, all of this is connected — you get hit with sob stories by Democrat media because they want to preserve a structural advantage which directly damages you, and thus you’re a lot less likely to be moved by them.

It all plays to Trump’s advantage. So much so that perhaps he’s able to push a constitutional amendment that dumps birthright citizenship and directs the Census to count only citizens for the purpose of apportionment, thus correcting two drafting mistakes of the 14th Amendment. Blue states won’t want to ratify that, but it’s a very, very bad issue for them.

It’s a great move all around.

2. About the Fleebaggers, There Is This…

Did you know the Texas legislature is in a special session to redraw its congressional map on the strong advice of the Department of Justice?

Well, yes, they are.

As the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, explained to Sean Spicer, her office sent Texas a letter informing the state that it had some racially gerrymandered districts and that those needed to be done away with in order to bring Texas into compliance with the Constitution.

“The stakes are very high for people who have casually relied on race for their elections to be won.” pic.twitter.com/do2u0YuHil

— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) August 5, 2025

So now Democrats want states to defy the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ? You guys sure that’s how you want to do it?

Boy, they really won’t like it when the Supreme Court ends racial gerrymandering altogether by invalidating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when they decide Louisiana v. Callais in a couple of months.

3. Lee Zeldin Is a National Treasure

This was perhaps the greatest video clip ever generated by a public official. It’s EPA director Lee Zeldin being interviewed by CNN’s Kasie Hunt, who attempted to buffalo him into one of those “you’re an EXTREMIST!” corners. She asked him if he denied carbon dioxide was a main driver of “man-made climate change.”

And Zeldin answered the question by first, indicting CNN’s setup of the interview, and second, sticking to the EPA’s cancellation of the 2009 endangerment finding on CO2, which has been such a disaster for the U.S. economy while invalidating her question on an evidentiary basis. He said we now have 2025 data, which invalidates the bad 2009 assumptions.

Which is a way to say that no, carbon dioxide doesn’t cause global warming like this fraudulent “overwhelming consensus” would have you believe. But by saying it indirectly, Zeldin is sticking to facts he can defend, from which the deduction can be made that all this “climate change” stuff is an expensive grift.

Damn, he’s good.

WATCH: EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin just completely OBLITERATED CNN’s running propaganda. 😂

CNN: “Thank you so much for being here….Do you accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that these greenhouse gas emissions are the biggest drivers of man made climate change?”… pic.twitter.com/S6y8uecwN7

— DeVory Darkins (@devorydarkins) August 3, 2025

What’s great about this is Zeldin isn’t just arguing that we get off the climate change bus. He’s taking us off it and then explaining why we don’t want to be on it. That’s a level of effective action most people didn’t expect from Republicans until not so long ago.

4. Another Player on the “Our Democracy” Team Turns Up Lame

Well, you can’t get anything out of Robert Mueller on the Russiagate hoax. Subpoenaed by the House Committee seeking to get to the bottom of the mess, we find out he’s even worse off than Joe Biden is.

Robert Mueller is allegedly residing in a memory care facility, according to a report published Monday by Real Clear Politics. The former FBI director and special counsel, who led the high-profile investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, has reportedly been in the facility “for the past few years,” sources told investigative journalist Paul Sperry.

The report surfaced as the House Oversight Committee announced it had issued Mueller a subpoena to testify about the FBI’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Chairman James Comer is seeking answers about a long-dormant federal investigation into Epstein that occurred during the George W. Bush administration.

While the Oversight Committee confirmed the subpoena was issued, it declined to comment on Mueller’s alleged condition. “The subpoenas issued are legally binding and duly authorized,” a spokesperson told the Daily Caller. “As always, the Committee will engage in good faith negotiations with all parties.”

The report from Real Clear Politics has raised concerns about Mueller’s cognitive capacity and ability to testify. If confirmed, it would mark a dramatic turn for the once-revered lawman who served as FBI director under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and later as special counsel in one of the most politically charged investigations in recent memory.

Mueller’s 2019 report famously concluded that investigators did not find sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election — a finding that sharply contradicted years of media speculation and Democrat accusations.

It remains unclear how the Oversight Committee will proceed if Mueller is unable to participate in the deposition. No official statement has been released by Mueller or his representatives regarding the report or the subpoena.

Well, there you go.

You’re going to find out that none of the players in any of these scandals are going to be able to exonerate themselves. Here’s another example — Anita Dunn, who somehow was a key adviser to Team Biden on political messaging (no, she isn’t very good at her job, but you won’t find anybody more utterly evil than Anita Dunn), got called up to testify and, well…

Opening statement from Biden aide Anita Dunn ahead of her interview.

“While I observed that President Biden aged physically during his time in office, which is something that happens to every President, he remained throughout my interactions w/ him fully engaged” pic.twitter.com/BfT0kfsjXV

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) August 7, 2025

The House Oversight Committee put out a statement afterward, shredding Dunn:

It’s no surprise Anita Dunn is telling the American people not to believe their own eyes, claiming Joe Biden was sharp and “fully engaged.” This opening statement, leaked to media before Ms. Dunn even delivered it, is yet another example of the absurd lengths Biden loyalists will go to defend his failed presidency.

What’s fun is the subpoena sure to come for all of her emails to people in the Biden White House to see if she was holding that story in private among friends, because almost nobody believes Anita Dunn is telling the truth here.

And when those emails don’t match up with that statement, then… gosh, that’s lying to Congress, isn’t it? Why, you get a criminal referral to DOJ for something like that, and you might just spend a little time in jail for such shenanigans.

5. Have You Gotten Caught Up On Blockbusters Yet?

As of this writing, I guess it’s six of the nine serialized episodes of Blockbusters now posted here at The American Spectator.

Here’s the link where you can access all of them.

I’ve got the whole book finished and edited, and all that’s left is some formatting and the cover design before it goes up for sale at Amazon, probably in late September.

Big thanks to Lori Mashburn and Ellie Gardey Holmes, who’ve been really great in helping with editing and giving feedback on the book, and thanks to those of you sending me feedback as the serialized installments have gone out.

What’s been fun is seeing evidence that some of the things the book predicts are already coming true. I’d be more specific about that, but I don’t want to do any spoilers, particularly for what’s coming in episodes 7-9.

But when Sydney Sweeney shows up in the book, just know that she was already written in before that American Eagle ad campaign dropped. I swear!

READ MORE from Scott McKay:

DC Has Had Its Chance to Self-Govern. It Failed. Enough Already.

The Democrats Are Messing With Texas. It’s Time to Shut Down the Fleebagger Circus.

Five Quick Things: The Long Overdue Russiagate Reckoning