Latest / The Kinzinger Report / Rigging the Census | How Trump's New Plan Redraws Political Power — September 10, 2026

Transcript

Rigging the Census | How Trump's New Plan Redraws Political Power — September 10, 2026 · The Kinzinger Report

• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Adam Kinzinger, and you're listening to the Kinzinger Report, where I bring you top stories and analysis on current events and the growing threats to our democracy.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: After serving over a decade in Congress, I hope you know what's true and what really matters so that we can all work to save this country that we love so much.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, this is Terry Vertz again and like Adam said yesterday I'll be filling in for him for the next few days while he's traveling overseas.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am super excited to be back on the show.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's jump right into the news.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our top story today, the Trump administration wants to change who counts as a person in the census.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: A proposal released yesterday would exclude millions of immigrants from the 2030 count, including people here legally and drop questions about race that have been on the census since the first one back in 1790.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: That count is very important because it decides how many house seats and electoral votes each state gets and how federal money is divided between the states.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Constitution says to count everyone, but this proposal would skip the people
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also get into the desperate promises Trump is making to save the midterms, a mystery group, dumping $50 million Trump aligned dollars into tight races, and Elon Musk website, harviting harvesting voters, personal data, and the European investigators who say the DOJ has stopped answering their questions about Jeffrey Epstein.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So do me a favor, like this video, share it with somebody who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's try to get right to it.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: We start with the census where the administration is changing the rules with big consequences for future elections.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yesterday, the Commerce Department released a proposal to overhaul the 2030 census.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, under the plan, the count would include only U.S. citizens and green card holders.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone else would be excluded, including people here legally on temporary status.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: The proposal would also drop the census questions on race and ethnicity, which have been asked in some form ever since the very first census in 1790.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now the census is about much more than just a head count.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: It decides how house seats and electoral votes are divided among the states and how hundreds of billions of federal dollars get distributed.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: You leave millions of people out and states with large immigrant populations by the way, just like my home state of Texas, a very red state in the past, those states lose seats and lose funding.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Drop the race questions and it becomes much harder to know when a group is getting left behind.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the worst part about this is that the proposal ignores the Constitution.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The 14th Amendment very clearly says how seats are divided based on, quote, the whole number of persons in each state, not the number of citizens, the number of persons.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're trying to add a citizenship question in his first term, the Supreme Court shut them down.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: New York's attorney general has already said she'll sue over this one.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now look, the census might sound boring, but it's the bedrock of our representative democracy.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And while the president floods your feed with AI memes and culture war red meat, he's pursuing meaningful structural changes like this one.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And all that noise is just meant to distract us from the very real damage he's doing to our country.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to take years to clean up.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, Trump is making some big promises to try to save the midterms.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So last night in his weird midterm convention speech, Trump reached a new level of grift, offering a $5,000 payout to every adult citizen if and only if Republicans keep control of Congress in November.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's calling it the Trump dividend.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a dividend, by the way, it would be a stimulus check.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's details.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess he knows that we all need help paying for gas that thanks to his Iran War of choice.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But a payment like that will of course require congressional approval, which seems pretty unlikely when you do the math.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Estimates put the cost at about $1.3 trillion, which is roughly 70% of the entire discretionary federal budget.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Chip Roy, a MAGA Republican congressman from Texas,
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But besides just exploiting the deficit that much stimulus would, of course, explode inflation, even more than it already has been.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And look, Trump has done this kind of thing before.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Last November, he promised to solve $2,000 tariff checks by the middle of this year.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's now September and those checks are nowhere to be seen.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And on Hannity last night, JD Vance was asked whether the plan is an attempt to buy votes.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here's his response.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you want to undercut the wages of American workers, you want to ship American jobs overseas, you're going to pay a big fat penalty when you try to bring that stuff back into the United States of America.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Those penalties have generated a lot of revenues.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: They've helped us pay down debt.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: What the president's just saying is, if you keep it going to the American people, if you keep us in power and allow us to continue to do these things, then you're going to share in some of the benefit of this incredible wealth that we're creating in the United States of America.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, the answer is tariffs, but even before the Supreme Court struck down most of Trump's tariffs in February, they brought in about $200 billion a year.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now it's just a fraction of that.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: These checks will never go out and Trump knows it.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But just one more lie can't really hurt, right?
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, he made an even bigger promise before the speech.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Asked about the war with Iran, which is now in its seventh month.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trump told reporters it would end immediately after the election and that oil prices would magically come tumbling down.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have a listen.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're more powerful now than OPEC and prices right after this very important election on November 3rd will be plummeting.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The world will be over very shortly after the election.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: By the way, well, is now $100 a barrel today, side note.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Compare that with new reporting from the Wall Street Journal that Trump's own top advisors, including Vance and Rubio, have warned him that the Whark could last through the end of his term.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: These aren't Trump critics.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't TDS.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is his own cabinet.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So voters are being offered two things.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: A check from a guy who's never sent the last one he promised and an into a war that the president's own advisors don't expect.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: In case you can't tell, this is what desperation looks like.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And next, Trump is finally opening his war chest, but doesn't want anyone to look inside.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now for months, for publicans and tough races, and there's a lot of them this midterm, have been asking Trump's super PAC, MAGA Inc, to open its $400 million war chest.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: This week, some money finally started flowing, but it's not from MAGA Inc. On Tuesday, a brand new group called No Going Back Pack,
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's an interesting name.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Reserved about $25 million in ad buys.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: By Wednesday, that number had grown to roughly $47 million spread across several races.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the New York Times reports that this group is linked to mega ink, according to two people familiar with the plants.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has the same treasure, its websites are nearly identical.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But here's the loophole.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: No going back, pack,
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: was incorporated on September 1st, just last week.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because of that timing, it isn't required to fire file its first report on donors until October.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: By then, early voting will already be underway in a number of states, and campaign finance circles.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is called a pop-up pack.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It spends money now, but it doesn't have to make any disclosures until later.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, the money that Republicans have been begging for is finally arriving, but the voters watching those ads won't be able to see who paid for them until ballots are actually being cast.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: As usual, in air quotes, the most transparent administration in history would prefer to keep you in the dark.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just what are they hiding and where is that money coming from?
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Elon Musk is spending millions to send voters to a website that takes far more than it
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you've seen ads telling you to verify your voter registration at Votesafe, be careful.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the past week, Elon Musk's super PAC, America PAC, has spent over $180,000 driving people to the website ahead of the midterms.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just what is Musk want?
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Judd Legum reports on his sub-stack that he's after your private information.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you use Votesafe to quote, check your registration.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: The site also collects your home address, your cell phone number, your IP address, and your location, and voter registration status, and every link that you click.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: In short, Musk learns far more about you than you learn about your registration status.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: and he stands to profit at your expense, as if he needs any more money.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vote safe, shares your information with business partners, so they can track your online activity and push you targeted advertisements.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the site just changes privacy policy, stripping out the language that limited what it could do with your data.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't a first, in 2024, Elon's America Pack spent almost a million dollars sending voters to a similar site, which collected their information without ever helping them to register.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And just this summer, North Carolina election officials flagged another muscling group for mailing out outdated registration forms.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: The pattern is hard to miss.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Musk is capitalizing on the chaos and uncertainty orchestrated by the Trump administration around who can vote and how.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: and worried voters land on his websites looking for answers, which he abuses for his own personal game.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're really concerned about your voter registration, please go to the Election Assistance Commission's website.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's vote.gov, very simple, VOTE.gov, and that will send you directly to your state registration page.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: They will give you information without taking yours.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And finally, the Justice Department has blocked European allies from investigating Jeffrey Epstein.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You heard that right.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first batch of the Epstein files released last fall included names, associates from countries around the world.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Several of those countries have since opened their own criminal investigations, but they face a significant obstacle to justice.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The United States Justice Department.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Last month, a spokesperson claimed that the DOJ quote has not refused to assist any jurisdiction investigating potential criminal conduct related to Jeffrey Epstein on quote.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the Washington Post found otherwise when foreign investigators asked for help, the Justice Department refuses or ignores them.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: European allies in particular have come away empty handed.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: In Norway, a former Prime Minister and two former diplomats are under corruption investigation over their ties to Epstein.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Norwegian prosecutors asked RDOJ for records, and the request has not been approved.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: In Poland, the Prime Minister and his government are investigating possible links between Epstein and Russian intelligence.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Polish prosecutors requested unredacted documents in April and have yet to receive a response.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in Britain, we're a former ambassador and a former prince, our under investigation, the telegraph, reported last month that the Justice Department wouldn't hand over unredacted files.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Such requests typically move through mutual legal assistance, a routine procedure, countries used to share evidence in criminal investigations.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the DOJ office that handles them has long faced operational challenges from high staff turnover to oversized caseloads.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: and look refusing to help our allies investigate the world's most notorious child predator fits a pattern we've seen here at home.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: This administration has dragged its feet and resisted releasing information that every turn, this is the same government that campaigned on the promise that they would share this evidence and they've done everything in their power to keep its secret.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Trump sits at the center of it all protecting himself
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's the show for September 10th.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: If this was worth your time and I know it was, like it, share it with somebody who needs to see it, and please subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And while you're at it, check out my sub-stack to revert, subscribe there, follow me on social media.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you back here tomorrow, a summer day at the 25th anniversary of September 11th tomorrow.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bye everybody.