Add a citizenship question to the decennial census

Research notes

• The Federal Register notice was read in full through GovInfo (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-03/html/2026-02206.htm, the same text unblocked). It says the Test is an American Community Survey test using the ACS Methods Panel, but it never uses the word “citizenship” — a full-text search of every Federal Register document since 2025-01-20 for “citizenship question” returns nothing. The question itself is in the draft content specifications filed with OMB (forms D6-QE-ISR and D6-QE-IFE). NPR, which read that filing, is kept as Secondary for that one fact. A human with a browser should confirm the questionnaire on reginfo.gov (OMB control number 0607-0936) — reginfo.gov’s search is a POST form and could not be driven from here.
• NPR also reports that in August 2025 the President called, on social media, for a “new” census excluding people without legal status. That call is not a presidential action: the whitehouse.gov presidential-actions corpus (612 records) contains no document mentioning the census, and no executive order or memorandum on the census appears in the Federal Register for the window. It is therefore not recorded as a Status event.
• No 2030 Census rulemaking or notice in the window proposes a citizenship question; the Bureau’s other 2030-census filings are address-canvassing and redistricting-program notices.
• The 2026-09-10 Census proposed rule (FR 2026-18481, 91 FR 57524, RIN 0607-AA75, docket USBC-2026-0628) — found in scan triage 2026-09-10, closed in review 2026-09-11. The triage had only the abstract, which never says “citizenship”, and left two questions. The review read the full text on federalregister.gov. (1) A question, as an option. The preamble raises a legal-status question on the short form and invites comment on it. The regulatory text does not add one. It does exempt residence-criteria questions from Part 70’s restrictions and from the voluntary-response rule (§70.2(d)), and that exemption would reach a legal-status question. Recorded as the 2026-09-10 event, at an unchanged attempted. (2) Status decides who is counted. Proposed §60.4 counts foreign citizens for apportionment only if they are also U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents; “all other citizens of foreign countries” are “not counted for apportionment”. That is the exclusion the President called for in August 2025, now proposed as a rule. It is not this Quote’s object, a question on the form, and no ask on the site is about who is counted for apportionment (grep of every content file, scan triage 2026-09-10). It is recorded here so the reader sees what the rule’s other half does. The scan did not propose this item, because the record shares no phrase with the Quote.
• Comment period extended (scan triage 2026-10-04, twelfth run). The Census Bureau extended comments on the 2026-09-10 proposed rule from 2026-10-13 to 2026-11-02 (FR 2026-20328, 2026-10-05, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/05/2026-20328/decennial-census-of-the-population-of-americans-proposed-residence-criteria-and-proposed-regulations). This is known from the abstract. The 2026-09-10 event’s “Comments close 2026-10-13” was true when it was written and is left as dated. An extension is not a rung, and it says nothing about whether a legal-status question will be in the final rule.