SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Newly released data from the Census Bureau points to big shifts in state representation in the House after the 2030 Census, showing a projected loss of four seats for California due to slowing population growth.
The Brennan Center of Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute based at NYU, predicts the state will see its congressional delegation shrink from 52 to 48, in what it describes as a stunning loss of representation.
Once a decade, the Constitution requires the reallocation of congressional seats among states based on the results of the latest census, a process called reapportionment.
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This is only the second time the Golden State has lost representation since it became a state.
California lost 229,077 people to net domestic migration between July 2024 and July 2025.
The top states that people moved to from California were Texas, Nevada, Arizona and Washington.
Jonathan Cervas, a redistricting expert at Carnegie Mellon University, says that California could lose four congressional seats if the trends hold in 2030.
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If those trends hold, Texas and Florida could gain four seats each.
President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has contributed to a year-to-year drop in the U.S. growth rate as the nation’s population hit nearly 342 million people in 2025. That’s according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest since 2001 and was fueled by immigration.
The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people. Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of 2.8 million people. Trump made a surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 Republican presidential campaign.
Population growth in the United States has slowed significantly, with an increase of only 1.8 million, or 0.5%, between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025, according to the new Vintage 2025 population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
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This was the nation’s slowest population growth since the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the population grew by a historically low 0.2% in 2021.
“The slowdown in U.S. population growth is largely due to a historic decline in net international migration, which dropped from 2.7 million to 1.3 million in the period from July 2024 through June 2025,” said Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for Estimates and Projections at the Census Bureau. “With births and deaths remaining relatively stable compared to the prior year, the sharp decline in net international migration is the main reason for the slower growth rate we see today.”
Slower population growth was felt across the country. All four census regions and every state except Montana and West Virginia saw their growth slow, or their decline accelerate.
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