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simpledinosaur's avatar

Democrats will need to cast aside their admirable but loserish probity on the gerrymandering issue. We don't need a new attack of tedious scruples about this stuff, unless we're fine with Trump transforming his Four-Year Reich into a Thousand-Year Reich. Which we aren't.

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Zyxomma's avatar

Ta, Dok. That Thing in the Offal Office is always going on about how much he HATES criminals (let's ignore for the moment that he is one). I haven't once heard him say state prisoners should be excluded from the Census. We all know that's how rural areas like many in upstate NY inflate their numbers to have greater Congressional representation. I know, don't give him any ideas.

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Rhizolith Reborn's avatar

A gøøse once bit my sister. It was very nasti

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Lionel “8647” Hutz's avatar

As stupid and lazy as MAGA is, there is no way they have convinced themselves that they can do an actual census in under two years. Do you think they would take the billions for kidnapping brown people off the streets and waste it on people going door to door?

No, they will come up with some stupid computer program that will weight the number of people in each state based upon something dealing with the 2024 vote counts (All Republican voters are citizens, in California, the number of Republican votes for Trump was only 6,081,697, so California will only get 8 congressional seats in 2026. QED!)

When you think about how fair that is, it is a wonder we haven't always done apportionment like this.

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Ron Spangler's avatar

So, it's 50/50 at this point whether Dementia Cheeto and his Mini Me get to deport babbies born in the United States to brown mothers, because despite the plain text elsewhere in the 14th Amendment (motherfuckers) and a raft of lower court rulings against him along the lines of "Are you fucking kidding me with this?" the Supreme Court of the United States refuses to strike down Executive Orders 14160 and 14156 and be done with it.

If the Cheeto orders a census and starts reapportioning Congressional seats, he'll just keep doing it and wait for the courts to stop him. Which will probably happen at some point. Maybe in 2035.

And the news pieces that talk about how impossible it is to do a full census from a standing start before the end of this year that ends in 5 miss the point, that a census is pretty easy if you plan to just make up numbers that take seats away from blue states and give them to red ones. Which you can't do, but who's going to stop you, the courts? (Please see paragraph 2.)

So, in summary, Dementia Cheeto is now claiming he can overturn two very plain provisions of the 14th Amendment, and he probably will get away with it, at least for awhile, because fuck you John Roberts, and the horse you rode in on.

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Flashman's avatar

On a positive note, however, this and the Texas apportionment thing give me hope that the Repugs are foreseeing a real bloodbath in 2026 if they don't do something.

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simpledinosaur's avatar

The economy is sinking while the cost of living rises, most people hate the ICE-Nazi Reign of Terror, and the Epstein Files! Epstein Files! Epstein Files! scandal isn't going away. Trump's non-stick coating has worn off and he's now justly smeared and slathered all over with his own SHIT. The thing about conspiracy theories is that anything one does to allay people's belief and interest in them is immediately taken as yet more evidence of a coverup. And in this case, there IS a coverup. So, there's that.

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Rhizolith Reborn's avatar

Not to mention Dems growing a pair and doing the same thing where they can.

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Ron Spangler's avatar

If people who don't like what they're doing are actually allowed to vote in 2026. That's what all of this is about, after all.

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Flashman's avatar

Yup

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MTE_NYC's avatar

So if you don’t count people, you can pretend they don’t exist & therefore ICE can be abolished… hmmm…

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beb's avatar

Just remember that Trump considers all Democrats as unAmerican. He'll probably try to eliminate them from the census, too.

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Pere Ubu's avatar

We KNOW why he wants NEW CENUSS; the GOP is constantly claiming the Democrats allow undocumented persons into the country "to vote Democrat", like it's a demonic pact or something.

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"M"'s avatar

"In addition to being blatantly illegal, Trump’s order is also wildly impractical, especially if he thinks he can order a new Census and reapportion seats in Congress before the 2026 midterms, or even the 2028 general election."

Well ... he does think that

Because he's incredibly stupid, as well as being a power-hungry coward

Fran Lebowitz really did try to tell us

In 2016

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Daerosdaimeyez's avatar

I miss when the only thing that came to mind when I Thought about red hats and fedoras was Linux.

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"M"'s avatar

Can't spell "hatred" without RED HAT

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TheGreatAndPowerfulMormos!'s avatar

We have to stop arguing with propaganda; bad faith arguments don't care about good faith arguments, so arguing is pointless. Destroy the propaganda and educate people in critical thinking.

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TheGreatAndPowerfulMormos!'s avatar

What is a "person" anyway?

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Satanic Pancake's avatar

A white male born on continental U.S. soil to white parents themselves born on continental U.S. soil, if Trump and Miller are to be believed. Oops, wasn’t Trump’s mother a filthy fucking furriner?

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Mexfiles's avatar

At the very least, the child of a north European.

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calliecallie, aka pollyanna's avatar

"...because half-assing everything is built into the Trump Operating System."

Really, it's the PAB Operating System. POS for short.

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Ward From Cali's avatar

The court will uphold this fuckery. We already KNOW that John Roberts has never seen a Republican vote suppression scheme his didn't love, so the vote would already be 4-3 before before Kavenaugh and Barrett weigh in. We'd have to get both of them.

I also got a point out that the only enforcement mechanism for unlawful apportionment or elections in defiance of apportionment is for Congress to deny seating for state delegations. This could also be an attempt to create conditions that would break Congress and leave only the Presidency. Trump isn't that clever, but Project 2025 is.

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"M"'s avatar

"The court will uphold this fuckery."

It's only the thousandth time I've said that -- but I really REALLY wish "regular folks" would stop acting like the other goosesteppers in the SCOTUS majority and think things through a little more like Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson

It's not like they haven't asked us to do it

https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-demands-new-better-illegal/comment/143445461

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Kerry Canfield's avatar

Why does he want to correlate the census with the 2024 election?

Because he wants voting records to show him who to persecute.

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"M"'s avatar

EXACTLY

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