Barackface: 27: Trade

Opinion: Do the math: America’s representation ratio is all wrong Taxes are going up. Debt is skyrocketing. Priorities are out of whack. The government is rounding up citizens. ......... And what are the parties doing? Gerrymandering for power. What is the president doing? Deploying the National Guard. ....... Chris Stirewalt on the Dispatch Podcast says, “The underlying problem … is that we haven’t added any members to the House of Representatives for more than 100 years.” He’s right, but the issue goes deeper. America has a representation ratio problem. ....... If we want to fix the problem, we must uncap the House and pass comprehensive immigration and apportionment reform. ........ The country’s first representation ratio problem was caused by slavery. The three-fifths compromise counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportionment, enabling a minority interest to have outsized control in Congress. It diluted the representation for non-slaveholding citizens and increased the number of representatives for slaveholders. And as the country and slavery grew, the representation ratio problem got worse. ........ The imbalance of power caused by the ratio problem led to the Civil War. Like today, parties were gerrymandering for control of Congress, and the executive was expanding power. In April of 1853, the Democratic Party in Virginia gerrymandered districts that “effectually stifle[d] the voice of the Whig people of this commonwealth.” Then, on July 4 of 1856, President Franklin Pierce sent the U.S. Army into Kansas supporting the slave government. .......... Since then, the population has grown to more than 340 million today, and the ratio has increased from one representative to 220,000, to one to 768,000. As the population has tripled, the number of seats has remained the same. The representation ratio problem has worsened. .........

all the gerrymandering and enforcement does is drive a bigger wedge between us. Representation is turned into a tool for control rather than a tool for self-government.

....... Immigrants are more likely to be exploited, suffer wage loss, or end up a victim of human trafficking out of fear that going to authorities will get them deported. Businesses and local governments invite them here, but they lack the authority to grant the necessary rights to protect themselves. ........ We must provide clarity to the census. We must uncap the house, removing the limit on power, and add seats to the House of Representatives. We must mend the current divide, enabling better communication between citizens and their representatives.

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Iowa Democrat wins deep pro-Trump district to break GOP supermajority: “A flash warning to the GOP” Democrat Catelin Drey on Tuesday scored a special state Senate election upset victory in a district President Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024. ........ In 2024, Trump won the area that includes District 1 by a wide margin of 23 points. ........ Drey’s win is the second upset win by a Democrat in Iowa in 2025, marking the end of the GOP’s supermajority in the state Senate. ........ Drey’s opponent, Prosch, campaigned as “a strong pro-life conservative” who favored tax cuts and spoke out against “woke ideologies” in public schools.

Democrat leads Republican rivals by double digits in deep red Georgia race Democrats have generally been overperforming in special elections this year following their losses in the 2024 elections. Although special election victories are not always indicative of future electoral wins, Democrats hope these results will translate to high voter motivation in the 2026 midterms, when they are hoping to win back control of the House of Representatives and potentially the Senate amid Trump's faltering approval rating. ..... Democrats also overperformed in the special election for Iowa's 1st Senate District on Tuesday, where Democrat Catelin Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch in the Trump-won district based around Woodbury County.