Month: August 2025

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 09AUG2025 – Constitution on Census

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I actually looked at the constitution with respect to the census in a comment in another blog ( https://thenewneo.com/2025/08/07/trump-calls-for-new-census-that-doesnt-count-illegal-aliens/ ) Looking at the text of Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the US Constitution (partial) we have

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

So first issue is that the 3/5 clause is made moot by the 13th amendment as slavery is now forbidden, as are terms of service for a period of years . The “Indians Not Taxed” Portion has been nullified by legislative action in 1924 by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 so native Americans DO count towards the census. This effectively leaves us with

“according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons”.

Sadly the most direct reading of that is NOT citizens but humans (actually counted/enumerated). It might be possible for the legislature to clarify the meaning to citizens (making legislative changes similar to what it did to include Native Americans). More sure would be a change in the constitutional language in the form of a constitutional amendment. A purely legislative change is likely to see judicial challenge given large blue states would get hammered by it. At present I doubt an amendment could be gotten through Congress let alone the 38 states needed for ratification. Probably worth a shot via the legislature as the Supreme Court might view that change as a clarification of the definition of Persons, analogous to the change created by the Indian Citizenship act.

With respect to the inaccuracy of the count alleged by the Trump administration the language uses the words count and enumerate. This does NOT seem to leave slop for the various estimates used in the blue cities with respect to transient and homeless populations as well as to count illegal aliens who do not directly reply to the census. The language implies that you have to actually count the people. Only people so counted, to be repetitive, count. This would be challenged but is on far stronger ground with the current Supreme Court’s tendency to being more constrained by the text.

Finally the language concerning whether you can do another census sooner than 2030 says “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.” That implies no more than 10 years between enumerations but Congress may legislate when within that period. So it would seem they could require an enumeration sooner, but it may take legislative action depending on the law as it exists.

Of course, I am NOT a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, so this and $2.50 will get you a cup of coffee (maybe). This particular idea of restricting the redistricting to be based on citizens (or similar) seems like a win. It also seems like what the founders intended as the purpose of redistricting is to avoid rotten boroughs, as seen in 17th-century England and trying to keep representation in line with citizens/population.
If Congress WERE to write an amendment to restrict the enumeration to citizens I would think that they should also go with something like the Wyoming rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule), adding seats so that there is less of the discrepancy on representation/seat where some small states votes are disproportionate to districts in larger districts. Last I looked the Wyoming rule would require ~570 seats instead of the current 435 in the House. It is something the Left complains about A LOT and I do not think the Wyoming rule would have much effect on overall balance as the red areas get a fair addition of seats too.

Goodbye Summer 2025

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So, Saturday (09AUG2025) is a big family party at the Compound.  Another grandson graduates from high school and begins college.  The next, next generation become adults and have all the same decisions and experiences in front of them.  And Camera Girl and I continue our campaign to get to play with progressively more distant descendants.  The hunt for great grandchildren is now the thing.

But the main thing is that I’m just providing the infrastructure; the indoor and outdoor venue and the grill.  The graduate’s parents will bring and cook the food and organize the kids’ activities and lifeguard the pool.  I’ll just be one of the kids tomorrow.  I intend to spend a portion of the event with my brothers talking about how passing the torch to the next generation feels for them.  There has been a threat of putting on a Shatner-Khan adjacent event.  Maybe put on one of his greatest hits.  If it happens, I hope it’ll be “Terror at 20,000 Feet.”  There can be nothing more definitively Shatner than that.

But I hope to spend most of the day eating burgers and dogs and potato salad and peppers and sausage.  And then playing pool with the grandkids and shooting the breeze with family that I don’t see very often.  This will be the last get together for the summer.  And everyone is getting older and travelling even the modest distances between us becomes more challenging every year.  So, these parties become more important.

I guess most of us are on the Trump train so there will be some Trump gloating going on.  We’ll keep it sotto voce because even among my close relatives there are a few folks of the other persuasion.  And I don’t see any need to start a fight.  Family solidarity is more important than scoring political points at a party.  That’s for sure.

A couple of days ago the goofy looking weather man on the Spectrum channel (my cable provider) told us that it looks like a very nice week with temperatures in the 80’s, low humidity and plenty of sun.  But then, just to prove he’s a jerk he went into a little spiel where he defined just how much daylight we lose over the course of August.  And just to show that he was intentionally spreading misery he finished off by saying, “But most people don’t like to be reminded of this sad fact.”  What a creep.

But he’s right.  The sun is lower in the sky.  It’s cooler than a few weeks ago and the sun is down earlier than it should be.  The leaves are starting to fall from the cherry trees.  The vegetable garden is definitely looking worse for wear and the flowers are starting to exhaust.  Last week the daylilies in the sheltered corner ran out of flowers.  There are still some smaller ones (Stella de Oros and orange ones) but they’re not the same.  The cone flowers will last a good long time but there aren’t anymore new flowers growing.  The only flowers still to come are the Montauk daisies and the wolfbane in October.

So summer is wrapping up.  The kids go back to school in two weeks and pretty soon the end of season Dunwich Fair with its First Selectman dunk tank (win at your own risk) and free werewolf neutering clinic will be upon us.  Well, it’s time for the party and goodbye Summer 2025.

Guest Contributor – Glenn W – 08AUG2025 – What Counts

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I’m very interested to see how this plays out. I worked for the Census Bureau for six years and who got counted in the decennial census was always very contentious. After every census the Bureau would be sued by several states who believed their population were undercounted (states always want to maximize their population to get the maximum number of congressional seats). The Census’ position always was that the Constitution states that they are to count the number of “persons” in each state without any other qualifiers. There is a historical basis for this since slaves were not citizens and they were to be counted (the 3/5 rule would be mute otherwise). Of course slaves were here legally. I suspect the legal folks at the Census Bureau are scrambling right now and I don’t know how they are going to officially react. We live in interesting times for sure.

Re-Counting the Census

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Wow.  Can he do that?  I guess he can.  This may turn out to be a really big deal.  How much might California’s population decrease if illegal aliens are discounted.  A million?  Three million?  Maybe more?  What if all of a sudden there are more people in Texas and Florida than New York and California?  Not to mention all the illegals in Illinois, Virginia and New Jersey.

So, this is Trump swinging for the fences.  I can’t imagine that the same federal judges that have challenged him on every executive order and every action he takes won’t write injunctions against this.  They may slow him down but I think the Supreme Court may back him on this if he can make the case that illegal aliens are being counted in defiance of the intent of the census to count how many Americans need representation in each state.

I listened to a little bit of a podcast where James Carville was freaking out over this and he said that if the Democrats can get the White House and both houses of Congress in 2028, they should immediately declare DC and Puerto Rico states and add six seats to the Supreme Court in order to claw back control of the federal government.  I took that to mean that he’s in a panic.  Trump is fighting gerrymandered fire with fire.  Massachusetts has been 100% Democrat for ages.  The Supreme Court has said that gerrymandering is not within their purview.  Since racial gerrymandering is no longer allowed, it’s only natural for the red states to copy states like Massachusetts and maximize the number of Republican house seats they can manufacture.

Trump is playing hardball and he’s doing it while he has the maximum clout he’ll ever have.  Could it backfire?  Not really.  It could fail to get all he’s looking to get but it’s not like the Democrats could ever get any angrier than the already are.  And this is the moment when the Democrats are as unpopular as they’ve ever been or maybe ever could be.  So, this is the time to strike.

We are living in very turbulent times.  We have elected Trump because the other Republicans were useless and dishonest.  We’ve hired a pragmatist who doesn’t like losing.  It certainly behooves us to back his play.  Any Republican wringing his hands or whining about alienating the Democrats is not to be listened to.  In fact, these are the people we must replace.  Trump has a vision of how to defeat the leftist political movement.  It entails restoring prosperity to the American middle-class and eliminating as much of the bureaucracy and the NGO’s that leech money and power from the federal government at the expense of the tax payers.  He is dead right.  Defunding USAID and other slush funds that feed the Left is brilliant.  Recounting the census is also brilliant.  He is doing everything he can to allow the real majority to get the government they want.  If he keeps up like this, it won’t be enough to add him to Mt Rushmore.  We’ll have to put him on the million-dollar bill (which will have to be added to circulation to allow for buying Starbucks coffee in a few years).