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Some electoral firsts, occasioned by the 2026 election for the House of Representatives

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

Staying up late last night watching election returns (as I do), one thing the commentators kept saying was it was a day of firsts, historic results. And it got me thinking about one of those anticipated firsts: assuming there are no more surprises, New York’s Hakeem Jeffries is poised to become the first Black person to be Speaker of the House.

Beyond the fact itself, what caught my attention is that we normally associate “firsts” with increasing levels of difficulty. The first person to row across the Atlantic Ocean came before the first to row across the Pacific, because the Pacific is larger, more difficult. The first people to climb Mt. Everest came after all the shorter, less dangerous mountains had been summitted. Similarly, we unconsciously rank political offices in order of difficulty: President ranks above Vice President, which (in our minds) ranks above Speaker of the House, and so on. And yet, the first Black person to be President, Barack Obama (2009–17) came before the first Black Vice President, Kamala Harris (2021–25), who came before the expected for Black Speaker.

On the other hand, the first woman to be Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (2007–11 and 2019–23), came before the first woman to be Vice President (Kamala Harris, 2021–25), while we still await the first woman to be President (and yes, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote for President in 2016, but she didn’t win the electoral vote).

A few other political firsts in that lineage:

John Willis Menard of Louisiana was the first Black person elected to the House of Representatives, in 1868 (but the election was contested, so he wasn’t seated).

Hiram Revels of Mississippi was the first Black person elected to the US Senate, in 1870. That same year, Joseph Rainey of South Carolina was the first Black person to serve in the House of Representatives. In 1874, Rainey was the first Black person to preside over the House, serving as Speaker pro tempore.

In 1879, Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi became the first Black person to preside over the Senate. He was also the first to serve a full term as Senator (1875–81); Revels served just over a year. In 1881, Bruce became the first Black person whose signature appeared on US paper currency, in his new role as Register of the Treasury.

Robert C. Weaver was the first Black Cabinet Secretary, serving as the first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1966–68).

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was the first Black person appointed to the Supreme Court.

In 1989, Colin Powell was the first Black person to serve as Chairman the Joint Chiefs, and in 2001, he became the first to be Secretary of State.

The first Black person to be elected a governor was Douglas Wilder in Virginia in 1990.

And a few other female firsts:

First woman to serve as President pro tempore of the Senate: Patty Murray of Washington (2023–25).

First woman to serve as Secretary of State: Madeleine Albright (1997–2001).

First woman to serve in the Cabinet: Frances Perkins, who was Secretary of Labor (1933–45).

First woman to serve on the Supreme Court: Sandra Day O’Connor (1981–2006).

First woman to be elected to the Senate: Hattie Caraway of Arkansas (1931–45). Fifteen states have not elected any female Senators: Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.

First woman to be elected to the House of Representatives: Jeannette Rankin of Montana (1917–19 and 1941–43). She is the only woman ever to represent Montana in House. Mississippi is the only remaining state to have never sent a woman to the House of Representatives.

First woman to be elected governor: Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming (1925–27). She is the only woman to have served as governor of Wyoming, and then became the first woman to be director of the US Mint (1933–53). Ross beat Miriam Ferguson of Texas to the governor’s office by 15 days.

Hakeem Jeffries

Presidential Ships

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

As it frequently does, research on one thing took me down a deep rabbit hole elsewhere; in this case, into ship naming. For another piece I’m working on, I looked at President Donald Trump directing a new class of battleships (which apparently no one but him wants) to be named for him. It’s like he has no concept of history or tradition: first and foremost, that classes of ships are actually named after the first ship of the class. But to name a ship or a class after himself is… well… classless.

In the early days of the republic, it was actually fairly common to name US Navy vessels after living people.

There were at least fourteen US Navy ships named after the first president, George Washington (1732–99; he was president from 1789 to 1797), at least five of them while he was still alive (several, indeed, simultaneously):

  • USS Washington (1775) was a schooner named Endeavor that was acquired by Gen. Washington in October 1775, renamed Washington, and re-rigged as a brigantine.
  • USS Washington (1776) was a row galley that operated in Narragansett Bay during the winter and spring of 1776.
  • USS Washington (1776) was one of 13 frigates authorized by the Continental Congress. She was launched in August 1776.
  • USS Washington (1776), a lateen-rigged two-masted galley, was built in the autumn of 1776.
  • USS George Washington (1798), a frigate, was commissioned in 1798.

The practice of naming ships after the living died out in the middle of the 1800s. The USS Harriet Lane was commissioned by the US Revenue Cutter Service in 1857 and transferred to the Navy in 1861. She was named for Harriet Lane (1830–1903), the niece and First Lady of bachelor President James Buchanan.

After that, the next naval ship to be named for a living person was the USS Holland (SS-1), the first submarine commissioned by the US Navy, in 1900. She was named for submarine designer John Philip Holland (1841–1914). But then, no more.

In 1969, a Navy panel made it official, formally decreeing that warships would no longer be named after living persons. That lasted until 1974, when President Richard Nixon announced that the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) would be named for Carl Vinson (1883–1981), who chaired the House Armed Services Committee from 1949 to 1953 and 1955 to 1965. The ship was commissioned nine months after he died, in March 1982.

Since then, however, it’s become more acceptable to name ships after a few living people. Specifically, former presidents, for whom the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers were named, with a few exceptions.

In 1994, the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) was named for the former president who died in June 2004, eleven months after the ship was commissioned in July 2003. Reagan served in the US Army from 1937 to 1945, serving only in the continental US, mostly in public relations.

In 1998, the Seawolf-class submarine USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) was named for the former president and submariner. Carter graduated from Annapolis in 1946, and served as an officer aboard several submarines. He left the Navy in 1953, after the death of his father, to take over the family business. Carter died in December 2024, 19 years after the ship was commissioned.

The USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) was named in December 2002 for the former president who served as a naval aviator during World War II. He flew 58 missions and completed 128 carrier landings. Bush died in November 2018, nine years after his ship was commissioned.

The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78)—the first Ford-class carrier—was named in October 2006. ; Ford served as an instructor and a carrier officer during World War II. He died in December 2006, eight years before the ship was commissioned.

On January 13, 2025, President Joe Biden announced that Ford-class carriers CVN-82 and CVN-83 will be named for former presidents William J. Clinton and George W. Bush, respectively. Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard, and is the last president to have served in the military.

Only 18 of the 58 ships named for US presidents were named for those who did not serve in the military, and the honor was only accorded to six presidents who did not so serve:

John Adams—seven ships. Most recently, ballistic missile submarine John Adams (SSBN-620) was named for both Presidents Adams was launched January 12, 1963, decommissioned in 1989, and scrapped in 1996.

Thomas Jefferson—five ships. Most recently, ballistic missile submarine USS Thomas Jefferson (SSBN-618) was commissioned in January 1963, decommissioned in 1985, and recycled between 1996 and 1998.

Martin Van Buren—one ship. A schooner-rigged revenue cutter entered service with Revenue Marine on December 2, 1839. She was transferred to the Navy for the Seminole War (1841–42), and also served against Mexico (1846). She was declared unseaworthy late in 1846, and sold June 1, 1847.

James Knox Polk—three ships. Most recently, ballistic missile submarine USS James K. Polk (SSBN-645) was commissioned in April 1966, decommissioned in July 1999 and recycled.

Woodrow Wilson—one ship. Ballistic missile submarine USS Woodrow Wilson (SSBN-624) was christened in February 1963, decommissioned in 1994, and recycled between 1997 and 1998.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt—one ship. The USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42) was a Midway-class aircraft carrier, commissioned on October 27, 1945, decommissioned on October 1, 1977. She was sold for scrapping on April 1, 1978.

Bill Clinton—planned CVN-82.

Presidents with ships named for them who did serve in the military include:

  • George Washington: 14 ships, including the in-service aircraft carrier CVN-73.
  • James Madison: 4 ships.
  • James Monroe: 1 ship.
  • Andrew Jackson: 3 ships.
  • Abraham Lincoln: 3 ships, including the in-service aircraft carrier CVN-72.
  • Ulysses Grant: 3 ships.
  • Rutherford Hayes: 1 ship.
  • Theodore Roosevelt: 2 ships, including the in-service aircraft carrier CVN-71.
  • Harry Truman: 1 ship, the in-service aircraft carrier CVN-75.
  • Dwight Eisenhower: 1 ship, the in-service aircraft carrier CVN-69.
  • John Kennedy: 2 ships, the retired aircraft carrier CV-67 and CVN-79, which was christened in 2019, and is expected to be delivered to the Navy next year.
  • Lyndon Johnson: 1 ship, the in-service destroyer DDG-1002.
  • Gerald Ford: 1 ship, the in-service aircraft carrier CVN-78.
  • Jimmy Carter: 1 ship, the in-service Seawolf-class submarine SSN-23.
  • Ronald Reagan: 1 ship, the in-service aircraft carrier CVN-76.
  • George H.W. Bush: 1 ship, the in-service aircraft carrier CVN-77.
  • George W. Bush: the planned aircraft-carrier CVN-83.

(The picture is the USS Gerald R. Ford sailing alongside the USS Harry S. Truman.)

Where have all the war correspondents gone?

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

The Trump-Iran War is a strange one, in that we’re not experiencing it directly; we only experience the effects.

Every war since Vietnam has been live and in person, in our living rooms on the evening news (or, with the rise of the 24-hour news channels, all day long). There have always been war correspondents embedded with the troops, and we’ve seen them on the ground in the fields of battle. We’ve heard from them how well or poorly the troops are holding up; they’ve offered us pronouncements and interviews from the commanders in battle; they’ve involved us in the wars. War has been emotional for Americans.

But this one is different. We aren’t experiencing the war directly, visually, viscerally. The only way we know the Trump-Iran War is still happening is because we’re paying more for gas, and high diesel prices have translated into higher costs for food and everything else. But beyond those basic effects on our lives, the only way we know the war is happening is due to the near-constant assertions from the White House that we’ve destroyed the Iranian military, that we control the Gulf of Hormuz, that Iran wants to negotiate.…

I can only surmise it’s a result of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth’s war on the free press. Hegseth threw the press out of the Pentagon, so there are no Pentagon briefings. And Donald Trump and his lackeys keep trying to throw the free press out of the White House. Well, I will say the press are also colluding in this silence, to a degree. It is far cheaper and easier for the press to report on the never-ending political/election “news” than to actually put reporters in the field. But sending those reporters into a war zone is not a unilateral decision; it has required the assistance of the government and the military, and that assistance is not there this time.

I don’t have an answer, just questions, and a feeling that something is amiss. There is no longer any such thing as a “long-distance phone call.” UFOs have disappeared because everyone now has a cell phone camera. We can communicate with nearly everyone on the planet with only the slightest of difficulties or pauses. And yet the Trump-Iran War is shrouded in mystery; we have only a single source of information about it, and that source—Donald Trump—has proven repeatedly over the last decade that he is not a reliable reporter about anything.

Reporters should call out interviewees who lie

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

I was just watching CNN, the anchor (I think it was Brianna Keilar) interviewing Erin Hawley who is “Of Counsel” for the ironically named “Alliance Defending Freedom.” The discussion was about the case State of Louisiana v US Food and Drug Administration, in which the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is currently hearing arguments. (The case is an attempt to restrict access to mifepristone by mail.)

What caught my ear, and kept me watching to the end of the interview, was that during the few minutes I watched, Hawley said—three times—that the drug sends “one in point five women to the emergency room.” She also harped on the drug’s “black box” nature, and compared sending it through the mail to sending cocaine. But that “one in point five women…” bit, that’s what made me yell not at the guest, but at the interviewer. I yearn for the days when reporters paid attention to what interviewees were saying and called them on it. “One in point five”? What does that even mean? Why didn’t Keilar call her on that non-statistic to ask Hawley what the hell she really meant?

Digging through this group’s web site, I think the statistic Hawley was trying to quote was that “roughly one in 25 women who take mifepristone as directed will end up in the emergency room.” And she was probably conflating it with another biased group’s study quoted on the ADF web site that analyzed 866,000 prescriptions and found nearly 11 percent of women suffered serious complications, “which is approximately 22 times higher than the less than 0.5 percent figure the FDA cites.”

Statistics don’t lie, but the uses one puts them to—especially when misquoting them—mean that we’re not getting the whole story. In this case, the story probably would not have changed had the anchor called out the guest for spouting nonsense, but when people are presenting themselves (or being presented) as experts, they really ought to be able to communicate the truth correctly.

And for a news program to let such miscommunication go by, forcing me to dig through the guest’s web site to figure out what she was saying, makes the news program much less useful to me (which is bad) and the guest far less credible (which in this case, is fine with me. She represents a group which has morals [okay, that’s acceptable] and is trying to force those morals on others [which is completely out of line]).

Between the Trumpians and the DSA, there’s no place for me

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

The Trumpian wing of the Republican Party has been doing an excellent job of forcing me into the arms of the Democratic Party. I fear their hatred, their racism, their dishonesty, their graft, and their deification of Donald Trump. So for the last several elections, I’ve voted straight Democratic tickets.

But now I’m watching the Socialist wing of the Democratic Party doing their best to force me away from the Democrats. It’s on fewer issues, but perhaps that’s only because they are the newer player on the stage, and haven’t had the time to poison as many wells. There’s the outrageous “abolish police” position, and their drives to nationalize certain industries. And there’s more.

I’m not religious—don’t attend temple, don’t keep kosher—but I am socially or culturally Jewish. And every time the Democratic Socialists open their mouths, I feel even more marginalized, even more a target of their outright hatred. A few weeks ago, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani threatened to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is not accused of committing any crimes in New York City (though the ICC has an asymmetric view of the events of October 7, 2023, and its aftermath). So why is Mamdani making such threats? Who is the audience he’s playing to? His comments certainly don’t represent this citizen of New York City. And now, he’s decided the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary should have no Jews on it.

And most recently, DSA spokesmodel Hasan Piker is certain that whoever wins the Democratic nomination for president in 2028 will oppose Israel and embrace Hamas and the Palestinians. (CNN on July 31 played a clip of his comment, taken from an interview that is scheduled to air August 2.)

The Democrats seem hell-bent on losing, and I’ve written about it before. In 2018, it was throwing out Senator Al Franken, because he’d been in a questionable photo years before he was elected to the Senate. In 2021, it was the fight with the new progressives demanding everything instantly, and threatening to derail the entire Joe Biden presidency if they didn’t get everything they wanted immediately. In 2022, the Democrats were yelling at Senators Manchin and Sinema to abolish the filibuster rule (they should be venerating them today for not giving in). Today, the Democrats have been handed the future on a platter: Trump’s reputation is at historical lows; the Trump-Iran War is keeping prices and inflation high; the Trump-Epstein Files still have not been released; his chief domestic priority seems to be plastering his name and his tacky taste on everything in Washington; and the list goes on. A Democratic sweep of government offices would require only keeping their heads down and doing their jobs. Instead, they’ve let their Socialist wing come rampaging in, doing nothing to attract new voters, but doing everything to turn off Democratic stalwarts, the centrists.

There have always been racists in this country. But when Trump came to power, the racists felt emboldened. They became comfortable proclaiming their racism publicly. And there have always been anti-semites. But with the rise of the Democratic Socialists, they, too, are no longer ashamed.

Several of my friends have or will soon move out of the country because they fear a Trumpian future. Each of those moves saddens me, because I’ve held the firm opinion that the country can be saved, and is worth fighting for. But now, listening to the Democratic Socialists, I’m wondering if my friends fleeing the country are actually the smart ones.

The Republicans have accepted the Trumpians and their vitriolic hatred for everyone who isn’t them. Now the Democrats are accepting the Socialists and their hatred of Jews. Is there any place left for me and mine?

These guys, again?

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been rewatching The West Wing (and dreaming of politicians we can all admire), while also remarking on the pure fantasy of it all. We hear opinion polls all the time: the party in power is supported or opposed, the person in office has favorables and unfavorables, and so forth. But the point of it all—regardless of the polls, regardless of the people—is that the American electorate, by and large, is never happy with the party in the White House.

Specifically, we have buyer’s remorse, and almost always have. For evidence, I point to the number of times we’ve elected a new president who is a member of the same party as the outgoing president. That number is small.

From 1800 to 1828, we had four straight presidents who were members of the Democrat-Republican party, but there really wasn’t much of an opposition party at that time. Indeed, the election of 1820 had only one candidate: sitting president James Monroe was re-elected with more than 78% of the popular vote and 231 of the 232 electoral votes cast (the Federalist party, with no named candidate, got 19% of the popular vote). Thomas Jefferson was elected in 1800 and 1804, James Madison in 1808 and 1812, Monroe in 1816 and 1820, and John Quincy Adams in 1824.

In the election of 1836, Democrat Andrew Jackson was retiring after two terms, and his second vice president, his chosen successor, Martin Van Buren, won the election, holding the White House for the Democrats.

The next time that happened was in 1856, when Democrat Franklin Pierce lost his bid to be nominated for a second term, but the Democrat who won the nomination, James Buchanan, won the presidency as well.

The election of 1876 was very close. As Republican Ulysses Grant was retiring after two terms, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was in a very close race with Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Indeed, Tilden won the popular vote, but the Electoral Commission awarded enough of the disputed electoral votes to give Hayes the electoral college, 185 to 184. In 1880, Hayes kept his pledge and did not run for a second term. Instead, Republican James A. Garfield won the election to succeed him (and was assassinated six months into his term of office).

Republican William McKinley was elected in 1896. His first vice president, Garrett Hobart, died in 1899, and in the election of 1900, McKinley was re-elected with vice president Theodore Roosevelt. McKinley was assassinated in late 1901, and Roosevelt succeeded. Roosevelt then won his own term as president in 1904. In 1908, Roosevelt stepped aside, and his chosen successor, Republican William Howard Taft was elected. In 1912, Roosevelt would split from Taft, run against him, and give the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

In 1920, Republican Warren Harding was elected. He died in 1923, elevating Vice President Calvin Coolidge to the presidency. Coolidge won his own term in 1924, and chose not to run for another term in 1928, so Republican Herbert Hoover was elected to succeed him.

In 1988, after two terms of wide support, Ronald Reagan was forced to retire from the presidency under the terms of the 22nd Amendment, and his vice president, George H.W. Bush, was elected to succeed him.

To sum up, we’ve chosen a person of the same political party to succeed a departing president only in 1808, 1816, 1824, 1836, 1876, 1880, 1908, 1928, and 1988. Nine times. That’s it. (That is also ignoring Vice Presidents John Tyler and Chester Arthur [who weren’t elected to their own terms] and Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson [who were], who first succeeded to the office upon the deaths of their predecessors).

We chose to change parties in the elections of 1800, 1828, 1840, 1844, 1848, 1852, 1860, 1868 (Abraham Lincoln’s second vice president, Andrew Johnson, was not a member of his Republican party), 1884, 1888, 1892, 1896, 1912, 1920, 1932, 1952, 1960, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1992, 2000, 2008, 2016, 2020, and 2024.

I’m not predicting anything for 2028; you can draw your own conclusions.…

A step toward ending government corruption

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

Unwritten rules are fine, so long as everyone complies with them. But then a person or group comes along—such as the Trump Crime Family—that requires us to put actual words to these unwritten rules to turn them into written law.

And after years of Congressional representatives talking about preventing themselves from trading stocks while not actually doing anything, I think it’s time we the people proposed the law we want. Therefore, as my contribution to the discussion, I offer…

A Law Delineating Emoluments Prohibitions that Were Previously Understood but Unwritten

Section I: People Subject to This Law
1. Elected and appointed members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
2. Members of the Supreme Court.
3. The President and Vice President of the United States.
4. People appointed by the President, whether confirmed by the Senate or not.
5. People hired or appointed by, or who in the normal course of business report directly to, anyone in lines 1, 2, 3, or 4.
6. People hired or appointed by, or who in the normal course of business report directly to, anyone in line 5.
7. Immediate family members of anyone in lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.

Section II: Prohibited and Required Actions of People in Section I.
1. All people covered by this law are prohibited from buying or selling stocks, bonds, or any other form of ownership of any company, whether publicly traded or privately held.
2. All people covered by this law are required to place all assets in a blind trust.
2.a. Assets with a combined value of less than 50% of the mean personal annual income of the United States may be exempted from this requirement.
2.b. A primary residence may be exempted from this requirement.
2.c. Covered people shall have 30 days from notice of election, appointment, or hiring to a position listed in Section I in order to complete this requirement.
3. All people covered by this law are prohibited from communicating what would be considered “insider information” about any government or business activities to any person or people for financial benefit.

Section III: Penalties for Failure to Comply with This Law
1. Stocks, bonds, or other forms of ownership purchased are subject to forfeiture—in their entirety—to the United States Treasury General Account.
2. Proceeds from sales of stocks, bonds, or other forms of ownership are subject to forfeiture—in their entirety—to the United States Treasury General Account.
3. Assets with a combined value greater than 50% of the mean personal annual income of the United States held outside of a blind trust are subject to forfeiture—in their entirety—to the United States Treasury General Account.
4. Instances of communicating insider information (see Section II, 3) shall be fined at a rate equal to the potential gain enjoyed by the recipients of such communication.

Section IV: Duration of These Requirements
1. People listed in Section I shall be subject to this law during the entire time they hold one of the offices listed in Section I, and for 180 days after leaving such office.
2. Those people in office when this law is adopted shall have 30 days to comply with all the provisions herein.

Don’t like Congress? Your opinion doesn’t matter.

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

RealClear Polling doesn’t show a Congressional approval rating above 40% in the last 15 years. In the short term, Ballotopedia agrees. Gallup has Congress’s job approval rating in the teens.

In other words, everywhere we look, nobody likes what Congress is doing or how they’re doing their jobs. Every news story using those numbers predicts a massive change in Congress at the midterm election, shifting control to the Democratic party, and watchers hope they’re right.

But what none of those polls and none of those pundits are doing is looking at four hundred and thirty-five individual campaigns for four hundred and thirty-five individual seats in the House of Representatives.

And that’s why I think a lot of people looking forward to that massive change are going to be very disappointed next January 3, when the 120th Congress is seated. It’s very difficult to do legitimate polling on such a granular level, but the way our government is put together, combining the results of such tiny polling samples is the only way to get a legitimate estimation of what is going to happen. Because while the sentiments of 55%, or 60%, or 70% of the voting public in the US may be with the Democrats, that doesn’t matter. What matters is which candidate gets the greater number of votes in the California 41st, and the Texas 32nd, and the Florida 9th, and the New York 15th, and on and on and on. Each district, by itself, in an election of several hundred thousand people, upon which the opinions of 99.8% of the population matters not one whit.

Congressional approval ratings are always low. People never like what Congress—as a whole—is doing, or its direction. If that were the only thing that mattered, we’d see a tidal wave of electoral defeats among Representatives every two years. But we don’t. We don’t see that tidal wave, and we won’t as long as we have a body made up of representatives by geography who have chosen the boundary lines of their own districts in order to guarantee their re-election. And we, the voters, always vote to re-elect our own Congressional representatives.

As Ballotopedia told us, in the election of 2024, fifteen Representatives running for re-election were defeated in primary or general elections. Further, they say, since 2014 (six elections), a total of 125 House incumbents were defeated: an average of 21 per election (remember, out of 435 seats).

That’s the reason we keep getting the same non-functional Congress we all hate not doing what we want: because we only vote for our own representative. It doesn’t matter what I think of the Speaker—who lives in Louisiana. And it doesn’t matter what I think of the minority leader—who lives in the next district over from mine in Brooklyn. Neither does my opinion of any of the 432 other members of the House matter. I only have a say in who will represent New York’s 9th district. And the two major political parties have done such an excellent job of choosing their voters through political gerrymandering that almost none of the 435 districts have any chance of changing the party of the person who represents them.

A year ago—in April of 2025—Fair Vote said that 81% of the House seats were already decided… for the 2026 election! And this is not surprising or new. It’s been going on for decades.

So when everyone around me expresses optimism for change following the election of 2026, I’m the Eeyore. I’m the one who is not looking forward to the results, because I don’t expect very much, if anything, to change. Unite America claimed that only 69 of the seats were competitive elections in 2024. We’ve seen absolutely no reason to think it will be any different this time around.
https://www.uniteamerica.org/articles/research-brief-why-are-most-congressional-elections-uncompetitive-2

And this is one of those times that I don’t have a solution to propose. We’re stuck. We’ve let the parties gerrymander the country too damn far, and we can’t find a way out of it. So as much as I hate that Congress has abdicated its responsibilities; as much as I hate that Congress—even if its members wanted to—can’t do anything it should; as much as I hate the political gridlock caused by extreme politicians who only campaign in the primaries because they don’t have to compete in a general election… I fear we’re stuck with it all until we can find a way to tear down walls of power that the Democans and Republicrats have built for themselves.

Put simply: we’re screwed.

The Trump Iran War: Who Benefits?

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

Last year, President Donald Trump was railing against wind power, urging the UK to shut down their wind power farms in favor “cheap and reliable” oil. His Big Beautiful Bill (which seems much more like a Frankenbill) cancelled tax breaks for solar and wind power in the US.

Three weeks ago, he launched a hot war against Iran.

In response—a response any first-year political science student could have predicted—Iran threatened the safety of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, sending the cost of oil skyrocketing and imperiling the global flow of oil. And now Trump is calling for other countries to pledge military support to secure the Strait, in effect, demanding they clean up after his mistake.

The United States, which is nearly self-sufficient in terms of oil, is not threatened by that bottleneck. Prices, however, skyrocketed. And last week, Trump reminded the world “when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”

Who benefits?

The “we” in that Trump quote is not the average American; it’s the oil companies in the US. And quite possibly Trump himself and his close advisors. The US oil companies, for whom the cost of producing and distributing oil and gasoline have not changed, now get to sell their product for more money.

Global instability also leads to lower values for national currencies, increasing interest in those media which are not tied to any nation, such as cryptocurrencies. In October 2025, Bitcoin peaked at a value around $126,000 per coin. It then plummeted to about $62,000 in February. Since Trump launched this war, it is back up to $74,000, a 20% increase. Ethereum—one of the cryptocurrencies in the president’s personal portfolio—has followed a similar trajectory.

Saudi Arabia is almost the undisputed power in the Gulf region. Indeed, the only country that can threaten them is Iran, which is lead by people who are unpredictable and dangerous. Reports March 16 say that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman, is speaking regularly with Trump, urging him to continue attacking Iran harshly.

Meanwhile, since the onset of this war, you haven’t thought about the Trump-Epstein Files, have you?

How Donald Trump intends to stay in office beyond January 20, 2029

~ ianrandalstrock ~ Leave a comment

Is this all far-fetched, doom-and-gloom, dystopian theorizing? Probably. I hope certainly. Nevertheless, it is a topic of conversation which keeps cropping up, so…

I know how Donald Trump is going to attempt to stay in office beyond the end of his term. It’s Section 3 of the 20th Amendment. Section 3 talks about who shall become President or act as President (two different things) if there is no President elect or if the President elect is not qualified to serve as President. The final clause of that Section reads “the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.” In other words, if the election is somehow prevented from occurring—and despite Article II, Section 1, and Amendment 20, Section 1—I think Donald Trump’s sycophants are relying on this phrase to enable the Congress to “select” him to “act” as President “until a President or Vice President shall have qualified” (by being elected).

This revelation came while I was researching the essay I thought I was going to write, noting that, regardless of what Trump and the Trumpians try to do to the election of 2028, a lack of an incoming President does not enable the current President to remain in office.

I was going to quote Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which says the President “shall hold his office during the Term of four Years”—thus limiting the time the President serves to four years, whether a successor has been elected or not.

I was going to go on to the 12th Amendment, which says “…no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” Thus preventing the President from becoming Vice President, only to succeed to the Presidency with the removal of the new President.

Then comes the first Section of the 20th Amendment: “The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.” Repeating and emphasizing the Article II quote above: the President’s term ends, regardless of whether or not there is a successor waiting.

And, of course, the first Section of the 22nd Amendment: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

But then I stumbled upon Section 3 of the 20th Amendment, as I said above. That’s the “well, there may be a way around the Constitution” that the most ardent Trumpians have been hinting at. It’s fairly simple, if we assume they can somehow prevent the next Presidential election. And one doesn’t have to be too creative to figure out ways to do that: declare a state of emergency, ban gatherings “for public safety” during the first week in November, so that an election cannot be held (that’s why they keep pushing to get rid of mail-in ballots and early voting; so that there will be no ballots to count). Or, perhaps easier, would be to look at the fifth paragraph of Article II, Section 1: “The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.” Such an emergency declaration could simply prevent the Electors from gathering to cast their votes in December. No electoral votes, therefore nothing to count on January 6, and no President elect. Blocking that, rather than the general election, would mean that there would still be a new Congress elected who would then be charged with selecting that person who shall act as President.

Therefore, Congress needs to adopt a new law, by a veto-proof margin, saying “No person who is ineligible to be elected President may act as President.”