Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died.

[Barrister]

I guess the GOP has the votes then.

In a scenario where the Dems win the WH and a majority in the Senate, I hope they pack the court. It's no use trying to find common ground with an arsonist.

I dunno - court-packing is pretty dangerous as it can be used the next time the GOP is in power.

The more interesting possibiity is statehood for PR and DC. 

[DGuller]

I guess the GOP has the votes then.

In a scenario where the Dems win the WH and a majority in the Senate, I hope they pack the court. It's no use trying to find common ground with an arsonist.

I dunno - court-packing is pretty dangerous as it can be used the next time the GOP is in power.

It's going to be pretty GOP-packed regardless.  If you're going to have an illegitimate Supreme Court, it's much better to have an illegitimate court that is used for good rather than for evil.  Of course it would be better to have a legitimate court than either of these two options, but that's not on the cards.

[Zoupa]

I guess the GOP has the votes then.

In a scenario where the Dems win the WH and a majority in the Senate, I hope they pack the court. It's no use trying to find common ground with an arsonist.

I dunno - court-packing is pretty dangerous as it can be used the next time the GOP is in power.

The more interesting possibiity is statehood for PR and DC. 

The Dems have to use the same dirty tricks as the GOP has for decades. Redistricting, statehood, expanding the SC, nothing should be off the table. The "when they go low, we go high" means absolutely nothing if it gets you Trump, a Senate led by McConnell and insane Qanon types in the House. Time to go low, dems.

[Sheilbh]

In modern times something like 40% of all abortions in America are done via the two-pill combination of mifepristone and misoprostol, there is strong reason to believe barring the effects of Roe v Wade, it would be even more difficult for red states to prevent its citizens acquiring these drugs than they could prevent women from getting in-person abortions in the 1960s. You have to do some really draconian shit to really go after the practice of abortion, things like raids, mass arrests of women and doctors and nurses etc. It almost certainly will happen some early on, and cause such profound political blowback it will cease very quickly, and we will get to a point where in red states you have about as much trouble acquiring an abortion as you do acquiring marijuana, which is to say it's not trivial if you don't already know someone, but it's not exactly hard either.

Yeah. Can confirm from the many abortion cases in Ireland and Northern Ireland that I think moved to repealing the constitutional ban and radicalising a lot of people. Such as the case tha made global news of a woman who was denied an abortion after an incomplete miscarriage (the heart of the foetus was still beating) and subsequently died of a septic miscarriage.

Or the very famous case (as they had to have "due regard" to the woman's equal right to life) of a girl who was raped and became pregnant and suicidal, her family planned to take her to England to get an abortion. The rapist (a neighbour) was denying responsibility and the family asked the police if DNA from the aborted foetus could be used in evidence, this led to the police reporting it up the chain and an injunction forbidding her from leaving the state. It went all the way to the Supreme Court who ruled that abortion was permitted if there was serious suicidal intention because that would end both lives anyway, by that point I think she had miscarried.

I'm not convinced that getting rid of Roe v Wade removes the courts from these issues or produces the sort of results that leads to a settled pro-life majority.

[Barrister]

I guess the GOP has the votes then.

In a scenario where the Dems win the WH and a majority in the Senate, I hope they pack the court. It's no use trying to find common ground with an arsonist.

I dunno - court-packing is pretty dangerous as it can be used the next time the GOP is in power.

The more interesting possibiity is statehood for PR and DC. 

The Dems have to use the same dirty tricks as the GOP has for decades. Redistricting, statehood, expanding the SC, nothing should be off the table. The "when they go low, we go high" means absolutely nothing if it gets you Trump, a Senate led by McConnell and insane Qanon types in the House. Time to go low, dems.

Wrong.  Just encourages the next guy to go even lower.  Two wrongs don't make a right.

Biden is doing very well in the polls by being the candidate of honour and integrity.  Don't know why you'd want to mess that up.

Besides, Trump was a freak aberration who got lucky and pulled just enough votes in just the right states.

Besides, the reason why PR and DC statehood is an interesting move is becausethe Republicans have no counter.  There's no GOP leaning territory they could some day make a state as well, and statehood can't be revoked.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I would actually argue that while the GOP needs to be neutered, it's important to try and do so in a form that is democratically legitimate, both in a broader sense and in a constitutional sense.

Packing the courts is constitutional, but it's never been associated with good behavior, and in fact every time we've either attempted to or actually have changed the composition of the courts for partisan purposes, it's related to dark times in American history. I also think the Democrats will implode a lot of potential good will, and be setting themselves up for a voter backlash from such a nakedly partisan power grab.

I think a few other options on the table are much more viable, much harder for Republicans to message against, and much more (and in some cases impossible) to reverse:

1. Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico. While the D.C. part is a little controversial, Puerto Rico is not. The District has more American citizens living in its borders than a number of states, and Puerto Rico's status is a true relic of the days of colonialism. There is no just cause to deny citizens their representation in Congress and in the electoral college. The people of these territories largely seem to want this, and they should be granted it as a pure moral good. The fact that it will accrue benefit to the Democrats is simply a side effect. With the District, I think you get around any of the structural concerns by classifying a small area around the White House / Congress and a few other prominent Federal buildings as the "Federal District of Columbia" which will have basically only residents of the White House living within its borders, and a "State of Columbia" (or whatever) that will hold the 700,000+ residents of the District.

2. Increase the House of Representatives by around 100 seats. The House is supposed to represent people--very deliberately population, it is one thing for Idaho to be disproportionately represented in the Senate (which is by design), and quite another for it to be disproportionately represented in the House, which is solely because in the 1920s we chose to fix the House seats at a static number and never changed them. Over the years this has caused out of bounds growth in the over-representation of rural states that only have one congress person. This one is actually literally harking back to following original constitutional intent, the House was never supposed to favor low population rural states, it was supposed to represent population.

I didn't pull 100 from a hat entirely, some years ago when I was discussing this very proposal I came up with the idea that the number of members of the House should be set by taking the population of the smallest state and using it as a divisor, however many whole number of times your state can be divided by that divisor, that is how many seats in congress your state gets. That would give California around 68 congressmen and 70 votes in the electoral college. While I've since lost the spreadsheet I used for this years ago, at the end of the day the net addition of seats got the House to around +100 versus its current size. Because of the makeup of the state demographics I believe a majority of these new seats would accrue to Democrats, but some would accrue to Republicans--who would be loathe to in the future vote their seats out of existence (I also believe changes like this can only occur in sessions after the decennial census, so the GOP wouldn't have any fast remedy period.) But again, this is a decision that I think helps to undermine the pernicious nature of the modern GOP without engaging in a "race to the bottom."

[grumbler]

I dunno - court-packing is pretty dangerous as it can be used the next time the GOP is in power.

Been there and done that.

The more interesting possibiity is statehood for PR and DC. 

PR is fairly easy procedurally, but DC would require a constitutional amendment, and that's not happening any time soon.  It'd be easier to split California or New York.

[grumbler]

It's not about abortion, it's about women deciding to have an abortion. Agency is the issue.

That is correct.  I am pro-life and pro-choice.

[Barrister]

PR is fairly easy procedurally, but DC would require a constitutional amendment, and that's not happening any time soon.  It'd be easier to split California or New York.

The existence of DC is in the constitution, but it says nothing about the size of DC.  DC has shrunk once, returning the parts on the other side of the Potomac to Virginia.

The proposals I've seen would shrink the District of Columbia to just the area of the handful of capitol buildings right in the middle.  The other 99% would form the new state.

In fact DC might be easier because for Puerto Rico you'd need to get the Puerto Ricans to agree to become a state.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Correct, you would just change the size of the "Federal District", no constitutional amendment was required for the retrocession of the Virginia land west of the Potomac given to the new district. You could even fairly rapidly follow the same process--retrocess all but a small amount of land around key Federal buildings to Maryland, and then Maryland quickly would apply to the Congress to divide off that portion of land as a new state (West Virginia has set the legal standard of this being allowed, as per the constitution you can sub-divide states as long as the legislature of the state in question is in favor of it.) I'm not even sure you'd need the Maryland intermediary step, but if you did politicians in Maryland have always been mostly on the side of statehood so would likely be pliant. If Larry Hogan tried to resist I suspect he'd face veto overrides.

[grumbler]

PR is fairly easy procedurally, but DC would require a constitutional amendment, and that's not happening any time soon.  It'd be easier to split California or New York.

The existence of DC is in the constitution, but it says nothing about the size of DC.  DC has shrunk once, returning the parts on the other side of the Potomac to Virginia.

The proposals I've seen would shrink the District of Columbia to just the area of the handful of capitol buildings right in the middle.  The other 99% would form the new state.

In fact DC might be easier because for Puerto Rico you'd need to get the Puerto Ricans to agree to become a state.

Yes, but you are talking about the District of Colombia (that's what DC stands for) which is constitutionally mandated.  You could resize the district (and they should, IMO) to include just the Federal District, with no inhabitants, and return the rest to Maryland.  You could, in theory, resize the same way and make the rump a state.  But you can't make the District of Colombia into a state without changing the constitution.

I think getting the rump of Washington designated a state is still going to be a huge challenge for the Democrats.  After the original states, only California and Texas have become states without being either territories or parts of other states, and the cases of California and Texas were quite particular to their times.   The new state would dilute the representation of other states in the Senate, but would not be an economically viable entity on its own.

[DGuller]

Is there a limit to states dividing themselves?  Why can't Wyoming petition to divide itself into 100 states?

[OttoVonBismarck]

There is no limit. In fact one of the more silly/dangerous schemes I've heard of is a proposal to admit DC not as one, but 100 states, and use the newfound majority to basically fully rewrite the constitution, since you'd be able the ram amendments through.

[Josquius]

And this is coming from people who think it's a good idea to fix things or conspiracy nuts who think their opponents are going to try it to ruin things?

[Eddie Teach]

Probably conspiracy nuts who think it's a good idea.