Originally published at: The GOP’s Bill to ‘Rip House Seats From Dem States’ - TPM – Talking Points Memo
A New Republican Bill Brings Efforts to Meddle With Apportionment Into Focus TPM has covered apportionment for years — in part, because right-wing activists are so intent on meddling with it, and in part because of the impact that meddling could have. As we’ve been reporting, the Census Bureau is currently attempting to exclude many…
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Conservative SCOTUS wet dream for a power grab. And a way to hate on those with less power. A twofer for the the GOP.
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Measles in New York now …
The New York State Department of Health (DOH) launched an online dashboard on Tuesday to track the measles outbreak that has infected at least 57 people in New York in 2026.
Pennsylvania update too - information regarding the four who died.
ETA: Shades of Covid – the murderin’ Amish …
Going forward, the hospital said in a statement, only parents or legal guardians will only be allowed in the NICU, or its nearby children’s hospital, and only as long as they don’t have signs or symptoms of measles. They will be encouraged to wear a surgical mask before entering the unit.
“These screenings are in place to best protect our patients, visitors and staff as measles cases are rising in the area,” Geisinger said in a statement to CNN.
[Mother of measles exposed NICU infant] said she doesn’t understand why the hospital doesn’t require visitors to show vaccination records before they can come in.
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It is way past time to get rid of the Electoral College!
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On the positive side, the 18-year-old didn’t catch autism. Likely a point of great pride for the teen’s parents!
The point is, the vaccine serves an important purpose. Why take the chance of a catastrophic outcome like this?
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Peewee Johnson sending members home early is not a particularly bright move. Members now get to go home and talk about gas prices. 
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
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Are any Republicans even holding town hall meetings these days? Don’t they just go home and hide on their estates? Pretty sure that’s what my Representative does. Oh, he may go into Ludowici for lunch, but nobody there recognizes him.
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Among the things we don’t think about if/when we think about apportionment is the full list of human persons that the government in a given state represents and provides services for: children, minors who cannot yet vote but by right of citizenship will vote someday; the military and their families who have no choice in where, in the country or in the world, they reside; incarcerated persons, both felons and detainees in immigration custody. Add them up, and that’s a lot of people for whom all levels of government provide representation and services. Messing with apportionment affects how federal funds flow to them… and from them, depending on whether they happen to reside in ‘have not’ or ‘have’ states (red or blue states, coincidentally). If a state or city welcomes and respects immigrants, or funds education and healthcare for its children, it is because it’s voters elected them to do so.
Food for thought.
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They don’t believe in no scientific mumbo jumbo.
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Two Kinds of MAGA: Proud MAGA and Scared MAGA
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The list of legislation stacking up for the lame duck session after the midterms bears watching: Hegseth impeachment, apportionment, the SAVE America act, war powers…
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Free link to the NYT article on the latest OpenAI issues, probably needs email:
OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning’ A.I. Behavior
The artificial intelligence company also released a framework for reporting when its systems go wrong.
Ed Zitron made the point in one of his recent interviews that the Hugging Face attack might have used up to $10 million dollars worth of OpenAI’s compute. The AI agents were given essentially unlimited token spend during their test runs.
The systems may eventually get more efficient over time, but at least at the moment, odds are that a kid sitting in his Mom’s basement isn’t going to afford an Anthropic or OpenAI subscription that spends millions of dollars to create a doom bioweapon with AI. The AI in test runs might do it though, just for kicks when given unlimited compute. And a foreign government could certainly afford it.
So that’s a question someone should be asking OpenAI and Anthropic when they reveal these alignment “glitches.” What did each one cost? How much compute did it use? What does that mean for safety standards? Is it enough just to limit the compute each agent can have?
Of course this goes against their end goal, which is to have every subscriber spend as much as possible on a monthly subscription using agentic AI. But if they’re claiming transparency they should be asked about this.
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And of judicial and U.S. Attorney appointments. The vote Mitch showed up for was a judicial appointment. If Dems take the Senate, we shouldn’t be surprised if Alito and/or Thomas retires. DJT (well, one of his lackeys) probably has their replacements lined up and may even have consulted with Thune already. (Btw, if Repubs do ram through two young Federalist Society assholes, the movement for expanding the court and other reforms would gain lots of momentum.)
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appearing to be “misaligned”
Ah, the language of tech. It’s a whole new vocabulary, new concepts!
“No, the dish isn’t cracked. There’s simply a spatial disparity between the left side and the right side.”
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Man of the Hour
Assumes facts not in evidence. Tiny Johnson is slime mold in a suit.
OTOH, we probably should count ourselves lucky that he is so surpassingly ineffectual as Speaker; he really just can’t get shit done.
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And it’s not just their transportation that’s full of horse shit.
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Well, FUCK!
A new poll finds a small majority of California voters in favor of a proposed wealth tax, but that same survey shows two rival plans passing by larger margins.
The Public Policy Institute of California says 52% of respondents plan to vote “yes” on Proposition 40, which would levy a one-time 5% tax on residents with a net worth of $1 billion, with 46% against.
But the proposal’s detractors—like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who is funding an organization to oppose the wealth tax—have a plan in place to stop it even if “yes” prevails. Brin’s side is backing a pair of initiatives that would prevent the wealth tax from going into effect should either receive more “yes” votes than Proposition 40.
PPIC finds that this strategy might work. A 51-44 majority supports Proposition 41, which Politico explains would “require audits of state spending while invalidating the wealth tax because of how it would allocate money.” An even larger 54-43 spread favors Proposition 42, which would stop the state from taxing assets like stocks and investment accounts.
My bold.
I did not realize this billionaire bestiality was in play 
In order to eat the rich: YES on 40; NO on 41 & 42.
The quoted analysis if from today’s Downballot:
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And that spatial disparity means you’ll shortly have two dishes.
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