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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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Bad idea for many reasons, including that the children of illegals would still eventually be supported by federal dollars for both school and welfare. But most of all, this just inflates the census numbers for sanctuary states, granting them more votes in the electoral college and more congressmen in congress.

birthright citizenship is certainly something that is uniquely American that I completely forgot about when I write my comment

forgive my ignorance, why is US counting non-citizens for electoral college and house seats after abolition of slavery?

The relevant clause in the constitution reads:

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 three fifths clause now being stricken as slavery was abolished.

The 14th Amendment seems unambiguous at first glance.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.

Trump did attempt to exclude illegal aliens from the apportionment base in his first term, but before any illegal-free numbers could be published (which was necessary for adjudication of the legal issue) he left office and Biden returned to the old policy.

From an outside perspective, this seems unambiguous in the way that, illegal should be counted, as the wording distigush between a person and a citizen, which is totally fucked.

This should be changed, I am sure tourists and legal foreign students do not count, right, right??

I am sure tourists and legal foreign students do not count, right, right??

The Constitution doesn't explicitly address this topic. But an initial draft of the Constitution used the word "inhabitant", and the first Census-related law passed by Congress used "inhabitant", "usual residence", and "usual place of abode". So the Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that the government is allowed (but not required) to include temporary absentees (federal employees, such as soldiers, who are living abroad for their jobs) in the population of a state. The same logic presumably applies to the exclusion of temporary residents (such as tourists and foreign college students).

The Biden executive order linked above reflects this practice, explicitly using the words "usual place of residence", though Congress has not bothered to put similar language into the currently-applicable law.