Count of congressional districts by population, divided into bins of 10,000 persons. Data for 2021.
Source of original data: U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey. Calculations and chart by author.
Category: United States government
Trump-supporting QAnon seen as public security threat
QAnon, a conspiracy theory group mentioned favorably by President Donald J. Trump and embraced by other Republican leaders, represents a public security threat, according to the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
Originally published August 23, 2020. In light of recent events, it seems the authors were prescient.
Proceed with the presidential transition
Further delay in starting the transition to the Biden administration harms Americans. Kansas Republican leaders, please get started.
I sincerely hope that the Republican federal officeholders who represent me, or who will soon represent me and my state, recognize that the presidential election is over, that Joe Biden won, and they encourage and help with a peaceful and effective transition to the new presidential administration.
While none of these leaders — Senator Pat Roberts, Senator Jerry Moran, Representative Ron Estes, Representative Roger Marshall, Representative-elect Jake LaTurner, and Representative-elect Tracey Mann — have the power to compel the transition to start, they can add their names to the small list of Republicans urging my president Donald J. Trump to get along with the nation’s business. Their leadership can convince other Republicans to follow.
If by some chance it turns out that my president Donald J. Trump won the election, we can simply stop the transition in its track. No permanent harm will have been done. But needlessly delaying the transition is harming national security and the health of Americans.
We now have a COVID-19 vaccine that will likely be approved for use. Its distribution involves overcoming large obstacles, both technical and human. The Biden administration must be ready to continue the efforts of the Trump administration with no delay or problems. Start the transition, please.
National security is at stake. The 9/11 Commission Report noted that the disputed presidential election of 2000 and the resultant short transition period was a problem:
“The dispute over the election and the 36-day delay cut in half the normal transition period. Given that a presidential election in the United States brings wholesale change in personnel, this loss of time hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees.”
In its recommendations, the committee concluded this:
“Improve the Transitions between Administrations
“In chapter 6, we described the transition of 2000—2001. Beyond the policy issues we described, the new administration did not have its deputy cabinet officers in place until the spring of 2001, and the critical subcabinet officials were not confirmed until the summer—if then. In other words, the new administration—like others before it—did not have its team on the job until at least six months after it took office.
“Recommendation: Since a catastrophic attack could occur with little or no notice, we should minimize as much as possible the disruption of national security policymaking during the change of administrations by accelerating the process for national security appointments. We think the process could be improved significantly so transitions can work more effectively and allow new officials to assume their new responsibilities as quickly as possible.”
The Biden administration needs to be ready to seamlessly assume the duty of keeping us safe. Start the transition, please.
Trump and Russia sanctions
President Donald J. Trump presents himself as tough on Russia, but he opposed and complained about almost all sanctions.
This year, John Bolton published The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir. It covers his time as National Security Advisor for the Trump Administration, which was from April 9, 2018 to September 10, 2019.
When the book was published, the editors of the conservative National Review questioned the timing of the book, but wrote: “Bolton is a longtime friend of this publication and we take his honesty as a given. Any credibility contest between him and Donald Trump is laughably lopsided.”
In this passage, Bolton lists sanctions imposed on Russia during the Trump Administration. But, he writes, “… almost all of them occasioned opposition, or at least extended grumbling and complaining, from Trump himself.”
The Trump Administration had imposed substantial new economic sanctions on Russian citizens and entities in 2017, related to the Crimea annexation, adding to what Obama had done, as well as extending other sanctions; closed the Russian consulates in San Francisco and Seattle; expelled more than sixty Russian intelligence agents (operating in the US as “diplomats”) after Moscow’s attack on the Skripals; imposed sanctions for violating the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act, also required by the attack on the Skripals; sanctioned Russia’s Internet Research Agency, an arm of Russia’s cyber-offense machinery; and penalized over three dozen Russian officials for violations of US Syria-related sanctions. As new violations were uncovered, further sanctions were imposed on each person and corporate entity involved.
Trump touted these as major achievements, but almost all of them occasioned opposition, or at least extended grumbling and complaining, from Trump himself. One example involved the sanctions related to the chemical-weapons attack on the Skripals. This statute had only recently been used for the first time, after Kim Jong Un ordered his half brother murdered in Malaysia via chemical weapons, and after the Assad regime’s chemical weapons attacks in Syria. There was criticism that the sanctions imposed were not sweeping enough, but Trump objected to having any sanctions at all. Trump finally approved sanctions before the Helsinki summit but postponed announcing them until the summit ended. We explained to Trump that these sanctions were only the first in what was likely a series, since the applicable statute provided for ever-more-stringent sanctions if the accused nation did not provide convincing evidence it had given up chemical and/or biological weapons, including allowing international inspectors to verify compliance. No one believed Russia would do so. When Helsinki concluded, State announced the sanctions, since no new decision was required. Trump, upon hearing the news, wanted to rescind them. I wondered if this entire crisis was caused by Rand Paul’s recent visit to Moscow, which generated significant press coverage for him and where the Russians doubtless stressed that they were very unhappy about the sanctions. This was ironic, with libertarian politicians like Paul so worried about the Kremlin’s tender sensibilities. Hearing of the controversy, Mnuchin called Pompeo and me to blame us for not telling him about the new sanctions, which was inaccurate because the sanctions had previously gone through a National Security Council review process without objection from anyone. Within hours, Trump concluded he was relaxed about this particular decision, but he still thought we were being too tough on Putin. Trump told Pompeo to call Lavrov and say “some bureaucrat” had published the sanctions — a call that may or may not have ever taken place.
In addition to objecting to sanctions, Trump stopped an anodyne statement criticizing Russia on the tenth anniversary of its invasion of Georgia, a completely unforced error. Russia would have ignored it, but the Europeans noticed its absence and became even more concerned about American resolve. This was typical of Trump, who in June 2019 also blocked a draft statement on the thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacres and criticized the State Department for a press release issued before he knew about it. Trump seemed to think that criticizing the policies and actions of foreign governments made it harder for him to have good personal relations with their leaders. This was a reflection of his difficulty in separating personal from official relations. I’m not aware of any case where Russia or China refrained from criticizing the United States for fear of irritating our sensitive leaders.
Bolton, John. The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir. United States: Simon & Schuster, 2020.
A preview of the book is here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Room_Where_It_Happened/QjTMDwAAQBAJ
Photo credit: www.kremlin.ru. 
Presidential approval
Explore and compare the approval ratings of presidents in this interactive visualization.
I’ve gathered presidential approval poll data and present it in an interactive visualization.
I present data in a table and a timeline. Then, I present several views based on the poll date as the number of days from the start of each presidential term.
To learn more about the data and access the interactive visualization, click here.
Example from the visualization. Click for larger. 
Border wall procedures criticized
A government watchdog says the procedures for acquiring the southern border wall are inadequate, and the ability to maintain complete operational control is diminished.
A report by the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security finds that U.S. Customs and Border Protection found the procedures for procuring the southern border wall inadequate for the task.
Specifically, the IG found that CBP did not attempt to identify “the most effective, appropriate, and affordable solutions to obtain operational control of the southern border as directed.” Instead, the IG described the methods as “outdated.”
The report found other deficiencies and concluded: “the likelihood that CBP will be able to obtain and maintain complete operational control of the southern border with mission-effective, appropriate, and affordable solutions is diminished.”
The report is dated July 14, 2020 with the title “CBP Has Not Demonstrated Acquisition Capabilities Needed to Secure the Southern Border.” It is report number OIG-20-52 and is available here.
The executive summary is this:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not demonstrated the acquisition capabilities needed to effectively execute the Analyze/Select Phase of the Wall Acquisition Program. Specifically, CBP did not conduct an Analysis of Alternatives to assess and select the most effective, appropriate, and affordable solutions to obtain operational control of the southern border as directed, but instead relied on prior, outdated border solutions to identify materiel alternatives for meeting its mission requirement. CBP did not use a sound, well-documented methodology to identify and prioritize investments in areas along the border that would best benefit from physical barriers. Additionally, the Department did not complete the required plan to execute the strategy to obtain and maintain control of the southern border, as required by its Comprehensive Southern Border Security Study and Strategy. Without an Analysis of Alternatives, a documented and reliable prioritization process, or a plan, the likelihood that CBP will be able to obtain and maintain complete operational control of the southern border with mission-effective, appropriate, and affordable solutions is diminished. We made three recommendations to improve CBP’s ongoing investments for obtaining operational control of the southern border. DHS concurred with recommendation 2 but did not concur with recommendations 1 and 3.
Trump-supporting QAnon seen as public security threat
QAnon, a conspiracy theory group mentioned favorably by President Donald J. Trump and embraced by other Republican leaders, represents a public security threat, according to the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
President Donald J. Trump has mentioned favorably the conspiracy theory group QAnon. 1 A branch of the United States Government, however, sees QAnon differently, describing it as “the bizarre assemblage of far-right conspiracy theories that holds that U.S. President Donald Trump is waging a secret war against an international cabal of satanic pedophiles seems to present a far lesser threat to public security.”
At the United States Military Academy at West Point, there is a research center that, in its own description, “educates, advises, and conducts research to equip present and future leaders with the intellectual tools necessary to understand the challenges of terrorism and counterterrorism.” In its July publication, a research paper describes QAnon as a threat to public safety, with the potential to become a domestic terror threat.
Here is the abstract from The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making? 2
The QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017, has quickly risen to prominence in the United States. A survey of cases of individuals who have allegedly or apparently been radicalized to criminal acts with a nexus to violence by QAnon, including one case that saw a guilty plea on a terrorism charge, makes clear that QAnon represents a public security threat with the potential in the future to become a more impactful domestic terror threat. This is true especially given that conspiracy theories have a track record of propelling terrorist violence elsewhere in the West as well as QAnon’s more recent influence on mainstream political discourse.
The heavily-researched and footnoted article may be read at The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making?
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Notes- Q During the pandemic, the QAnon movement has been — appears to be gaining a lot of followers. Can you talk about what you think about that and what you have to say to people who are following this movement right now?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate, but I don’t know much about the movement. I have heard that it is gaining in popularity. And from what I hear, it’s — these are people that, when they watch the streets of Portland, when they watch what happened in New York City in just the last six or seven months — but this was starting even four years ago when I came here. Almost four years; can you believe it?
These are people that don’t like seeing what’s going on in places like Portland and places like Chicago and New York and other cities and states. And I’ve heard these are people that love our country, and they just don’t like seeing it.
So I don’t know, really, anything about it other than they do, supposedly, like me. And they also would like to see problems in these areas — like, especially the areas that we’re talking about — go away. Because there’s no reason the Democrats can’t run a city. And if they can’t, we will send in all of the federal — whether it’s troops or law enforcement, whatever they’d like — we’ll send them in. We’ll straighten out their problem in 24 hours or less.
Okay?
The White House. Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing | August 19, 2020. Available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-briefing-august-19-2020/. ↩
- Combating Terrorism Center. The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making? July, 2020. Available at https://ctc.usma.edu/the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-a-security-threat-in-the-making/. ↩
- Q During the pandemic, the QAnon movement has been — appears to be gaining a lot of followers. Can you talk about what you think about that and what you have to say to people who are following this movement right now?
Relations with North Korea
The Congressional Research Service has produced a summary and timeline of recent events pertaining to the United States and North Korea relationship.
In May the Congressional Research Service published a timeline of events relating to the relationship between the United States and North Korea. The document is available here: North Korea: A Chronology of Events from 2016 to 2020.
Here is a portion of the report’s introduction, with footnote references removed:
Since Kim and President Trump’s first summit in Singapore in June 2018, however, little progress has been made on denuclearization, despite two more Kim-Trump meetings (a February 2019 summit in Hanoi and a one-hour June 2019 meeting in Panmunjom). Since the June 2019 meeting, only one round of talks has been held and it did not produce a breakthrough. U.S. officials say their North Korean counterparts have refused to engage in additional negotiations.
The deadlock largely is due to disagreements over the timing and sequencing of concessions that each side should provide.4 In particular, North Korea is seeking significant sanctions relief in return for the steps it claims it already has taken, but U.S. officials have said sanctions will not be eased until denuclearization is complete.
Meanwhile, North Korea appears to be enhancing its military capabilities. In addition to continuing to produce nuclear material, between May 2019 and late March 2020, North Korea conducted multiple short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) tests; such tests violate United Nations Security Council prohibitions. Its motivation was possibly to advance the reliability of its solid fuel and guidance systems and develop capabilities to thwart short-range missile defense systems.
In February 2020 written testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Commander of U.S. Northern Command said “recent engine testing suggests North Korea may be prepared to flight test an even more capable ICBM design that could enhance Kim’s ability to threaten our homeland during a crisis or conflict.” President Trump has dismissed the significance of these tests. Since the Hanoi summit, North Korea also has largely refused to interact with South Korea, spurning Moon’s efforts.
In a possible signal that the active diplomatic phase of current U.S.-DPRK relations may be coming to an end, Kim in December 2019 announced that, due to the United States’ policies “to completely strangle and stifle the DPRK … there is no ground” for North Korea to continue to maintain its nuclear and missile testing moratorium. Kim criticized the United States’ continuation of sanctions, joint military exercises with South Korea, and shipments of advanced military equipment to South Korea. Kim warned, “the world will witness a new strategic weapon to be possessed by the DPRK in the near future.” The statement noted that this could be adjusted depending on the “U.S. future attitude.”
Electoral College math
In the Electoral College, residents of different states have widely varying influence.
When thinking about the desirability of the Electoral College for electing a president, the arithmetic should be considered.
I have performed a few calculations, gathering state populations and the number of Electoral College votes. Here are the two extremes: In Wyoming, there are 192,579 people for each Electoral College vote (577,737 / 3). In Texas, the number is 755,312. That’s a difference of 3.92, which is a lot, I would say. For Kansas, the number is 485,251. The average value for a state (weighting all states equally) is 513,088, although the population of the country divided by 538 is 608,118. (I include the District of Columbia, as it has EC votes.)
Sample of the table in the visualization. I present these calculations in an interactive visualization that you may access here.
Plot of state population versus Electoral College Power Index. Click for larger. The visualization also holds a plot of state populations and Electoral College Power Index. By that, I mean the relative “power” of a state resident over their Electoral College votes. The state with the highest number of residents per Electoral College vote is Texas, which is assigned the value of one. Wyoming’s value is 3.92.
Note that a California resident, by living in the most populated state, votes in a state with 719,219 persons per Electoral College vote, which is the third-lowest state in power index (1.05). When Vermonters vote, they vote in a state with 208,766 residents per Electoral College vote, which is a power index of 3.62.
