US onAir Curators
The surprising idea from two conservative Democrats that could fix the House
Expanding the size of the House would make Congress more responsive to voters.
Ryan Teague Beckwith, MSNBC
Imagine you live in a city with 35,000 people. There’s a pothole in the street in front of your house and you can’t get anyone to come fix it, so you decide to call the mayor.
How easy do you think it would be to get a response?
There are now 200 million more Americans, but still the same number of representatives, which means each member of the House represents more and more people. In 1793, the average House member represented 37,000 people, or basically the number of people in a small city. Today, they represent 768,000 — roughly as many people as live in Seattle.
Trump loves tariffs. Will the rest of America?
Haleema Shah and Noel King, Vox
Trump’s trade strategy is one that Greg Ip, chief economics commentator at the Wall Street Journal, says is a major departure from almost 80 years of US policy. In a conversation with Noel King, co-host of theToday, Explained podcast, Ip described how it might play out and have massive implications for the global economy. In today’s newsletter, we’ve got an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Traffic on Bluesky, an X competitor, is up 500% since the election. How will it handle the surge?
Bobby Allyn
“We’ve been growing by about a million users a day for several days,” said Bluesky CEO Jay Graber in an interview with NPR on Monday. “It’s proving out the model that we thought would be the right approach to social [media]: Give people the tools to control their experience and they’ll have a better time.”
Rather than having one “master algorithm,” Bluesky allows for a more personalized experience. By default, there are three main feeds: One shows accounts you follow, another shows what your friends follow and a “discover” feed surfaces posts linked to your interests.
Bluesky Appeals to All Worldwide
Bluesky is NOT libs vs maga. Bluesky appeals to everyone who doesn’t want Elon Muskovic tweaking the alogrithm and skewing the data for his own interests. The Bluesky community consists of liberals and conservative, democrats and republicans, left and right from all continents of the world. Pro-Ukrainians and dictators-detesters; believers in justice, the rule of law, world order and unfettered freedom of expression. Greetings & welcome to all of moral dignity and courage to defend these basic values.
Trump’s messy coalition
Mike Allen, Axios
President-elect Trump’s Cabinet increasingly resembles a European-style coalition government, staffed with a dizzying array of ideological rivals united — for now — by a grand MAGA vision.
- The incoming administration has a little something for everyone: isolationists and hawks, populists and bankers — even a couple of lifelong Democrats who ran for president against Trump, Axios’ Zachary Basu writes.
The big picture: Trump’s picks suggest at least three factions in the new Republican coalition, with enough support to warrant representation in his administration.
OpenAI has some national policy ideas
Derek Robertson
OpenAI, at the white-hot center of the AI boom, is no exception. Chris Lehane, the political veteran and former Clinton White House lawyer who now leads OpenAI’s global policy, sees an expansive collaboration between industry and government in coming years as not just Washington, but state and local governments adapt to the dawn of powerful new AI tools.
The company is circulating an as-yet-unpublished “blueprint” for AI infrastructure, with proposals for special AI economic zones and cross-North American policy collaboration.
