Friday News Roundup — April 30, 2021
The Census(es) Edition
Good morning to you from Washington, D.C. This week saw President Biden’s first address to Congress, where he put forth plans for more than $4 trillion in infrastructure and social programs that would rival the New Deal and Great Society in scope and impact. Given the size, price tag, and debate over how to pay for these measures — and razor-thin majorities — Democratic unity will be closely watched, along with any momentum for bipartisan proposals, or the GOP’s far more modest counter proposals. President Biden’s address also focused on the competition with China, while right to highlight the new reality of competition with China led by Xi Jinping, we wish that the president could have better highlighted cooperation with allies and their contributions to great power competition and geotech.
This morning, in The Hill, Rep. Glenn Nye and Chairman Mike Rogers wrote of the importance of continuing the momentum behind the Space Force and reforming our national security space enterprise. On May 4th, join us for the release of our latest recommendations for the Space Force and policymakers.
Also next Wednesday, tune in to our discussion on the ongoing semiconductor shortage and lessons related to U.S. innovation leadership featuring Susie Armstrong, Sr. Vice President for Engineering at Qualcomm, and Jimmy Goodrich, Vice President for Global Policy, Semiconductor Industry Association.
This week, in The Diplomatic Courier, Joshua reviewed Andrew Mumford’s The West’s War Against the Islamic State, while also providing a deep analysis of the ODNI’s Global Trends 2040 report.
This week’s roundup is brief, but focused on demography. First, Dan looks at what the data on fertility means particularly with stunning news in both the United States and China. At the intersection of politics and demography, Michael looks at what the census reapportionment means for redistricting.
This week, instead of contributing to the roundup, Ethan is participating in the Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) 24-hour run-walk-ruck challenge to honor fallen TACP brothers, unite the TACP community, and raise monies for programs directly benefiting the TACP community. Click here to support Ethan, and read below to learn more about this cause.
As always, we wrap with news you may have missed.
Demography & Destiny
Dan Mahaffee
When looking at the balance of global power or the geopolitics of great power competition, it is often about comparing metrics. Some are obvious, like the size of naval fleets, warhead counts for treaties, or military budgets, while others reflect more modern competitions, such as the scope of R&D subsidies, processing speed of supercomputers, or even the qubits of quantum computing applications. Yet, despite all these methods of slicing and dicing the data, the most fundamental count of all — a headcount — has much to tell us.
In both the United States and China, the headlines this week talked of demographic changes. Here at home, the initial results of the census suggest the slowest U.S. population growth since the 1930s. While most of us in the political sphere are focused on what the population data means for redistricting (which Michael covers in greater detail), the decade-long population increase of only 7.4 percent reflects both slowing immigration and declining fertility rates. While most things are currently viewed through the near-term lens of the pandemic — or the medium-term lens of the Trump era — much of this is still the echo of the 2008 financial crisis reverberating through to today. Unlike following the Great Depression, U.S. fertility rates have continued to decline since the Great Recession. As for immigration, trends already slowing immigration that predated the Trump administration — along with others reshaping it from primary Hispanic immigraiton to Asian immigration — only accelerated under more onerous immigraiton restrictions.
In Beijing, the demographic news appears even more dire. This week, The Financial Times reported that China would report the first population decline since the famine of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. The murky details about the data, and the strict secrecy in which Chinese officials were discussing this finding reflected the potential impact of such a finding. The fact that Chinese officials moved so quickly to refute the FT cements any analysis of the importance of this. Throughout China’s economic boom, the CCP’s brutally-enforced One Child Policy has tamped down China’s population growth. While creating 30 million bachelors and a generation of only-child “Little Emperors,” it left China analysts with one burning question: “will China get old before it gets rich?” If we’re reaching the point where we’re now getting closer to older than rich — and possibly even closer than thought, as some suggest that Chinese fertility rates are even lower than official statistics — then the calculus for Beijing shifts greatly. Be it assumptions about domestic-consumption growth, military manpower, or even the demands of the elderly on only children at the micro level and China’s relatively underdeveloped welfare state at the macro level.
Here in the United States, a declining population growth rate also weighs on our economic prospects and future dynamism. In 2015, it was estimated that immigration would fuel 88% of U.S. population growth by 2065. These and other trends raised questions about future U.S. demographics, and helped to fuel further nativism in U.S. politics. The future of our economy and the shape of America’s future are largely tied up in the politically toxic immigration debate. At the same time, what can be done about the fertility rate in the United States will also weigh on the debate regarding early childhood care, paid family leave, and other measures to help family formation — measures perhaps not as hot button as immigration, yet where significant partisan differences remain.
Looking globally, both the United States and China are matching fertility trends already seen in many developed countries like those of the European Union and Japan. South Korea would now be below the lower bound of the above chart, with a sub-1 fertility rate at 0.64. Even in South Asia and Latin America, population growth has slowed, with the fastest growth remaining in the Middle East & North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. What this means beyond the U.S.-China balance of power and for the global balance of power is also worth consideration, as growing regions will have their own development and dynamism as other nations age and ossify. In the battle for influence and competition for business, those markets represent the next opportunity.
For the United States, this reminds us of the need to address problems at home, as well as to change how we look at the world. The idea that demography is destiny is hardly a new one, but it’s one that policymakers need to increasingly consider as they look to the future. Population growth and the dynamism that it brings have been key ingredients to American exceptionalism. Despite what some might say, our nation is hardly full. Technology and innovation increasingly render no-growth arguments moot. While this brings together a complicated mix of political, social, cultural, and economic factors, it is a challenge that we must solve.
Census Results Set the Stage for Redistricting Battles
Michael Stecher
On Monday, the Census Bureau released the population and apportionment data for the 2020 decennial census. These data tell state legislators how many members of Congress they will have for the next decade and set the stage for the redistricting battles to come; actual redistricting cannot happen until the Census Bureau delivers its “redistricting data”, which breaks down population at the census block level and includes information like age, sex, and race of residents. That information will allow officials in each state to begin to draw the boundaries for the Congressional districts for the next Congress, but the outlines of those decisions can already be seen and they are ugly.
The Census data tells a few interlocking stories about life in the United States in 2020. The first continues a long trend, the general movement of population and political power away from large industrial centers in the Great Lakes and Northeast towards the Sunbelt and the Mountain West. As recently as 1980, the Great Lakes and Northeast accounted for 40% of the representation in Congress; for the next decade, they will have only 32%, a 20% decline in 40 years. The regions that include Florida and Texas, two of the fastest growing states, now also have about ⅓ of the total voting power in Congress, up from 26% in 1980. The growth story in the West is more about slow and steady growth, with Colorado and Montana gaining seats this cycle and Arizona and Idaho ending up just on the wrong side of the bubble.
By contrast, California losing a seat is a sharp reversal of the trend. California’s population grew by only 6.4% over the last decade, a very tepid showing. Nor is the future necessarily bright for the largest delegation in Congress. The formula that the Census uses to allocate seats shows that California has seats 433, 425, and 418 (seat 435 is the last seat in), which sets the state up for further losses in 2030 and 2040. Wildfires and droughts might play a role in California’s declining popularity, but it is hard to ignore that the trend described above is one of people moving from cold cities in the north to less expensive metro areas in the Sunbelt. Years of underinvestment in housing means that California no longer really qualifies as an easy place to move to. Lawmakers in Sacramento need to think hard about what will happen if they cannot get growth back on track in the state.
It is likely, though difficult to prove at this point, that states that did not expend maximum effort to encourage Hispanic residents to respond to the census may have cost themselves in voting power. Texas picked up 2 seats and Florida picked up 1, but experts were expecting more. Texas, Florida, and Arizona had seats 438–440, meaning that they just narrowly missed out on an additional member. According to the New York Times, New York City spent more out census outreach than Texas did; Florida’s unfunded outreach committee did not meet until January 2020 (while Minnesota’s had met since 2015); and Arizona also spent a paltry sum. This will reverberate through federal spending and priorities for a decade.
At a high level, the population shifts mean that states that voted for President Biden lost three electoral votes, while states that voted for President Trump gained three, which slightly narrows a future Democratic presidential candidate’s path to victory, all else being equal. At the state level, the question of who gets to draw the districts will be very important. The irreplaceable Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report estimates that the population shifts will result in a 3–4 seat shift towards the GOP. While an undercount of Hispanics may have hurt some states as a whole, for intra-state redistricting fights, it will likely benefit Republicans.
37 states have direct political oversight of the redistricting process and are dominated by a single party in the state capital, which makes them particularly at-risk for partisan gerrymanders that systematically disenfranchise voters of the other party. This is, unfortunately, roughly unchanged from a decade ago, despite the hard work of advocates of gerrymandering reform (including CSPC). There are even states that have bipartisan or nonpartisan commissions that submit maps that require approval from the state legislatures — most notably New York and Ohio — where partisan control means that they can overrule the commission. New York’s legislature, for example, might be able to draw lines that generate 4 new seats for Democrats.
This remains one of the most distasteful elements of American politics — jockeying for political influence not based on the strength of ideas but on power reinforcing power. In its extreme form, which you can see on display in Wisconsin for example, only a landslide that is difficult to imagine in these partisan times would disrupt one party’s hold on the legislature. When the normal cycle of representatives winning and losing is disrupted, it encourages parties to push the boundaries of what is acceptable in order to hold onto power, which is completely anathema in a democratic system.
Both parties have gotten better at this in recent decades and it shows no sign of slowing down. This year, partisans in the majority of states containing the majority of the population will seek to create a system that entrenches party representation rather than ensuring popular representation. There will be fewer competitive seats and more extreme partisans in Congress, which will further limit compromise and the ability to get business done. This is one of the most pressing issues for political reforms going forward.
Supporting the TACP Community
Ethan Brown
I apologize for diverging from my normal defense coverage but hoped to share with everyone an opportunity to help out a tremendous organization from my former Air Force community.
Every year, the TACP Association puts on the 24-hour Challenge, which is the single-biggest fundraising event for the organization. Teams of current squadrons, retired TACPs, and support units compete in the 24-hour long run/ruck challenge. Last year, 41 teams logged 10k+ miles and raised over $70k which went directly to supporting TACPs during family and medical emergencies, assisting with travel expenses for a fallen TACP’s memorial service, and helping the families of Fallen TACPs by way of college scholarships.
Unlike other veteran support organizations, the TACPA exclusively supports my former career field and the families of those operators. As one of the smallest career fields in the DoD, the TACP community is often lost in the shuffle of the wide range of VSOs who offer similar support, which is what makes the TACPA so incredibly important in helping TACPs and their families in times of need.
My former unit (the 17th Special Tactics Squadron) participates in the 24-hour Challenge every year as “Team GC” (Named after MSgt Joshua Gavulic, a XVII STS member who died in a parachute training accident at Yuma Proving Ground, AZ in 2014). If you are able to contribute, please click here to give a tax-deductible donation (even anonymously), or simply share these links informational fliers or links within your circles to tremendously help the TACPA and the families of the community.
News You Might Have Missed
Foster to Step down as Northern Ireland’s First Minister
Sarah Naiman
Northern Ireland’s First Minister and Democratic Union Party (DUP) head Arlene Foster will be stepping down from both posts by the end of June. After a letter of no confidence was allegedly signed by the vast majority of her party’s Members of the Legislative Assembly and Parliament, she was left with little choice. Her six-year tenure has been rocky at times, with challenges ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to a failed Brexit deal. She also struggled to work with Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican party in Northern Ireland’s formerly power-sharing government (Sinn Féin pulled out in 2017, citing an inability to find compromise with Foster and the DUP). While Foster’s political instincts were often lacking, as the first woman to hold these two positions, she was often the victim of sexism in the “traditional” DUP. For example, Edwin Poots, Foster’s agriculture minister and the front-runner to become the next First Minister, offered this congratulations when she assumed the position: “Her most important job has been, and will remain, that of a wife, mother and daughter.” As of now, it is unclear whether anyone will challenge Poots’ bid for the position. Such a challenge would mark the first time in the DUP’s 50-year history that the First Minister candidate faced an inter-party opponent. For now, it appears that the DUP is headed in a more anti-Catholic, right-wing direction under Poots’ leadership.
Hungary Moves to Cement Control over Universities
The Hungarian government under Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been one of the worst offenders in the recent trend of democratic backsliding. The Fidesz Party, which Orban heads, has systematically changed the electoral rules to disadvantage opposition parties, and has used the levers of power to transfer vast amounts of public wealth and patronage to political allies. Orban is often called a right-wing populist, but he is actually Europe’s westernmost Putinist. Hungary’s university system, which tends to have a more left-wing faculty, has long been a target for the government. This new change will put the universities under a set of foundations — run by Orban allies — that will be able to manage their real estate and endowments, as well as engage in Fidesz’s anti-liberal and anti-pluralist culture war. When new openings occur in these foundations’ boards, they will be filled by nominees from other board members, ensuring that one hand will continue to wash the other, and any changes to this structure will require a ⅔ vote in the Hungarian parliament.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.