derfunkatron

~~DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD are formatting conventions for expressing dates. The date itself is probably converted from some date object anyway, like the Unix Epoch, and can be expressed in any variety of formats.~~

~~Wednesday, June 11, 2025 is a date. dddd, mmm dd, yyyy or %A, %B %d, %Y is a format.~~

Edit: I’m pretty sure I misread the comment above.

Senators in the US senate serve 6 year terms and there are only 2 per state. This means that there is always an even number of senators and they have a lot of time in office before needing to focus on campaigning for re-election. Compare this to the House of Representatives where the terms are 2 years and states get allocated different amounts of representatives based on population.

Other things to note about senators is that there are certain procedural elements in government that only originate or happen in the senate: approving presidential appointees, judges, generals and admirals, authorizing treaties. The senate also has various committees that advise or manage various aspects of governance. Bills, including the budget, must pass both houses of Congress; in the case of the budget, it originates in the House of Representatives but must be approved by the Senate. The Senate has a lot of power to kill/block legislation because legislation requires both houses of Congress to pass it.

Historically, the Senate was the states’ representative in the federal government and, in fact, state legislatures used to select senators. Although senators are now voted for by the populations of each state, they still have a legacy of being “more prestigious” than the House of Representatives and often vote more conservatively (read as deliberate or less reactively).

Candidly speaking, senators are known to become legacies often staying in office for more than 20 years and it is not uncommon frontje children of senators to also become senators. I mention this, because socially senators are often perceived as being part of a supposedly “non-existent” US aristocracy.

Oh, I’m with you. I was just diving really deep into how absurd the 51st rhetoric is on our side.

It is clear that there is no intention of treating Canada fairly and, as you rightly pointed out, annexation would be violent and justifiably so.

If Canada entered collectively as a single state (pure nonsense, but hear me out), they’d get two senators and 1 representative to the house. The apportionments for US representatives would need to be raised to account for 40 million new people, which my guess wouldn’t happen, so instead California and Canada (who have almost equal populations) would just trade off allocations of representatives alternating with New York and Texas. Canada would end up with a lot of representatives in the House this way but wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as adding 20 senators if the provinces entered as individual states.

All said, not all of these seats would go democrat, but the GOP definitely wouldn’t be able to guarantee majorities or stalemates in both houses like they have been for the past 20-30 years. Even if the Trump admin pulled this con off and annexed Canada as a US territory, the GOP would just block entry as a state since I can’t imagine this Congress passing a joint resolution to allow it. Furthermore, Congress doesn’t even have to consider adding a new state even if the population of that territory keep petitioning for it (see ongoing D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood petitions).

Shit would get really complicated when the US has to handle the dissolution of parliament, withdrawal from the Commonwealth, and Quebec.