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CARL AZUZ: Hi, I'm Carl Azuz for "CNN 10."
We hope you're enjoying our show so far this season.
In today's down the middle coverage,
we're explaining a complicated and controversial
subject concerning evictions in the United States.
Under normal circumstances, people who rent their homes
can be forced to leave-- they can be evicted if they
don't pay the rent they owe.
But starting last year as the COVID pandemic hit the US
economy, then-President Donald Trump
signed a law that, among other things,
temporarily stopped evictions.
One major argument for doing this
was to allow renters to stay in their homes
even if they couldn't afford their rent because they lost
income due to the pandemic.
But after that law expired, President Trump
signed an executive order that gave
the US Centers for Disease Control
the power to stop evictions.
That was also meant to be temporary,
but the order has been extended several times
and current US President Joe Biden
has continued extending it.
But as we said, it's controversial.
The Biden administration says the CDC has the power
to take steps to prevent the spread of diseases
like COVID-19, and it argues that allowing evictions
could increase the spread of the virus
because it could force renters to move in with other people
or to become homeless.
But property owners say this violates
their rights to control the homes they rent out.
In some cases, they say people who can pay rent
are taking advantage of the law and refusing to pay it.
And they add it's not fair or legal that some renters are
allowed to live on someone else's property for free
while the property owner is forced
to pay the taxes, insurance, and maintenance on the home.
So what do the courts say?
They're all over the place.
Some cases have been decided in favor
of the government's eviction ban,
some have been decided against it.
In early June, landlords asked the Supreme Court
to effectively let the current eviction ban end the Biden
administration said the ban would on July 31,
and the Supreme Court decided not to end it early.
But in August, the Biden administration
extended the ban again, this time through early October.
And all of this is now back at the Supreme Court.
An alliance of landlords and real estate groups
is asking the high court to end the current eviction ban.
It argues that Congress never gave the CDC
the power to stop evictions.
The Biden administration argues that the ban needs
to stay in place because the country is
dealing with a historic public health emergency.
How all this turns out for some renters and property owners
hangs in the balance.
10-second trivia-- the 16th Amendment
to the US Constitution concerns what subject?
Voting rights, income taxes, presidential terms,
or alcohol sales.
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The 16th Amendment gives Congress
the power to collect income taxes without regard
to census results.
But census results do factor into the number
of lawmakers each US state has in the House
of Representatives.
The results of the 2020 US census
came out earlier this year.
The Census Bureau said they were delayed
by the COVID pandemic and the challenges
it created in collecting information.
The big findings include the fact that the US population is
now greater than 331 million.
But that population growth has slowed.
The shifts in where people are living
will affect how much money certain states will receive
from the federal government.
How will they affect representation
in that government?
CHRIS CILLIZZA: After months of waiting and delay,
the US Census Bureau finally--
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Released its count of the country's population
in late April and with it, the states
that will gain and lose congressional seats
over the next decade.
Now, the decennial-- big word, decade-long-- process
of reallocating the 435 House districts among the 50 states
using population growth and loss, which is also known
as reapportionment, is the official kickoff
of each state's redistricting process
in which the lines of each congressional seat
are redrawn to deal with the census results.
So here's the big news-- the country's
population grew from roughly 309 million in 2010 to 331 million
in 2020.
That's, say, a 7.35% increase.
It's also the slowest population growth
since 1930 to 1940, the decade of the Great Depression.
So if your state grew slower than 7.3%,
you likely lost a seat in Congress.
If it grew faster than that number,
you probably gained a seat or two.
So in that latter growth category
are a half dozen states that will
gain at least one new seat in 2022,
with Texas, the lone state--
Lone Star, see what I did--
to gain two districts.
On the losing seats and are a gaggle
of states that are mostly centered in the upper Midwest.
So I dug through the numbers--
get my shovel-- to be honest, it was an act
of total joy, I love this stuff--
and came up with five things--
five things about the census count
you will want to know to impress your friends
and vanquish your enemies, which is our real goal in life,
isn't it?
Just me?
OK, let's go.
Number one, the South and West continue
to seize more and more population
and congressional power.
All six states gaining House seats--
Texas, Florida, Colorado, Montana, Oregon,
and North Carolina-- are in the two regions of the country
that we have seen grow fastest over the past three decades
when looking back at demographic data from the 2000 census
through the 2020 census.
Since that 2000 census, for example, Texas
has gained 8 seats while Florida has gained 5
and Arizona and Georgia have picked up 3 each.
In fact, of the 13 states that have gained seats
in reapportionment since the 2000 census,
all 13 of those states are in either the South
or the Midwest.
Yeah, it's a trend.
Number two, the Rust Belt continues
to lose seats and power.
So of the seven states losing a district following the 2020
census, all but two, California and New York,
fall within the one-time manufacturing
heart of this country.
Pennsylvania has lost 4 seats since 2000, as has Ohio.
Michigan is down 3, you same with Illinois.
The biggest loser of seats in the past three decades,
however, is New York, having lost 5 seats.
Here's an amazing New York stat--
after the 1940 census, New York had 45 congressional districts.
It'll have just 26 in 2022.
Number three, the electoral map didn't change all that much.
OK, so the expectation and most of the projections
going into this reapportionment were that the electoral map
would move in favor of Republicans because
of major expected gains in Republican friendly territory
like Texas and Florida.
But Texas gained only 2 seats and Florida just 1--
in each case, a seat fewer than most politics watchers
had predicted would happen.
Number four, the long California boom is no more.
For much of the past five decades,
California has been the population
engine of the country.
As Scott Wilson of the "Washington Post"
noted in a terrific piece on the Golden State and its population
in late-April, quote, "beginning in 1960,
the state population grew by more than 30%
each of the next three decades, a rate that peaked in the 1990
census which found California's population had jumped
37% over the previous 10 years," end quote,
which is remarkable growth.
The state's congressional delegation, not surprisingly,
also grew rapidly.
It went from 30 seats in the 1950s
to 52 seats just four decades later.
But in the last 10 years, California's population
grew by 6.1%, well below that national average I mentioned
of 7.4%, which means, as I said, for the first time ever,
California will lose a seat in Congress,
dropping its literally massive delegation
down to 52 members come 2022.
That, of course, still makes California
the largest single-state delegation by a lot.
Number five, Texas is the new political superpower.
Sure, Texas gained 2 seats as opposed to the 3
that most people had expected, but the addition means
that the Lone Star State will have 38 House seats and 40
electoral college votes, which begins
to rival the ongoing might of California--
54 electoral votes in 2024.
OK, so 50,000-foot broadview-- what the census numbers reveal
is that the political realignment of the US,
more power to the South and West and less of it
for the Midwest and East, continued
steadily over the last decade.
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CARL AZUZ: For sale, fake space dirt.
You might be like, ooh, I bet business is booming.
Well, business is booming.
A lab at the University of Central Florida
mixes natural earth elements with chemical formulas.
The idea is to create soil that's
like that on Mars or asteroids.
NASA, space companies, schools are all customers.
They use the fake space dirt for research.
The lab has shipped 25 tons of dirt this year.
That's five times more than all of last year.
And that's how to dish the dirt on a group that makes it.
Wonder if they needed to put up for soil signs.
Every business wants to be grounded in strong sales.
They dig deep into research on how to do that.
And while it's a dirty job, someone
needs to mix it up so others can plant
the seeds of new research.
We are going to Somerville, South Carolina today.
It's where we heard from Ashley Ridge High School
on our YouTube channel.
If you never want to miss a show,
please subscribe to youtube.com/CNN10 and click
that notification bell.
I'm Carl Azuz.
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