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resolves no, the government agency said so xD

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump took place in Pennsylvania, which is connected to Rhode Island via the ground of the North American continent. Therefore, there is a connection between the attempted assassination and Rhode Island.

QED

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump directly caused the death of a "family man", leading to a long-term reduction in the population of Pennsylvania. The reduction's quantity is unpredictable but quite probably significant over long time scales since population growth is exponential in nature.

That reduction necessarily affects the future apportionment of members of the House of Representatives, such that a reduction in the population of Pennsylvania eventually leads to a relative increase in the number of representatives apportioned to Rhode Island.

Since the attempted assassination affects the future number of Representatives apportioned to Rhode Island, there is a connection between the attempted assassination and Rhode Island.

QED

(please no one take this too seriously... I couldn't bear to be responsible for starting some "it was Rhode Island playing the long game to get more representation in the House" conspiracy)

You make a good point though, anything is technically connected to anything else, so what is the minimum threshold connectedness required for market resolution?

such that a reduction in the population of Pennsylvania eventually leads to a relative increase in the number of representatives apportioned to Rhode Island.

You would think so, but there was some census about 100-ish years ago where Virginia grew faster than Maine but didn't get an extra seat while Maine did.

The proportional representation method used has since been changed and that can no longer happen.

@BrunoParga I did actually spend time double-checking my beliefs before commenting and got briefly lost in the history being far more complicated than I expected. I learned that the apportionment process could be wildly changed by Congress on a whim, which is kinda terrifying.

I think a whooooole lot of things about the way the US is organized are super terrifying; however, apportionment is surprisingly sane. There have been blunders (the one I mentioned, the Alabama paradox, the Oklahoma paradox) but I think these came from a place of genuine ignorance not malice. It's not like America had a lot of other experiences to learn from, and the blunders are currently fixed AFAIK. And the Constitution is pretty clear that apportionment must be proportional (with a minimum of 1 seat per state, which is fair)...

But hey, maybe your rabbit hole has shown you cool scary stuff - would you like to share why you find terrifying?

Could you imagine the chaos that would ensue if one of the political parties decided that the House should actually have 10,000 members? That's entirely possible, and unless I'm missing something it would only take a simple majority vote in the House and Senate to do it (assuming no veto). Redistricting to make over 20x the districts, keeping track of the sheer number of new candidates, and basically all of the rules of the House would have to change to accommodate.

This would surely cripple the legislative branch, at least in the short-term. Not to mention that some truly niche political parties could get voices in Congress, which maybe that would be a good thing and maybe not, but I think it would almost certainly set the record for the most overall chaos caused by a single bill.

I see. Sure, that's possible. But solipsism is also possible, or possibly some evil spirit is actually deceiving me about reality such that everyone is always laughing at me because I have hot dogs for fingers and I don't notice it.

The 10,000 member House is less likely than those options that mean my entire sense-making apparatus is fundamentally broken, so I don't worry about it at all.

I can imagine scenarios where it could happen, albeit unlikely. Imagine a situation where a single political party has full control of the House, Senate, and Presidency. Then, in an election, they lose all three simultaneously. Rather than hand over all power to their political rivals, they decide the nation will be better off if they sabotage the government instead (with the side effect of possibly allowing themselves to retain power). I'd argue that such attempts at sabotage already happen fairly often to a much lesser degree.

(EDIT: I maybe should point out, in my rabbit hole search it seems entirely possible for a Congress to pass something like this and make it immediately effective, even in the brief period after elections and before new members are sworn in. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that.)

I suspect the primary reason something extreme like this hasn't happened is because it's rare for people who actively seek the government's failure to end up in office, but that rarity seems to be getting more and more common lately...

My fear is that if Congress ever does get self-destructive, however briefly, then it can self-destruct. Once that happened, I don't see any way the House would ever practically get back to normal. Undoing the sabotage would require almost 5,000 members to effectively vote themselves out of office.

You're right that I probably shouldn't worry about hypothetical nukes when there's plenty of less extreme bombs that a malicious Congress would undoubtedly drop first. I'm just saying that I never realized quite how persistently a single malicious Congress could screw up the federal government. I always thought it was like the other branches where replacing all bad actors would quickly fix things.

I'm not sure I get it. Why wouldn't the incoming, normal 435-member House (+Senate and President) undo this change within the first 10 minutes of their term? Like, even if the outgoing party somehow manages to get the new 9.5 thousand Reps nominated (without apportionment, redistricting, primaries or general elections), in this scenario it still seems likely they'd mirror the incoming composition - the party that didn't want the shenanigans in the first place would have a majority.

I mean, even if somehow they want the new crowd of members to take office immediately, states still have to play along with that, and I don't see why they would.

They legally couldn't. The Constitution enforces that the House has a majority quorum to conduct business, so there would be no way to pass any legislation until over 4,500 new representatives got elected and in office. At that point, good luck getting a majority of them to voluntarily vote themselves right back out of office.

I suppose it's possible a political movement could try to elect only people who promised to vote themselves out of office... I find it incredibly unlikely that such a movement would be successful enough though. Either way, chaos would ensue for quite a long time.

I very much doubt that the majority quorum there refers to an arbitrarily-defined size of the House rather than the number of actual members actually in office as members. Which at first would be just the 435 incoming ones.

Also, the idea that someone would vote away 95% of their voting power is essentially the same as them voting away 100%. Existing members wouldn't do that to themselves.

Also, I learned the other day that in 1917 the Netherlands passed a constitutional amendment to move from single-member districts (like in America) to proportional representation. However, they needed the amendment to be approved by the next Parliament, after new elections, by a larger majority.

The existing Parliament made a pact: the parties making the pact would not run against incumbents. Half of them ran unopposed, the other half easily defeated challengers from outside the pact. The exact same members were returned to a new Parliament, whose only act was to approve the amendment and dissolve itself so that proper elections, with proportional representation, could be held.

Now, would one say that Americans are inherently less trustworthy than Dutch people? I wouldn't go so far....

I can't believe I'm jealous of the 1917 dutch 😞

Members about to be voted out might as well, although you're right that members not being replaced might be less likely to go along with the plan. Although, if they believe that being a minority will make their vote have effectively no voting power anyway, then they might also reason that destroying everyone's voting power wouldn't really reduce their own any further.

"The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators."

~ Article 1, Section 4

"Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business;"

~ Article 1, Section 5

The Supreme Court has ruled from this that the House sets its own rules for determining whether there is a quorum, and the House has interpreted this power... very liberally. (Another rabbit hole: There's currently a "provisional quorum" rule in effect that theoretically allows the House to pass legislation without a true majority of members present by disregarding members who don't respond to a call for attendance after several days. This is generally believed to be unconstitutional, but has never been used and so has never been challenged in court.)

There's nothing stopping a majority of the house from making its rules for determining a quorum much stricter though, and abolishing all the loopholes. The outgoing House could easily include a provision declaring that all vacant seats count for the purposes of determining whether a quorum is met (whether vacant seats count or not does vary, so there is precedent for either), and that all changes to House rules require a quorum. Although I suppose a House wanting to sabotage itself could wreak havoc in countless ways simply by changing the House rules before the new Congress gets in, so maybe this is a separate issue.

The Netherlands story is encouraging though. Maybe my view of politicians is simply too cynical. I'm going to stop now before I get sucked down yet another rabbit hole.

Now I kinda want this to happen because the only way out would clearly be a new Constitution.

At least this one is an easy legal question. The answer to "can there be a new Constitution?" is always yes. (And the answer to the question of how is always "¯\_(ツ)_/¯".)

For example, the 1787 Constitutional Convention violated the previous Constitution, which was the Articles of Confederation. If the Articles did not have the power to prevent the 1787 Constitution from coming into being, then it does not have the power to prevent a successor.

I have always found it odd how the Constitution required Congress to propose amendments. If enough states wanted to change the Constitution to fix Congress then... couldn't they just decide that it was changed? Is anyone really going to fight due to the fact that it isn't a Constitutionally valid amendment because Congress couldn't pragmatically pass anything?

I dunno, politics can be weird.

For me it's the opposite. I think America has the only Constitution in the world where states play any role in the amendment process. It's usually some combination of the legislature and the people as a whole (like the Dutch procedure I mentioned). And this is not because of federalism, federations are a dime a dozen (granted, less common than unitary states, but still). It's just America being weird. The 13 smallest states, combined population of "the stands at one NASCAR track", can block amendments even if the entire nation is in favor.