Talk:United States House of Representatives

Mike Johnson created Women-only spaces in US House

Republican House Speaker says Capitol bathrooms restricted by "biological sex." After implementing the ban as the House Speaker, Mike Johnson announced, "Women deserve women's only spaces." Arbeiten8 (talk) 13:23, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

FEMA

Hello With everything that is going in with FEMA right now you should really look into what they are doing to people from the hurricanes. They have told Pasco County that the only permit they will give us is a demo. We never got any help from them other then $750. We put all of our life savings in to our home and move. We are living in a camper provided to us by friends other wise we would be homeless now. I had NFIP for $61,000 they took our money for that amount and have decided to give us $25,000 due to the loop holes in the policy. Mind you tgey had the vin from the trailer. We are still waiting for our insurance money. Once again FEMA has not done anything for us other than to cause more heart aches for us. I want to know when we started to be a dictatorship. Who gives the federal government the right to tell me not to fix up our home. Mind you they have not given us a dime for anything. Both my husband I and are veterans and are disgusted with way the Federal government (FEMA) treating us. Helene flooded our home FEMA left us homeless Susan Sterzinger 47.203.212.88 (talk) 14:41, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Credit card 2603:6011:8E00:352D:5C80:9179:6869:648D (talk) 07:04, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Speaker Election - Incumbent/Vacant House

Since the House failed to elect a Speaker, at least so far (January 3, 2025; 2pm Eastern Time, first ballot just finished), that means that none of the Representatives-Elect have been sworn in. I think we should do as we did back in January 2023 when we added a note that said that none of the Representatives were sworn in, therefore kind of vacant. Gufand (talk) 19:02, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Spartz is not part of the republican majority

Victoria Spartz does not caucus with the republicans and should not be listed in the majority. Bte3000 (talk) 19:44, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@Bte3000: I was thinking about this as well, it seems that she's not on any committees, but the House Republican Conference still lists her as a member, and it seems that reputable sources still treat her like any other Republican. I also had seen a news update that she attended a House R meeting about the budget resolution, so honestly this just seems moot. AG202 (talk) 00:17, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Removal of whips from infobox

I think the whips should be included in the infobox. They are described prominently alongside with Majority and Minority Leader in Party leaders of the United States House of Representatives is it not? Bokmanrocks01 (talk) 17:49, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

I've added it back since I think it should be discussed here first before removing Bokmanrocks01 (talk) 00:57, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

New Seating Chart

Recently, @President Loki added a new seating chart for the House of Reps matching the actual layout in the House chamber. I've since reverted the change per WP:BRD since it's changing a longstanding layout that's been used for years, and I feel that it creates problems as I illustrated in the edit summary:

• Seating charts like this that aren't tied to the automated tool create issues when vacancies need to updated or when seats flip. As far as I can tell, when say, the two Florida special elections are done and members are sworn in, we won't know exactly where they'll sit or how that'll be set up. I would like to avoid a similar situation to what's happened with Legislature of Guam or Northern Mariana Islands House of Representatives, where they've yet to be updated after elections because of their changed layouts and said user being inactive. Someone will eventually either have to manually update the layout or simply use the normal tool.
• To the untrained eye, the difference in majority is not as clear as it used to be.

Overall, these updated seating charts are cool, but they're less practical in the long-term compared to the typical way these breakdowns are done. Nonetheless, I'm open to discussion. AG202 (talk) 20:05, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I believe there is certainly precedent for the change, as is seen in many legislative pages. To name a few: the Australian Parliament, the European Parliament, the Polish Parliament, and the Cortes Generales (Spanish Parliament). These are among a host of parliamentary/legislative pages on Wikipedia that use election apportionment diagrams that accurately depict the seating layout of their respective parliaments. I don't see why the national legislature of the United States needs to be any different. I don't see why updating the diagram that I've added would be an issue either. It is a simple, Inkscape-friendly vector, which can be easily edited with a few clicks.

President Loki (talk) 22:58, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

The simple version is also used by other Wikis, so updating it keeps them up to date as well. Personally I find the new version hard to decipher, and it gives the impression that the current vacancies are on the D side. Peter NYC (talk) 00:00, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Not being able to update via the automated tool, which I've done several times on my phone, is a huge drawback. Peter NYC (talk) 01:13, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't see why that should be an argument against it. Again, as I've said previously, there are a vast host of countries that use parliamentary diagrams which are seat acurate. Should those pages abandon using accurate seating charts, because the tool is not available to use in those cases? Should it be the policy of Wikipedia that all of the many legislature pages with these charts should be reverted back to their old "simple" versions?

As I've said, the vector in question is Inkscape-friendly and extremely easy to edit, as is the case with these other legislatures/parliaments that I've mentioned.

I also cannot see why it would be a problem that other language wikis use the "simple" version. Just because other wikis use it, that's a reason that the English version should not be improved? If that was the case, images that appear on multiple language wikis would never be updated/improved, for fear of not keeping the other wikis up to date. And on top of that, these other language wikis can easily be updated.

President Loki (talk) 01:39, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

So what would I need to do when someone dies and want to update the chart quickly? As happened several times last year. Peter NYC (talk) 01:47, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

The same thing that happens with all the other legislative diagrams. The vector can be updated easily using Inkscape. And when it's the legislature of the third most populated country, that is absolutely not an issue, and I cannot imagine that it will take much time at all for the image to be promptly updated in the case of vacancy/replacement/death/retirement. As I have now reiterated numerous times, why should the United States have a different standard than all of the many countries that use accurate legislative seating diagrams? Again, should we go ahead and revert all of those legislative diagrams back to their "simple" versions? Obviously not. The same standard should apply to the United States as well.

President Loki (talk) 18:59, 26 February 2025 (UTC) President Loki (talk) 18:59, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

@President Loki: I'll address these directly:

• Australian Parliament & Polish Parliament at least have direct links to the seating chart on Wikimedia Commons, and each member does have assigned seating. As stated by U.S. Rep Keating's website: "Members of the House do not have assigned seats in the House Chamber, but traditionally sit according to party with Democratic Members sitting to the Speaker’s right and Republican Members sitting to the Speaker’s left." Thus, I'm not sure where you're getting the seating layout from, and also, the sides would need to be switched to match, at the very least, the two sides.
• Cortes Generales actually shows the exact problem I've been talking about. Looking at the Senate specifically, the layout doesn't match the colors, the description at Senate of Spain is entirely different, and most importantly, the graphic hasn't been updated since September 2023 likely because of the same issue I brought up. The user that created the seating chart has been barely active since 2023, meaning that the chart that we have currently is entirely outdated as the Senate of Spain's website confirms.

Both of those concerns combined (lack of direct source and high chance of a lack of updates) are exactly what I would like to avoid with such a high-traffic page. It already takes long enough to make the necessary updates with the existing auto-template. AG202 (talk) 00:03, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

The fundamental principle behind Wikipedia is that anyone anywhere with an Internet connection can edit.

We shouldn't have to rely on someone with a computer and a specialized graphics program happening to notice that an important graphic is outdated when there is already an easy tool accessible to all. Peter NYC (talk) 21:54, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

So should all of the many legislature pages that have realistic seating charts be updated to a "simple" version? You have still not answered that question. President Loki (talk) 22:22, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

That's not the question the OP asked, the question was whether this particular graphic should be changed, and it should not be.

 

Let me ask you a question: you've created a lot of these seating charts, how often do you patrol those pages for changes in numbers? Peter NYC (talk) 23:39, 27 February 2025 (UTC)