The People's Assembly

A second axis of representation. Geographic representation tells us who lives where, and assigns one set of representatives to handle every issue across that geography. The People's Assembly proposes a complementary structure: representation organized by what a law concerns, not just where it applies.

Every place government touches life is a domain. Twenty-two of them, mapped out below. Each domain becomes a potential seat — a topical specialization where members of the public can develop expertise, follow what's happening, and provide the kind of sustained, informed oversight that no single geographically-elected representative has the time or training to deliver across all twenty-two at once.

This isn't a replacement for geography. It's an addition. The combination — district reps who represent place, plus topical reps who represent depth — is the model.

Why twenty-two

The number isn't sacred. The aim is comprehensive coverage. If a domain is missing — if government does something significant that doesn't fall into one of the twenty-two — the map isn't yet honest, and the assembly has a gap. The list will grow as gaps surface. (It already grew from the original twenty when we noticed we'd left out arts, sciences, and the entire infrastructure of public records.)

Below: every domain, what it covers in broad strokes, and a way to express interest in a topical seat. Express interest in as many or as few as you'd like. We track the responses to see where there's energy and which domains are ready to organize.

Express interest

Tell us which domains you'd want to follow or organize around. Email plus checkboxes — the form takes about thirty seconds. We use the responses to see where there's energy and which domains are ready for organizing work.

The twenty-two

Identity & Legal Status
Citizenship, immigration, vital records, legal personhood, identification systems, the architecture of \"who counts as what\" for governmental purposes.
Historical & Public Records
Public records, archives, FOIA, the census, historical preservation, transparency law, the records infrastructure that makes everything else possible to verify.
Mental Health
Mental health care access, mental health parity, crisis response systems, public mental health services, the institutional architecture for serious mental illness.
Public Health
Disease surveillance, public health agencies, vaccination, health emergencies, environmental health, the population-level health apparatus distinct from individual medical care.
Commerce & Industry
Trade regulation, antitrust, business formation, industrial policy, supply chains, sector-specific regulation outside the carve-outs that have their own domains.
Food & Medicine
Food safety, drug regulation, supply chains for both, the FDA's regulatory domain, medical device regulation, the gray areas (supplements, off-label).
Government Operations
How government runs itself — civil service, procurement, transparency, internal accountability, the meta-domain that shapes how every other domain actually functions.
Energy
Electricity grid, fuels, energy policy, transition planning, utility regulation, the public-private architecture of energy delivery.
Finance & TaxationDrafting
Tax policy, public finance, banking regulation, the fiscal architecture across federal, state, and local layers.
Social Welfare
Income support, SNAP, TANF, housing assistance, social insurance — the architecture of public support for people whose circumstances put them outside what the labor market alone provides.
Agriculture
Farms, food systems at the source, agricultural labor, USDA programs, water for irrigation, soil and land use.
Environment & Natural Resources
Air, water, lands, wildlife, climate policy, environmental regulation across federal, state, and local layers.
Education
Schools from pre-K through higher education, curriculum, funding formulas, accreditation, the public/private/charter mix, special education, libraries qua educational institutions.
Labor & Employment
Wages, working conditions, unions and collective bargaining, workplace safety, unemployment insurance, gig and platform work, the full architecture of the employer-employee relationship.
Gambling & White Collar Crime
Casino and gambling regulation, financial crime, securities fraud, public corruption — the regulatory and enforcement architecture for the kinds of harm that don't show up in violent crime statistics.
Arts & Sciences
Public funding and infrastructure for the arts, the sciences, and the public communication of both — grants, institutions, public broadcasting, research universities qua research.
Foreign Policy & Action
Diplomacy, foreign aid, international agreements, military action abroad, the institutional architecture of how the U.S. interacts with the rest of the world.
Digital Infrastructure
Broadband access, telecommunications, internet governance, public digital services, the public-private edges of digital infrastructure.
Public Safety, Law Enforcement & Security
Policing, prosecution, corrections, courts, national security, intelligence, the full enforcement and adjudication apparatus.
Emergency Management
Disaster preparedness and response, FEMA, civil defense, mutual aid, the layered federal/state/local emergency apparatus.
Land & Property
Real property law, zoning, eminent domain, housing, public land, the legal infrastructure of who owns what and what they can do with it.
Physical Infrastructure
Roads, transit, water systems, ports, bridges, the built environment that everyone uses regardless of whether they think about it.

Click any domain to see what's already been mapped within it. Most domains are scaffolded but not yet researched — that's where contributors come in.

How specialization works in practice

The assembly is a long-term proposition. In the near term, before any formal structure exists, the work is more concrete: each domain is a place where someone with subject knowledge and time can do the analytical work — map the gaps between formal representation and lived experience, surface the relevant statutes and how they actually operate, write up findings, propose changes. That work is what makes a domain ready to be claimed.

If you'd like to do that work for a domain, the contribute page explains how. If you'd like to follow what other people are doing, the form above gets you on a per-domain interest list.