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Andrea Brearley's kids really want to see Pixar while on vacation. The problem is that the family is staying in San Francisco and with rail workers on strike, they're having a hard time figuring out how to get to the cartoon-maker's headquarters across the bay in Emeryville, Calif.

Brearley, who lives in Windsor, Ontario, says it's been "scary" trying to figure out an alternative route. "Three different people told me three different buses," she says.

In fact, many of the natives are confused. The area has multiple transit agencies, but the Bay Area Rapid Transit system links a number of them, serving an average of 400,000 riders on weekdays.

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All this week, NPR is taking a look at the demographic changes that could reshape the political landscape in Texas over the next decade — and what that could mean for the rest of the country.

Texas is a large, diverse state with broad regional differences in population and demography. Its politics is subject to wild swings, too, depending on location. Take the 2012 presidential election, for example.

President Obama, who didn't campaign in the Lone Star State, got only 41 percent of the statewide vote last year. Compare that with the 57 percent of the vote received by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who also didn't devote any energy to Texas.

The map is staggeringly red, with Obama winning just 26 of the state's 254 counties, whose populations range from 4 million residents (Houston's Harris County) to 82 residents (rural Loving County):

My name is Maureen, and I am an Ikea-holic. Sure, I laughed knowingly at The Narrator's "slave to Ikea" speech as much as the next Fight Club fan. But the awful truth is, I've got a BEDDINGE in my bedroom.

And I'm not embarrassed to say so.

But for the world's millions of refugees, a home supplied by Ikea would be no joke. And testing will soon be under way on a temporary structure that could transform their lives.

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All this week, NPR is taking a look at the demographic changes that could reshape the political landscape in Texas over the next decade — and what that could mean for the rest of the country.

To see the speed of demographic change in Texas, look no further than its largest city — Houston. Only 40 percent of the city's population is non-Hispanic white, and by a Rice University count, it's the most racially and ethnically diverse city in America.

"Houston is an immigrant magnet," says Glenda Joe, a Chinese-Texan community organizer whose extended family came to Houston in the 1880s.

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