The test immigrants must pass to become U.S. citizens has been upgraded to become more challenging. This article from New Your Times offers 9 sample questions that are new. All questions can be viewed in a link from the Times article.
I was able to answer 6/9 questions correctly. I am pretty certain I would never have known the answers to some of the questions as U.S. born citizens. The MC format makes things a little easier, but the questions are also esoteric as far as functioning according to the expectations of this country.
I also thought a couple of questions were ambiguous or at the least depend on a very careful interpretation of the wording (perhaps some terms have both a formal and an informal meaning).
Here is one I missed. I would have liked the stem to have focused on who elects a representative which I would guess is widely known. Just for sake of argument the citizens in their district are also living in their state. I would also argue that no matter the district the issues of their state are prioritized over the priorities of other states. Too much? I think I overthought this one.
The key to the following question is the word usually. While there are 9 seats on the court, all 9 are not necessarily filled. With 8 justices, a 4-4 tie leaves the lower court decision in place. Is that a decision? It depends on whether you are for or against the lower court decision. Open seats are not the only issue. What happens when a justice or potentially more decide they should not vote? Five is a safe choice. Six decides a case, but it is not the minimum
If complaints of this type seem weird to you, you have never been a teacher using multiple-choice tests who had to listen to student complaints about how they interpreted the questions they missed.