> Chief among those hard-wired components, he said, is the Constitution’s focus on states, rather than individual voters, as the basic “representational unit.” That arrangement “shapes all the elements of our electoral and legal system,” Rana said: the House and Senate, the Electoral College, Supreme Court confirmations. And this arrangement is partly why the U.S. Constitution is among the hardest in the world to amend. It doesn’t simply undermine majority rule, he added; the minority it empowers are those who have historically weilded disproportionate influence in the political system.
This is by design. The United States is exactly meant to be that: states that are united, but independent. The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives. The expansion of the federal government, especially the powers of the executive branch, is the problem everyone seems to dislike (when their favored party isn't controlling this branch), and that's what needs to change
The United States is a flawed system designed to protect the feudal, mostly southern property based system. That’s why we killed millions over the ability to own humans, and the reactionary Senate blocked the most minor civil rights law (ie mobs may not hang people for summary justice).
These flaws have been continually amended. We can vote for Senators, corporations can operate across state lines, you can’t discriminate, etc.
Reactionaries perceive being unable to persecute people or exert their will as being executive overreach. Most rational people don’t share that perspective, which is why undermining the competence of the government and flooding propaganda everywhere has been a key priority for reactionary forces for the last generation.
So here we are, impossibly rich people can now impose their will with impunity. We’re in a new, undemocratic era.
This is a half-truth that obscures what makes The United States unique. From the day the constitution was signed, it was a compromise between competing economies, geographic incentives, cultures, religious movements, political philosophies, and individual ambitions. This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.
Yes, but this tension has been there since the founding of the republic. The federalists wanted to centralize power (some much more than others), and the republicans (the "jeffersonians") bitterly opposed it. In his second term George Washington personally lead troops to Pennsylvania to put down the whiskey rebellion.
Zooming out of the 24h news cycle, "all power to a singular person" concerns seem far too overblown. Half the country hates Trump. He won the popular vote, but not by all that much (despite what he may assert). By comparison LBJ, FDR, and Nixon won ~60% of popular vote. Even if he were a young man, I don't think we're in any danger of a caesar.
I think the scarier part is how utterly polarized the US is. The ratings are awful for trump, but it gets really scary when you zoom in.
80% conservateives at worst still support trump, while 7% liberal at best support him. Maybe someone can bring up polling to prove me wrong, but that is utterly unheard of levels of polarization. The only solace here is that independent voters are tanking, so in polls this close that can be the breaking point for all of this.
>Even if he were a young man, I don't think we're in any danger of a caesar.
The scary part is that he's not a young nor healthy man. He can blow the world up and not live to see the utter destruction he triggered. At least Caesar was assassinated and had to be on edge for years. Trump will have lived a full life never being punished and the world will burn afterwards.
From my reading of history the level of polarization was at least as high or higher during the early republic, and obviously higher leading up to and through the civil war. I don't know American history in any meaningful depth outside these two periods, but I suspect there were other periods of extreme polarization. I really don't think this is new.
But a huge constraint on the current regime's aspirations is that they can only exercise power by sending federal officers and troops into states. We'd be in a much worse place if Stephen Miller could issue an order taking over local law enforcement every time someone harasses his goons.
We killed millions over the ability to own humans because the north viewed it as a religious duty to do so. This is demonstrated in our national hymn, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which talks about how God is damning to hell the old south.
I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
The criticisms you rightly levy against the Senate are themselves decades old.
The idea that this era is especially defined by the aristocracy controlling the government is honestly just ahistoric.
> We killed millions over the ability to own humans because the north viewed it as a religious duty to do so.
No, we didn’t, because if that was the reason for the fight, it would have happened before the South, fearing the long-term prospects for the institution of slavery, not only seceded to protect it, but also preemptively attacked federal installations.
It was fought by the South over slavery and by the North over federal power. Both sides were fairly explicit about this at the time.
Of course, long after the fact, popular opinion on slavery has moved enough that people like to pretend the side that they prefer fought primarily for the opposite reason; the South over (opposition to) federal power and the North over (opposition to) slavery.
The above might seem a little shocking to non Americans, but consider the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation proclamation.
The first was because fighting merely for the preservation of the union was not enough to bolster moral. Union forces had been losing or winning pyrrhic victories and the common solider didn’t want to fight to force their southern cousins into a nation they didn’t want to be a part of.
So the stated rationale for the war was changed to be about ending slavey now.
However the emancipation proclamation only ended the practice in states that were in rebellion, which is not what you would expect from a country who had wanted to end slavery from the start.
Right, the Confederate leaders could easily have negotiated a shorter and cleaner surrender if they had wanted to. They didn't want to, because they were evil men who couldn't tolerate even the possibility that they might not be able to own other people.
Lincoln refused to negotiate with them, so not sure what you mean. He only accepted unconditional surrender by them. The southern states tried to negotiate with Lincoln before the war broke out but he refused and never budged on that.
Good for him! The time for negotiation is before the war, not after you've been utterly destroyed. For him to give in to the slave-owning south having won a civil war at such high cost, would have been snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I'm not sure where you've gotten this information, because it's completely untrue. For example, he made a quite famous offer to the southern states on September 22, 1862, in response to a major Union victory at Antietam. If any of them agreed to rejoin the Union before January 1, they would be welcomed back and allowed to keep their slaves under the pre-war status quo. But no state took him up on the offer, presumably because their leaders found it intolerable to live in a country where slavery might some day be banned.
> I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
It keeps coming up because in 2026 the compromises made to accommodate slave-owning states reverberate to this day.
The Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787 (at the Constitutional Convention) allowed slave-owning states to count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. This gave the slave-owning states more representation in the House and more Electoral College votes in presidential elections.
This allowed the south to create a voting block that blocked legislation that would have given the formerly enslaved rights that other Americans had.
The Civil War ended in 1865; black Americans in the south were second class citizens and lived under an Apartheid state for the next 100 years until the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965.
> We killed millions over the ability to own humans
"we" didn't kill millions; it's estimated that 750,000 soldiers were killed [1].
So is this what the South teaches in school? Very interesting. Well, I'll try to respond in kind:
>I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
Yes, it's been more than 100 years. We know the history better than ever. The dividing point was slavery and Lincoln didn't really care about freeing them. He simply picked a side and wanted everyone to go along with it. He picked the North because Texas seceded from the union (again, over slavery) and Lincoln would not allow that to happpen. So that played his hand in choosing to eventually ban slavery.
Does your history mention that Texas was the one who seceded?
>The idea that this era is especially defined by the aristocracy controlling the government is honestly just ahistoric.
Do you not know what's happened the past year alone? We can argue over history, but this is happening before our eyes.
It’s a feature, not a bug. The United States federal government was set up as a representative republic, not a democratic republic, and not a democracy. We are supposed to be a federation of fairly-independent state governments with just enough federal scaffolding to keep the peace between the states. We were not set up with the intention of having a do-everything federal government ruling over the states.
This exactly. But the country never figured out how to deal with one state’s laws conflicting with another state’s laws (see the Fugitive Slave Act for example). The lack of resolution around conflict between the states (which remained unresolved even after a civil war was fought over it) is partly why the federal government began to grow as it took on the role of enforcing laws (like desegregation) that certain states would not.
Wickard V Filburn is simply bad law... The federal government has way too much power and MUCH more than was ever intended. Its not a feature it is indeed a bug. One caused by the Supreme Court.
>The federal government has way too much power and MUCH more than was ever intended. Its not a feature it is indeed a bug.
we got bigger and thus we got permutational orders of issues arising as a result. We had to redo the articles of confederation within 20 years of their drafting and that was with 13 states.
Bug or feature, I see it as an inevitability as we grew to 50 states and multiple territories that the federal government would need a stronger hand today than in 1787. Of course, that hand shouldn't be bypassing every section of the constitution to serve the federal government itself. These are the exact fears that caused Shay and Whiskey way back in the day coming to fruition.
Democracy comes in many flavours and it's very hard to see the US federal system as outside of that when it is composed of elected representatives.
It's not a direct democracy, it's not a democracy where each vote counts the same, but it certainly falls within the very wide definition of democracy -
"a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives."
OK but the constitution effectively cannot be amended now (the last one, in the early 90s, took 202 years to pass [no not a typo]) and we're stuck with what we have. The population also isn't even remotely good with the powers restrained by the 10th amendment and hasn't been since at least the 1930s and maybe even before that, and there is zero chance the court changes that.
So what is next. It seems the only option is to just use the courts to re-interpret the constitution, so that things like growing your own wheat is "interstate commerce" and so that stuff like a post-86 machinegun isn't an arm even within the context of being a member of (by federal statute) the unorganized militia.
Repeal the 17th amendment - popular election of senators - and all of a sudden it gets much easier for states to amend the Constitution in ways they want.
Popular election of senators has been a disaster, it essentially turned to the Senate from a deliberative body into a pure partisan body like the House.
Yeah, I think the people need a way to eject people without waiting for 2-6 years (or never for the supreme court). it needs to be a high bar, but if we use the same 75% state ratification to start up an impeachment process, it might keep some pressure under people who otherwise feel like they can run rampant.
My understanding is that states already have the ability to appoint presidential electors however they want. No need to repeal any amendment, if a state wanted to do things differently in that regard.
My proposed elector appointment algorithm is as follows. For each elector seat, summon 20 grand juries according to standard methods (distribute across various counties, weighted by population). Each grand jury spends a day getting to know one another, then appoints one member as a representative using approval voting. The 20 representatives from the 20 grand juries form a secondary grand jury, which also spends a day getting to know one another, then appoints one member as a representative using approval voting. This produces 1 elector. Electors serve 8-year terms, staggered so that their appointments occur midway through a presidential term when emotions are relatively placid.
If you persuade a few big swing states to adopt this approach for appointing electors, the nature of the presidential contest changes dramatically.
This is more along the lines of how the presidential elector system was supposed to work in the first place. Presidential electors were supposed to be leading individuals of the community, not otherwise involved in politics, exercising their independent judgement. That's what the founders intended.
I don't think that solves what I see as the root problem, the national parties' control of the state organizations. The money would only need to be focused on the state politicians instead of them plus the senators.
There are many systems, the Australian Federation of independent States adopted a "Washminster" system based on both the UK Westminster system and the USofA Washington system.
Popular election of senators in the senate / upper house hasn't been a disaster there.
The Australian Electoral Commision as an independent body does a lot of heavy lifting towards keeping the washminster system running (no gerrymandering and a world class voting system).
Independent checks and balances are an essential part of any system of government.
The people vote in Representatives to debate policy, an independent merit based civil service carries it out, overwatched by independent scrutineers, judged by and independent legal system and enforce by a spectrum of LEOs and peace officers.
A feature of the Australian system (IMHO) is how rapid the churn on Prime Ministers can be ... the Washington system by contrast can't even toss out a corrupt felon grifting hard in public view.
Been saying this for almost two decades. State governments no longer have a direct seat and representation at the table. Federal mandates (coercion) like enforce this or don't get funds would never, or at least rarely, happen. It's also the only nonviolent way to dissolve the union, intentionally or through strangulation (state legislatures refusing to elect and seat senators, if a majority of them do this then a quorum can't be reached and funding dies).
> It's also the only nonviolent way to dissolve the union, intentionally or through strangulation (state legislatures refusing to elect and seat senators, if a majority of them do this then a quorum can't be reached and funding dies).
Holy shit, imagine of the whole of federal congress could be controlled with gerrymandering rather than just the house: the house through districts, and the senate through districts for state representatives. The fireworks would be insane.
Put another way: it would do nothing. If it did something, it would likely make everything worse, not better. Legislatures would pick the most partisan hack. They would be answerable to fewer, more partisan people. It would pour fire on an already tenuous situation.
It would also make congress significantly less representative of the country, but I guess that's the point.
well, I'm never a fan of "this is hard so lets break/bend the rules" as a justification.
The constitution still can be amended. But congress has been in gridlock for 30 years so we can't even get over the first hurdle. Lets work on fixing that gridlock and then we can review if 38 states signing on is too big a burden. It was already a Herculean task convincing 10/13 states to accept the Bill of Rights.
> This is by design. ... The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives.
So behavior of the system fails to meet its design goals? It honestly sounds like you kind of agree with the excerpt you quote.
> The expansion of the federal government ... [is] what needs to change
What are you proposing though? Even assuming the premise here, achieving said goals requires changes to lots of little details and incentives. It's not like there's a single potentiometer controlling Gov't Size™. So what are you actually suggesting?
Certainly, the details of fundamental electoral structure engage deeply with the operation of our government, and the legal scholars in the article seem to be honestly pointing out levers (and big ones at that) we could possibly pull to create a less expansive federal government, or whatever the goal may be.
Imagine a plane crashes and analysts start attempting a root cause analysis, discussing control system specifics and whatnot. To me, your stance reads like "This is by design. Plane parts are united but independent. Control systems were never intended to lord over every part of the plane. The expansion of control systems is what needs to change."
I mean... maybe? But even if we agree on that point, any random contraction of the control system seems unlikely to make a plane that flies better. We have to actually engage with the details of what's going on here.
Not having standing armies also creates structural problems (mostly getting invaded). There are only 21 countries without a standing army, and they're almost all micronations with <200k population (mostly tiny islands). Iceland is the only one of them with a GDP per capita worth mentioning, but it's also part of Nato, the largest military alliance in the world.
None of your opinion on the power of government requires the people to be cut out of the equation.
One could have a "small" federal government while having a popular vote for president and a reduced/discarded Senate.
And no, not everyone likes it when the federal government is "too big". Personally, I support social welfare and research programs at the federal level, as well as food safety and many other administrative functions there too.
I'm less supportive of "big government" when the executive declares itself the arbiter of the Constitution and all foreign wars and treaties.
Why does social welfare need to be handled at the federal level? There seems to be no explanation for why people insist on this other than that it must be so.
Even as of today, California gives aid to many states who fundamentally disagree with California's culture. Make social welfare state level and some states will simply starve.
It's like insurance: we all need to pool together and help everyone. And for it to work, we can't complain that some people get more help than others. It's a safety net, not floor. If everyone hit the net, the entire thing collapses quickly.
2nd reason is that people can move between the states easily. Imagine the logistical disaster of having a California worker work for a New York company. Which social security does this workers wages get deposited to? What if the worker moves to Arizona? What if the New York company opens a branch in Florida and that worker's department operates out of there?
It's a mess across state lines, and traditionally we have state disputes handled at the federal level.
Social welfare needs to be handled at the same level that mobility exists, because otherwise all destitute people will bumrush the nearest jurisdiction that is giving out generous welfare benefits. The issue is most often seen at the city level (e.g. Bellevue “encouraging” homeless to go to Seattle), but more generous policies like housing-first will need to be federally administered to prevent the most generous states from getting bumrushed.
Exactly. I won't even say it's a good system, but it's a straw man he's attacking. Also, maybe i'm over sensitive but i feel like he's insinuating the constitution is wrong because it's inherently racist and elitist. Maybe i'm straw manning but sadly that choice of words often goes hand in hand with such ideas and reckless, poorly thought out solutions.
>i feel like he's insinuating the constitution is wrong because it's inherently racist and elitist.
The constitution suggests that "all men are created equal". it sadly needed several revisions to define what "man" is, though. And then some 150 years before we expanded "man" to represent "humanity" instead of "male".
The constitution isn't racist/sexist by the wording of its law, but the interpretations arguably were. And maybe are.
Nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so.
We had to spend a long, long time thinking and re-thinking this over. Sadly the trend as of late is to stop thinking altogether. I hope that changes.
Failing to enforce the Constitution is part of the problem. The Constitution gives very few options for recourse and was not designed for the situation where two of three branches of government willingly abdicate their own power.
Even the government shutdown is an example of the failure of the US constitution. In most other countries in the world, the inability to pass a budget triggers an election.
> In most other countries in the world, the inability to pass a budget triggers an election.
In many parliamentary systems, and some semi-presidential systems this would be likely or automatic. Basically no presidential systems do this, though some have optional safety valves that might be threatened to try to force resolution of a budget deadlock or invoked in response to one, like the muerte cruzada system in Ecuador (which allows the President to dissolve the National Assembly or the Assembly to impeach and remove the President, but either action triggers new elections for both the President and the Assembly.)
>In most other countries in the world, the inability to pass a budget triggers an election.
That's actually a wonderful idea. Our legistlature definitely needs more skin in the game, so I was privy to the idea that their salaries are also frozen during a shutdown (like 90% of federal workers). But having them ousted from their seats can be interesting.
Of course, the obvious counter argument is exploitation. Could a bitter party band together and try to force early re-elections if they feel they have the upper hand?
They did NOT abdicated the power. They, meaning their republican members, are actively using power to achieve or defend republican ideological goals. Democrats are not fighting as they should, they tend to be centrists seeking to accomodate.
But, there was no abdication. There is an intentional cooperation.
I'd say choosing to let the executive execute reckless tarriff policies counts as "abdicating power". If they really believed in their power, Trump would just need to throw tarriff policies at congress and they can approve it with their majority house and senate votes.
Likewise, the Supreme Court putting an immunity clause right before Biden left feels like abdication. Again, if what Trump was doing was just, it'd be easy to interpret it in his favor, 6-3. But instead they gave blanket immunity. It can be intentional cooperation and still be abdicating.
Yup. There were supposed to be 3 separate, contentious arms of the government: executive, legislative and judicial. The problem, and I honestly can't see a solution to it, is that the same party/group controls all three and nobody's willing to buck the trend. The "guardrails" are there, it merely turns out they're only weakly enforced.
Yes, the original dream of the U.S. is very clearly a failed experiment with both the legislative and judicial branches essentially extensions of the executive branch. The checks and balances that used to exist have almost completely disappeared. Whatever’s left of those branches are essentially extra entry points for lobbyists and billionaires to fully drive the knife deeper.
It wasn’t actually designed that way but it has slowly manipulated and shaped into that way over a hundred years of stacked up law bloat built with the sole intention to make challenging it impossible for anyone who’s not crazy wealthy.
Well yes. It's easy to manipulate when you freeze the House for 100 years. That's the biggest reason we keep swinging so much. The House became a mini-senate, and the Senate structure is already something under contention (designed from the beginning to compromise with smaller population states). Now we have a Senate that can change every 2 years. 2 years is simply a bad golf swing for billionaires when they "lose". 2 years of suffering feels eternal for the working class
The Legislature has the most power and the House freeze made it easy to co-opt. you make the house compliant or essentially useless, and you can't impeach anything in the executive nor judicial branches. Freeze the house and you can't really start any legislature to have laws catch up with rampant greed. Or make it easier to lobby into more greed.
We desperately need to expand the house again. I remember saying we should have over 1000 reps with current growth. Maybe starting at 700-800 would be a good start.
I don’t know what the solution is, because a fourth branch of government also could be problematic. But it’s becoming a very obvious problem that the justice department is not separate from the executive.
> But it’s becoming a very obvious problem that the justice department is not separate from the executive.
The alternatives are probably worse. Every alternative trades political accountability for independence or vice versa.
The alternatives are: An Independent Prosecutorial Branch (a “fourth branch”), OR Prosecutors as Part of the Judicial Branch, OR Congress-Controlled Prosecution, OR Fully Decentralized / Elected Federal Prosecutors.
The US uses a hybrid model of executive control with strong counterweights rather than full independence. This model persists because it maintains democratic accountability, preserves adversarial courts, and allows checks without creating an unaccountable power center.
well, it might be bucked. The problem is you can tear down a lot more in 2 years of reckless, lawless land than you can build in 20 years of gridlock. Even 5 years of unanimous cooperation may not be enough at this point to rebuild what's happened, and we're halfway to midterms.
Legistlative will bend and sway as it's been doing for 30 years now. the judicial is the much more concerning branch. EVen if Trump was ousted tomorrow, we're still stuck with a conservative majority for a good 20 years or so without major intervention. The long shot is that Thomas and Alito get convicted. But we'd need huge momentum for that to gain ground, and even then Breyer may pass sooner or later.
Adding to the courts would help, but not solve the underlying issue.
The real problem is that Congress delegated all its responsibility to the executive and judicial branches.
To the executive branch it gave the power to declare war (war power act), and to make new law (administrative law). Then it created a new branch, the federal reserve, to make monetary policy.
To the judiciary it handed the power of checking the president.
Now Congress does nothing as evidenced by how little actual legislation they've passed while Trump has just done everything via executive order.
But this entire system developed while one party held all three branches but also while the branches were held by different parties.
Since the house is up for election every two years, they have every incentive to delegate so they can wash their hands free of any decision.
"To the executive branch it gave the power to declare war (war power act), and to make new law (administrative law). Then it created a new branch, the federal reserve, to make monetary policy."
The War Powers Resolution of 1973, aka War Powers Act, does not give the executive power to declare war. On the contrary, it was intended to limit the executive's ability to engage in armed conflict. It says so right at the top:
50 U.S. Code § 1541 - Purpose and policy
It is the purpose of this chapter to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.
One could argue that it hasn't worked all that well, but it is, for example, why George W. Bush got Congress to pass the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 before invading Iraq.
Also, "[t]hen it created a new branch, the federal reserve" is a sort of unusual way to describe something that happened 60 years earlier.
What do you mean no one is willing to buck the trend? It’s almost a certainty that Republicans will lose the house this year and maybe the senate.
On the other hand we have federal district court judges in podunk deciding that they have the unilateral ability to stop the president from exercising executive authority. It wouldn’t be so comical if they didn’t ultimately lose in most cases; our judges are the real Constitutional crisis right now.
I have not seen the Trump administration fail to obey a single court order; I just don’t see Trump as a crisis. His policies, you could make a good case. His rhetoric, yes. His official acts, not so much.
Very true. The trials against these people better be brutal (assuming they don't all run to Argentina).
It's frustrating now, but having all these cases and cases over ignoring orders is a very important paper trail if we want to civilly resolve all of this. The new DoJ can certainly go after the old one and they have a disgusting amount of cases to comb through to make their case. And a frankly incompetent opposition (it's okay, about 2/3rds of the DOJ quit as of now, I imagine many of the sensible/talented ones realized the incompetence).
> On the other hand we have federal district court judges in podunk deciding that they have the unilateral ability to stop the president from exercising executive authority
He doesn’t have unlimited executive authority; it makes sense for a judge to be able to determine where that line is. It’s literally their job?
> I have not seen the Trump administration fail to obey a single court order
If we can avoid playing word games, the Trump administration has been accused of defying or frustrating court orders at an unprecedented rate, with analyses indicating it failed to comply with approximately one in three judicial rulings against its actions.
Notably in regard to deportations. The administration either acts in defiance of, or appeals until the case is elevated to a sympathetic judge or eventually complies. This is the trend and has been a successful set of tactics so far.
Every American, even the president, even (gasp) Donald Trump, has the right of appeal of judicial orders and rulings. I could just as well say that people and organizations who oppose Trump's immigration policies go "judge shopping" or "jurisdiction shopping" to find sympathetic judges, which happens all the time (For example, there is absolutely no justification for Judge Boasberg in the DC Circuit to have adjudicated the issue of the deportations from Texas; it should have been a local judge in TX).
Inferior court judges (i.e. judicial branch judges that are not Supreme Court justices), only have judicial authority as granted by Congress, and it's not clear whether they do or should have jurisdiction outside their circuit- the Supreme Court is currently deciding that one. Congress explicitly has denied judicial branch judges from jurisdiction over immigration issues, in favor of immigration judges. I believe that most of the judicial actions against the administration wrt immigration are largely lawless (illegal) actions by judges, but I am very much not worried about Trump because his administration is NOT ignoring court orders.
There is a lot of FUD in the news that you have to do a bit of reading to understand (for example, why district court judges may not lawfully order a halt to a deportation that has been properly adjudicated by an immigration court).
My bottom line is that I don't see a Constitutional crisis in Trump's actions, although I very much see many reasons why many people would be upset; he has a very polarizing personality and demeanor.
This really isn't up for debate. the admin has most certainly ignored court orders.
>Every American, even the president, even (gasp) Donald Trump, has the right of appeal of judicial orders and rulings.
If I even talked the way Blanche and Bondi did in these hearings, I'd instantly be held in contempt and be thrown in jail. let alone the overreach of order applied. Let's not pretend that we are on an equal playing ground here.
>Inferior court judges
I think this phrasing alone says a lot more about you than anything you typed. I bet over Biden you were ranting about how the Supreme Court is corrupt. Just shifting in the sands based on what "your team" is doing, laws be damned.
They couldn't bring a single man back and sweep all this under the rug. Trump has to get the last word in. Remember beforehand that they were trying to bribe him to self-deport to a country he wasn't even born in.
So it’s ok he was sent to CECOT in violation of an order not to in the first place? The original question was whether Trump ignored court orders. Id say that removing someone against a court order to a third country is a pretty big issue. Even if a year later after a huge public pressure campaign he is temporarily back in the states.
He wasn't removed to a third country. He was removed to his home country, illegally, as he had a court order for deportation but per his own request he left open only deportation to a third country because he was granted his petition to bar deportation to El Salvador after his asylum claim failed.
Had he had been shoved out of a C-130 and parachuted into South Sudan, we'd never even be hearing of the guy because that would have been allowed and been in compliance with the deportation order as well as the order blocking deportation to the one country they deported him to.
During the ordeal the government attorneys repeatedly claimed that they had no way to bring him back (although clearly that was a lie as he was returned…)
We have crossed the rubicon so far, the fact we even have to nitpick this is absurd.
Do you know how ridiculous you sound defending Trump for bringing back a person from a foreign prison that he sent there without due process? Only because he got caught?
The guy operates in bad faith constantly. It's why a huge chunk of his prior administration recommended against voting for him. It's his only edge in life aside from his ability to hypnotize idiots, and it's only an edge because weak willed or complicit people let him get away with it.
This is absolutely the correct take. Everyone in the country seems to have decided that, if they don't like the presidents policy, then the president is undemocratic.
Trump, while president, sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the United States, and members of Congress, because Mike Pence refused Trump’s illegal order to overturn an election both of them had lost.
The current president is plainly undemocratic. It’s a matter of public record.
The Constitution is not fine. You are correct that it is not being enforced properly, and IMO we have a coup being staged in real time.
We should have rolling term limits for SCOTUS.
We should have ranked-choice/multiple-choice mechanisms for all elections to facilitate a true multiparty system.
We should further regulate money and transparency in spending vis-a-vis political advertising.
We should ban gerrymandering.
The Senate should be weakened or entirely removed. I am aware that is theoretically the only thing that is not amendable, but it's a flaw that we have it in any case.
The Electoral College should be discarded.
And clearly, impeachment should be easier than it is - or else maybe we just have the dictatorship we deserve? Thanks, GOP.
> He's the democratically elected president of the US
“Dictator” and “elected” are not incompatible. In fact, the term originates as the title of an elected (not directly by the citizenry, but then neither is the US President in any case) officer, and the term has nothing to do with how you got into power, but with what practical constraints it is exercised.
Your democratically elected president (or, rather, the group behind him) is undoing whatever was left of the democratic apparatus. There is no counter power in place. Executive, legislative and judiciary are de facto one.
You seem to operate on the belief that democratically elected leaders can't do harm to democracy, while history has times and times again proved you wrong, and that to me is what's insane here.
If the reports are true, the proceeds from selling Venezuelan oil are going into his own Qatari bank account. That's third-world tinpot dictatorship right there.
Those takes are informed and level headed. We have a wildly unqualified Secretary of Defense who was appointed only because he advocated in his book "American Crusade" for a crusade against the "American Left". A Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts described us as in the middle of a second American Revolution that will remain bloodless if the left allows it. And he said that before the election.
The DOGE project was a wildly unconstitutional overreach of the executive branch, shutting down or severely crippling agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without the approval of Congress.
Republicans are letting Trump act like a dictator to accomplish things they want outside of the guardrails of our democracy. There are plenty more examples out there if you choose to pay attention.
> There is no dictatorship ... He's the democratically elected
The first part does not follow from the second. It's much easier to become dictator when in power, e.g. after being democratically elected. It's a common route. See also Self-coup / autocoup (1).
Of course, nothing like that could even be attempted in the USA! (2) /s
I love clarifications like this. It is like “The Constitution is fine; Nicolas Cage never stole it. That was just a film. In any case even if he had, it is is documented that he eventually returned it unharmed”
What is the evidence that America is falling apart? From all my reading of American history, America has _always_ been this way. With a wide lens it appears as healthy as it's ever been. This is a genuine question-- I've read a lot of American history, but I'm still a dilettante. It's extremely difficult to tell if there are genuinely new conditions, or if we're engaging in a vigorous political process as we always did.
We live in a world where the sitting president calls January 6 a day of love, and has pardoned the rioters, and then says that people protesting ICE are "domestic terrorists". We live in a world where federal prosecutors are choosing to quit rather than following his orders.
Remember John McCain defending Obama[0]? Do you genuinely believe that the people heading the Republican Party today would ever do that? Contrast McCain's humility and grace in his concession speech[1] with Trump's constant refusal to accept that he lost 2020, and his insistence on exacting revenge on the people who "wronged" him.
No, this is not a "vigorous political process" in action. It's something else entirely.
In the 1800 election republicans thought the federalists will turn America into a tyrannical monarchy, and the federalists thought the republicans will plunge America into mob rule like the French Revolution. They would have never defended each other.
Things look bad if you have a twenty year time horizon, but they look pretty normal if you zoom out to encompass all of American history.
Re Trump exacting revenge on political opponents, that conduct has endless precedent in American history. (Refusing to concede the election does not; but he was forced out of office nonetheless, which I read as a sign the republic is healthy.)
EDIT: I just remembered about the Aaron Burr conspiracy. Aaron Burr lost the 1800 election to Jefferson by one elector (after over a month of gridlock). He then tried to raise a private army to either march on Washington, or to form his own country and secede from the union. In 1805 Jefferson ordered his arrest and Burr was tried for treason (and acquitted!)
>Things look bad if you have a twenty year time horizon
50 year horizon, US erupted into a Civil War. Gotta expand out a bit, but maybe the republicans of 1800 had a point (who we'd call liberal today, but history has a strange way with language).
And yes, Trump has already done decades of damage to the US's soft power. countries are now trying to slowly cut out the middleman of the US and even pulling out of the dollar. the 20 year horizon here is awful.
I think they rightly pointed out that US States construct is problematic esp in much more interconnected world.
However, I think fundamental problem still goes back to politics where Congress effectively does not do their job and thus fighting around executive and judicial leave us in worse place. Chevron and lack of it is mostly due to Congress just passing big stuff and then massive fights in courts when Congress could step in and be like "Nope, we are changing our mind, this is happening."
Congress moves too slow to be effective at thwarting off bad policy (largely written by lobbyists) until after it’s done its damage. By then, the senators that sponsored the bill quietly retire. Or they double down behind closed doors to be elected well into their geriatric years. I’m for term limits and age caps.
Lobbyists can't write bad policy unless it is passed by congress, so basically you are saying that congress doesn't move fast enough to stop congress. I'm also skeptical of this "but the lobbyists" argument and I can't think of a single major problem facing the country that can be reasonably blamed on them.
I would argue states are ideal in an era of social media-triggered political fragmentation. People can move to the state which aligns best with their preferred policies.
The constitution has been absurdly broken by a cult of partisan federal judges claiming to be textual, but then inventing an absurd canon of non-laws no one can reference:
* Unitary executive theory. Congress can't create a federal reserve, except for when the supreme court likes it.
* Major questions doctrine. Congress can't create an EPA and give it open ended authority to regulate its way to clean air
* Qualified immunity. Congress can't stop ICE agents from murdering people
* Historical tradition as regard to the 2nd amendment. Congress can't ban everyone from walking around with military assault weapons.
I agree that partisan federal judges have caused this but my point is, Congress makes it worse.
Unitary is just wrong and Congress could continue to push back against it.
Major Question keeps coming up Congress does not step in after passing of EPA. Major EPA cases are like "Well, does this mean what we think it means because some comma somewhere" and Congress could step in and say "No, we really meant this."
Qualified Immunity is again something else Congress could step in on and say "Nope, we are eliminating qualified immunity or tailoring it back."
2nd Amendment is third rail I don't wish to touch.
The problem is the inflexibility of the constitution. If judges hadn't made the conscious decisions to turn the constitution into whatever they feel like, you'd be stuck in an even worse system of obsolete 18th century government.
This; the “originalists” who dress up in wigs and shock of shocks, just so happen to rule contrary to the way things have worked for the last 50 years.
The US constitution is working great. Democracy isn't necessarily good. If we had a national vote where 51% of the people voted to kill 49% of the people, that would be bad. More democratic institutions also have a tendency to favor hand outs to people, people vote for the policy that gives them free stuff, or rather that robs other people and enriches them.
The issue is a cultural one, where people are looking out for themselves over their country. Where politicians seek to enrich themselves, people just want to get a hand out, and lobbyists write sections of laws.
Where democracy shines is that we can leverage democracy to amend the constitution. If they think that moving to a pure popular vote or something would be better, then get that amended into the constitution, we have a process for this, just get 2/3s of states to vote for it.
> The US constitution is working great. Democracy isn't necessarily good. If we had a national vote where 51% of the people voted to kill 49% of the people, that would be bad.
"Democracy is bad because majorities can vote for bad things" is hardly a meaningful argument on its own. How is the current system of minority rule via electors better? If we had an electoral vote where 22% of the people voted to kill 78% of the people[1], would that be better?
1. The current apportionment of electors is such that you can achieve 270 electoral votes with states accounting for roughly 43% of the population. Since nearly all states grant all electors to the candidate winning the popular vote within themselves, you only need roughly 22% of the overall US population to elect a president.
One challenge is the executive can move fast while legislative/courts go slow by design. But the executive needs other slow branches for lasting change.
Remember we were freaking out about a year to six months ago? A lot has either been absorbed into legal precedent, quietly rolled back by Congress / courts. But it takes a long time.
Whatever comes out of these years that lasts will probably be because of SCOTUS more than Trump.
If congress can't act quick and hold him accountable, there may not be a long time to come.
>Whatever comes out of these years that lasts will probably be because of SCOTUS more than Trump.
We're still feeling aftereffects of actions from Reagan. History assures you that you don't need everything to be de jure to fundamentally shift the Overton curtain. Especially in regards to the economy.
Unbalanced executive power has been growing for a long time. It was just waiting for someone power mad enough to fully leverage it.
If we make it through this intact we need to reel this in. Unfortunately neither party seems to want to do so. They’d rather fight for that office in the hope of leveraging that power.
It's defunct isn't it? If i'm being kind i would say that Americas strength comes from her people, not the constitution. I do believe that's the truth.
My main complaint on the constitution, is perfectly explained, ironically by the guy trying to defend it
>>Feldman cited another reason to
defend the Constitution: It “has the
capacity to evolve and change.” In
1919, he explained, Supreme
Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr. “basically invented modern free speech law,” establishing, in a
series of opinions, the now-
fundamental concept that free
expression should be permitted
unless it poses a clear danger to
others. “He understood that the Constitution had to evolve,”
Feldman said.
So there you have it. The reason the constitution is great because judges allow themselves to interpret it in ways it was never intended to be interpreted (sometimes based on loyalty owed to a political faction or) that aligns with the way they want it to be, not the way it is.
That's frankly bonkers. Now i'll get back to my country run by the guys 2/3 of the country voted against, lords, a king and a supreme court run by activist judges with a large portion of our law outsourced to the EU...
Many of the comments lay the blame for the threat to democracy at the feet of SCOTUS and Congress for failing to act in a time of crisis to strangle the constitutional excesses of the Trump administration.
I see it much differently. I see a Constitution exposed. It's purported 'checks and balances' stripped naked. For the reality is this: the Constitution provides neither SCOTUS or Congress the ability to enforce their constitutional authorities. The Executive has sole control over the police power and military power.
And when a President is surrounded by heads of the FBI DOJ and Military who swear loyalty to the man, not the office, there is literally nothing SCOTUS or Congress can do.
SCOTUS has, thus far into the current Trump term, been very careful to rule in a manner that avoids inviting Trump to tell SCOTUS: "you've had your say, not enforce it." SCOTUS would much rather grant Trump powers that some future SCOTUS can take back. But the Executive exposing SCOTUS as barren is something that can never be undone.
The same for Congress. Congress can impeach Trump yet again. And in some imaginary world the Senate could actually find him guilty. But where is the army or police who shoot it out with Trump's FBI and military so they can walk Trump out of the West Wing in handcuffs?
The very terms of our Constitution are such that only a coup d'etat can remove a President who, surrounded by loyalists in the FBI and military, refuses to step down voluntarily.
That is my conclusion about why the Constitution is broken: it has been exposed for what it is. All we can do is wait and see how SCOTUS and Congress respond when Trump finally tells them: "Let's see you make me"
Edit: correct "...that invites Trump..." with "...that avoids inviting Trump"
If the president doesn't step down when ordered to do so lawfully, its up to the individual participants in government to obey the law and not the president. It's not that complicated.
That the American government has reached a position where it's somehow questionable whether the government and its departments should answer to congress or the president is ridiculous.
The individual participants in government demonstrate every day that they do nothing in response to Trump's literally daily illegal actions. When Trump tells SCOTUS to 'get lost' or when he cancels elections or when he declares martial law in response to some made up provocation; or when he refuses to leave office;
When any or all of these things occur, and the heads of the FBI, and ICE ( his personal police force ), and the DOJ and the military all put up a united front in support of him - what are the names of the people you are referring to who will have the physical ability to take any action against Trump?
If trump is no longer president and the military chooses to follow his orders anyway, we have a rouge military. The military that follows orders from the chain of command fights the rouge, and it at worst escalates to civil war.
That's pretty much why military is so rank and file and is trained to remain non-partisan in uniform. That scenario above is how we devolve the entire structure into fighting amongst one another. The military is under command of the Commander-in-Chief, not who they think is CiC.
The FBI, ICE, and the DOJ simply have no authority to decide who the President is. If an FBI agent calls up their local IRS office and asks them to redirect tax revenues to a Trump-controlled account, they're going to say no.
A military coup is always possible, but I see no reason to believe that Trump has done any of the consolidation that would be required to make that work. Military coups generally install a member of the military as the new leader.
>It's purported 'checks and balances' stripped naked. For the reality is this: the Constitution provides neither SCOTUS or Congress the ability to enforce their constitutional authorities. The Executive has sole control over the police power and military power.
If we got to a point where Trump was convicted and he then refused to step down, then yes. I'd say your interpretation is correct.
But we're not there yet. Legislature refuses to impeach (let alone convict), and the judicial branch doesn't have any direct power over the executive branch. The idea is that the judicial defines lines (which includes what the executive branch can do with police and military power. Remember that deplpoying troops in a state that does not wish it is very rare behavior), and lines stepped over comes back to the legislature to punish. So we reach the same impasse.
>But where is the army or police who shoot it out with Trump's FBI and military so they can walk Trump out of the West Wing in handcuffs?
He's no longer commander-in-chief, so an army following orders would act on orders of either the vice president turned president (VP->P) or some high standing generals to arrest trump. And this VP->P cannot simply relinquish his power to the convicted president if the VP->P is sympathetic.
If that falls apart, we are indeed in a true constitutional crisis. And likely civil war. That's why military is very strictly training to be non-partisan in uniform. And why they have stricter laws (e.g. court marshal) than a citizen.A military betraying its governments' will is textbook civil war material.
Agreed.. but this is pretty out of date, mostly about politics from April/2025 and a 2024 Book "The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them". Notes politics are "fast moving", I'm not sure that Aziz Rana or Noah Feldman would say the same now.
Biggest challenge is that people bleat about executive overreach when their team is not in power, then smirk with glee when they have it. Similar to debates about freedom of speech, etc.
I don't think the executive overreach happening last year alone can be compared to anything from the D side until you go all the way back to FDR. And that was to establish stuff that actually benefitted us for the next 90 years.
Meanwhile we're in "weekly Watergate" mode right now. If there's nay overreaches from the Biden/Obama era, I'd happily close those loopholes to never have 2025 happen again.
> Chief among those hard-wired components, he said, is the Constitution’s focus on states, rather than individual voters, as the basic “representational unit.” That arrangement “shapes all the elements of our electoral and legal system,” Rana said: the House and Senate, the Electoral College, Supreme Court confirmations. And this arrangement is partly why the U.S. Constitution is among the hardest in the world to amend. It doesn’t simply undermine majority rule, he added; the minority it empowers are those who have historically weilded disproportionate influence in the political system.
This is by design. The United States is exactly meant to be that: states that are united, but independent. The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives. The expansion of the federal government, especially the powers of the executive branch, is the problem everyone seems to dislike (when their favored party isn't controlling this branch), and that's what needs to change
The United States is a flawed system designed to protect the feudal, mostly southern property based system. That’s why we killed millions over the ability to own humans, and the reactionary Senate blocked the most minor civil rights law (ie mobs may not hang people for summary justice).
These flaws have been continually amended. We can vote for Senators, corporations can operate across state lines, you can’t discriminate, etc.
Reactionaries perceive being unable to persecute people or exert their will as being executive overreach. Most rational people don’t share that perspective, which is why undermining the competence of the government and flooding propaganda everywhere has been a key priority for reactionary forces for the last generation.
So here we are, impossibly rich people can now impose their will with impunity. We’re in a new, undemocratic era.
This is a half-truth that obscures what makes The United States unique. From the day the constitution was signed, it was a compromise between competing economies, geographic incentives, cultures, religious movements, political philosophies, and individual ambitions. This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.
Looks like the current US government is trying to centralize the power by multiple means, one of them sending federal officers and troops into states.
To me it's crazy how many went from "we favor the Republic" to "all power to a singular person, what could go wrong, he is cool" pretty fast.
Yes, but this tension has been there since the founding of the republic. The federalists wanted to centralize power (some much more than others), and the republicans (the "jeffersonians") bitterly opposed it. In his second term George Washington personally lead troops to Pennsylvania to put down the whiskey rebellion.
Zooming out of the 24h news cycle, "all power to a singular person" concerns seem far too overblown. Half the country hates Trump. He won the popular vote, but not by all that much (despite what he may assert). By comparison LBJ, FDR, and Nixon won ~60% of popular vote. Even if he were a young man, I don't think we're in any danger of a caesar.
I think the scarier part is how utterly polarized the US is. The ratings are awful for trump, but it gets really scary when you zoom in.
80% conservateives at worst still support trump, while 7% liberal at best support him. Maybe someone can bring up polling to prove me wrong, but that is utterly unheard of levels of polarization. The only solace here is that independent voters are tanking, so in polls this close that can be the breaking point for all of this.
>Even if he were a young man, I don't think we're in any danger of a caesar.
The scary part is that he's not a young nor healthy man. He can blow the world up and not live to see the utter destruction he triggered. At least Caesar was assassinated and had to be on edge for years. Trump will have lived a full life never being punished and the world will burn afterwards.
From my reading of history the level of polarization was at least as high or higher during the early republic, and obviously higher leading up to and through the civil war. I don't know American history in any meaningful depth outside these two periods, but I suspect there were other periods of extreme polarization. I really don't think this is new.
But a huge constraint on the current regime's aspirations is that they can only exercise power by sending federal officers and troops into states. We'd be in a much worse place if Stephen Miller could issue an order taking over local law enforcement every time someone harasses his goons.
Took a while, but it seems it only needed 250 years for it to happen. Including a complete revamp of the original draft and a civil war.
Still, 250 years is pretty short on the grand history of humanity.
We killed millions over the ability to own humans because the north viewed it as a religious duty to do so. This is demonstrated in our national hymn, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which talks about how God is damning to hell the old south.
I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
The criticisms you rightly levy against the Senate are themselves decades old.
The idea that this era is especially defined by the aristocracy controlling the government is honestly just ahistoric.
> We killed millions over the ability to own humans because the north viewed it as a religious duty to do so.
No, we didn’t, because if that was the reason for the fight, it would have happened before the South, fearing the long-term prospects for the institution of slavery, not only seceded to protect it, but also preemptively attacked federal installations.
The US Civil War was way too long and bloody to claim it was just a war fought over a few federal installations.
It was fought by the South over slavery and by the North over federal power. Both sides were fairly explicit about this at the time.
Of course, long after the fact, popular opinion on slavery has moved enough that people like to pretend the side that they prefer fought primarily for the opposite reason; the South over (opposition to) federal power and the North over (opposition to) slavery.
The above might seem a little shocking to non Americans, but consider the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation proclamation.
The first was because fighting merely for the preservation of the union was not enough to bolster moral. Union forces had been losing or winning pyrrhic victories and the common solider didn’t want to fight to force their southern cousins into a nation they didn’t want to be a part of.
So the stated rationale for the war was changed to be about ending slavey now.
However the emancipation proclamation only ended the practice in states that were in rebellion, which is not what you would expect from a country who had wanted to end slavery from the start.
Right, the Confederate leaders could easily have negotiated a shorter and cleaner surrender if they had wanted to. They didn't want to, because they were evil men who couldn't tolerate even the possibility that they might not be able to own other people.
Lincoln refused to negotiate with them, so not sure what you mean. He only accepted unconditional surrender by them. The southern states tried to negotiate with Lincoln before the war broke out but he refused and never budged on that.
Good for him! The time for negotiation is before the war, not after you've been utterly destroyed. For him to give in to the slave-owning south having won a civil war at such high cost, would have been snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I'm not sure where you've gotten this information, because it's completely untrue. For example, he made a quite famous offer to the southern states on September 22, 1862, in response to a major Union victory at Antietam. If any of them agreed to rejoin the Union before January 1, they would be welcomed back and allowed to keep their slaves under the pre-war status quo. But no state took him up on the offer, presumably because their leaders found it intolerable to live in a country where slavery might some day be banned.
> I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
It keeps coming up because in 2026 the compromises made to accommodate slave-owning states reverberate to this day.
The Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787 (at the Constitutional Convention) allowed slave-owning states to count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. This gave the slave-owning states more representation in the House and more Electoral College votes in presidential elections.
This allowed the south to create a voting block that blocked legislation that would have given the formerly enslaved rights that other Americans had.
The Civil War ended in 1865; black Americans in the south were second class citizens and lived under an Apartheid state for the next 100 years until the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965.
> We killed millions over the ability to own humans
"we" didn't kill millions; it's estimated that 750,000 soldiers were killed [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#Casualties
So is this what the South teaches in school? Very interesting. Well, I'll try to respond in kind:
>I legitimately do not understand these takes connecting everything to slavery. It's been more than a hundred years at this point. The trope is getting old.
Yes, it's been more than 100 years. We know the history better than ever. The dividing point was slavery and Lincoln didn't really care about freeing them. He simply picked a side and wanted everyone to go along with it. He picked the North because Texas seceded from the union (again, over slavery) and Lincoln would not allow that to happpen. So that played his hand in choosing to eventually ban slavery.
Does your history mention that Texas was the one who seceded?
>The idea that this era is especially defined by the aristocracy controlling the government is honestly just ahistoric.
Do you not know what's happened the past year alone? We can argue over history, but this is happening before our eyes.
It’s a feature, not a bug. The United States federal government was set up as a representative republic, not a democratic republic, and not a democracy. We are supposed to be a federation of fairly-independent state governments with just enough federal scaffolding to keep the peace between the states. We were not set up with the intention of having a do-everything federal government ruling over the states.
This exactly. But the country never figured out how to deal with one state’s laws conflicting with another state’s laws (see the Fugitive Slave Act for example). The lack of resolution around conflict between the states (which remained unresolved even after a civil war was fought over it) is partly why the federal government began to grow as it took on the role of enforcing laws (like desegregation) that certain states would not.
Republic, res publica, means state power comes from the people.
Democracy, dēmos kratos, means state rule comes from the people.
They mean the same damn thing. They are just two different words that mean not ruled by monarchs.
Wickard V Filburn is simply bad law... The federal government has way too much power and MUCH more than was ever intended. Its not a feature it is indeed a bug. One caused by the Supreme Court.
>The federal government has way too much power and MUCH more than was ever intended. Its not a feature it is indeed a bug.
we got bigger and thus we got permutational orders of issues arising as a result. We had to redo the articles of confederation within 20 years of their drafting and that was with 13 states.
Bug or feature, I see it as an inevitability as we grew to 50 states and multiple territories that the federal government would need a stronger hand today than in 1787. Of course, that hand shouldn't be bypassing every section of the constitution to serve the federal government itself. These are the exact fears that caused Shay and Whiskey way back in the day coming to fruition.
> not a democracy
Democracy comes in many flavours and it's very hard to see the US federal system as outside of that when it is composed of elected representatives.
It's not a direct democracy, it's not a democracy where each vote counts the same, but it certainly falls within the very wide definition of democracy -
"a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives."
OK but the constitution effectively cannot be amended now (the last one, in the early 90s, took 202 years to pass [no not a typo]) and we're stuck with what we have. The population also isn't even remotely good with the powers restrained by the 10th amendment and hasn't been since at least the 1930s and maybe even before that, and there is zero chance the court changes that.
So what is next. It seems the only option is to just use the courts to re-interpret the constitution, so that things like growing your own wheat is "interstate commerce" and so that stuff like a post-86 machinegun isn't an arm even within the context of being a member of (by federal statute) the unorganized militia.
Repeal the 17th amendment - popular election of senators - and all of a sudden it gets much easier for states to amend the Constitution in ways they want.
Popular election of senators has been a disaster, it essentially turned to the Senate from a deliberative body into a pure partisan body like the House.
Lack of elections hasn't seemed to save your supreme court from becoming a pure partisan body.
Yeah, I think the people need a way to eject people without waiting for 2-6 years (or never for the supreme court). it needs to be a high bar, but if we use the same 75% state ratification to start up an impeachment process, it might keep some pressure under people who otherwise feel like they can run rampant.
My understanding is that states already have the ability to appoint presidential electors however they want. No need to repeal any amendment, if a state wanted to do things differently in that regard.
My proposed elector appointment algorithm is as follows. For each elector seat, summon 20 grand juries according to standard methods (distribute across various counties, weighted by population). Each grand jury spends a day getting to know one another, then appoints one member as a representative using approval voting. The 20 representatives from the 20 grand juries form a secondary grand jury, which also spends a day getting to know one another, then appoints one member as a representative using approval voting. This produces 1 elector. Electors serve 8-year terms, staggered so that their appointments occur midway through a presidential term when emotions are relatively placid.
If you persuade a few big swing states to adopt this approach for appointing electors, the nature of the presidential contest changes dramatically.
This is more along the lines of how the presidential elector system was supposed to work in the first place. Presidential electors were supposed to be leading individuals of the community, not otherwise involved in politics, exercising their independent judgement. That's what the founders intended.
I don't think that solves what I see as the root problem, the national parties' control of the state organizations. The money would only need to be focused on the state politicians instead of them plus the senators.
There are many systems, the Australian Federation of independent States adopted a "Washminster" system based on both the UK Westminster system and the USofA Washington system.
Popular election of senators in the senate / upper house hasn't been a disaster there.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Senate
Australia also has political weightings wrt various regions populations.
The Australian Electoral Commision as an independent body does a lot of heavy lifting towards keeping the washminster system running (no gerrymandering and a world class voting system).
Independent checks and balances are an essential part of any system of government.
The people vote in Representatives to debate policy, an independent merit based civil service carries it out, overwatched by independent scrutineers, judged by and independent legal system and enforce by a spectrum of LEOs and peace officers.
A feature of the Australian system (IMHO) is how rapid the churn on Prime Ministers can be ... the Washington system by contrast can't even toss out a corrupt felon grifting hard in public view.
Been saying this for almost two decades. State governments no longer have a direct seat and representation at the table. Federal mandates (coercion) like enforce this or don't get funds would never, or at least rarely, happen. It's also the only nonviolent way to dissolve the union, intentionally or through strangulation (state legislatures refusing to elect and seat senators, if a majority of them do this then a quorum can't be reached and funding dies).
> It's also the only nonviolent way to dissolve the union, intentionally or through strangulation (state legislatures refusing to elect and seat senators, if a majority of them do this then a quorum can't be reached and funding dies).
Sounds like a bad idea and far from non-violent
Holy shit, imagine of the whole of federal congress could be controlled with gerrymandering rather than just the house: the house through districts, and the senate through districts for state representatives. The fireworks would be insane.
Put another way: it would do nothing. If it did something, it would likely make everything worse, not better. Legislatures would pick the most partisan hack. They would be answerable to fewer, more partisan people. It would pour fire on an already tenuous situation.
It would also make congress significantly less representative of the country, but I guess that's the point.
Which is something people arguing to make the house of Lords fully democratic don't appreciate.
Senators aren’t hereditary and never were; they used to serve at the will of elected officials but were isolated from electoral influences.
well, I'm never a fan of "this is hard so lets break/bend the rules" as a justification.
The constitution still can be amended. But congress has been in gridlock for 30 years so we can't even get over the first hurdle. Lets work on fixing that gridlock and then we can review if 38 states signing on is too big a burden. It was already a Herculean task convincing 10/13 states to accept the Bill of Rights.
> This is by design. ... The federal government was never intended to lord over everyone's lives.
So behavior of the system fails to meet its design goals? It honestly sounds like you kind of agree with the excerpt you quote.
> The expansion of the federal government ... [is] what needs to change
What are you proposing though? Even assuming the premise here, achieving said goals requires changes to lots of little details and incentives. It's not like there's a single potentiometer controlling Gov't Size™. So what are you actually suggesting?
Certainly, the details of fundamental electoral structure engage deeply with the operation of our government, and the legal scholars in the article seem to be honestly pointing out levers (and big ones at that) we could possibly pull to create a less expansive federal government, or whatever the goal may be.
Imagine a plane crashes and analysts start attempting a root cause analysis, discussing control system specifics and whatnot. To me, your stance reads like "This is by design. Plane parts are united but independent. Control systems were never intended to lord over every part of the plane. The expansion of control systems is what needs to change."
I mean... maybe? But even if we agree on that point, any random contraction of the control system seems unlikely to make a plane that flies better. We have to actually engage with the details of what's going on here.
Yes, it is by design. By the design of slaveholding states in the 18th century.
If I'm not mistaken, there was not supposed to be a standing army.
If you have a standing army, that creates a whole rats nest of problems.
And ps, I've talked to people who think we shouldn't have a standing army, and I frankly think they're insane.
Standing armies create structural problems. Many countries in Asia are constantly having civilian governments being overthrown by the army.
Not having standing armies also creates structural problems (mostly getting invaded). There are only 21 countries without a standing army, and they're almost all micronations with <200k population (mostly tiny islands). Iceland is the only one of them with a GDP per capita worth mentioning, but it's also part of Nato, the largest military alliance in the world.
Switzerland has no standing army and they have a respectable GDP.
You could pull off a “Switzerland but with defensive nuclear second strike capability” model in this era and it’d work fine.
Switzerland has a standing army with ~150k active personel, upon which they spend 1% GDP, and which includes a half year conscription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Armed_Forces.
Right, but it’s a citizen militia rather than a permanent professional army.
None of your opinion on the power of government requires the people to be cut out of the equation.
One could have a "small" federal government while having a popular vote for president and a reduced/discarded Senate.
And no, not everyone likes it when the federal government is "too big". Personally, I support social welfare and research programs at the federal level, as well as food safety and many other administrative functions there too.
I'm less supportive of "big government" when the executive declares itself the arbiter of the Constitution and all foreign wars and treaties.
Why does social welfare need to be handled at the federal level? There seems to be no explanation for why people insist on this other than that it must be so.
Even as of today, California gives aid to many states who fundamentally disagree with California's culture. Make social welfare state level and some states will simply starve.
It's like insurance: we all need to pool together and help everyone. And for it to work, we can't complain that some people get more help than others. It's a safety net, not floor. If everyone hit the net, the entire thing collapses quickly.
2nd reason is that people can move between the states easily. Imagine the logistical disaster of having a California worker work for a New York company. Which social security does this workers wages get deposited to? What if the worker moves to Arizona? What if the New York company opens a branch in Florida and that worker's department operates out of there?
It's a mess across state lines, and traditionally we have state disputes handled at the federal level.
Social welfare needs to be handled at the same level that mobility exists, because otherwise all destitute people will bumrush the nearest jurisdiction that is giving out generous welfare benefits. The issue is most often seen at the city level (e.g. Bellevue “encouraging” homeless to go to Seattle), but more generous policies like housing-first will need to be federally administered to prevent the most generous states from getting bumrushed.
Exactly. I won't even say it's a good system, but it's a straw man he's attacking. Also, maybe i'm over sensitive but i feel like he's insinuating the constitution is wrong because it's inherently racist and elitist. Maybe i'm straw manning but sadly that choice of words often goes hand in hand with such ideas and reckless, poorly thought out solutions.
>i feel like he's insinuating the constitution is wrong because it's inherently racist and elitist.
The constitution suggests that "all men are created equal". it sadly needed several revisions to define what "man" is, though. And then some 150 years before we expanded "man" to represent "humanity" instead of "male".
The constitution isn't racist/sexist by the wording of its law, but the interpretations arguably were. And maybe are.
Nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so.
We had to spend a long, long time thinking and re-thinking this over. Sadly the trend as of late is to stop thinking altogether. I hope that changes.
If it was elitist we wouldn't have the right to assemble or bear arms.
Some of us can do both, at once!
No, the Constitution is fine.
We are failing to enforce the Constitution like we did in the past, and that is why America is falling apart.
Failing to enforce the Constitution is part of the problem. The Constitution gives very few options for recourse and was not designed for the situation where two of three branches of government willingly abdicate their own power.
Even the government shutdown is an example of the failure of the US constitution. In most other countries in the world, the inability to pass a budget triggers an election.
> In most other countries in the world, the inability to pass a budget triggers an election.
In many parliamentary systems, and some semi-presidential systems this would be likely or automatic. Basically no presidential systems do this, though some have optional safety valves that might be threatened to try to force resolution of a budget deadlock or invoked in response to one, like the muerte cruzada system in Ecuador (which allows the President to dissolve the National Assembly or the Assembly to impeach and remove the President, but either action triggers new elections for both the President and the Assembly.)
>In most other countries in the world, the inability to pass a budget triggers an election.
That's actually a wonderful idea. Our legistlature definitely needs more skin in the game, so I was privy to the idea that their salaries are also frozen during a shutdown (like 90% of federal workers). But having them ousted from their seats can be interesting.
Of course, the obvious counter argument is exploitation. Could a bitter party band together and try to force early re-elections if they feel they have the upper hand?
They did NOT abdicated the power. They, meaning their republican members, are actively using power to achieve or defend republican ideological goals. Democrats are not fighting as they should, they tend to be centrists seeking to accomodate.
But, there was no abdication. There is an intentional cooperation.
I'd say choosing to let the executive execute reckless tarriff policies counts as "abdicating power". If they really believed in their power, Trump would just need to throw tarriff policies at congress and they can approve it with their majority house and senate votes.
Likewise, the Supreme Court putting an immunity clause right before Biden left feels like abdication. Again, if what Trump was doing was just, it'd be easy to interpret it in his favor, 6-3. But instead they gave blanket immunity. It can be intentional cooperation and still be abdicating.
Yup. There were supposed to be 3 separate, contentious arms of the government: executive, legislative and judicial. The problem, and I honestly can't see a solution to it, is that the same party/group controls all three and nobody's willing to buck the trend. The "guardrails" are there, it merely turns out they're only weakly enforced.
Nobody wants to say it.
Yes, the original dream of the U.S. is very clearly a failed experiment with both the legislative and judicial branches essentially extensions of the executive branch. The checks and balances that used to exist have almost completely disappeared. Whatever’s left of those branches are essentially extra entry points for lobbyists and billionaires to fully drive the knife deeper.
It wasn’t actually designed that way but it has slowly manipulated and shaped into that way over a hundred years of stacked up law bloat built with the sole intention to make challenging it impossible for anyone who’s not crazy wealthy.
Well yes. It's easy to manipulate when you freeze the House for 100 years. That's the biggest reason we keep swinging so much. The House became a mini-senate, and the Senate structure is already something under contention (designed from the beginning to compromise with smaller population states). Now we have a Senate that can change every 2 years. 2 years is simply a bad golf swing for billionaires when they "lose". 2 years of suffering feels eternal for the working class
The Legislature has the most power and the House freeze made it easy to co-opt. you make the house compliant or essentially useless, and you can't impeach anything in the executive nor judicial branches. Freeze the house and you can't really start any legislature to have laws catch up with rampant greed. Or make it easier to lobby into more greed.
We desperately need to expand the house again. I remember saying we should have over 1000 reps with current growth. Maybe starting at 700-800 would be a good start.
I don’t know what the solution is, because a fourth branch of government also could be problematic. But it’s becoming a very obvious problem that the justice department is not separate from the executive.
> But it’s becoming a very obvious problem that the justice department is not separate from the executive.
The alternatives are probably worse. Every alternative trades political accountability for independence or vice versa.
The alternatives are: An Independent Prosecutorial Branch (a “fourth branch”), OR Prosecutors as Part of the Judicial Branch, OR Congress-Controlled Prosecution, OR Fully Decentralized / Elected Federal Prosecutors.
The US uses a hybrid model of executive control with strong counterweights rather than full independence. This model persists because it maintains democratic accountability, preserves adversarial courts, and allows checks without creating an unaccountable power center.
The justice department IS part of the executive branch; it’s a department headed by a cabinet secretary.
Yes? That’s what I said.
How is that all not part of the judicial branch, e.g. the "courts" ?
well, it might be bucked. The problem is you can tear down a lot more in 2 years of reckless, lawless land than you can build in 20 years of gridlock. Even 5 years of unanimous cooperation may not be enough at this point to rebuild what's happened, and we're halfway to midterms.
Legistlative will bend and sway as it's been doing for 30 years now. the judicial is the much more concerning branch. EVen if Trump was ousted tomorrow, we're still stuck with a conservative majority for a good 20 years or so without major intervention. The long shot is that Thomas and Alito get convicted. But we'd need huge momentum for that to gain ground, and even then Breyer may pass sooner or later.
Adding to the courts would help, but not solve the underlying issue.
The trend has been bucked by the fascists currently in power.
Well... That's only part of the problem.
The real problem is that Congress delegated all its responsibility to the executive and judicial branches.
To the executive branch it gave the power to declare war (war power act), and to make new law (administrative law). Then it created a new branch, the federal reserve, to make monetary policy.
To the judiciary it handed the power of checking the president.
Now Congress does nothing as evidenced by how little actual legislation they've passed while Trump has just done everything via executive order.
But this entire system developed while one party held all three branches but also while the branches were held by different parties.
Since the house is up for election every two years, they have every incentive to delegate so they can wash their hands free of any decision.
"To the executive branch it gave the power to declare war (war power act), and to make new law (administrative law). Then it created a new branch, the federal reserve, to make monetary policy."
The War Powers Resolution of 1973, aka War Powers Act, does not give the executive power to declare war. On the contrary, it was intended to limit the executive's ability to engage in armed conflict. It says so right at the top:
50 U.S. Code § 1541 - Purpose and policy
It is the purpose of this chapter to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.
One could argue that it hasn't worked all that well, but it is, for example, why George W. Bush got Congress to pass the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 before invading Iraq.
Also, "[t]hen it created a new branch, the federal reserve" is a sort of unusual way to describe something that happened 60 years earlier.
What do you mean no one is willing to buck the trend? It’s almost a certainty that Republicans will lose the house this year and maybe the senate.
On the other hand we have federal district court judges in podunk deciding that they have the unilateral ability to stop the president from exercising executive authority. It wouldn’t be so comical if they didn’t ultimately lose in most cases; our judges are the real Constitutional crisis right now.
I have not seen the Trump administration fail to obey a single court order; I just don’t see Trump as a crisis. His policies, you could make a good case. His rhetoric, yes. His official acts, not so much.
Depends on where the 11 Airborne goes. Most places outside of existing training sites break treaties or cause civil unrest/volate posse comitatus.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Very true. The trials against these people better be brutal (assuming they don't all run to Argentina).
It's frustrating now, but having all these cases and cases over ignoring orders is a very important paper trail if we want to civilly resolve all of this. The new DoJ can certainly go after the old one and they have a disgusting amount of cases to comb through to make their case. And a frankly incompetent opposition (it's okay, about 2/3rds of the DOJ quit as of now, I imagine many of the sensible/talented ones realized the incompetence).
> On the other hand we have federal district court judges in podunk deciding that they have the unilateral ability to stop the president from exercising executive authority
He doesn’t have unlimited executive authority; it makes sense for a judge to be able to determine where that line is. It’s literally their job?
> I have not seen the Trump administration fail to obey a single court order
If we can avoid playing word games, the Trump administration has been accused of defying or frustrating court orders at an unprecedented rate, with analyses indicating it failed to comply with approximately one in three judicial rulings against its actions.
Notably in regard to deportations. The administration either acts in defiance of, or appeals until the case is elevated to a sympathetic judge or eventually complies. This is the trend and has been a successful set of tactics so far.
No word games at all.
Every American, even the president, even (gasp) Donald Trump, has the right of appeal of judicial orders and rulings. I could just as well say that people and organizations who oppose Trump's immigration policies go "judge shopping" or "jurisdiction shopping" to find sympathetic judges, which happens all the time (For example, there is absolutely no justification for Judge Boasberg in the DC Circuit to have adjudicated the issue of the deportations from Texas; it should have been a local judge in TX).
Inferior court judges (i.e. judicial branch judges that are not Supreme Court justices), only have judicial authority as granted by Congress, and it's not clear whether they do or should have jurisdiction outside their circuit- the Supreme Court is currently deciding that one. Congress explicitly has denied judicial branch judges from jurisdiction over immigration issues, in favor of immigration judges. I believe that most of the judicial actions against the administration wrt immigration are largely lawless (illegal) actions by judges, but I am very much not worried about Trump because his administration is NOT ignoring court orders.
There is a lot of FUD in the news that you have to do a bit of reading to understand (for example, why district court judges may not lawfully order a halt to a deportation that has been properly adjudicated by an immigration court).
My bottom line is that I don't see a Constitutional crisis in Trump's actions, although I very much see many reasons why many people would be upset; he has a very polarizing personality and demeanor.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
This really isn't up for debate. the admin has most certainly ignored court orders.
>Every American, even the president, even (gasp) Donald Trump, has the right of appeal of judicial orders and rulings.
If I even talked the way Blanche and Bondi did in these hearings, I'd instantly be held in contempt and be thrown in jail. let alone the overreach of order applied. Let's not pretend that we are on an equal playing ground here.
>Inferior court judges
I think this phrasing alone says a lot more about you than anything you typed. I bet over Biden you were ranting about how the Supreme Court is corrupt. Just shifting in the sands based on what "your team" is doing, laws be damned.
> It’s almost a certainty that Republicans will lose the house this year and maybe the senate.
Unfortunately the state party operatives have started gerrymandering efforts to make this even more difficult.
Trump has absolutely failed to comply with several court orders. The ones I’m aware of relate to Kilmar Garcia’s removal to CECOT.
Where is Garcia now? In the US.
Who brought him back? Trump
>Where is Garcia now
In the US, for the next month.
Who STILL wants to deport him after this embarrasing fumble of administrative incompetence? Trump
https://marylandmatters.org/2026/01/16/whats-next-for-maryla...
They couldn't bring a single man back and sweep all this under the rug. Trump has to get the last word in. Remember beforehand that they were trying to bribe him to self-deport to a country he wasn't even born in.
So it’s ok he was sent to CECOT in violation of an order not to in the first place? The original question was whether Trump ignored court orders. Id say that removing someone against a court order to a third country is a pretty big issue. Even if a year later after a huge public pressure campaign he is temporarily back in the states.
See https://marylandmatters.org/2026/01/16/whats-next-for-maryla...
He wasn't removed to a third country. He was removed to his home country, illegally, as he had a court order for deportation but per his own request he left open only deportation to a third country because he was granted his petition to bar deportation to El Salvador after his asylum claim failed.
Had he had been shoved out of a C-130 and parachuted into South Sudan, we'd never even be hearing of the guy because that would have been allowed and been in compliance with the deportation order as well as the order blocking deportation to the one country they deported him to.
Sounds like you’ve made my point. Thank you for correcting my mistake on the particulars.
The judge in his case literally said the words “you haven’t complied” to the government attorneys in the case. Not sure how much more I can say.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/16/judge-scolds-trump-...
During the ordeal the government attorneys repeatedly claimed that they had no way to bring him back (although clearly that was a lie as he was returned…)
We have crossed the rubicon so far, the fact we even have to nitpick this is absurd.
Do you know how ridiculous you sound defending Trump for bringing back a person from a foreign prison that he sent there without due process? Only because he got caught?
The guy operates in bad faith constantly. It's why a huge chunk of his prior administration recommended against voting for him. It's his only edge in life aside from his ability to hypnotize idiots, and it's only an edge because weak willed or complicit people let him get away with it.
This is absolutely the correct take. Everyone in the country seems to have decided that, if they don't like the presidents policy, then the president is undemocratic.
That is not how this works
He is openly talking about doing away with elections.
Trump, while president, sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the United States, and members of Congress, because Mike Pence refused Trump’s illegal order to overturn an election both of them had lost.
The current president is plainly undemocratic. It’s a matter of public record.
The Constitution is not fine. You are correct that it is not being enforced properly, and IMO we have a coup being staged in real time.
We should have rolling term limits for SCOTUS.
We should have ranked-choice/multiple-choice mechanisms for all elections to facilitate a true multiparty system.
We should further regulate money and transparency in spending vis-a-vis political advertising.
We should ban gerrymandering.
The Senate should be weakened or entirely removed. I am aware that is theoretically the only thing that is not amendable, but it's a flaw that we have it in any case.
The Electoral College should be discarded.
And clearly, impeachment should be easier than it is - or else maybe we just have the dictatorship we deserve? Thanks, GOP.
That's just off the top of my head.
Why weaken or remove the Senate? It seems like one of the few parts of the federal government which is vaguely functional.
Interesting choices. Some seem straightforward, others debatable. Can you explain them a bit more? (or link to a blog post?)
There is no dictator ship though.
These takes are insane. Hate trump as much as you want (I certainly dislike him).... He's the democratically elected president of the US
> He's the democratically elected president of the US
“Dictator” and “elected” are not incompatible. In fact, the term originates as the title of an elected (not directly by the citizenry, but then neither is the US President in any case) officer, and the term has nothing to do with how you got into power, but with what practical constraints it is exercised.
Your democratically elected president (or, rather, the group behind him) is undoing whatever was left of the democratic apparatus. There is no counter power in place. Executive, legislative and judiciary are de facto one.
You seem to operate on the belief that democratically elected leaders can't do harm to democracy, while history has times and times again proved you wrong, and that to me is what's insane here.
If the reports are true, the proceeds from selling Venezuelan oil are going into his own Qatari bank account. That's third-world tinpot dictatorship right there.
If you're into word games, swap out authoritarian so you don't get hung up on him being elected.
He is daily exceeding legal bounds of the presidency and otherwise abandoning all precedents that limit executive overreach.
He has committed crimes against this country and should not be in office.
Those takes are informed and level headed. We have a wildly unqualified Secretary of Defense who was appointed only because he advocated in his book "American Crusade" for a crusade against the "American Left". A Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts described us as in the middle of a second American Revolution that will remain bloodless if the left allows it. And he said that before the election.
The DOGE project was a wildly unconstitutional overreach of the executive branch, shutting down or severely crippling agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without the approval of Congress.
Republicans are letting Trump act like a dictator to accomplish things they want outside of the guardrails of our democracy. There are plenty more examples out there if you choose to pay attention.
> There is no dictatorship ... He's the democratically elected
The first part does not follow from the second. It's much easier to become dictator when in power, e.g. after being democratically elected. It's a common route. See also Self-coup / autocoup (1).
Of course, nothing like that could even be attempted in the USA! (2) /s
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup#Notable_events_descr...
I love clarifications like this. It is like “The Constitution is fine; Nicolas Cage never stole it. That was just a film. In any case even if he had, it is is documented that he eventually returned it unharmed”
What is the evidence that America is falling apart? From all my reading of American history, America has _always_ been this way. With a wide lens it appears as healthy as it's ever been. This is a genuine question-- I've read a lot of American history, but I'm still a dilettante. It's extremely difficult to tell if there are genuinely new conditions, or if we're engaging in a vigorous political process as we always did.
We live in a world where the sitting president calls January 6 a day of love, and has pardoned the rioters, and then says that people protesting ICE are "domestic terrorists". We live in a world where federal prosecutors are choosing to quit rather than following his orders.
Remember John McCain defending Obama[0]? Do you genuinely believe that the people heading the Republican Party today would ever do that? Contrast McCain's humility and grace in his concession speech[1] with Trump's constant refusal to accept that he lost 2020, and his insistence on exacting revenge on the people who "wronged" him.
No, this is not a "vigorous political process" in action. It's something else entirely.
0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Mba8ncBso
In the 1800 election republicans thought the federalists will turn America into a tyrannical monarchy, and the federalists thought the republicans will plunge America into mob rule like the French Revolution. They would have never defended each other.
Things look bad if you have a twenty year time horizon, but they look pretty normal if you zoom out to encompass all of American history.
Re Trump exacting revenge on political opponents, that conduct has endless precedent in American history. (Refusing to concede the election does not; but he was forced out of office nonetheless, which I read as a sign the republic is healthy.)
EDIT: I just remembered about the Aaron Burr conspiracy. Aaron Burr lost the 1800 election to Jefferson by one elector (after over a month of gridlock). He then tried to raise a private army to either march on Washington, or to form his own country and secede from the union. In 1805 Jefferson ordered his arrest and Burr was tried for treason (and acquitted!)
>Things look bad if you have a twenty year time horizon
50 year horizon, US erupted into a Civil War. Gotta expand out a bit, but maybe the republicans of 1800 had a point (who we'd call liberal today, but history has a strange way with language).
And yes, Trump has already done decades of damage to the US's soft power. countries are now trying to slowly cut out the middleman of the US and even pulling out of the dollar. the 20 year horizon here is awful.
I think they rightly pointed out that US States construct is problematic esp in much more interconnected world.
However, I think fundamental problem still goes back to politics where Congress effectively does not do their job and thus fighting around executive and judicial leave us in worse place. Chevron and lack of it is mostly due to Congress just passing big stuff and then massive fights in courts when Congress could step in and be like "Nope, we are changing our mind, this is happening."
Congress moves too slow to be effective at thwarting off bad policy (largely written by lobbyists) until after it’s done its damage. By then, the senators that sponsored the bill quietly retire. Or they double down behind closed doors to be elected well into their geriatric years. I’m for term limits and age caps.
Lobbyists can't write bad policy unless it is passed by congress, so basically you are saying that congress doesn't move fast enough to stop congress. I'm also skeptical of this "but the lobbyists" argument and I can't think of a single major problem facing the country that can be reasonably blamed on them.
https://systemicjustice.org/article/corporate-influence/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10938928/
You can't think of any?
I would argue states are ideal in an era of social media-triggered political fragmentation. People can move to the state which aligns best with their preferred policies.
The constitution has been absurdly broken by a cult of partisan federal judges claiming to be textual, but then inventing an absurd canon of non-laws no one can reference:
* Unitary executive theory. Congress can't create a federal reserve, except for when the supreme court likes it.
* Major questions doctrine. Congress can't create an EPA and give it open ended authority to regulate its way to clean air
* Qualified immunity. Congress can't stop ICE agents from murdering people
* Historical tradition as regard to the 2nd amendment. Congress can't ban everyone from walking around with military assault weapons.
I don't see how Congress can easily fix this.
I agree that partisan federal judges have caused this but my point is, Congress makes it worse.
Unitary is just wrong and Congress could continue to push back against it.
Major Question keeps coming up Congress does not step in after passing of EPA. Major EPA cases are like "Well, does this mean what we think it means because some comma somewhere" and Congress could step in and say "No, we really meant this."
Qualified Immunity is again something else Congress could step in on and say "Nope, we are eliminating qualified immunity or tailoring it back."
2nd Amendment is third rail I don't wish to touch.
The problem is the inflexibility of the constitution. If judges hadn't made the conscious decisions to turn the constitution into whatever they feel like, you'd be stuck in an even worse system of obsolete 18th century government.
This; the “originalists” who dress up in wigs and shock of shocks, just so happen to rule contrary to the way things have worked for the last 50 years.
The US constitution is working great. Democracy isn't necessarily good. If we had a national vote where 51% of the people voted to kill 49% of the people, that would be bad. More democratic institutions also have a tendency to favor hand outs to people, people vote for the policy that gives them free stuff, or rather that robs other people and enriches them.
The issue is a cultural one, where people are looking out for themselves over their country. Where politicians seek to enrich themselves, people just want to get a hand out, and lobbyists write sections of laws.
Where democracy shines is that we can leverage democracy to amend the constitution. If they think that moving to a pure popular vote or something would be better, then get that amended into the constitution, we have a process for this, just get 2/3s of states to vote for it.
> The US constitution is working great. Democracy isn't necessarily good. If we had a national vote where 51% of the people voted to kill 49% of the people, that would be bad.
"Democracy is bad because majorities can vote for bad things" is hardly a meaningful argument on its own. How is the current system of minority rule via electors better? If we had an electoral vote where 22% of the people voted to kill 78% of the people[1], would that be better?
1. The current apportionment of electors is such that you can achieve 270 electoral votes with states accounting for roughly 43% of the population. Since nearly all states grant all electors to the candidate winning the popular vote within themselves, you only need roughly 22% of the overall US population to elect a president.
> If we had a national vote where 51% of the people voted to kill 49% of the people, that would be bad.
How is it different from the majority of electoral votes supporting killing everyone in, I don't know, let's pick a random state, Minnesota.
>people just want to get a hand out
They want to work and America can't even promote jobs to Americans. Get out of here blaming the people for the ransacking of government.
this is how dictatorships start -- paid intellectuals who lack integrity -- they will argue every cause that they can, to debate if it's valid or not.
I think my question is "if it's failing does it mean it's broken?"
The actual title is "Is the Constitution Broken?"
Someone has edited it to show the more soporific subtitle...
It's a more curious title than the clickbait headline.
One challenge is the executive can move fast while legislative/courts go slow by design. But the executive needs other slow branches for lasting change.
Remember we were freaking out about a year to six months ago? A lot has either been absorbed into legal precedent, quietly rolled back by Congress / courts. But it takes a long time.
Whatever comes out of these years that lasts will probably be because of SCOTUS more than Trump.
>Remember we were freaking out about a year to six months ago?
we're still freaking out, and it's getting worse. Why do you ask?
>A lot has either been absorbed into legal precedent, quietly rolled back by Congress / courts. But it takes a long time.
And Trump has ignored at least a third of the judicial rulings:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
If congress can't act quick and hold him accountable, there may not be a long time to come.
>Whatever comes out of these years that lasts will probably be because of SCOTUS more than Trump.
We're still feeling aftereffects of actions from Reagan. History assures you that you don't need everything to be de jure to fundamentally shift the Overton curtain. Especially in regards to the economy.
Unbalanced executive power has been growing for a long time. It was just waiting for someone power mad enough to fully leverage it.
If we make it through this intact we need to reel this in. Unfortunately neither party seems to want to do so. They’d rather fight for that office in the hope of leveraging that power.
Hint: Its easier to have balanced federalism when the federal government can't just print money and buy the states.
It's defunct isn't it? If i'm being kind i would say that Americas strength comes from her people, not the constitution. I do believe that's the truth.
My main complaint on the constitution, is perfectly explained, ironically by the guy trying to defend it
>>Feldman cited another reason to defend the Constitution: It “has the capacity to evolve and change.” In 1919, he explained, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “basically invented modern free speech law,” establishing, in a series of opinions, the now- fundamental concept that free expression should be permitted unless it poses a clear danger to others. “He understood that the Constitution had to evolve,” Feldman said.
So there you have it. The reason the constitution is great because judges allow themselves to interpret it in ways it was never intended to be interpreted (sometimes based on loyalty owed to a political faction or) that aligns with the way they want it to be, not the way it is.
That's frankly bonkers. Now i'll get back to my country run by the guys 2/3 of the country voted against, lords, a king and a supreme court run by activist judges with a large portion of our law outsourced to the EU...
Many of the comments lay the blame for the threat to democracy at the feet of SCOTUS and Congress for failing to act in a time of crisis to strangle the constitutional excesses of the Trump administration.
I see it much differently. I see a Constitution exposed. It's purported 'checks and balances' stripped naked. For the reality is this: the Constitution provides neither SCOTUS or Congress the ability to enforce their constitutional authorities. The Executive has sole control over the police power and military power.
And when a President is surrounded by heads of the FBI DOJ and Military who swear loyalty to the man, not the office, there is literally nothing SCOTUS or Congress can do.
SCOTUS has, thus far into the current Trump term, been very careful to rule in a manner that avoids inviting Trump to tell SCOTUS: "you've had your say, not enforce it." SCOTUS would much rather grant Trump powers that some future SCOTUS can take back. But the Executive exposing SCOTUS as barren is something that can never be undone.
The same for Congress. Congress can impeach Trump yet again. And in some imaginary world the Senate could actually find him guilty. But where is the army or police who shoot it out with Trump's FBI and military so they can walk Trump out of the West Wing in handcuffs?
The very terms of our Constitution are such that only a coup d'etat can remove a President who, surrounded by loyalists in the FBI and military, refuses to step down voluntarily.
That is my conclusion about why the Constitution is broken: it has been exposed for what it is. All we can do is wait and see how SCOTUS and Congress respond when Trump finally tells them: "Let's see you make me"
Edit: correct "...that invites Trump..." with "...that avoids inviting Trump"
If the president doesn't step down when ordered to do so lawfully, its up to the individual participants in government to obey the law and not the president. It's not that complicated.
That the American government has reached a position where it's somehow questionable whether the government and its departments should answer to congress or the president is ridiculous.
Army already proven they will commit war crime with little to no pushback.
DOJ already proven they will facilitate murder and prosecute the victim.
People around president are basically worst then himself, just less insane and more coherent.
The individual participants in government demonstrate every day that they do nothing in response to Trump's literally daily illegal actions. When Trump tells SCOTUS to 'get lost' or when he cancels elections or when he declares martial law in response to some made up provocation; or when he refuses to leave office;
When any or all of these things occur, and the heads of the FBI, and ICE ( his personal police force ), and the DOJ and the military all put up a united front in support of him - what are the names of the people you are referring to who will have the physical ability to take any action against Trump?
edit: typo 'canceks'
If trump is no longer president and the military chooses to follow his orders anyway, we have a rouge military. The military that follows orders from the chain of command fights the rouge, and it at worst escalates to civil war.
That's pretty much why military is so rank and file and is trained to remain non-partisan in uniform. That scenario above is how we devolve the entire structure into fighting amongst one another. The military is under command of the Commander-in-Chief, not who they think is CiC.
The FBI, ICE, and the DOJ simply have no authority to decide who the President is. If an FBI agent calls up their local IRS office and asks them to redirect tax revenues to a Trump-controlled account, they're going to say no.
A military coup is always possible, but I see no reason to believe that Trump has done any of the consolidation that would be required to make that work. Military coups generally install a member of the military as the new leader.
>It's purported 'checks and balances' stripped naked. For the reality is this: the Constitution provides neither SCOTUS or Congress the ability to enforce their constitutional authorities. The Executive has sole control over the police power and military power.
If we got to a point where Trump was convicted and he then refused to step down, then yes. I'd say your interpretation is correct.
But we're not there yet. Legislature refuses to impeach (let alone convict), and the judicial branch doesn't have any direct power over the executive branch. The idea is that the judicial defines lines (which includes what the executive branch can do with police and military power. Remember that deplpoying troops in a state that does not wish it is very rare behavior), and lines stepped over comes back to the legislature to punish. So we reach the same impasse.
>But where is the army or police who shoot it out with Trump's FBI and military so they can walk Trump out of the West Wing in handcuffs?
He's no longer commander-in-chief, so an army following orders would act on orders of either the vice president turned president (VP->P) or some high standing generals to arrest trump. And this VP->P cannot simply relinquish his power to the convicted president if the VP->P is sympathetic.
If that falls apart, we are indeed in a true constitutional crisis. And likely civil war. That's why military is very strictly training to be non-partisan in uniform. And why they have stricter laws (e.g. court marshal) than a citizen.A military betraying its governments' will is textbook civil war material.
(2025)
Thanks - it's in the greyzone when the article is less than 5 months old.
It's >4months old.. so, nothing grey? (:
Sorry < 5 months, indeed just under 4.5 months.
We don't put the year on an article posted in late December that was posted in January of the same year, that could be over 11.5 months old.
There's no perfect answer for these ones :)
Agreed.. but this is pretty out of date, mostly about politics from April/2025 and a 2024 Book "The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them". Notes politics are "fast moving", I'm not sure that Aziz Rana or Noah Feldman would say the same now.
Biggest challenge is that people bleat about executive overreach when their team is not in power, then smirk with glee when they have it. Similar to debates about freedom of speech, etc.
I don't think the executive overreach happening last year alone can be compared to anything from the D side until you go all the way back to FDR. And that was to establish stuff that actually benefitted us for the next 90 years.
Meanwhile we're in "weekly Watergate" mode right now. If there's nay overreaches from the Biden/Obama era, I'd happily close those loopholes to never have 2025 happen again.