> 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.
The surface level reading of history is that everyone always agreed centralization of power is bad and operated in a gentlemanly way to further this principle, until Trump came along. But that's not the case at all. In the two parts of American history where I read more or less deeply (early republic and civil war), the factions bitterly vied for absolute power but were prevented from getting it through intangible American magic.
I didn’t say that. There’s been a few. Wilson, FDR, Jackson come to mind.
Trump is unique in that the previous folks predated the massive standing army and propaganda capabilities that exist today. The intangible magic is brave individuals and institutions. It’s harder for those individuals with the secret police and army running around.
That America works and keeps working for reasons nobody understands. We seem to make a ton of mistakes, and often act in the same way as far less successful countries do, but somehow keep coming out on top. It often feels like our success is despite our actions, not because of them. That's what I mean by "intangible American magic".
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.
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.
To be clear, a plurality of individual voters voted for Trump and Vance's electors. Trump still had less than 50% of all votes cast. At 64.1% turnout, that means that less than 32% (approximately) of eligible voters voted for Trump.
Why would a small difference in voters supporting him or not matter if he has all the guns and fanatics willing to use them?
The number of Americans willing to check the other person on the ballot is a lot lower than the number of Americans willing to pick up arms when he ignores the law like all the other laws he ignores.
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.
Comparing the early republic to today is apples and oranges, disagreements and passions are supposed to go down as things settle down with time.
Instead, both parties display an obstinate lack of compromise and wishy-washy, unworkable platforms while the media is only happy to make all of it worse.
Increasing polarization is surely a symptom of problems and that needs to be analyzed, explained and addressed, not excused.
You make it sound like a civil war is a walk in the park, you do need more history and more imagination in order to understand the human cost of obstinance and shallow thinking.
Much of that was always in dispute and while the “freedom of states” stuff has intellectual appeal and often prevails over shorter periods, the trendline has always been towards one nation.
In the post constitution era, 17 amendments were passed by the house, including an amendment that would make states supreme by law. 6 years after the constitution was ratified, Marbury v. Madison established judicial supremacy for interpreting law, 11 years after that, the court ruled in McCulloch v. Maryland that states are subordinate to federal power.
Political compromise got it done, but centralized power is necessary for survival and prosperity. Congress and the courts realized this immediately. Most of the realpolitik of “states rights” is really about wielding tyrannical power locally.
> Most of the realpolitik of “states rights” is really about wielding tyrannical power locally.
I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.
Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it. Marijuana is still illegal and those undocumented immigrants are also illegal, more federal influence would make it so states cannot legalize those any more, is that what you want?
So states rights goes both ways, it lets states both be more progressive and more conservative than the average.
The states have nothing to do with your ignorant hysteria about foreigners. Unfortunately, the reactionary types have turned that into a dog whistle for their imposition on tyranny to deliver freedom, someday, maybe.
Marijuana is illegal. The states have largely chosen to change their laws on the subject as it was determined that it was creating more problems than it was solving. Additionally, the Federal government, while incapable of changing the law, loosened some of the disincentives for the states laws on the subject.
>I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.
> Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it.
The states are not compelled to enforce federal law. Doing nothing about people violating federal law has always been a right of the states. You are trying to, or already have in your head, conflate non enforcing federal law, with actively violating state law.
Where marijuana is legalized, it means the State made it legal in terms of State law, not that it superseded federal law.
Zero States have made illegal immigrants legal. Some states stop going after them and assisting the federal government in their immigration duties.
You are talking about state's rights and have no idea what the boundaries of those rights even are.
Many states have made it such that there is no functional distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Identical drivers licenses, access to the same services, and indeed protection from federal enforcement of immigration law.
All of those things you’re mentioning are state services that they can offer to anyone because it’s not a federal issue.
This is what states rights look like and why the right is mocked for referencing it when they foam at the mouth once it’s used for things they don’t like.
It’s similar to people who claim the civil war was over states rights when southern states were pushing to have other state sovereignty ignored over their own laws when it came to returning slaves.
States cannot send their police officers to enforce immigration law, correct (see Arizona v. United States), but many states have gone further to make it illegal for their police forces to honor immigration detainers that federal agencies request when an illegal immigrant is arrested for a crime. That sure looks and sounds like a protection to me.
These people are released, which does make the job of federal agencies more difficult, requiring immigration enforcement action in the streets as opposed to the jailhouse. You prefer it in the street, apparently, but I can certainly understand how others may see how these types of actions start to look like States actively frustrating legal immigration enforcement action. Or that it is de facto circumvention if not de jure.
The states in question have zero obligation to help make the feds jobs easier. The people complaining about this situation feel entitled to other states using their resources to help the federal government enact policies that they want enforced nationwide.
This is why everyone rolls their eyes when conservatives crow about states rights. They don’t actually want state rights, they want their views enforced on the other states.
I’m actually for less of states independence from the feds on a bunch of areas, and immigration is probably one of them, but as long as this is a tool in the toolbox that conservatives are eager to use, I’m going to call them out for bitching about someone else doing the same thing.
Look, I’m not the one who supports street raids, that’s you. I’m not understanding your point anymore. Do you not want immigration law enforced at all?
An illegal immigrant commits a crime, say vehicular homicide. ICE lodges a detainer against this person, and the local PD refuses and instead releases the offender. As a result, ICE runs a tactical team out to go pick him up.
This is the outcome that you appear to believe is optimal, and you are intentionally using emotionally loaded words like "lenient" to attempt to guilt me into retreating from my position that this is, in fact, not an optimal outcome. In many cases like this additional crimes are committed before the offender is apprehended, crimes which are of course 100% preventable, without you and your "leniency".
>Tell me you at least recognize the difference between actively doing something against some group, and merely not helping them?
Technically speaking, you are right. These states are actively working against their own citizens, not the Federal government.
Your initial claim was that some States are merely "not assisting" the Federal government with their immigration duties, which is actually not a choice they get to make since the controlling caselaw (again, Arizona v. United States) prevents them from doing this even if they wanted to. Local cops cannot investigate immigration status, full stop. I point it out that some states actually go further, and passed laws that bar their police from doing the following.
Feds: hey you arrested individual_x, he's in the country illegally and oh by the way has a few other outstanding warrants, can you please hold him at the jail house, we're going to pick him up for immigration proceedings.
Cops: sure thing, let us know when you get here
And now we get.
Feds: hey hold that guy you arrested, he's got a standing deportation order from years ago, hold him until we get there.
Cops: No, in fact, we're going to let him go.
You continued to imply that banning the former is somehow preferable, even though the latter results in ... street raids.
I'm not really seeing how I'm the bad guy here, and honestly I think your real policy preference is simply that no immigration law is enforced at all. You should have the courage to say so, since that is quite clearly the policy preference for a large portion of the electorate, and possibly a majority of the Democratic Party.
> Feds: hey you arrested individual_x, he's in the country illegally and oh by the way has a few other outstanding warrants, can you please hold him at the jail house, we're going to pick him up for immigration proceedings.
> Cops: sure thing, let us know when you get here
> And now we get.
> Feds: hey hold that guy you arrested, he's got a standing deportation order from years ago, hold him until we get there.
> Cops: No, in fact, we're going to let him go.
You’ve accurately described how states who do not want to assist the federal government, send instructions to their employees on how to not assist the federal government
> You continued to imply that banning the former is somehow preferable, even though the latter results in ... street raids.
The latter results in street raids because of the choices of the federal government and the current leader. It is not an immutable law of physics that street raids have to happen.
This is abuser logic. Do what I want or I _have_ to hurt you.
> I'm not really seeing how I'm the bad guy here, and honestly I think your real policy preference is simply that no immigration law is enforced at all. You should have the courage to say so, since that is quite clearly the policy preference for a large portion of the electorate, and possibly a majority of the Democratic Party.
My preferred immigration policies are ones that brain drain the rest of the planet for my countries benefit.
I am calling out how states not enforcing federal policy for free is an example of states rights.
This comment chain started with me responding to `Jensson stating
> I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.
> Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it.
Which is patently false if you believe in states rights unless you are a hypocrite or belief that states only have the right to believe in the federal governments commands
I see conservatives actively oppressing blue states right now. Somehow states rights do not protect civilians from being mistreated, kidnapped and shot by violent agents sent by conservative minority.
> This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.
Well, and the isolation of the country by oceans on both east and west, and by the glaciers to the North, which make invasion by any but Mexico or Canada unthinkably expensive.
As for prosperous, a vast, then-untapped swath of forests, thick humus deposited by glaciers, and mineral deposits, all serviceable by waterways unprotected by competing nations, did play a minor role.
> The United States is a flawed system designed to protect the feudal, mostly southern property based system
A lot of the constitutional factors you object to - like smaller states having voting power out of proportion to their population, or the constitution being difficult to amend - are also shared by Australia, yet Australia never had race-based chattel slavery.
(Dispossession and maltreatment of indigenous people isn’t really comparable because (a) the US had that too and (b) to the extent that influenced the constitutional architecture, it didn’t really influence the aspects you are complaining about.)
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.
> 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].
> 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 is only true if you omit a frame of reference. The slave states wanted slaves to count 1:1 when assigning representatives. The free states wanted them to not count at all. From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation. So yes, from one point of view the 3/5 compromise gave some states more voice than they should have had. From another point it gave them less. That's what makes it a compromise.
> From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation.
This is not accurate, and there was a baseline: one man equals one vote.
It was a compromise because the northern states didn't want to count slaves at all because they're not allowed to vote; they were just property.
Of course, the South wanted to count slaves (for census purposes) as a person, even though they couldn't vote.
By allowing slaves to be counted as 3/5 of a person, it enabled the South to have more representation in the House, since the number of representatives is based on the population of the state.
If they weren't allowed to count their slaves, they would have had fewer representatives in the House and wouldn't be able to control legislation, etc.
They wouldn't have done it if it resulted in less representation in Congress.
> 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.
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'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
That offer was not to the confederacy, he refused to negotiate with the confederacy. Its very hostile if workers form a union and the employee gives a sweet deal to each of those workers to leave the union while refusing to talk to the union, its the same thing here refusing to negotiate with their representative is very hostile.
> 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.
No, its because the states had formed a new union and they didn't want to betray that one. Lincoln refused to negotiate with them as a whole, he tried to negotiate with the parts. Its like telling enemy soldiers that they get a sweet deal if they betray their country and join yours instead, that will not get you many because most people refuse to betray their allies.
If Lincoln hadn't refused to negotiate with the confederacy as a whole likely the war would be much less bloody or maybe even fully avoided.
There was no reason to negotiate with the confederacy because these were US states.
Them leaving was a non starter. You claiming he refused to negotiate with them is just saying "Lincoln didnt capitulate to the Confederacy on the _one_ thing that was non negotiable".
> If Lincoln hadn't refused to negotiate with the confederacy as a whole likely the war would be much less bloody or maybe even fully avoided.
Confederates shot first at Fort Sumter. If they hadn't started a war over their desire to own people, it would have been avoided. You can sign up for your local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy here[1] if you want to keep peddling these revisionist views.
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.
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.
> Does your history mention that Texas was the one who seceded?
> We know history better than ever before.
Do we?
Trying to find why you isolated Texas. Perhaps due to Texas v. White case after the war? It was prominent South Carolinian politicians, led by the Rhett and Memminger schools, who decided their state was to secede (first) from the Union and disseminated delegates with their proposal for secession, The South Carolina program, to the other slave states for adoption. Texas would be the last of the deep South to secede on the first of February 1861, despite the determination of Governor Sam Houston.
As Texan/Georgian I have the highest doubt that any non specializing university degree is teaching the above. Perhaps I am missing context.
no. i went to public school in mississippi (both high school and undergrad) and learned the real reason behind the civil war. there are definitely some teachers and textbooks who emphasize the states rights narrative, but that doesn't represent education for the entire south becausee it's not a monolithic region.
> The dividing point was slavery and Lincoln didn't really care about freeing them.
lincoln wasn't interested in freeing slaves at the beginning of the war, but he decided to make it an issue once he realized how it could help win the war. (this is very simplified summary btw. dubois has a good argument about this in his book "black reconstruction in america")
> 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.
read "forever free" by eric foner if you are interested in a better understanding. the institution of slavery and the institutions created in its place influenced a lot of our current system.
> 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.
"These takes" are from the articles of secessions that the various states published on why they wanted to leave. Georgia:
> The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property […]
Mississippi:
> In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
> Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. […]
South Carolina:
> The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Texas:
> […] Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. […]
Virginia:
> The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.
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.
Look, I'm a descriptivist, but my point is that there is nothing about the word "Republic" than implies representative democracy more than "Democracy." This distinction boils down to Federalist No. 10, when Madison uses the two terms differently... but he specifically says he's using these terms in a technical way to make a point:
>A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure, and the efficacy which it must derive from the union.
>The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic, are first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
He's using affected meanings, and he's going out of his way to say "varies from pure democracy" before referring to "pure democracy" as "democracy." Why is he doing this? Because the words mean the same damn thing!
People who are distinguishing them here are relying on peculiar definitions of these terms, which are largely peculiar to Americans-and I’d add, only some of them.
To an Australian or Briton or Canadian or New Zealander, “Republic” means not being a constitutional monarchy. I think it means something similar in a lot of other countries. Australia is a democracy but not a republic, because it has a King instead of a President. The US, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel (putting aside the Palestinian issue) are democratic republics, because they are democracies with Presidents instead of a King/Queen. China or North Korea are republics but not democracies; Saudi Arabia is neither a republic nor a democracy.
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.
It did. An average of 48 percent of Supreme Court rulings from 2010 to 2018 were unanimous. Another eight percent were nearly unanimous. That happens even though justices were appointed by different parties and the issues under discussion are normally complex and contentious. Clearly they can't be a partisan body if they so regularly agree despite having different politics.
But it's not clear how long that can be sustained now. The recent appointment of KBJ takes it in that direction. She has stated in court opinions that are themselves clearly unconstitutional, like:
"Having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.Ds and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States… These issues should not be in presidential control."
A SCOTUS judge should not be concerned with the "best interest of the citizens". That's not her job, that's the job of politicians. Making decisions on such a basis renders SCOTUS merely another House, but one that considers itself above the others in the power rankings. And what she's asserting is that the President should have no power over the executive branch, which is what Democrats want but isn't what the constitution says.
Not really. SCOTUS is mostly the same people. Eight years ago was 2018, people were whipping themselves into a frenzy about Trump, not much different to today.
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.
The AEC did nothing to stop the Australian government trying to criminalize the views of its political opponents, so it's not doing all that much heavy lifting.
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.
This argument has always seemed odd to me. The 17th amendment first took effect in 1915, and the whole Senate had been directly elected by 1919. Are we really going to claim that the late 1910's are when things really went off the rails? For example, to your specific point here, it seems unlikely that this made amending the Constitution harder. Excluding the Bill of Rights and the 27th Amendment (each a special case for its own reason), there have actually been more amendments in the fewer years after the 17th was enacted.
It's also unclear why one would expect that the Senate would be less partisan if its membership were selected by state legislatures. State legislators have a lot more partisan loyalty than the rest of us, both because they tend to be more ideological and because they are deeply dependent on the party for future career prospects.
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.
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.
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).
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.
> 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
Yeah but it's not going to, because the modern environment deeply favors a stronger federal government, no matter how much people might complain about it when they don't control said federal government. Arguably it's not even a "problem" so much as an inescapable result of the fact that the world of 2026 is vastly different than it was 250 years ago. A country composed of independent but united states makes a lot more sense when the fastest means of travel between them was a horse rather than an airplane or when your best bet for sharing information was...also a horse...rather than the Internet.
The real question is how you work with a system based on the idea of independent states where political power results almost entirely on the distribution of states that align with one of two dominant national ideological camps.
> 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.
> 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.
That changed in the wake of the South's surrender at Appomattox: The Civil War Amendments explicitly gave the federal government expanded powers. Sure, the southern states were forced to ratify those amendments before Congress would recognize their representatives and senators. But they brought it on themselves; it was one of history's most-horrendous examples of FAFO. And the South was saved from far worse by Lincoln's and Grant's desire to be conciliatory and Andrew Johnson's malign views. (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.)
> (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.)
Nothing validates this view more than looking at the modern republican party. This is especially blasphemous to say after MLK day, who's life was dedicated to attempting the fix the injustices of the south, and who's death is entirely and inarguably a result of the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south). At minimum the traitors should have been hanged in public view. The desire to be conciliatory has never been less vindicated -- it's not like the south all the sudden decided to adhere to constitution, they had to be forced to anyhow. It's a nice sentiment, but it should have been left at that.
> the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south)
Well, the south was the only place where there were any appreciable amounts of nonwhite people. "White supremacy" was just "the way things are" in the north, because they pretty much only had white people.
In 1900, decades after the end of the Civil War, the south was about one-third black; every other region (midwest, northeast, west) were less than 2% black.
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.
It's a permanent professional army, where are you getting this stuff? Switzerland has an air force and everything. They also have a large trained citizen militia but it's supported by a backbone of a professional standing army.
> They also have a large trained citizen militia but it's supported by a backbone of a professional standing army.
Less than 10% are full timers, the vast majority are conscripts and volunteers. Even officers generally aren't full timers[1].
All I'm saying is, there's a spectrum of 'Complete citizen militia, as envisioned by the framers of the US Constitution' all the way over to 'Standing army as it exists in the US today', and Switzerland is obviously much closer to the former than the latter.
This is why we originally instituted mandatory military service here in Sweden. To ensure that the army isn't representative of some special class, e.g. the nobility or the burghers etc.
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.
> 2nd reason is that people can move between the states easily
There is no requirement that states have to let anyone in without any action. California can easily levy a tax so high that only contributing people can enter. They don't want to....
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.)
This is one of many reasons why presidential systems are bad.
I find very strange that the presidential systems claim to be "republics", presumably because most people do not know what a "republic" had previously meant.
The most important principle of the Roman Republic was that it should not be allowed for any important civilian executive function to be occupied by a single human. All major functions should be held by 2 or more humans with equal power, e.g. 2 consuls for the supreme function (because it would be less likely for all of them to agree to do something abusive or illegal).
Only in exceptional circumstances, like war or natural catastrophes, it was fine to temporarily delegate power to a single dictator, to ensure fast decisions.
This principle of the Roman Republic was intended for avoiding the abuses of power, like those typical for kings. There is very little difference between most presidents of countries with presidential systems and absolutist monarchs, even if their function hopefully is not hereditary, but even this is not always true.
> This is one of many reasons why presidential systems are bad.
It is perhaps a consequence of some of the ways in which Presidential systems are suboptimal, but I don't think it is itself a way that they are bad. If you had a Presidential system and changed nothing else but making failure to pass a budget on a set timeline an election trigger, it would make things generally worse, not better, except maybe if the regular election interval was intolerably long to start with (in which case it would maybe be incidentally weakly, indirectly positive.
>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?
In a Parliamentary system there needs to be either one party with a majority or a coalition that agrees to rule as one party. If one party wins a clear majority it is rare for a government to fail to pass a budget or collapse early, as it'd require the party to turn on itself. In coalitions bitter parties can indeed force early elections and it happens all the time. It's the reason European countries have such unstable politics and frequently experience government collapse, "caretaker governments", "firewalls" and long delays after an election before a government can be formed.
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.
It might be cooperation through abdication, but it's still abdication. They are choosing to allow the executive to do things that would be under their control.
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).
> 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.
> I think this phrasing alone says a lot more about you than anything you typed.
I'm not sure it says anything about them: "inferior court" is the term of art for any court whose decisions can be appealed to a higher court [1]. It's not a derogatory term; 'inferior' is just the Latin for 'lower'.
> 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?
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.
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.
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 provides no mechanism for its own enforcement other than impeachment (not just of the executive, but of the top officials of other branches as well), but the party system makes that essentially impossible today. It might become just possible if the Senate were eliminated, but FPTP and gerrymandering would still present problems.
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.
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.
Uhhhhh... What? Are we living on the same planet? The Senate is absolutely terrible. Not only is it breathtakingly undemocratic, the modern rise of the filibuster raising the threshold to 60% makes it even harder to pass any legislation.
The weakness of the Senate has abetted the expansion of the other two branches as Congress has ceded most of its lawmaking responsibilities. But there are still limits. There are so many other knock on negative effects too: inability to pass laws leads to more enormous omnibus bills, increasing the influence of lobbyists.
Simply deleting the Senate entirely would go a very long way to improving the structure of the US govt.
Edit: incidentally, the main thing I've learned over the years about this topic is that most Americans (not necessarily you specifically) have simply never questioned the received wisdom about the US Constitution that they learned in grade school and are maybe even incapable of evaluating it dispassionately.
In a hyper-partisan age, it seems good to have some collegiality and requirements for cross-partisan cooperation.
If we can't agree on anything then maybe we shouldn't do anything. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Why are so many people so desperate to move here if things are going so badly? Much of the discontent is performative. How willing would you actually be to give up your spot and switch places with someone in Guatemala?
Maybe we need filibuster-style restraints for the executive too. Executive overreach is a major complaint people have about the current structure, correct?
https://fairvote.org has info on Ranked Choice Voting. It is, to me, the single most bang-for-buck reform we should have in government.
A voting system where voters give preferences to multiple candidates on a ballot takes away the "spoiler effect", where a candidate too similar to the two main candidates will split the vote.
We need a freer market of political parties for a number of reasons. People need to feel like political change is possible. The two main parties need more pressure to evolve or die within their section of the political spectrum. Allowing more political parties to exist allows splinter parties to have a chance. Imagine a "sane Republican" party, or a progressive party, or some hybrid-centrist party that likes unions and public education but doesn't like massive social services, and so on.
MAGA would be polling at 15% or less, I think.
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SCOTUS term limits is just an idea I heard once. Most other democracies have it in place.
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I am skeptical of the Senate's utility in a modern federal government - the difference between the population of Virginia and Rhode Island was far less extreme than the difference between California and Wyoming today. The electoral inequality is too much.
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Electoral college has to go for obvious reasons, as does gerrymandering.
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.
> 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.
I mean sure. But he's not even doing anything dictatorial. Most of his actions are well within the laws of the United States. Not more than any other president.
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”
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.
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.
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.
For decades, historians will debate how the United States ended up capitulating to a thin-skinned piece of foreskin—and how that failure damaged not only America, but destabilized other countries as well. Home of the brave, my hairy ass.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is more than one path to the crisis. The more likely one is when Trump tells SCOTUS he is not bound by their decisions. And when the Senate fails to convict upon the ensuing impeachment, where is democracy?
>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.
It's 100% both sides. We haven't had a president work to roll back his own power, since ... Hmm. Maybe Gerald Ford? I guess Carter was fairly principled on some of this.
This part of the system - executive power grabs - is supposed to be curtailed by the courts first and congress second in the US system.
> We haven't had a president work to roll back his own power,
this is just not true. For example, all under the Obama administration
* the closure of Guantanamo Bay and other black sites, the prohibition of torture as an interrogation method including updates to Army Field Manual and mandatory access of Red Cross to any POW, all represented a significant reduction in executive power in how we treat detainees.
* following the Snowden leaks there were several actions taken to curtail executive power in applying surveillance programs to both US citizens and non-US persons. these also rolled back several components of the PATRIOT act (passed under his predecessor we all know and love, Dubya)
* the signing statements reform meant the executive no longer had an effective line-item veto
* the AG under Obama implemented a new DoJ policy limiting the use of "state secret" privilege during litigations.
I agree with those things but they were not rollbacks of executive power. That was Obama using executive power to reel in bad policy, not ceding the power entirely.
Of course perhaps he couldn’t. Congress needs to do that, and the courts, and neither seem interested in doing their job. Lower courts sometimes step up but the Supreme Court seems to be on the side of a dictatorial executive for some time now.
What does Congress even do these days? Seems like half crackpot debate club and half hospice care facility.
There are light years of space between the behavior we're seeing now and "a president working to roll back his own power," and even that has arguably happened in many presidencies, depending on what you mean. You would need much more than that to demonstrate anything approaching behavioral parity on this dimension. Otherwise - yes, politicians from every party, forever, everywhere, exhibit some similar faults.
Democrat FDR was responsible for a lot of the expansionism of the federal powers of the modern era through threatening to pack the courts and 'the switch in time that saved 9'. Under his oversight the feds defended the state in Wickard v Filburn which opened the barn door to the massive expansion of the federal apparatus and everything being interstate commerce.
More importantly, the Democratic Party of his day was the true ancestor of the GOP of today. The Civil Rights Act caused truly massive shifts of southern voters to change from Dixiecrats to Republicans.
To believe elsewise is to believe that somehow Lincoln was elected by the same philosophies that run the red-state South.
FDR was taking drastic actions in response to a depression within the United States. In addition to many other issues like having old blue collars rotting on the street, expanding benefits for soldiers to boost morale (just in time for the 2nd world war), and setting some basic standards in the job market that we still enjoy today. Yes, if we're going to push the envelope, it should be in times of crisis and for the people.
Trying to compare that to what happened in 2025 just feels dishonest. But yes, if I had to sacrifice fast response to crises to not allow a felon executive to destroy the country in the course of 12 months, I vote to limit all the powers.
... I mean yeah. because FDR is not relevant. I am speaking about "long term" as in "within the lifetime of individual actors I can name and are political relevant today and are effecting plans making the US dramatically more authoritarian than I remember it to be just a few years ago."
George Washington also increased the power of POTUS substantially, from 0 to 1, but I don't think he's relevant to this discussion either.
You sound as if you might be one who would then say:
"In order to reverse this long term plot, a Democrat president should definitely use executive orders to accomplish this", etc. (Which is my point.)
No, no I wouldn't. That's how you get more EO's negated by the inevitable next shift, or court rulings that much more slowly get co-opted because we never codified them into federal law. I'd much rather end congress gridlock and get laws in that can't simply be thrown away by 1-6 people later on.
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.
22% is unlikely. The electoral college, the senate, the house, the state legiatures for constitutional ammendments. These are multiple layers that are meant to act as a check against a popular mob in a heat of passion.
If 3 people vote and 1 million are eligible but dont vote. Then 2 people vote for A and 1 person votes for B. A wins with 66% of the vote not .000000001% of the vote. Effectively those million people surender their votes to the other 3, or even just to the winners. They dont count anymore, they chose to not be counted when they chose not to participate. Whether those votes effectively disapear, or go to the winner or are divided based on the results, it doesn matter. If youre counting non voters you mignt as well get really pedantic and say that only the president, house and senate really get votes on a law so its .000000001% that vote on anything, but we dont because we known those votes represent the will of the people.
Then they are misusing the 22% argument. The 22% to win argument, is a specific arrangement of votes that is an argument against the electoral college. In that if someone were to merely win a the electoral college with 51% of the votes in each states but receive 0% of the votes in all other states, they could still win the presidency. So it is an extreme case of a president winning the electoral college despite a landslide crushing defeat in the popular vote. It is not about counting all non-voters as having been votes for the opponent.
They’re not misusing it. You are arguing things in your head instead of reading what is written. That you double down on it, when wrong, shows why you make up arguments with yourself.
Simply read what is written before making false claims against what you misread. Stubborn ignorance is still ignorance.
> 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.
> This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.
Tell that to the Republicans in Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.
And the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
The surface level reading of history is that everyone always agreed centralization of power is bad and operated in a gentlemanly way to further this principle, until Trump came along. But that's not the case at all. In the two parts of American history where I read more or less deeply (early republic and civil war), the factions bitterly vied for absolute power but were prevented from getting it through intangible American magic.
I didn’t say that. There’s been a few. Wilson, FDR, Jackson come to mind.
Trump is unique in that the previous folks predated the massive standing army and propaganda capabilities that exist today. The intangible magic is brave individuals and institutions. It’s harder for those individuals with the secret police and army running around.
>"through intangible American magic"
What is this statement even appealing to, and what are you getting at by saying it?
That America works and keeps working for reasons nobody understands. We seem to make a ton of mistakes, and often act in the same way as far less successful countries do, but somehow keep coming out on top. It often feels like our success is despite our actions, not because of them. That's what I mean by "intangible American magic".
That’s almost the textbook definition of American exceptionalism.
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.
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.
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.
To be clear, a plurality of individual voters voted for Trump and Vance's electors. Trump still had less than 50% of all votes cast. At 64.1% turnout, that means that less than 32% (approximately) of eligible voters voted for Trump.
Why would a small difference in voters supporting him or not matter if he has all the guns and fanatics willing to use them?
The number of Americans willing to check the other person on the ballot is a lot lower than the number of Americans willing to pick up arms when he ignores the law like all the other laws he ignores.
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.
Comparing the early republic to today is apples and oranges, disagreements and passions are supposed to go down as things settle down with time.
Instead, both parties display an obstinate lack of compromise and wishy-washy, unworkable platforms while the media is only happy to make all of it worse.
Increasing polarization is surely a symptom of problems and that needs to be analyzed, explained and addressed, not excused.
You make it sound like a civil war is a walk in the park, you do need more history and more imagination in order to understand the human cost of obstinance and shallow thinking.
Much of that was always in dispute and while the “freedom of states” stuff has intellectual appeal and often prevails over shorter periods, the trendline has always been towards one nation.
In the post constitution era, 17 amendments were passed by the house, including an amendment that would make states supreme by law. 6 years after the constitution was ratified, Marbury v. Madison established judicial supremacy for interpreting law, 11 years after that, the court ruled in McCulloch v. Maryland that states are subordinate to federal power.
Political compromise got it done, but centralized power is necessary for survival and prosperity. Congress and the courts realized this immediately. Most of the realpolitik of “states rights” is really about wielding tyrannical power locally.
> Most of the realpolitik of “states rights” is really about wielding tyrannical power locally.
I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.
Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it. Marijuana is still illegal and those undocumented immigrants are also illegal, more federal influence would make it so states cannot legalize those any more, is that what you want?
So states rights goes both ways, it lets states both be more progressive and more conservative than the average.
The states have nothing to do with your ignorant hysteria about foreigners. Unfortunately, the reactionary types have turned that into a dog whistle for their imposition on tyranny to deliver freedom, someday, maybe.
Marijuana is illegal. The states have largely chosen to change their laws on the subject as it was determined that it was creating more problems than it was solving. Additionally, the Federal government, while incapable of changing the law, loosened some of the disincentives for the states laws on the subject.
>I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.
> Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it.
The states are not compelled to enforce federal law. Doing nothing about people violating federal law has always been a right of the states. You are trying to, or already have in your head, conflate non enforcing federal law, with actively violating state law.
Where marijuana is legalized, it means the State made it legal in terms of State law, not that it superseded federal law.
Zero States have made illegal immigrants legal. Some states stop going after them and assisting the federal government in their immigration duties.
You are talking about state's rights and have no idea what the boundaries of those rights even are.
Many states have made it such that there is no functional distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Identical drivers licenses, access to the same services, and indeed protection from federal enforcement of immigration law.
Not helping arrest them != protecting them.
All of those things you’re mentioning are state services that they can offer to anyone because it’s not a federal issue.
This is what states rights look like and why the right is mocked for referencing it when they foam at the mouth once it’s used for things they don’t like.
It’s similar to people who claim the civil war was over states rights when southern states were pushing to have other state sovereignty ignored over their own laws when it came to returning slaves.
States cannot send their police officers to enforce immigration law, correct (see Arizona v. United States), but many states have gone further to make it illegal for their police forces to honor immigration detainers that federal agencies request when an illegal immigrant is arrested for a crime. That sure looks and sounds like a protection to me.
That sure looks and sounds like the state is electing to not spend its resources helping the feds do their job.
Protection would be actively circumventing the feds instead of saying “neat”, when presented with a request.
Unless you are operating under the mistaken belief that a “request” from the feds means mandatory compliance by the states.
These people are released, which does make the job of federal agencies more difficult, requiring immigration enforcement action in the streets as opposed to the jailhouse. You prefer it in the street, apparently, but I can certainly understand how others may see how these types of actions start to look like States actively frustrating legal immigration enforcement action. Or that it is de facto circumvention if not de jure.
The states in question have zero obligation to help make the feds jobs easier. The people complaining about this situation feel entitled to other states using their resources to help the federal government enact policies that they want enforced nationwide.
This is why everyone rolls their eyes when conservatives crow about states rights. They don’t actually want state rights, they want their views enforced on the other states.
I’m actually for less of states independence from the feds on a bunch of areas, and immigration is probably one of them, but as long as this is a tool in the toolbox that conservatives are eager to use, I’m going to call them out for bitching about someone else doing the same thing.
Sure sure, the street raids shall continue for as long as it makes people feel better to point out some sort of implied hypocrisy by conservatives.
No, the street raids will continue while this admin continues their authoritarian streak.
Whether or not the states help them be authoritarian is orthogonal to the chaos in the streets.
If you just want blue states to bend the knee and capitulate, you should say so.
Look, I’m not the one who supports street raids, that’s you. I’m not understanding your point anymore. Do you not want immigration law enforced at all?
The states that are lenient to immigrants don’t like the federal policy and so are choosing to not help them.
Not helping them is not hindering the feds, unless you feel entitled to the help.
Actively getting in the way is something like when Texas started trying to implement their own national border policy.
Tell me you at least recognize the difference between actively doing something against some group, and merely not helping them?
> Look, I’m not the one who supports street raids, that’s you.
lol, you sound like a wife beater “look you just gotta do what I say or I _have_ to hurt you. There’s no other alternatives babe”
An illegal immigrant commits a crime, say vehicular homicide. ICE lodges a detainer against this person, and the local PD refuses and instead releases the offender. As a result, ICE runs a tactical team out to go pick him up.
This is the outcome that you appear to believe is optimal, and you are intentionally using emotionally loaded words like "lenient" to attempt to guilt me into retreating from my position that this is, in fact, not an optimal outcome. In many cases like this additional crimes are committed before the offender is apprehended, crimes which are of course 100% preventable, without you and your "leniency".
>Tell me you at least recognize the difference between actively doing something against some group, and merely not helping them?
Technically speaking, you are right. These states are actively working against their own citizens, not the Federal government.
Ok, well you’re pulling out the ICE detainer shit so I know you’re deep in the sauce.
> Technically speaking, you are right. These states are actively working against their own citizens, not the Federal government.
If that’s your view then we’re never seeing eye to eye. Good luck with the new world order you’re getting.
Your initial claim was that some States are merely "not assisting" the Federal government with their immigration duties, which is actually not a choice they get to make since the controlling caselaw (again, Arizona v. United States) prevents them from doing this even if they wanted to. Local cops cannot investigate immigration status, full stop. I point it out that some states actually go further, and passed laws that bar their police from doing the following.
Feds: hey you arrested individual_x, he's in the country illegally and oh by the way has a few other outstanding warrants, can you please hold him at the jail house, we're going to pick him up for immigration proceedings.
Cops: sure thing, let us know when you get here
And now we get.
Feds: hey hold that guy you arrested, he's got a standing deportation order from years ago, hold him until we get there.
Cops: No, in fact, we're going to let him go.
You continued to imply that banning the former is somehow preferable, even though the latter results in ... street raids.
I'm not really seeing how I'm the bad guy here, and honestly I think your real policy preference is simply that no immigration law is enforced at all. You should have the courage to say so, since that is quite clearly the policy preference for a large portion of the electorate, and possibly a majority of the Democratic Party.
> Feds: hey you arrested individual_x, he's in the country illegally and oh by the way has a few other outstanding warrants, can you please hold him at the jail house, we're going to pick him up for immigration proceedings.
> Cops: sure thing, let us know when you get here
> And now we get.
> Feds: hey hold that guy you arrested, he's got a standing deportation order from years ago, hold him until we get there.
> Cops: No, in fact, we're going to let him go.
You’ve accurately described how states who do not want to assist the federal government, send instructions to their employees on how to not assist the federal government
> You continued to imply that banning the former is somehow preferable, even though the latter results in ... street raids.
The latter results in street raids because of the choices of the federal government and the current leader. It is not an immutable law of physics that street raids have to happen.
This is abuser logic. Do what I want or I _have_ to hurt you.
> I'm not really seeing how I'm the bad guy here, and honestly I think your real policy preference is simply that no immigration law is enforced at all. You should have the courage to say so, since that is quite clearly the policy preference for a large portion of the electorate, and possibly a majority of the Democratic Party.
My preferred immigration policies are ones that brain drain the rest of the planet for my countries benefit.
I am calling out how states not enforcing federal policy for free is an example of states rights.
This comment chain started with me responding to `Jensson stating
> I thought it was so states could knowingly house illegal aliens or illegal drug businesses without doing anything.
> Normally states wouldn't have that right, but I see many who think they should have it.
Which is patently false if you believe in states rights unless you are a hypocrite or belief that states only have the right to believe in the federal governments commands
I see conservatives actively oppressing blue states right now. Somehow states rights do not protect civilians from being mistreated, kidnapped and shot by violent agents sent by conservative minority.
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.
Maybe you're thinking of the 1st constitution, which was replaced because it made centralized power too difficult?
> This is what makes the country free and prosperous-- it was conceived under conditions that make centralization of power extremely difficult.
Well, and the isolation of the country by oceans on both east and west, and by the glaciers to the North, which make invasion by any but Mexico or Canada unthinkably expensive.
As for prosperous, a vast, then-untapped swath of forests, thick humus deposited by glaciers, and mineral deposits, all serviceable by waterways unprotected by competing nations, did play a minor role.
American exceptionalism is always a falsehood.
> The United States is a flawed system designed to protect the feudal, mostly southern property based system
A lot of the constitutional factors you object to - like smaller states having voting power out of proportion to their population, or the constitution being difficult to amend - are also shared by Australia, yet Australia never had race-based chattel slavery.
(Dispossession and maltreatment of indigenous people isn’t really comparable because (a) the US had that too and (b) to the extent that influenced the constitutional architecture, it didn’t really influence the aspects you are complaining about.)
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.
> 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
> 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 is only true if you omit a frame of reference. The slave states wanted slaves to count 1:1 when assigning representatives. The free states wanted them to not count at all. From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation. So yes, from one point of view the 3/5 compromise gave some states more voice than they should have had. From another point it gave them less. That's what makes it a compromise.
> From the point of view of the slave states (which is a perfectly valid point to claim as there isn't an objectively correct baseline here), the 3/5 compromise gave them less representation.
This is not accurate, and there was a baseline: one man equals one vote.
It was a compromise because the northern states didn't want to count slaves at all because they're not allowed to vote; they were just property.
Of course, the South wanted to count slaves (for census purposes) as a person, even though they couldn't vote.
By allowing slaves to be counted as 3/5 of a person, it enabled the South to have more representation in the House, since the number of representatives is based on the population of the state.
If they weren't allowed to count their slaves, they would have had fewer representatives in the House and wouldn't be able to control legislation, etc.
They wouldn't have done it if it resulted in less representation in Congress.
> 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.
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'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
That offer was not to the confederacy, he refused to negotiate with the confederacy. Its very hostile if workers form a union and the employee gives a sweet deal to each of those workers to leave the union while refusing to talk to the union, its the same thing here refusing to negotiate with their representative is very hostile.
> 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.
No, its because the states had formed a new union and they didn't want to betray that one. Lincoln refused to negotiate with them as a whole, he tried to negotiate with the parts. Its like telling enemy soldiers that they get a sweet deal if they betray their country and join yours instead, that will not get you many because most people refuse to betray their allies.
If Lincoln hadn't refused to negotiate with the confederacy as a whole likely the war would be much less bloody or maybe even fully avoided.
There was no reason to negotiate with the confederacy because these were US states.
Them leaving was a non starter. You claiming he refused to negotiate with them is just saying "Lincoln didnt capitulate to the Confederacy on the _one_ thing that was non negotiable".
> If Lincoln hadn't refused to negotiate with the confederacy as a whole likely the war would be much less bloody or maybe even fully avoided.
Confederates shot first at Fort Sumter. If they hadn't started a war over their desire to own people, it would have been avoided. You can sign up for your local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy here[1] if you want to keep peddling these revisionist views.
[1]https://hqudc.org/
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.
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.
> So is this what the South teaches in school?
> Does your history mention that Texas was the one who seceded?
> We know history better than ever before.
Do we?
Trying to find why you isolated Texas. Perhaps due to Texas v. White case after the war? It was prominent South Carolinian politicians, led by the Rhett and Memminger schools, who decided their state was to secede (first) from the Union and disseminated delegates with their proposal for secession, The South Carolina program, to the other slave states for adoption. Texas would be the last of the deep South to secede on the first of February 1861, despite the determination of Governor Sam Houston.
As Texan/Georgian I have the highest doubt that any non specializing university degree is teaching the above. Perhaps I am missing context.
> So is this what the South teaches in school?
no. i went to public school in mississippi (both high school and undergrad) and learned the real reason behind the civil war. there are definitely some teachers and textbooks who emphasize the states rights narrative, but that doesn't represent education for the entire south becausee it's not a monolithic region.
> The dividing point was slavery and Lincoln didn't really care about freeing them.
lincoln wasn't interested in freeing slaves at the beginning of the war, but he decided to make it an issue once he realized how it could help win the war. (this is very simplified summary btw. dubois has a good argument about this in his book "black reconstruction in america")
> 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.
read "forever free" by eric foner if you are interested in a better understanding. the institution of slavery and the institutions created in its place influenced a lot of our current system.
> 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.
"These takes" are from the articles of secessions that the various states published on why they wanted to leave. Georgia:
> The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property […]
Mississippi:
> In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
> Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. […]
South Carolina:
> The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Texas:
> […] Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. […]
Virginia:
> The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.
Well, that's like your opinion, man.
And cold, hard, indisputable, historical facts of record.
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.
Only if you believe "violet" and "mauve" are both the same thing, because they both mean "purple".
Look, I'm a descriptivist, but my point is that there is nothing about the word "Republic" than implies representative democracy more than "Democracy." This distinction boils down to Federalist No. 10, when Madison uses the two terms differently... but he specifically says he's using these terms in a technical way to make a point:
>A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure, and the efficacy which it must derive from the union.
>The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic, are first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
He's using affected meanings, and he's going out of his way to say "varies from pure democracy" before referring to "pure democracy" as "democracy." Why is he doing this? Because the words mean the same damn thing!
People who are distinguishing them here are relying on peculiar definitions of these terms, which are largely peculiar to Americans-and I’d add, only some of them.
To an Australian or Briton or Canadian or New Zealander, “Republic” means not being a constitutional monarchy. I think it means something similar in a lot of other countries. Australia is a democracy but not a republic, because it has a King instead of a President. The US, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel (putting aside the Palestinian issue) are democratic republics, because they are democracies with Presidents instead of a King/Queen. China or North Korea are republics but not democracies; Saudi Arabia is neither a republic nor a democracy.
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.
It did. An average of 48 percent of Supreme Court rulings from 2010 to 2018 were unanimous. Another eight percent were nearly unanimous. That happens even though justices were appointed by different parties and the issues under discussion are normally complex and contentious. Clearly they can't be a partisan body if they so regularly agree despite having different politics.
But it's not clear how long that can be sustained now. The recent appointment of KBJ takes it in that direction. She has stated in court opinions that are themselves clearly unconstitutional, like:
"Having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.Ds and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States… These issues should not be in presidential control."
A SCOTUS judge should not be concerned with the "best interest of the citizens". That's not her job, that's the job of politicians. Making decisions on such a basis renders SCOTUS merely another House, but one that considers itself above the others in the power rankings. And what she's asserting is that the President should have no power over the executive branch, which is what Democrats want but isn't what the constitution says.
Do you feel like there have been any significant changes to the political landscape in the 8 years since?
Not really. SCOTUS is mostly the same people. Eight years ago was 2018, people were whipping themselves into a frenzy about Trump, not much different to today.
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.
The AEC did nothing to stop the Australian government trying to criminalize the views of its political opponents, so it's not doing all that much heavy lifting.
Specificity helps here; which government and which political opponents?
eg: Do you refer to the government of Prime Minister Robert Menzies and its clandestine actions wrt organisers of the Vietnam moratorium protests?
* https://mhnsw.au/whats-on/exhibitions/persons-interest-asio-... etc.
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.
This argument has always seemed odd to me. The 17th amendment first took effect in 1915, and the whole Senate had been directly elected by 1919. Are we really going to claim that the late 1910's are when things really went off the rails? For example, to your specific point here, it seems unlikely that this made amending the Constitution harder. Excluding the Bill of Rights and the 27th Amendment (each a special case for its own reason), there have actually been more amendments in the fewer years after the 17th was enacted.
It's also unclear why one would expect that the Senate would be less partisan if its membership were selected by state legislatures. State legislators have a lot more partisan loyalty than the rest of us, both because they tend to be more ideological and because they are deeply dependent on the party for future career prospects.
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.
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.
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
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.
Naw. Bicameralism is dumb.
Abolish the Senate. End our vetocracy. (h/t Francis Fukuyama)
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.
>the last one, in the early 90s, took 202 years to pass [no not a typo]
I mean, it's not a typo, but it's also misleading. It wasn't an active campaign for 202 years. It was largely forgotten for most of that time.
> 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
Yeah but it's not going to, because the modern environment deeply favors a stronger federal government, no matter how much people might complain about it when they don't control said federal government. Arguably it's not even a "problem" so much as an inescapable result of the fact that the world of 2026 is vastly different than it was 250 years ago. A country composed of independent but united states makes a lot more sense when the fastest means of travel between them was a horse rather than an airplane or when your best bet for sharing information was...also a horse...rather than the Internet.
The real question is how you work with a system based on the idea of independent states where political power results almost entirely on the distribution of states that align with one of two dominant national ideological camps.
> 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.
> 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.
That changed in the wake of the South's surrender at Appomattox: The Civil War Amendments explicitly gave the federal government expanded powers. Sure, the southern states were forced to ratify those amendments before Congress would recognize their representatives and senators. But they brought it on themselves; it was one of history's most-horrendous examples of FAFO. And the South was saved from far worse by Lincoln's and Grant's desire to be conciliatory and Andrew Johnson's malign views. (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.)
> (I read a tweet some years ago that Gen. Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn, with multiple passes.)
Nothing validates this view more than looking at the modern republican party. This is especially blasphemous to say after MLK day, who's life was dedicated to attempting the fix the injustices of the south, and who's death is entirely and inarguably a result of the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south). At minimum the traitors should have been hanged in public view. The desire to be conciliatory has never been less vindicated -- it's not like the south all the sudden decided to adhere to constitution, they had to be forced to anyhow. It's a nice sentiment, but it should have been left at that.
> the white supremacist views and actions that were perpetuated, emboldened, and exported by the reconstructionist south (not that the north was innocent, far from it, but the majority of the burden inarguably on the south)
Well, the south was the only place where there were any appreciable amounts of nonwhite people. "White supremacy" was just "the way things are" in the north, because they pretty much only had white people.
In 1900, decades after the end of the Civil War, the south was about one-third black; every other region (midwest, northeast, west) were less than 2% black.
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.
It's a permanent professional army, where are you getting this stuff? Switzerland has an air force and everything. They also have a large trained citizen militia but it's supported by a backbone of a professional standing army.
> They also have a large trained citizen militia but it's supported by a backbone of a professional standing army.
Less than 10% are full timers, the vast majority are conscripts and volunteers. Even officers generally aren't full timers[1].
All I'm saying is, there's a spectrum of 'Complete citizen militia, as envisioned by the framers of the US Constitution' all the way over to 'Standing army as it exists in the US today', and Switzerland is obviously much closer to the former than the latter.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Armed_Forces#Personnel
This is why we originally instituted mandatory military service here in Sweden. To ensure that the army isn't representative of some special class, e.g. the nobility or the burghers etc.
Yes, it is by design. By the design of slaveholding states in the 18th century.
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.
> 2nd reason is that people can move between the states easily
There is no requirement that states have to let anyone in without any action. California can easily levy a tax so high that only contributing people can enter. They don't want to....
You are entirely incorrect, article IV prevents this.
And that misses the point entirely: parent's point is that greater mobility between states is a good thing.
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.
Because Mississippi, Missouri, etc.
People should not be condemned to poverty just because they were born in the wrong zip code.
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.)
This is one of many reasons why presidential systems are bad.
I find very strange that the presidential systems claim to be "republics", presumably because most people do not know what a "republic" had previously meant.
The most important principle of the Roman Republic was that it should not be allowed for any important civilian executive function to be occupied by a single human. All major functions should be held by 2 or more humans with equal power, e.g. 2 consuls for the supreme function (because it would be less likely for all of them to agree to do something abusive or illegal).
Only in exceptional circumstances, like war or natural catastrophes, it was fine to temporarily delegate power to a single dictator, to ensure fast decisions.
This principle of the Roman Republic was intended for avoiding the abuses of power, like those typical for kings. There is very little difference between most presidents of countries with presidential systems and absolutist monarchs, even if their function hopefully is not hereditary, but even this is not always true.
> This is one of many reasons why presidential systems are bad.
It is perhaps a consequence of some of the ways in which Presidential systems are suboptimal, but I don't think it is itself a way that they are bad. If you had a Presidential system and changed nothing else but making failure to pass a budget on a set timeline an election trigger, it would make things generally worse, not better, except maybe if the regular election interval was intolerably long to start with (in which case it would maybe be incidentally weakly, indirectly positive.
>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?
In a Parliamentary system there needs to be either one party with a majority or a coalition that agrees to rule as one party. If one party wins a clear majority it is rare for a government to fail to pass a budget or collapse early, as it'd require the party to turn on itself. In coalitions bitter parties can indeed force early elections and it happens all the time. It's the reason European countries have such unstable politics and frequently experience government collapse, "caretaker governments", "firewalls" and long delays after an election before a government can be formed.
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.
It might be cooperation through abdication, but it's still abdication. They are choosing to allow the executive to do things that would be under their control.
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.
Yes and:
The US House campaigns have steadily became more nationalized. Your proposal would reverse that.
I believe, but cannot prove, localism would lead to parliamentary style coalitions (caucus).
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" ?
There are many countries where prosecutors belong to the judicial branch, together with judges.
In USA however, they belong to the Department of Justice, which is a part of the government.
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.
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.
Distinction without a difference on the war powers act
Maybe, but my point is more that your conception and understanding of these things is terribly confused, incoherent, and just flat wrong.
For your own sake at least, it would be constructive for you to correct that.
The trend has been bucked by the fascists currently in power.
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).
A new DOJ might be able to go after the old one, except for one problem: the presidential pardon power is absolute, should he choose to use it.
> 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.
Note:
> No word games at all.
proceeds to play word games
> I think this phrasing alone says a lot more about you than anything you typed.
I'm not sure it says anything about them: "inferior court" is the term of art for any court whose decisions can be appealed to a higher court [1]. It's not a derogatory term; 'inferior' is just the Latin for 'lower'.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_court
> 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?
> 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
https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1qjau6v/bovino_t...
In direct violation of a court order not to use chemical weapons. https://turnto10.com/news/nation-world/judge-rules-against-i...
Not that you care but might as well share.
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.
>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.
[flagged]
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 provides no mechanism for its own enforcement other than impeachment (not just of the executive, but of the top officials of other branches as well), but the party system makes that essentially impossible today. It might become just possible if the Senate were eliminated, but FPTP and gerrymandering would still present problems.
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.
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.
Uhhhhh... What? Are we living on the same planet? The Senate is absolutely terrible. Not only is it breathtakingly undemocratic, the modern rise of the filibuster raising the threshold to 60% makes it even harder to pass any legislation.
The weakness of the Senate has abetted the expansion of the other two branches as Congress has ceded most of its lawmaking responsibilities. But there are still limits. There are so many other knock on negative effects too: inability to pass laws leads to more enormous omnibus bills, increasing the influence of lobbyists.
Simply deleting the Senate entirely would go a very long way to improving the structure of the US govt.
Edit: incidentally, the main thing I've learned over the years about this topic is that most Americans (not necessarily you specifically) have simply never questioned the received wisdom about the US Constitution that they learned in grade school and are maybe even incapable of evaluating it dispassionately.
In a hyper-partisan age, it seems good to have some collegiality and requirements for cross-partisan cooperation.
If we can't agree on anything then maybe we shouldn't do anything. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Why are so many people so desperate to move here if things are going so badly? Much of the discontent is performative. How willing would you actually be to give up your spot and switch places with someone in Guatemala?
Maybe we need filibuster-style restraints for the executive too. Executive overreach is a major complaint people have about the current structure, correct?
Interesting choices. Some seem straightforward, others debatable. Can you explain them a bit more? (or link to a blog post?)
No, I don't unfortunately.
https://fairvote.org has info on Ranked Choice Voting. It is, to me, the single most bang-for-buck reform we should have in government.
A voting system where voters give preferences to multiple candidates on a ballot takes away the "spoiler effect", where a candidate too similar to the two main candidates will split the vote.
We need a freer market of political parties for a number of reasons. People need to feel like political change is possible. The two main parties need more pressure to evolve or die within their section of the political spectrum. Allowing more political parties to exist allows splinter parties to have a chance. Imagine a "sane Republican" party, or a progressive party, or some hybrid-centrist party that likes unions and public education but doesn't like massive social services, and so on.
MAGA would be polling at 15% or less, I think.
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SCOTUS term limits is just an idea I heard once. Most other democracies have it in place.
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I am skeptical of the Senate's utility in a modern federal government - the difference between the population of Virginia and Rhode Island was far less extreme than the difference between California and Wyoming today. The electoral inequality is too much.
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Electoral college has to go for obvious reasons, as does gerrymandering.
Maybe I should blog about it.
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
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.
> 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.
I mean sure. But he's not even doing anything dictatorial. Most of his actions are well within the laws of the United States. Not more than any other president.
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.
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.
> 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”
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?
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.
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.
Relatively few people have the economic means to just pull up stakes and move states even if they had no family ties (e.g.) keeping them back.
The sort may be slow and incomplete, but it still seems preferable to the status quo?
For decades, historians will debate how the United States ended up capitulating to a thin-skinned piece of foreskin—and how that failure damaged not only America, but destabilized other countries as well. Home of the brave, my hairy ass.
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.
All three branches of govt have already abandoned its governing charter.
The nation is already in a state of low-intensity civil war.
It will switch to medium-intensity in the next 12 months before resolution. Likely to be short, the optimists say.
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.
I think my question is "if it's failing does it mean it's broken?"
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.
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.
>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.
Hint: Its easier to have balanced federalism when the federal government can't just print money and buy the states.
Losing the dollar's reserve currency status has economic downsides, but maybe the health of the republic demands it.
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.
There is more than one path to the crisis. The more likely one is when Trump tells SCOTUS he is not bound by their decisions. And when the Senate fails to convict upon the ensuing impeachment, where is democracy?
Edit: Tge == The
>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.
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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.
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There are very few things that have been more bipartisan than the concentration of power in the executive branch over the last 100 years.
It's 100% both sides. We haven't had a president work to roll back his own power, since ... Hmm. Maybe Gerald Ford? I guess Carter was fairly principled on some of this.
This part of the system - executive power grabs - is supposed to be curtailed by the courts first and congress second in the US system.
> We haven't had a president work to roll back his own power,
this is just not true. For example, all under the Obama administration
* the closure of Guantanamo Bay and other black sites, the prohibition of torture as an interrogation method including updates to Army Field Manual and mandatory access of Red Cross to any POW, all represented a significant reduction in executive power in how we treat detainees.
* following the Snowden leaks there were several actions taken to curtail executive power in applying surveillance programs to both US citizens and non-US persons. these also rolled back several components of the PATRIOT act (passed under his predecessor we all know and love, Dubya)
* the signing statements reform meant the executive no longer had an effective line-item veto
* the AG under Obama implemented a new DoJ policy limiting the use of "state secret" privilege during litigations.
The Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility is still open, and hosting detainees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
Obama rejected signing statements on the campaign trail, but his actions in office were more nuanced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_statement#Obama_admini...
Eric Holder, notable AG under the Obama administration had a very mixed record, and did not support limitations of his power, or oversight of his actions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder#Tenure_as_Attorney...
> The Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility is still open, and hosting detainees
remind me, who reopened it?
It never closed. Congress with support of many Democrats prevented its closure and Obama just kind of gave up.
Trump obviously wants it open and Biden kind of just ignored it so it remains.
I agree with those things but they were not rollbacks of executive power. That was Obama using executive power to reel in bad policy, not ceding the power entirely.
Of course perhaps he couldn’t. Congress needs to do that, and the courts, and neither seem interested in doing their job. Lower courts sometimes step up but the Supreme Court seems to be on the side of a dictatorial executive for some time now.
What does Congress even do these days? Seems like half crackpot debate club and half hospice care facility.
There are light years of space between the behavior we're seeing now and "a president working to roll back his own power," and even that has arguably happened in many presidencies, depending on what you mean. You would need much more than that to demonstrate anything approaching behavioral parity on this dimension. Otherwise - yes, politicians from every party, forever, everywhere, exhibit some similar faults.
Democrat FDR was responsible for a lot of the expansionism of the federal powers of the modern era through threatening to pack the courts and 'the switch in time that saved 9'. Under his oversight the feds defended the state in Wickard v Filburn which opened the barn door to the massive expansion of the federal apparatus and everything being interstate commerce.
> Democrat FDR
literally a century ago
More importantly, the Democratic Party of his day was the true ancestor of the GOP of today. The Civil Rights Act caused truly massive shifts of southern voters to change from Dixiecrats to Republicans.
To believe elsewise is to believe that somehow Lincoln was elected by the same philosophies that run the red-state South.
>>>" long term plot "
>> mentions long term history impacting modern federal powers
>... not like that!
FDR was taking drastic actions in response to a depression within the United States. In addition to many other issues like having old blue collars rotting on the street, expanding benefits for soldiers to boost morale (just in time for the 2nd world war), and setting some basic standards in the job market that we still enjoy today. Yes, if we're going to push the envelope, it should be in times of crisis and for the people.
Trying to compare that to what happened in 2025 just feels dishonest. But yes, if I had to sacrifice fast response to crises to not allow a felon executive to destroy the country in the course of 12 months, I vote to limit all the powers.
... I mean yeah. because FDR is not relevant. I am speaking about "long term" as in "within the lifetime of individual actors I can name and are political relevant today and are effecting plans making the US dramatically more authoritarian than I remember it to be just a few years ago."
George Washington also increased the power of POTUS substantially, from 0 to 1, but I don't think he's relevant to this discussion either.
You sound as if you might be one who would then say: "In order to reverse this long term plot, a Democrat president should definitely use executive orders to accomplish this", etc. (Which is my point.)
No, no I wouldn't. That's how you get more EO's negated by the inevitable next shift, or court rulings that much more slowly get co-opted because we never codified them into federal law. I'd much rather end congress gridlock and get laws in that can't simply be thrown away by 1-6 people later on.
I agree with you
no. that's a whole different sentence.
https://x.com/AustingrahamZ1/status/1029385497213366279
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.
22% is unlikely. The electoral college, the senate, the house, the state legiatures for constitutional ammendments. These are multiple layers that are meant to act as a check against a popular mob in a heat of passion.
Trump got 77,302,580 votes. US population is slightly over 340,000,000. That's at best 22.7% of the US population voted for Trump.
Who cares what the non voters say. They didnt vote! They voted for “whatever happens is fine by me”. Trump received over 50% of the vote.
Person A: A president can be elected with roughly 22% of the population voting for him or her.
Person B: That's unlikely.
A: It just happened in the most recent election.
B: Who cares!
Classic. Just absolutely classic.
If 3 people vote and 1 million are eligible but dont vote. Then 2 people vote for A and 1 person votes for B. A wins with 66% of the vote not .000000001% of the vote. Effectively those million people surender their votes to the other 3, or even just to the winners. They dont count anymore, they chose to not be counted when they chose not to participate. Whether those votes effectively disapear, or go to the winner or are divided based on the results, it doesn matter. If youre counting non voters you mignt as well get really pedantic and say that only the president, house and senate really get votes on a law so its .000000001% that vote on anything, but we dont because we known those votes represent the will of the people.
The person to whom you were responding very explicitly said "roughly 22% of the overall US population" [emphasis added].
But double down, dog. That's absolutely classic, too.
Then they are misusing the 22% argument. The 22% to win argument, is a specific arrangement of votes that is an argument against the electoral college. In that if someone were to merely win a the electoral college with 51% of the votes in each states but receive 0% of the votes in all other states, they could still win the presidency. So it is an extreme case of a president winning the electoral college despite a landslide crushing defeat in the popular vote. It is not about counting all non-voters as having been votes for the opponent.
They’re not misusing it. You are arguing things in your head instead of reading what is written. That you double down on it, when wrong, shows why you make up arguments with yourself.
Simply read what is written before making false claims against what you misread. Stubborn ignorance is still ignorance.
> 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.