It's certainly an interesting situation that wasn't explicitly spelled out in the law. But as far as everything that's working, it's realistically all within the legal framework of the Constitution. There are procedures to remove an unfit President, sure; but there's no requirement baked into the Constitution that requires those parties to act upon those procedures.
In short, it's a whole lot of short-sightedness of the Constitution combined with willing participants across multiple branches of the government.
The problems unearthed and the damage being done will take decades to fix just our internal issues, and it's very likely we will never resolve our international problems.
I don't know what the future holds for the United States, but we are certainly going to be operating from a severe handicap for quite a while.
Consider that most totalitarian states have constitutions that explicitly forbid torture, discrimination, and many other forms of government suppression of people. This does little in the face of a police state bent on suppressing the people.
The lines have definitely blurred a lot, especially since the early 1900's. And that's just between the branches, let alone the growth of govt in general.
Examples? The activist judges thing I can see, but I'm not so sure I'm concerned of a body with more singular authority (the president) delegating to a body with more democratic accountability and representation (congress), nor can I easily find any examples of it.
Can you expand? The Constitution gave the Executive powers that were then transferred to Congress and are now performed by the Federal Reserve?
So, if the president gave up his power to conduct monetary policy. Than good! But then that doesn't seem to correlate with Congress giving up their power so that they don't have to make unpopular votes and risk losing elections.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): As an independent regulatory commission, it oversees markets, yet some proponents of a unitary executive argue it should be subject to White House control.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC): A regulatory agency that, along with the Fed, has been subject to executive orders aiming to tighten oversight.
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC): An independent agency that issues regulations and recalls, often cited in discussions regarding the scope of executive authority.
Can you give any example of the opposite? A case where the executive has delegated power to the legislative or judicial branches?
Maybe we have a misunderstanding. I'm not asking a kind of broad speculative question like "hypothetically, what could a hardcore monarchist say to critique our constitutional system?"
I was asking for a plain old real-world example of delegation of power from the executive branch to another branch. In the real history of the USA. Agreed on one point, though: I can't think of one either.
The Constitution created SCOTUS as a political body.
The sole role of a Supreme Court Justice is to cast votes.
The constitution places zero restrictions on how a Justice decides which way to vote. The Justice is not bound by anything in deciding how to vote.
That includes bribery or other corruption. If bribery is proven, the Justice is subject to criminal prosecution. But conviction does not remove the Justice from office. And removal by impeachment does not undo the cases decided by the corrupt votes of the Justice.
Every vote of every Justice in US history was an "activist judicial practice" in the sense that each vote was made for personal reasons of the Justice that we will never know (opinions only reflect what a Justice chose to say, which in no way means it reflects the personal reasons for the Justice's vote).
Your comment is a political statement about a political body - although you seem to incorrectly believe you are making some type of legal statement.
The Constitution is designed such that it defines no rules and places no restrictions upon how Justices are to interpret the Constitution. The original design of the Constitution is that the Justices are to interpret the laws of the United States as they see fit.
There is no such thing as an "activist" Supreme Court.
The suggestion there must be an "Originalist interpretation" of the Constitution (e.g. it must be interpreted as intended by the Founding Fathers) is pure hogwash. If that were so, then by an "Originalist interpretation" the Constitution would already say so (and of course it doesn't). Nevertheless political conservative Justices actually made that part of their opinions that now impose the concept of "originalism" when interpretating the Constitution. A pretty neat magical trick by which the conservative Justices violate the philosophy of "originalism" to impose "originalism".
And as for "further down the line at the district level", there is likewise no such thing as an "activist" court - in the sense that lower courts, unlike SCOTUS, are constrained by the Constitution and statutes passed by Congress. There cannot be "activist" district courts to the extent that if they overstep their bounds, SCOTUS will be called upon to address it.
The phrase "activist court" is nothing more than a fictional invention of The Federalist Society. If there are actual politics being played in SCOTUS (this time I mean Republican vs Democrat), it is the Republicans through The Federalist Society and appointments to SCOTUS of Federalist Society Members. But now I am chasing down a rabbit hole that is best avoided.
This would be enforced how?
Bingo. The flaw in the constitution. The Executive holds the only enforcement mechanism in government: the FBI, military and other police forces.
Having majored in political science as an undergrad and then being a trial attorney for 40+ years, I would argue that my use of the word 'flaw' is probably misplaced. 'Flaw' implies it could (should) have been created differently.
Alas, I am unaware of ever reading a workable way to 'fix' our constitutional 'flaw'.
As far as I can tell the US system is designed for gridlock. Things like filibuster, lower house elections every two years, state elected upper body, electorate system are all designed to create girdlock.
While Americans as a whole are to blame for some of this they are working in a completely broken system. In tech we try not to blame a person when something goes wrong so we look at what process allowed this to happen. I think many of the US problems are explained by their underlying system which is basically a copy of the English one at the time of Independence with a monarch and a parliament. Unlike the English system though it barely evolved since then.
Even by the time of the civil war, Robert E Lee decided he was Virginian ahead of his national identity.
If you have a bunch of sovereign states, then you need some state-level evening out. If everyone is a citizen of one large state, you can just go proportional.
On top of this, it was never going to be easy to gradually move from one to the other with the issue of slavery looming large, so they didn't fix it. This was still a huge issue in 1848 when a lot of Europe was grappling with how to do a constitution.
So it stayed broken and here we are.
The US quickly realized that the loose federation wasn't going to work and centralized a lot of power. It should continue to evolve it's system.
It's worth noting that even the US doesn't think it's system is a good idea. When it imposes a new government on countries (like Iraq) it chooses a parliamentary system.
because theres no example in history that has worked better. Its unclear how much of the success of the US should be attributed to the Constitution (what history would have looked like if the US had a canadian constitution for example), but what cant be argued is that the US is the most successful political body in world history and it is the oldest continuous Constitution in the world.
Under that lens it makes sense that Americans are fairly conservative about changing the constitution and why the founders are so revered. Its just fucking worked out great for us until now. Its really a miracle in many ways.
You can very much argue about this.
If you've ever had the task of writing an essay about the nature of success, I don't think you would offer a sweeping statement like this.
i mean is it really hard to imagine why Americans might be wary to change things? maintaining a stable civilization is a pretty precarious undertaking.
That system explicitly encourages mucking with it. We have elections every 2/4/6 years. It has an amendment process. Parts of it, like judicial review and qualified immunity, were just plain invented.
Per Jefferson:
“On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, & what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, & consequently may govern them as they please. But persons & property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course, with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, & no longer. Every constitution then, & every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years.”
All im doing is explaining why Americans in the current moment are conservative about the constitution. Why are you failing to acknowledge this? Im not making a value judgement im explaining why people think this way.
The fact that the US Constitution is basically more sacred that the Bible when you talk to the average American is even weirder. The Founding Fathers are the Original Gods (Gangsters?).
because theres no example in history that has worked better. Its unclear how much of the success of the US should be attributed to the Constitution (what history would have looked like if the US had a canadian constitution for example), but what cant be argued is that the US is the most successful political body in world history and it is the old continuous Constitution in the world.
Under that lense it makes sense that Americans are fairly conservative about changing the constitution and why the founders are so revered. Its just fucking worked out great for us until now. Its really a miracle in many ways.
That’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_San_Marino.
The other bit, “the most successful political body in world history”, isn’t even a falsifiable claim; it’s pure opinion.
The Pope might disagree on it, for example.
For better or worse, our system today isn't quite what it was originally designed as... The Senate was originally selected by the state govts, not direct election... the Vice President was originally the runner-up, not a paired ticket and generally hamstrung as a result. The VP didn't originally participate in the Senate either, that came after WWII.
The good part about the constitution is there is a reasonable set of ground rules for changing said constitution with a minimum that should clearly represent the will of the majority of the population. (corrupt politicians not-withstanding)
The reasonable set of ground rules seem to favor states over the will of the majority of the population. It is possible to change the constitution with states representing only 25% of the population. And remember you'd only need a majority in each of those states so could be way less of the population.
Overall the system seems flawed in that instead of having clearly delegated areas of responsibility to states and then doing the federal system as based on the population of the whole country it muddled areas and then made a federal system that couldn't respond to the population.
There are clearly delegated responsibilities to the states... the 10th amendment specifies as much... that the govt has grown beyond this wouldn't have been stopped by a parliament any more than the current system.
The 10th amendment isn't clear. Too many areas are dual responsibility. That's never going to be clear.
I'm being a bit hyperbolic only to make the point... I don't think anyone's "rights" should include forced labor of anyone else. So certain things, even food cannot be a right... I would think that public lands and a right to hunt/gather or even some level cooperative gardening/farming might be okay as a middle ground though.
At the federal level the US system was designed for gridlock on purpose, with the premise that something shouldn't be federal policy without widespread consensus, and without that consensus it should be left to the states.
The problem is really that many of the gridlock-inducing measures have been thwarted, e.g. delegation of rulemaking power from Congress to the executive and direct election of Senators to prevent state-representing Senators from voting down federal overreach. But those things weren't just there to induce gridlock, they were also the accountability measures, so without them you put corruption on rails and here we are.
I'm not sure why Americans think that the creation of agencies is the problem when other well governed countries do the same. The idea that a legislative body could possible create appropriate regulation in a modern complex world is crazy. That's what a parliamentary system solves. It keeps the executive accountable to the legislative at all times.
Only if there is no other way to address the issues, but the system provides one. You adopt the policy at the state level instead.
> I'm not sure why Americans think that the creation of agencies is the problem when other well governed countries do the same.
The US at the federal level is larger than nearly all other countries. North Carolina has more people and a higher GDP than Sweden. California has almost as many people as Canada and a higher GDP. The US has the same order of magnitude in size and population as the whole EU.
Bureaucracies have diseconomies of scale. There is a point past which "larger" is no longer getting you significantly better amortization of fixed costs and is instead just increasing communication costs, adding layers of middle management, exacerbating the principal-agent problem and making you a more attractive target for corruption.
The US federal government is well past the optimal size for solving most problems; probably even California is too big.
You write this as a self evident truth but it isn't. In what way is having a single trucking standard for the entire country less efficient than having 50? In what way is having a single currency across the entire country less efficient than having 50? In what way is having a single standard for approval of medication less efficient than having 50?
The US's advantage is precisely because of it's scale. It provides a massive addressable market allowing companies to scale rapidly.
This is why issuing currency and interstate commerce (meaning actually crossing state lines, not the modern interpretation of anything that affects commerce anywhere) are among the explicitly enumerated powers of the federal government.
> In what way is having a single standard for approval of medication less efficient than having 50?
It allows large states to set their own standards and smaller states to choose which of the standards to apply, e.g. Arizona says you can sell anything in Arizona that you can sell in Texas, without requiring everyone to agree on how the trade offs should be made, e.g. California can have more stringent rules than Texas. Meanwhile people in Texas could still choose not to consume anything if it hasn't been approved in California and people in California could go to Arizona to get things they think California is being too reserved by prohibiting.
> The US's advantage is precisely because of it's scale. It provides a massive addressable market allowing companies to scale rapidly.
Which in itself has the tendency to promote megacorps and market consolidation over competitive markets with larger numbers of smaller companies, and consolidated markets themselves have significant inefficiencies and costs.
Meanwhile why would that require the federal government to insert itself into local education policy or be issuing subsidies to oil companies etc.?
The US system was designed as a grand experiment. It made a certain amount of sense at the time: the country as a vast plantation steered by a benevolent master with policy set by wealthy landowners and businessmen who knew what was best for everyone. It was a system already in place in the Americas for generations and most national arguments could be hashed out at the club over some fine imported brandy or, for people like Franklin, some imported tea.
As far as it goes, there have been worse set-ups.
The setup isn't the problem. The refusal to evolve is the problem.
I'd argue that it wasn't really the system in place. The system in place was one of states governing themselves. Before independence the states didn't really deal much with each other.
A similar problem in the United States is the excessive amount of law making by the Judiciary. In most countries the Judicary doesn't' make law it just tells Parliament that they need to change the law. This again means the consequences of who you voted for are not faced.
The pressure builds till there's a breaking point.
Slower democracy, sure, but fits advanced economies that need consistent small refactors and never full rewrites every 4 years.
But sometimes I think about the fact that you guys don't even have the metric system yet...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_New_Zealand_electoral_ref...
At the very least, we need a clarification on presidential immunity.
It was 49.8%, which is not quite a majority.
It's also worth noting that Kamala Harris received precisely 0 votes in the 2024 Democratic primaries.
[EDIT:] I see that the parent comment has now changed "majority" to "plurality."
If I could make one Constitutional amendment, it would be this: publicly finance all election campaigns, and make private contributions illegal bribery, punished by imprisonment of both the candidate and briber.
I think a competent opposition party would be great for the US. But regardless of the candidate, US voters had three clear choices in the 2024 Presidential election: (1) I support what Trump is going to do, (2) I am fine with what Trump is going to do (abstain/third-party), (3) Kamala Harris. I think it’s extremely clear 3 was the best choice, but it was the least popular of the three.
Was that less bad than what Trump has done in one year? Yes. But Trump in his first term was less bad than this, and recency bias means that what we didn't like about Biden was more prominent in our minds.
But my option 4 looks just like your option 2 in terms of how people voted. I'm just saying that the motive may have been different.
Democracy is a healthy process - I don't know why we buy the stupid line of "we need party unity" when what we need is an efficient expression of the voters will and having that expression is what best forms unity. There are some old Hillary quotes that make me absolutely rabid.
It's really a problem of money though. The DNC really are the king makers when it comes to candidates. That and PAC money are the requirements to get a nomination. At least when it comes to presidency. Smaller elections you get more freedom to have a successful without such things. The whole system needs an overhaul unfortunately and I don't see any candidate from any party looking to fix that any time soon.
That's only problem in the USA. Other western democracies are able to have snap elections done in two months.
The first couple states really end up determining who usually wins the nomination and financial backing. It takes time to move a candidate between places and set up multiple events and fundraisers. Now in state and city elections the US can do those quickly as well. Smaller area to cover and campaign and the community stays informed. It doesn't help that national elections involve institutions like the electoral college instead of a popular vote. That's a different problem though.
The only way this will change is if the rest of the world leaves America behind and the quality of life here becomes so bad that radical change becomes possible.
But you are right that Trump won the popular vote in 2024, so you can't blame that on the system. But a functioning democracy would have more constraints on him. Our legislative branch has been dead in the water for 20 years at this point.
Theres plenty we can do. That's off the top if my head. I'm sure if smart people sat down to think about it there are lots of practical and clever ideas.
The majority didn't ask for this. 49% of voters did.
We need changes that address the kind of people that are running for these spots and winning then go on to do a bad job. Congress isn't incentived to be effective.
We need to do something to fix this: gerrymandering ban, increase the number of Reps, add more states for more Senate seats, etc.
how is it possible that congress has consistent single digit approval ratings and they vote for things 90% of their constituents disagree with and still get elected? This is the core problem of American politics. Politicians are beholden to donors not voters.
You would describe this as being different from competitive?
I doubt any amount of money would matter if we had 1 representative per 30k people as written in the constitution, NY State is about 20 M people so you'd need to bribe ~300 of the ~600 representatives in order to get your way (and also do that for every other state).
They don't have to care about actually representing anyone. They can skip town halls, ignore requests, etc. Primaries are a very weak form of influence.
If you want numbers, reps in competitive districts hold more town hall meetings. And they also hold more personal staff (limited back in 1975) in their home states. This is kinda a no-brainer. If you have to care about re-elections, you'll try to help your local consituents.
>Or hear me out - the congress should start doing their job.
Well, we make them do their job by holding them accountable to the people rather than a billionaire donor class. Citizens United is at the root of all this.
If the majority of American voters elect snoopy the dog snoopy can do all of the things snoopy wants to do within the bounds of the law. Snoopy can use his bully pulpit to fight against dog restrictions in restaurants and grant pardons to previous offenders. Snoopy can ensure efficient spending of money on public water fountains accessible to canines... but if snoopy starts issuing open hand-outs to the red baron (snoopy in a moustache) that's when the other branches of government are supposed to step in - we aren't supposed to need to wait four years for the next election to stop open corruption (especially since corruption is really good at funding more corruption so there's a vicious cycle that can begin if you let it fester @see the recent FBI raid on GA election offices).
You mean like how President Trump just gave 10 billion USD of taxpayer money to a board operated by Private Citizen Trump?
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/gaza/trump-board-of-peace-firs...
Republicans who wanted to prevent Trump from doing this kind of shit were voted out.
This is what the voters want.
Gerrymandering keeps extreme politicians in office. Partisanship gets people to vote against their own interests. Media gravitates toward spectacle rather than substance, to the benefit of those that know how to use that; and social media in particular entrenches deeper into preconceived biases.
In short, manipulating voters is a profitable business. Electoral results are the output of that business, and voters are just the instrument.
1. Ranked Pairs voting for national elections, including eliminating the electoral college. Break this two-party duopoly of bad-cop worse-cop.
2. Enshrining the concept of independent executive agencies, with scope created by Congress, with agency heads chosen by the same national elections. (repudiation of "Unitary Executive Theory", and a general partitioning of the executive power which is now being autocratically abused)
3. Repudiation of Citizens United and this whole nonsense that natural rights apply to government-created artificial legal entities (also goes to having a US equivalent of the GDPR to reign in the digital surveillance industry's parallel government)
4. State national guards are under sole exclusive authority of state governors while operating on American soil (repudiation of the so-called "Insurrection Act"). This could be done by Congress but at this point it needs to be in large print to avoid being sidestepped by illegal orders.
5. Drastically increase the number of senators. Maybe 6 or 8 from each state? We need to eliminate this dynamic where many states hate their specific moribund senators, yet keep voting them in to avoid losing the "experienced" person.
6. Recall elections by the People, for all executive offices, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices. (I don't know the best way to square courts carrying out the "rule of law" rather than succumbing to "rule of the fickle mob", but right now we've got the worst of both worlds)
Importantly, prosecute every member of the Trump administration for their blatant respective crimes.
I agree with you that the Republican party has failed the country by allowing this to happen. But I think we can still do better.
More "big picture" ideas would be to fundamentally alter the House and Senate, and implement score/ranked voting to allow a multiparty system.
For sure. Question is what would be enough to regain trust? I don't really see it happening
That’s the problem.
I mean if I had to choose between being ok with Jews or supporting Hitler, i can understand why people would pick Hitler. The election of Hitler was really quite an indictment of the Jews.
(I am not saying Trump is Hitler)
These are system problems. Think in systems. No different than having an abusive family you have to decouple from for self preservation, just at geopolitical scale. Capital, people, information are all mobile, and can relocate as needed. There is nothing on US soil that cannot be replaced or replicated elsewhere on the globe (besides perhaps national parks and other similar public goods, which can hopefully be protected until improved governance emerges). Please, challenge me on this if you think it's wrong, I've put much thought into it to provide guidance to others.
The only thing we had of value was trust (value of US treasuries and the dollar) in the rule of law and stability, and we burned it up. Humans are tricky. Get as far away as you can from harmful humans.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/697382/record-numbers-younger-w... ("In 2025, 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they had the opportunity. The current figure is four times higher than the 10% who shared this desire in 2014, when it was generally in line with other age and gender groups.")
[2] Global Trade Is Leaving the US Behind - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-02-12/on-tra... | https://archive.today/dsI9R - February 12th, 2026
So don't present a candidate with shit vibes that people wont vote for? Democrats lost this election, if they got as many votes as they usually do they would have won.
Democrats in power would rather lose the election than break down their own power structure, that is the main reason Trump could get re-elected.
Mass deportation? Tariffs? Dismantling the government? Hate? All things he campaigned on. He is doing exactly what his voters were told he was going to do. Dems are going to win those votes? Unlikely, they’re not going to run a candidate that appeals to their values, which aren’t going to change.
> “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”: a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud A Trump voter hurt by the shutdown reveals the real reason the president attracts hardcore supporters.
> The president’s particular brand of identity politics — the racist attacks on blacks and Latinos, the Muslim ban, his cruel treatment of women — similarly depends on negative rather than positive appeals. Antoine Banks, a political psychologist at the University of Maryland, wrote a book on the connection between anger as an emotion and racial politics. When politicians gin up anger, an emotion that necessarily has a negative target, voters tend to think about the world in more racial (and racist) terms. Trump makes his voters angry, he centers that anger on hated targets, and that makes them want to take his side.
> This is what makes Trumpism work. This is the dark heart of our political moment. Even people who are tremendously vulnerable themselves, like Crystal Minton, support Trump because of his capacity to inflict pain on others they detest. The cruelty, as the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer says, is the point.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/tr...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/florida-government-shu...
States' Rights have been slaughtered by these false patriots.
It's completely foreign to the US or the Anglo-Saxon world in general. The military as the final guarantor of state security is a continental European thing (and removing this has been the goal of many army reforms in Europe since the end of WW2).
The US thinks it is the check for Europe but this offers no check for the leader of a superpower such as the US.
(It's apparently a flaggable offense to believe a legitimate republic is measured by making sense even if making sense goes against Anglo Saxon sensibilities since Cromwell.. I guess we can call time of death on the city on a hill.)
Is that because of scarcity? We’re manipulation? Or something else?
Y'all have proven how worthless that piece of paper is.
It’s not impossible for the USA to get there one day.
These things can be fixed even though it's difficult. Sometimes the pressure just boils over. Americans are a lot more defeatist about their politics than in many other democratic countries.
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Change that seems inevitable in retrospect often feels like a surprise in the moment. France its on its fifth republic. A second American republic is not impossible.
Au contraire, a Constitutional Convention of the states to define the way they can all agree to be united.
Just like the first time.
There weren't that many states back then anyway.
And I wouldn't mind if the American constitution did provide all of these tremendous benefits that everyone bangs on about all the time. That'd be great! But it turns out nobody's really tested that, until now.
And you get an F, my friend. Hard fail.
Which later constitutions do you grade higher? Who has stronger rights?
If you put 500 mock Constitutional conventions together at universities and cities across the country, I would polymarket my 401k that none of them would come up with the same structure we have today in the US. Many republics founded since 1791 have far better democratic structures than the US does. I call the US a semi-democracy because of our Senate, Electoral college, gerrymandered House districts and first-past-the-post voting.
Edit: I got "danged" so here is my response to the person below -
Consider the bill of rights and federal limits separately from the structure of government.
I believe France and Australia have better "democratic infrastructure" and I'm sure they aren't the only ones.
I'm not talking about legally protected rights, I'm talking about the "democratic infrastructure". Voting systems, legislative assembly design, power balance, and so on.
I don't know about trust but the constitution isn't what enabled this type of behavior, it's the legislature. They've been abdicating their duties to executive controlled bodies (FCC, FDA, FTC, EPA, etc.) and allowing the president to rule through executive action unchallenged. They could have stopped these tariffs on day one. SCOTUS isn't supposed to be reactionary, congress is.
The constitution has all the mechanisms in place to control the president, they just aren't being used by the legislature.
It's a tricky problem that has a number of proposed solutions. I'm not going to act like it's a silver bullet but I think open primaries in federal elections would go a _long_ way towards normalizing (in the scientific meaning) the legislature and allowing people who want to do the job, rather than grandstand, into the offices.
Even if part of the tariffs are rolled back, we may see other ones remain. And I bet they will not make it easy for people to get their money back, and force them into courts. Not that it matters. If people get their money back, it will effectively increase the national debt which hurts citizens anyways.
And let’s not forget the long-term damage of hurting all of the relationships America had with other countries. If Trump wanted to use tariffs as a tool for emergency purposes, he should have just taken action against China and made a case around that (pointing to Taiwan, IP theft, cyber attacks, etc). Instead he implemented blanket tariffs on the whole world, including close allies like Canada.
In the end, my guess is China and India gained from this saga. And the Trump administration’s family and friends gained by trading ahead of every tariff announcement. Americans lost.
This is kind of a bizarre whataboutism to throw in there. The current administration (with the full support of Congressional majorities in both houses that have largely abdicated any pretense of having their own policy goals) has been flouting constitutional norms pretty much nonstop for a year now and literally ignoring court orders in a way that probably no administration has ever done before, and yet the playbook they're following for extrajudicial activity apparently is from the Democrats? Just because there's bad behavior on both sides doesn't mean that the magnitude of it is equal, and in terms of respect for the rule of law the behavior of the current administration really has no comparison.
You can answer these questions for yourself and decide. But for me it’s clear that Democrats have repeatedly violated the first and second amendments and normalized those practices. They’ve played a part in creating the norms that now are exploited by the Trump administration. I consider these amendments to be way more important and consequential than a misuse of IEEPA.
I guess what I’m saying is the two sides are indeed comparable, even if I agree the Trump administration is a greater violator of laws and norms than anything before. And we shouldn’t ignore the rot on either side but instead strengthen the constitution to avoid these abuses.
What is the emergency with China?