The last few weeks have been one story after another about the blizzard of activities of the Trump administration. Just over 77 million people voted for Trump, and most, but not all of them are very happy with what he is doing. But over 75 million people voted for Harris and another 1.8 million voted for other candidates. So it was no landslide in terms of the popular vote, Trump got only 48.9% of the votes cast, less than half of them. A very large number of Americans, and I am one of them, are increasingly concerned about both what changes he is trying to make and how he is making those changes. “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” said David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School.
What does this all mean, and what should we dissidents be doing about it?
The United States has the oldest Democracy still operating under its original Constitution of all the countries in the world. The great strength of our Democracy is our Constitution. And the great strength of that Constitution is the separation of powers. When it was signed in 1789, the most common form of leadership across the world was a monarchy, absolute rule by a King or Queen. We took the giant step of saying we did not want one person in charge of making all the decisions.
If you have not recently read the Constitution, take a few minutes and read the first three Articles defining the Responsibilities and Powers of the three branches of our government. It is just 10 pages and here is a link to see it - https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution defines the very broad Powers of Congress starting with “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States”. It goes on for about a full page defining all of the Powers of Congress. Article 2, Section 2 defines the Powers of the President in just three paragraphs. The second and longest paragraph specifically calls out, “He shall have the Power, with the Advice and Consent of the Senate…”. How often has that happened in these first weeks? Article 3 defines the Judicial System, headed by the Supreme Court. Three separate branches, each with different powers and responsibilities creating checks and balances.
Such divisions of power and responsibilities are very inefficient. For countries ruled by a monarchy, life was much simpler, whatever the King says is the law. But that separation of power is the greatest strength of our Constitutional democracy, and why we have had the same form of government for 236 years. The single most important thing that we need to make happen is to make sure that the checks and balances intentionally put in place in the Constitution by the separation of powers remain in place.
One of the most valuable things I learned in my Georgetown education was the Jesuit principle of Thesis – Anthesis – Synthesis. No one has all the good ideas. Discussion, dispute, and debate can let both the good parts of every idea stand out and identify the weaknesses in that idea. What we need to do now is embrace the strengths of our Constitution and have those discussions, debates, and especially disputes over the Trump initiatives. This will not be fun for anyone, but Trump is laying out a Thesis of radically changing the structure of our government and the Powers of the Presidency. There needs to be an equally strong Anthesis of adherence to the Constitution and to the laws on the books that have been passed by Congress. If this is done, the Synthesis will likely not be the same as the government was the morning of January 20th when Trump took the oath of office. There will be changes, but if they are a Synthesis of the best ideas from both sides, they will likely be very good changes.
For most of our history Congress was the most powerful arm of our government and the role of the President was to implement the laws they passed using the budget they defined. FDR significantly expanded the role of the President in first dealing with the Depression and then WWII. But he did so by having laws passed and amending the Constitution. Trump is attempting to redefine the roles of the President by issuing Executive Orders, and improved efficiency is his justification. Why is he issuing Executive Orders to do this and not pass laws to do this, given the majority that the Republicans hold in both houses? Those laws could not be undone by a future President with another Executive Order. Ezra Klein had a great answer to that question in his video post Don’t Believe Him and I suggest you listen to it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8QLgLfqh6s&t=11s. If any of his initiatives went to Congress and did not pass, he would look weak and he is not willing to take that chance.
I think one of the few things that all of us agree on is that there are inefficiencies and waste in our Federal Government, and we would like to see improvements. But that improved efficiency will come with a serious cost if there are not the checks and balances called for in our separation of powers in determining where the inefficiencies are and how to fix them. E.g., closing down USAID is not within the defined Powers of the President. In his first 60 days Hitler was able to change the German government so that he had the ability to make, change, or drop any law with no checks and balances. That approach gave him the ability to quickly modernize Germany and create a world class military very quickly. But at an enormous cost. I am not equating Trump and Hitler. I am saying we need to learn from that history that checks and balances are more important than great efficiency.
Trump is clearly testing as many boundaries as he can very quickly, flooding the zone. He needs to be stopped quickly and consistently, or we will lose that separation of powers that is the basis of our Constitution and the strength of our democracy since 1789. He cannot be allowed to decide to set aside and ignore laws that are currently on the books. If 30 days’ notice is called for, then 30 days’ notice must be given. If consent by the Senate is required, then that action cannot start to happen until that consent is given. Issuing Executive Orders does not create new laws, and his subordinates cannot take actions as if they had. He cannot be allowed to take away rights guaranteed in the Constitution such as citizenship for anyone born in this country, that can only be done through the well-defined process of amending the Constitution.
To apply checks and balances to the Trump blizzard of Executive Orders we have probably moved beyond discussion and debate, so we will need to use disputes. Lawsuits have been the most common form of dispute so far, and there is nothing wrong with that. Two federal employee unions sued Monday to block DOGE from accessing that system. If there are multiple class action suits by Federal employees who are terminated without the process defined in laws and collective bargaining agreements, the resolution of those lawsuits will define the checks and balances for the federal workforce. Is a raft of lawsuits messy and inefficient? Yes! But would you prefer a King making all the decisions with no recourse for the decisions you don’t like? Including the decision on if and when the King steps down?
Many of the challenges should come from Congress because it is their Powers that are being challenged by the President. Do our elected representatives in Congress want to be just a rubber stamp on Trump’s edicts? The fact that Trump appears to be afraid that his Executive Orders would not be passed into law, even with the Republicans control of both houses, gives me hope that the Anthesis can be strong enough. We as citizens, need to make sure our elected officials know how important we think it is to quickly and consistently respond to Trumps actions with a clear definition of what the President can and cannot do under the Constitution.
One of the clubs that Trump is making major use of is the threat that Republicans who do not stay in line and follow his directives will not even be on the ballot in the next primary when they are up for reelection. Each of the two major parties have total control over their primaries, even though we taxpayers pay for them. The Republican leadership in each state can determine what candidates are on their primary ballot. And they control the assets of people and money to support certain candidates. The Democrats have the same capability. For years Congress has had approval ratings around 20%, yet 94% of them get reelected. One of the big reasons for that is total control that the two major parties have over the primaries and the election processes in each state. Does this make sense?
How can we change this to get more choices on the ballot? Independents have been locked out of the primaries for years and those of us who are moderates and don’t think that bipartisan is a four letter word are increasingly being left out of the process. The goal of our founding fathers has been changed to Government of the Party, by the Party, and FOR the Party. There is a new third Party that has recently been formed with the goal of updating our electoral processes to break that wall that the Republicans and Democrats have built around our elections, the Forward Party. Check out their website at https://www.forwardparty.com/. If you were not happy with the choices you had when you turned in your ballot in November, supporting the Forward Party could be a good way to change that.
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