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Supreme court, July 2024: "the president is the god king, and cannot be beholden to laws of mere mortals"
The Guardian, July 2025: "i don't know guys, checks and balances seem to be failing, don't you think?"
checks and balances were already fucked but whatever was there was finally shot dead and thrown in a ditch like a Noem family pet a year ago, dickheads, what the fuck are you talking about
The AskHistorians podcast called it, in the aftermath of January 6 riots. They did not explicitly compare January 6 with the fall of Roman republic, but explained why the republic fell. The institutions got too corrupt in spite of checks and balances. The concept worked many times and was threatened before, until the breaking point had been reached. Brutus proclaimed he saved democracy after assassinating Caesar, but the crowd booed and heckled him because Caesar was popular and could actually get the job done, unlike corrupt politicians who typically make excuses not to do what the people want, because the elites would not want to ruffle their feathers of their patrons and their own interests.
People are not dumb. If politicians are doing what the people want, populism would never be a thing.
If politicians are doing what the people want, populism would never be a thing.
Populism works to get politicians elected because it is nothing more than politicians telling the people what the people want to hear.
Populism has nothing to do with actually doing what is in the best interests of the people, it's about making the people believe that their interests are going to be served.
Checks-and-balances rely on:
Voter interest in civic participation
Careerist politicians and bureaucrats
If voters have no civic interest and prefer masturbatory prejudices to serious consideration of civic duty, and if 'careerist' politicians are given immense power and wealth for stepping aside (either by retirement or by simple non-action when in office) thus rendering self-castration of their office personally meaningless to their career path/personal fortunes, checks and balances don't mean shit.
All systems are reliant on a population's willingness to obey and enforce their rules. We in the US, apparently, have very little appetite for that anymore.
Say it with me, kids. "We're fucked!"
*failed
The Guardian. When news breaks, you can guarantee they'll say something about it in five to fifteen years.
Better late than never?
Oft mentioned is different from famed.
*has failed.
**completely and totally
***repeatedly
I spent the first 3/4 of my adult life listening to all politicians and deciding who I thought had better ideas for the issues that concerned me. The last 12 years have taught me that there are simply to many fucking republicans. That wouldn't be a problem but every single last one of them are worthless pieces of shit, more interested in cruelty than accomplishing anything decent.
The last 12 years have taught me that there are simply to many fucking republicans.
So many that they've been bleeding into the Democratic Party.
Felt like I was taking crazy pills when Kamala Harris spent the back half of October leaving her very popular VP candidate on the side of the road while doing a whirlwind tour with... Liz fucking Cheney. Between that, importing all of Keir Starmer's UK campaign staffers, and letting Michael Bloomberg manager her social media, it's a wonder she didn't do worse.
That wouldn’t be a problem but every single last one of them are worthless pieces of shit
Waking up every day and saying the Pledge of Allegiance on a pile of Ayn Rand novels will do that to you.
I honestly think that she should've won but the repubos cheated, as they do every time. There's no way Trump swept every single swing state. All the polls showed it's be a tight race but for Kamala to lose so utterly? Now, I've made fun of election deniers in the past, I see the irony. But its suspect.
I honestly think that she should’ve won but the repubos cheated, as they do every time.
When Republicans cheat and win, Democrats stomp their feet but insist there's nothing they can do.
When Republicans cheat and lose, Democrats say "demographics is destiny!" and ignore the problem until the next election cycle.
There’s no way Trump swept every single swing state.
Eh. Harris was a dogshit campaigner who inherited a dogshit campaign from a senile neoconservative hack with underwater approval numbers. Had Walz been at the top of the ticket (or Pritzker or Baldwin or maybe even Klobacher or Warren) things might have gone differently. Their political instincts were miles better than Harris's, which is why they stomp all over her in the 2020 primary.
No shit Sherlock.
Hahahaha
Breathes in hahahahaha
Someone just noticed this?
We ain’t had “checks and balances” since Allen Dulles and Curtis Lemay had JFK and RFK killed. We’ve been feeding off the husk of America like spider crabs.
We ain’t had “checks and balances” since Allen Dulles and Curtis Lemay had JFK and RFK killed.
I mean, the Truman-Era Red Scare / Eisenhower-Era "Operation Wetback" / "Operation Eagle Eye" weren't exactly America's finest hours, either.
And you only have to thumb through a few chapters from Hoover back to McKinley to notice a certain historical weight of Fascist tendency baked into the American bureaucracy post-Reconstruction Era.
Honestly, the more notable moments in US History are when "Checks and Balances" actually work. Like, Nixon actually leaving office before the Senate could impeach him was something of a high water mark for the country, precisely because it suggested these institutions functioned as advertised (eventually). Even Comey threatening to prosecute Hillary was something of a moment for the country, as it suggested a President's Wife Turned Senator Turned Mega-Bundler Turned Presidential Nominee wasn't impervious to the consequences of her shitty stupid decisions.
But then Ford pardons Nixon and Trump fires Comey and you have to come back down to Earth to reconsider whether this game is rigged from the start.
It's sad to realize that there never really were any "checks and balances". It was all based on an honor system, that relied entirely on no one trying to cross any boundaries.
As soon as Trump pushed even slightly against those so-called guardrails, they simply fell over.
It relied on voters actually caring about corruption and imposing a cost on corrupt behaviour. Unfortunately, Americans gonna American.
I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?
Our government is completely populated with cowards who don't even want the responsibility of the power of their positions. And our civics education is so poor that they know the only thing the masses pay attention to is the president. So everyone can collectively fuck off with their jobs and face no backlash.
There are no "independent branches of government". They are all governed by people of the same party. Your assumption copies the beliefs of the original founders that some imaginary "civic duty" would overrule all partisanship, when all recorded political history going back to the earliest civilisations show us that partisanship is an inevitable phenomenon in human societies.
When the person in charge puts people in those positions to hand the power to him. It’s not willfully ceding at that point, it’s a concerted effort.
With Trump's staff and cabinet choices sure, but he didn't put Congress or the Senate together, the voters did. Unfortunately both are filled with Republicans who are all to happy to be hand over their power or Democrats who are too scared to use theirs.
Now it's too late, Trump has his own personal paramilitary with a budget that on par with military spending. At this point Jeffrey Epstein's ghost has a better chance of taking Trump and MAGA down then a Democrat.
Of course all that would do is put a Democrat in charge who would just slow the decline for four years.
He didn't put the House and Senate there. They're the ones ceding power.
Every country which went into dictatorship had checks and balances. US checks and balances were not unique.
All systems are honour systems at their core. If no one respects the rule of law then laws don’t matter.
Someone writes the checks to tip the balance.
It broke the minute Trump exposed the fact that the Constitution says exactly nothing about what to do if anyone chooses to violate it, and the answer to the question of "What are you gonna do about it?" was essentially "Nothing."
It's really been a broken system since Marbury v. Madison (1803). The lesser known finding of that case was that SCOTUS can declare something to be illegal or a violation of the law but can't do shit beyond that. It took over 200 years for a President to fully understand SCOTUS has no real teeth. If you control the enforcers of the law, you ARE the law.
It's not that it took 200 years for a President to understand that, it's just that all Presidents since then and until trump weren't demented sociopath rapists who couldn't be arsed to think of the good of anyone else.
Using the law enforcement arm to specifically commit national crimes against citizens was more often than not considered what it was; treason.
There were definitely a couple literal demented sociopath rapists in the mix. What changed wasn't the law, but the political context and institutions.
It took decades for the GOP to systematically destroy faith in institutions.
It took years of Trump presidency followed by a strong reaffirmation of popular support in the last election.
It took Obama and Biden abdicating their duty to their electorate by respectively refusing to nominate a new Justice and refusing to prosecute Trump for sedition.
It took the media failing their duty to inform voters of Trump's past, intentions, and state of mind.
It took decades of slow work by the right to reframe the media landscape to be less truthful and more obedient.
It took social media and their algorithms to galvanize fascism.
It took an entire cold war and war on terror to normalize an absolutely abnormal and near insurmountable militarization of domestic law enforcement.
The US constitution is not to blame. That's a cop-out answer, a lame scapegoat. America wouldn't be saved by passing amendments alone. The rot goes far deeper than that. Just like the 13th amendment didn't do much to fix the system of racial injustice the US was built on. If it was just a matter of wording, a silly loophole, it wouldn't have worked. It worked because the vast majority of Americans abdicated their allegiance to the Bill of Rights, to Human Rights, and to Democracy.
It took Obama and Biden abdicating their duty to their electorate by respectively refusing to nominate a new Justice and refusing to prosecute Trump for sedition.
? Obama was stuffed by McConnell on Garland, and Biden oversaw the appointment of Jack Smith to investigate Jan6 as well as the top secret stolen files.
Every president in some way or form pushed those boundaries without any consequences. Even the lightly better ones, like the shade of grey only lightly different than black.
Trump is the culmination of every president taking its way with the constitution without even a slap on the wrist.
It's not a check and balance when the Executive has gone rogue and the Justice Department operates under the Executive.
There is no check. There is no balance.
Remove the Justice Department from the Executive branch and place it under the Judicial branch.
Similarly, there's no check and balance on the Supreme Court either.
Make it so that the House and Senate can over-ride a bad Supreme Court decision without having to pass an Amendment to do it.
It's rock-paper-scissors, guys. President can veto the House and Senate, the Judicial should hold the executive accountable, and the House and Senate should be able to over-ride the Supreme Court.
and the Justice Department operates under the Executive
Does someone need to retake civics or read an org chart? The Justice Department is basically the government's attorney's/prosecutors. They represent the federal government at court. They're not the criminal (article 3) federal court system or judges.
They are the group whose own internal policy prevents them from investigating and prosecuting the executive.
Until there's an independent agency capable of holding the Executive accountable, there is no check and balance.
According to the constitution, Congress would be the check against the executive.
While there is structural defect in the absence of a government office that could prosecute the president for violations against the government, the DOJ policy is based on executive structure & separation of powers stipulated by the constitution & its interpretation by SCOTUS.
The executive branch enforces federal laws including by prosecution by authority the president supervises & delegates to the branch's departments. As supervisor of executive branch prosecutions & bearer of executive privileges (to ensure the branch's (1) effective operation & (2) separation of powers from other branches), criminal prosecution of the (office of) president creates some conflicts. The president would basically be both defendant & prosecutor in their own criminal trial. They'd decide what evidence to present & withhold for & against them in their prosecution & defense. While the president can delegate prosecutorial powers to other people, that delegation is revocable.
The president is charged to perform unique official duties no one else is authorized to perform. In the DOJ's estimation, criminal adjudication (in the judicial branch) with "protracted personal involvement of the president in trial proceedings" would impact operation of the executive branch in ways that challenge separation of powers.
under our constitutional plan as outlined in Article I, sec. 3, only the Congress by the formal process of impeachment, and not a court by any process should be accorded the power to interrupt the President or oust an incumbent
Impeachment by Congress is available in the constitution to open a convict to criminal prosecution (impeachment judgment clause).
This was all explained in your document.
Agreed, they are SUPPOSED to be the check, but the problem is, they aren't.
The way it's SUPPOSED to work is they impeach the President in the House, remove them in the Senate, then turn them over to the Justice department for criminal investigation and action.
If this process is actually going to work, what needs to happen is the Justice Department needs to run the investigation as part of the Judicial Branch, bring the evidence to the House for impeachment, the Senate for Conviction, then haul his ass off to prison.
That cannot happen as long as the Justice department is a function of the executive branch. They refuse to investigate their own sitting boss.
Placing the Justice Department under the Judicial Branch would work two fold:
First, it allows the Justice Department to actually investigate a sitting president, which they will not do currently.
Second, it would prevent the sort of actual political witch hunt that Clinton faced as it's not Congress running the investigation, it's the Justice Department.