America’s famed ‘checks-and-balances’ governance system is failing
a year ago by DwZ to c/politics
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.
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.
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.
I'd argue the checks and balances worked, the electorate failed. Trump tried to overturn and election and the checks and balances held. That should have been political suicide. He should have not even won a school board seat after that, but the electorate failed and reinstated him. You cannot build enough checks and balances into representative government to save the electorate from repeated mistakes. The checks are there to ensure someone must show their true intents to the electorate before they make a choice.
Narrator: "They couldn't."
Andrew Jackson already did that, but we acted like checks and balances still worked because Jackson defying the supreme court only resulted in the Trail of Tears.
It broke once all three came under single party control. Mmmmm. What does the us historically think of one party control. let me think. let me think.
Tbh it was always broken - it’s just that it’s never been done this blatantly, contemptuously, and systematically before.
This is the firesale, and orangeboi et al are just vacuuming up every single cent they can wring from the wreckage that they’re turning our government and society into at breakneck pace.
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.
All systems are honour systems at their core. If no one respects the rule of law then laws don’t matter.
Some systems, though, have actual mechanisms for enforcement attached to them. But apparently none of that was included in the legal framework that the entire country is built on.
"Hey! You can't do that! That very clearly violates Constitutional law."
"Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it?"
(checks Constitution) "Oh...uhhh. I guess nothing?"
Mechanisms of enforcement still need enforcers who respect the rule of law. If the enforcers stop respecting the rule of law and prefer to play power politics then the won’t help you.
Enforcers are part of the honour system. If they aren’t honourable then the system breaks down.
Except in this case...there are no enforcers. At all.
There is no mechanism in place to actually enforce a court ruling, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There is no mechanism in place to enforce legislation that's been passed by Congress, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There aren't even any mechanisms in place to enforce Constitutional amendments that should actively restrict the executive branch's actions. They had a lot to say about what the executive branch should not be allowed to do...but they seemingly forgot to include any way of ensuring they would be held accountable, if they didn't follow the rules.
There are literally NO "checks and balances" in place to enforce anything if the executive branch decides to ignore the other two branches of government. It's like passing legislation that declares murder a crime...but not including any consequences for actually committing it.
“Hey! You can’t do that! That very clearly violates Constitutional law.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it?”
(checks Constitution) “Oh…uhhh. I guess nothing?”
Impeachment, that's what they'd do about it. But that would require politicians who do their job and also uphold the constitution. If the question is: what happens when everyone involved breaks the law and doesn't do their job?
The answer is one of two things: the people vote them out.
If they are voted out but refuse to cede power peacefully, we end up with violence.
Nothing about the checks and balances are broken, what's broken is the percentage of the population that just doesn't care their representative isn't actually doing their job.
Yeah. I was just thinking about why zombies are so threatening. They represent the total collapse of the social order and a replacement of a large percent of the population of ordinary people with savage predators.
It's no coincidence that zombie dramas and video games became extremely popular in the USA right as people started feeling they were surrounded by hostile forces in a collapsing society with no one looking out for them.
This is not about "society as we know it", this is about a particular way of designing your political system. The American way of doing things in this regard is not terribly widespread.
So no, this is not about lofty and universal concepts like "social contract" or anything like that, it is about specific constitutional designs, which are not the same everywhere. Especially the "checks and balances" system.
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.
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.
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.
I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?
Anyone with any sense?
This is how political parties work. And, the "founding fathers" were aware of it too. They just thought that somehow the US was special and would magically avoid this problem.
There's a difference between voting in a block, and literally passing/interpreting legislation to expand powers of another branch at the expense of your own.
If you vote in a block, you still have your vote. If you pass laws saying actually you can do whatever you want without a law saying you can, you just took your own vote out of the equation.
There's a difference between voting in a block, and literally passing/interesting legislation to expand powers of another branch at the expense of your own.
Not really. As soon as people are told they have to vote for what the party wants instead of each person individually voting as they believe, then it's just a matter of where you draw the line. If your party's leader is president then why wouldn't you just fall in line and pass everything he wants. If you're a judge and your party's president is in office, why wouldn't you try to find legal justification for everything he wants. Why should there be party infighting between the president and the head of the house? Surely the house should just fall in line and let the President get his agenda passed.
This is how political parties work. And, the "founding fathers" were aware of it too. They just thought that somehow the US was special and would magically avoid this problem.
Well at least one of them tried to argue against having political parties in order to avoid this problem
It relied on voters actually caring about corruption and imposing a cost on corrupt behaviour. Unfortunately, Americans gonna American.
Caring about corruption impartially. They may care about it if it is the opposing team doing it, but are perfectly willing to ignore it if it is their own team. And with "they" I mean the Republicans.
Every country which went into dictatorship had checks and balances. US checks and balances were not unique.
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.
The problem is the majority of the legislative and the head of the executive decided to collude to just ignore the constitution and then proceeded to stuff the judicial branch with their puppets. The problem with the checks and balances is they don't have an answer to "but what if 2/3rds of the government decides to wipe their ass with the constitution at the same time?".
No amount of reorganizing the deck chairs changes that calculus. The system was broken the moment they just decided not to remove Trump from office during his first impeachment. The only way I can see to do anything about that flaw is to just make it ridiculously easy to impeach any politician, say something like a general vote of the public that only requires a 25% margin to pass. Sure the Republicans absolutely would have used something like that against Obama, but at least we'd be able to clean all the corrupt bastards out of congress and the supreme court as well.
"No Confidence Vote" like in a parliamentary system.
Yup, and there's some other conditions that would benefit from an immediate recall, too. It's insane that the consequence for failing to pass a budget or raise the debt ceiling is that our financial system is damaged or collapses. Failure to get it done in a timely manner should result in an automatic extension or raise paired with snap elections on all members involved.
Or hell, even just allow recall petitions at the federal level. Better to have a revolving door than a legislature that's tempted to see what touching the third rail is like.
That does require a significant majority of the executive branch to go through with it.
Impeachment is in ways similar to it.
but what if 2/3rds of the government decides to wipe their ass with the constitution at the same time
Or just, "what if a party works together and falls in line under a single leader"?
It should have been obvious not that this was possible, but that it was inevitable.
The only way I can see to do anything about that flaw is to just make it ridiculously easy to impeach any politician, say something like a general vote of the public that only requires a 25% margin to pass
If that happened, seats would be constantly vacant. You'd have 75% D districts with a 25% R minority who would simply remove anybody the other side elected. The D's would retaliate by removing a R. The oligarchs would love that system because there would be nobody to pass laws that stopped their looting.
The fundamental problem is democracy.
Giving every single person a vote, no matter what, is a problem. Weighing every single vote equally, no matter what, is a problem. The GOP won because there were enough people who had lost touch with reality that their lies were believable. And, now that they won, they're going to rig the game even more, and make sure that there are no limits put on disinformation.
Democracy may be the best system we have found so far, but it has some severe failure modes.
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.
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
Failing? Tbh I feel like they’ve already completely failed.
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.
Populism is getting a bad rap, but more often than not, it is triggered when people feel under pressure from worsening cost and standards of living. If we follow Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the base requirement of security of food and shelter has to be addressed first, before more conceptual self-realisation needs and other abstract ideas are thought of. If you are constantly worried about how to put food on the table, or how to pay the rent, you would not have sufficient time to think more abstract ideas like exploring the nebula, algebra, democracy, rule of law, checks and balances, etc.
Demagogues rile up populism to get into power, because there is genuine frustration among the people on not having their basic needs being met. Needless to say, populism is still democracy. Here in Europe (or in anywhere really), experts have already repeated numerous times that in order to prevent the further rise of far right, just build more houses. But of course politicians don't want that, because they themselves are landlords or have financial stakes in keeping property and rent prices high. Unfortunately, demagogues twist the genuine concerns and frustrations, and exploit the desperate situation people are in to gain power.
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, statistically what happened was about impossible not to mention a shit ton of votes for Donald Cuck that only voted for him and ignored all the other candidates. You can't tell me that many voters only voted for the President and ignored all the other Republican candidates.
Besides all the legal voter suppression there was likely some tabulation machine manipulation. Maga had also infiltrated all levels of the voting system to make sure it was "fair" aka stop the blue no matter what.
BlueAnon
... Right. I just love conservative-lite, all the fascism with none of the stigma 🙄
*has failed.
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.
*cuts off penis*
”Why is my penis failing?”
Has failed. Has failed. Has...
You'll catch up. Whatever.
Edit:
Well, I dont think there are any shortages of checks, to the corrupt politicians.
And there certainly is balancing going on, the balance of billionaires bank accounts going up.
There you have it. The world famous checks and balances in america.
No fucking shit, Sherlock, what gave it the fuck away?
It died, fell to the ground, started rotting, MAGA took a dump on it and now it really stinks up the place.
The Guardian. When news breaks, you can guarantee they'll say something about it in five to fifteen years.
Better late than never?
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 never really existed to an extent. It’s been gamified from the get-go.
Let’s not forgot about not having publicly funded elections.
Is failing. Has failed. Same difference I suppose.
Oft mentioned is different from famed.
famed
Uhmm
Yeah, more like infamous. Basically all other Western democracies have looked at the US system and thought "yeah, we are going to do something else", except for the ones who were militarily pressed into adopting something akin to the US constitution.
Where will the next concentration camp be?
Just around the riverbend.
Ya think???
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