Your questions keep pouring in. Here are just a few of the things on your mind this week:
I recently read something about an “alternate state” of government that posits that the majority of us will continue to live fairly normal lives and get complacent/compliant while the Trump administration does their dirty deeds (disappearing people, taking away our rights and civil liberties, cutting programs to profit billionaires). Given that this already seems to be happening, what can we do about it?
(Chris) I agree that this would indeed be a disturbing outcome! That said, I disagree that this is happening right now. Two of the largest protests in the history of the United States, the “Hand's Off!” protests of April 5, and the “No King's” protests of June 14, have taken place during the first six months of the Trump administration. While some large media companies occasionally make high profile concessions to Trump, dissent against the administration is thriving and growing on social media and in hundreds of independent outlets made possible by Substack. Democrats are crushing it in special elections, which are continuing to happen without any difficulty. Democratic dissent in the United States seems alive, well and thriving to me. I don't feel like the country has become complacent and compliant at all.
Since Trump seems able to undo laws and legislation that were hard and fast rules, when and if Democrats take over the House and Senate, why can't they undo some of the awful legislation passed in the big ugly bill?
(Matt) It’s not clear how many laws Trump is going to be able to undo in the long run. Some of his blatantly illegal actions like impounding funds legally appropriated by Congress are being challenged in the courts—slowly, to be sure, but the process does move. And while the Supreme Court appears determined to give Trump latitude to operate outside all but the strictest boundaries of separation of powers, a Congress controlled by Democrats—should one be elected next year—will be able to put the brakes on his most blatant violations.
What they can’t do is just undo legislation passed by this Congress, like the ugly reconciliation bill, because they will be operating in divided government. Trump can still veto any legislative acts a Democratic Congress can pass, and passage of anything outside the reconciliation process would still be subject to a Republican filibuster. But controlling the legislative branch would restore a sorely needed guardrail, as it would put an end to Trump’s ability to assert his will over Congress. And if you want to look ahead a couple of years past the midterms, remember that most of the damage Trump is doing is happening through executive orders. A Democratic president can reverse all of it with the stroke of a pen on day one.
What are the reasons for the Democratic leadership of the Senate not grinding the body to a halt?
(Chris) This is a variation on a question that I asked a Democratic senator way back at the start of the first Trump administration. While I don't have an answer directly from any current Democratic senators, I do have what I think is a good guess. Basically, I believe that the Democratic Senate caucus lacks unanimity, or at least something close to unanimity, about a rationale for why they would be shutting down the Senate and the government, about what they could reasonably accomplish by doing so, and about the conditions under which they could eventually allow Senate or government business to resume without looking foolish.
When you think about it this way, it is a much more difficult question to answer than many activists may appreciate. My sense is that a lot of people just want Democrats to shut everything down until Trump agrees to stop doing bad things. Which bad things should Democrats demand that Trump stop doing? It isn't going to be easy to get everyone to agree on this. What chance is there Trump will actually stop doing those bad things because of a shutdown in Senate business? How do you open the government up again, after achieving no concessions or very limited ones, and not look like a fool?
Government shutdowns do not have a good record of forcing the other side into concessions, and it’s legitimately hard to imagine that Trump would care if Congress stopped doing stuff. Also, government shutdowns are pretty dangerous things that can cause real pain if they drag on. I get people's frustrations here, but the actual mechanics of benefitting from a shutdown by changing the political situation are pretty difficult to map out. It feels a little like starting a brawl in the third inning as a means of trying to win a baseball game.
I have noticed that most democracies have a parliamentary system which would prevent most of the problems the United States has. I also suspect the likelihood of parliamentary rule in our future is somewhere between slim and none. What changes do you think might be possible to make the government more responsive to the will of the people?
(Matt) Like any system, parliamentary government has its strengths and weaknesses. I can’t count the number of times I wished we had a system where a no confidence vote could bring down the government, where early elections were possible, or where a party could swap prime ministers overnight by changing its leadership. On the other hand, having the executive lead the legislative branch makes it much easier for the prime minister to advance his or her legislative agenda than is possible in our system. While this Congress has been subservient to Trump in a way that feels like the so-called “responsible parties” of parliamentary systems, the voters will get to pass judgment on their actions next year and if they don’t like what they’re seeing (which they don’t) they have the option to hand control of part or all of the legislative branch to Democrats.
As for the chance that the United States will transform into a parliamentary system, you’re correct that the odds are somewhere around zero. It would require a major constitutional overhaul which would have to be ratified by a supermajority of states. Having said that, I believe there are meaningful structural changes we can make to the length of Supreme Court terms, how elections are conducted and financed, the size of the House, how congressional district lines are drawn, and many others that don’t require constitutional amendments. None of these are possible now, but they could be possible in a few years if things get bad enough under Trump and reform-minded Democrats are given a chance to govern. I plan to write about these in my “Project 2029” series over the summer.
Hope is something that’s important to me and I continue trying to figure out what it is. How do people hope? What do they hope for. For me, it's not about outcomes, but in doing the work. So, my question to you is—what's hope for you? What does it mean to you to hope?
(Chris) To me, hope is two things. First, hope is having something to look forward to every day. Not just something to look forward to on the weekend, on vacation, around the holidays, or an accomplishment several years in the future, but every single day. Whether it is a walk I can take, a book I can read, something which I can accomplish at work, or an activity I can engage in with my family, I find that having something to look forward to every single day has provided me with more hope than anything else in my life. Making the every day something to look forward to is what makes me feel, in the phrasing of the life motto that my wife and I have adopted for ourselves, “excited to live!”
The second thing that gives me hope is history. Being reasonably well versed in human history, both global and local, both ancient history and modern, has provided me with more hope than any other field of study in which I have ever engaged. This is not because I believe in inevitable progress or that the human condition always improves, as I do not believe those things. It is just because things are so much better right now than they were for the vast majority of human history that I am both grateful to be alive and grateful to be where I am.
(Matt) Thank you for asking this very thoughtful question. To me, hope is about possibility. It is about the resilience of the spirit. It is about envisioning a future where I would want to live, grounded in what I believe to be attainable, and—like you—working to make that future happen. And as the old saying goes, it is a journey rather than a destination. It is remembering that nothing remains constant, that pendulums swing, and that is history is filled with moments of peril like ours and resolutions to those moments. As long as I can remember that light always follows darkness, I have hope.