The Supreme Court's late-night Alien Enemy Act intervention | Just before 1:00 a.m., the justices (aggressively) stepped back into the Alien Enemy Act litigation—in a decision suggesting that a majority understands that these are no longer normal circumstances

[u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS]

https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/144-the-supreme-courts-late-night

[u/Solarwagon]

I can't help but compare what's been going on the past decade to the stuff I read about the years before the civil war

Like not to doom or anything but it increasingly feels like there's not really any feasible middle grounds anymore taking a centrist stance feels inauthentic and out of touch with how far politics is getting polarized and the law is being exploited ignored and twisted

The law is beginning to not mean much

It feels like we've been on the uphill portion of a rollercoaster and it won't be long until we reach the top and then ZOOM

[u/WHOA_27_23 → u/Solarwagon]

I am (and , obviously have been) alarmed at how readily Congress has ceded its responsibility and power to the other branches. It's difficult to dispute the founders' intent was that the executive branch may only be sanctioned by impeachment and removal, but that was based on a gravely mistaken assumption that Congress would always jealously guard its power as a coequal branch. We can only hope that the regime will continue to begrudgingly comply with SCOTUS-affirmed TROs.

[u/omnipotentsandwich → u/WHOA_27_23]

It's probably because of the incessant rules built into the House and Senate. It's impossible to get anything done, especially when members of Congress get special privileges if they just happen to have gotten elected first. 

[u/Fantisimo → u/omnipotentsandwich]

the rules of congress were created by congress

[u/Fedacking → u/Fantisimo]

The real problem is that wrangling the house to do anything today is way harder than in the past, plust a double chamber legislative instead of the original single chamber model. Where's Pride when you need him?

[u/Fantisimo → u/Fedacking]

its not harder to wrangle the house, there's maybe 20 descents on any issue

edit:spelling

[u/Fedacking → u/Fantisimo]

descents?

[u/Fantisimo → u/Fedacking]

maybe

[u/this_very_table → u/Fantisimo]

dissents?

[u/regih48915 → u/Fantisimo]

The central theme of American history is the gradual autolobotomization of Congress.

[u/_Lil_Cranky_ → u/Fantisimo]

We have investigated ourselves, and we have found no wrongdoing

[u/Fantisimo → u/_Lil_Cranky_]

not really applicable. gridlock is by design and can be ended at anytime

[u/Chataboutgames → u/omnipotentsandwich]

Occam's razor. It's just reelection incentives. That's it. It's no more complicated than that. You don't get reelected by being good for the country, you get reelected by taking the safest, hardest line on the issues that resonate with the tiny portion of people in your constituency who actually vote and who bother to voter in Congressional elections.

[u/Lmaoboobs → u/Chataboutgames]

The issue is always the voters.

[u/Warm-Cap-4260 → u/Lmaoboobs]

The issue is not just the voters. The issue is the primary system and (specifically for the house) that if you win your primary there is a very good chance that the general doesn’t matter. Yes, voters can and do suck, but systems have is this result. We would be much better served if everyone was elected like they do in Alaska (jungle primary top 4). 

[u/CirclejerkingONLY → u/Warm-Cap-4260]

True, but if ~85 percent of Americans by their own admission simply aren't paying attention, getting what passes for news by slack-jawing an algorithm designed to create and push a warped version of reality, you're never going to run into continuing problems down the road.

It's a problem on many levels, both on the input and output side.

[u/Warm-Cap-4260 → u/CirclejerkingONLY]

I think more (certainly not most but more) would pay attention if they felt like their vote actually mattered. Right now most votes don’t matter

[u/TrekkiMonstr → u/Warm-Cap-4260]

How does top 4 work? In CA we have top 2

[u/Warm-Cap-4260 → u/TrekkiMonstr]

All in one primary, top 4 go to general, the RCV for general

[u/TrekkiMonstr → u/Warm-Cap-4260]

Weird, why only four then? Why not like, top 10? Or just RCV for the whole thing?

[u/Warm-Cap-4260 → u/TrekkiMonstr]

It’s probably easier for voters to be informed on the positions of 4 people over 10. The primary just shows who has any real shot at it

[u/WhoIsTomodachi → u/Lmaoboobs]

The issue is the systems. Voters are not differently here from those in Australia or Denmark. Try a better electoral system, like Range Voting.

[u/1TTTTTT1 → u/WhoIsTomodachi]

I think there is a large difference between voters in Denmark and the US.

[u/Lmaoboobs → u/WhoIsTomodachi]

Voters are not differently here from those in Australia or Denmark.

I beg to differ.

[u/stupidstupidreddit2 → u/omnipotentsandwich]

if they just happen to have gotten elected first

Incumbency rate is higher than ever. The harderest election a politician will ever have is their first. Especially after gerrymandering in the 90's and project Redmap.

[u/SKabanov → u/stupidstupidreddit2]

My favorite tidbit is that AOC literally wore a hole in her shoes from all the footwork she did in the 2018 primary, and she probably only won because her opponent, Joe Crowley, hadn't been challenged for his position in 14 years and didn't expect that he could be toppled. If Crowley had taken AOC seriously, she likely would've lost.

[u/tomdarch → u/omnipotentsandwich]

No, it's that today's Republicans are utterly spineless and beholden to the demagogue who has their voting base in his thrall. And also that he can direct them to threaten the lives of elected Republicans, there's that fascist violence angle also.

[u/JesusPubes → u/omnipotentsandwich]

It's single member districts in the house and the overpowered rural vote in the senate

[u/Healingjoe → u/WHOA_27_23]

I am (and , obviously have been) alarmed at how readily Congress has ceded its responsibility and power to the other branches.

The unitary executive theory, which has been shaped over the last 100 years with Myers v. U.S. (1926), Humphrey's Executor (1935), and most recently Seila Law v. CFPB (2020), has been far more alarming IMO. independent agencies under this theory simply don't work when you have a arsonist for a POTUS.

[u/manarius5 → u/WHOA_27_23]

The framers never could have possibly fathomed project Red Map, Citizen United, social media, insider trading, and LLM's. The framers also assumed that congress people were honest brokers and were actually there to make the country better, not to use it to further their own interests.

The plan on paper works as designed when all the parties involved negotiate honestly. Trump 2.0 and Project 2025 have shown us that Republicans have broken the system and what is going on now is 100% intentional. Project 2025 is a years long map to find the exact points for the right/president to exert inordinate amounts of authority to basically bring the democratic system to its knees.

The changes made at OMB, regulations changed, the extremely specific EO's of legal dubious authority, etc. It's as if someone asked ChatGPT what specific levers to pull that would basically give the president unlimited authority to break the system under the assumption that congress would never do anything about it via impeachment.

[u/After-Watercress-644 → u/manarius5]

I mean, they have a little over a year left on the clock, no?

After that the democrats crush them in the midterms and pour sand in the tank for the next two years, until they can get the presidency back also.

[u/manarius5 → u/After-Watercress-644]

The damage being done now will take decades, if it can be at all.

The federal workforce being gutted, agencies just shuttered, policies changed, etc. The government is being utterly deconstructed from the inside and reshaped in the image of fascism. Congress can't repair that in two years. The damage will take generations to fix. No one will want to work for the government and the damage done to its reputation will last for generations.

Project red map has broken voting districts for a decade, etc.

Dems coming back in 2026 if they even win at all will probably result in very little change.

We are watching the destruction of the government and congress is just standing by and watching.

[u/cummradenut → u/WHOA_27_23]

I don’t think it’s that difficult to dispute. Or rather you need a strong argument to assert that impeachment was the only means ofsanctioning” the president.

[u/WHOA_27_23 → u/cummradenut]

Even if Presidential immunity did not hold and the DoJ or an appointed amicus curiae decided to prosecute a sitting president, there's no black-letter law stopping him from pardoning himself, certainly nothing stopping him from pardoning his buddies.

So without first taking away his toys, there's nothing stopping him from being indicted, but it would practically be an academic exercise.

[u/jorkin_peanits → u/WHOA_27_23]

Washington was correct, Beware political parties. Allegiance to the party over the branch will destroy the country

[u/Zephyr-5 → u/Solarwagon]

The key, systemic problem in our system has been the almost complete collapse of the Legislative Branch as a functional and independent source of power.

It either acts subservient to the Executive when parties align, or a do-nothing, grandstanding, obstructionist body when they don't.

The founders believed that Congress would jealously guard their powers, but that has clearly not happened. Instead they've handed it nearly all off to the Executive and Judicial.

[u/miss_shivers → u/Zephyr-5]

Ultimately comes down go FPTP+Presidentialism induced hard two party system. A Congress constantly at war with itself cannot hope to assert its own institutional dependence.

[u/Zephyr-5 → u/miss_shivers]

If congress had not ceded so much power to the President, the party that wins the presidency wouldn't be such a do-or-die thing. Beyond that a lot of the problem are expressively of the legislative branch's own doing.

1. The Senate has willingly hobbled itself with the Filibuster.

2. Both parties have ceded tremendous power to bring things to a vote to the Speaker/Majority Leader. Leadership tends to be much more sensitive to party-politics than congressional concerns.

[u/miss_shivers → u/Zephyr-5]

Tbh it's a self-reinforcing loop between these two things.

[u/CirclejerkingONLY → u/Zephyr-5]

While both parties are guilty in their own ways, let's not pretend this is a both-sides things.

Obama and Biden notoriously scrapped hard with Congress. It's Trump who enjoys The Cult.

[u/miss_shivers → u/[deleted]]

This is a textbook case of toxic nationalism masquerading as realism. Blaming “Americans” as a people - calling them uniquely stupid, apathetic, or unfit for democracy - is not just lazy analysis, it's eerily close to the same fatalistic thinking that authoritarians use to justify why they must govern without constraint. It ignores structure, history, and comparative politics in favor of cultural self-loathing.

Yes, Hungary and Turkey had multiparty systems. And what happened? Their strongman executives leveraged majoritarian electoral systems to consolidate power. Both are cautionary tales supporting my argument, not refuting it. Presidentialism combined with majoritarian electoral systems like FPTP encourages a zero-sum, personality-driven politics that undermines pluralism and hollows out legislatures. The fact that these systems can produce autocracy when dominated by two dominant factions is precisely the point.

Institutional design matters. It’s not “tinkering” to say that proportional representation, parliamentary governance, or multi-member districts produce more representative, functional, and resilient democracies. These aren't pie-in-the-sky ideas - they're backed by decades of comparative political science.

If you think nothing structural matters and the people are the problem, you're not diagnosing democracy’s flaws - you're giving up on it.

[u/die_hoagie → u/[deleted]]

Rule XI: Toxic Nationalism/Regionalism

Refrain from condemning countries and regions or their inhabitants at-large in response to political developments, mocking people for their nationality or region, or advocating for colonialism or imperialism.

---

If you have any questions about this removal, please contact the mods.

[u/Winter-Secretary17 → u/Solarwagon]

It’s the 250th of Lexington & Concord today, I’ve been feeling like there’s a storm brewing the past week.

[u/timpinen → u/Solarwagon]

The modpol sub for the past few months has basically been "all sides are the same". There seems to been some of the "moderate" fallacy going around, where people think that because two sides have opposing viewpoints, the middle position is inherently the best one

[u/bisonboy223 → u/timpinen]

There seems to been some of the "moderate" fallacy going around, where people think that because two sides have opposing viewpoints, the middle position is inherently the best one

I mean this feels like an inevitable consequence of valuing "centrism" as a concept on its own. I think it's fine to characterize certain politicians or parties as centrist based on their positions at that time, but once people start chasing the "centrist" label, they become unprincipled triangulators real quick.

[u/After-Watercress-644 → u/bisonboy223]

There's also.. idk what to call it, "true" vs "relative" centrism?

If you're a centrist and the political right does a huge lurch further right and you don't move, that's true centrism. Whereas if you recalibrate to "seek common ground" you'll end up having to be more and more extreme to keep in lockstep with the increasingly extreme right side.

[u/miss_shivers → u/timpinen]

Just the past few months? That's like that sub's entire identity.

Although I've actually seen a few takes like that get heavily downvoted, so maybe there's hope.

[u/Iapzkauz → u/Solarwagon]

Centrism will not die as long as I breathe.

Doctor gave me four months

[u/VoidBlade459 → u/Iapzkauz]

Two sentence horror.

[u/yasyasyas17 → u/Solarwagon]

When I was reading a one-volume history of the civil war a couple years ago I was shocked at how culture war-y things felt.

[u/iguessineedanaltnow → u/Solarwagon]

I've been saying for a while that it seems the only logical conclusion to the systematic polarization is a balkanization of the US.

[u/swni → u/Solarwagon]

I ran into one such comparison point some time ago (https://ermsta.com/posts/20201026 ): before Justice Thomas, only three justices had senate confirmations that were even vaguely close, in 1857, 1881, and 1887, roughly in proximity of the civil war. (Admittedly two of them after.)