I think you're misunderstanding at least a little bit here. The Constitution created separation of powers, but what it did not do is explicitly block a particular branch from either abdicating their duty or simply delegating their power back to the executive.

It's certainly an interesting situation that wasn't explicitly spelled out in the law. But as far as everything that's working, it's realistically all within the legal framework of the Constitution. There are procedures to remove an unfit President, sure; but there's no requirement baked into the Constitution that requires those parties to act upon those procedures.

In short, it's a whole lot of short-sightedness of the Constitution combined with willing participants across multiple branches of the government.

The problems unearthed and the damage being done will take decades to fix just our internal issues, and it's very likely we will never resolve our international problems.

I don't know what the future holds for the United States, but we are certainly going to be operating from a severe handicap for quite a while.

I'm not sure why Americans are so certain that their system of separation of powers is the right one. Most countries don't separate the executive and legislative like that. The executive is whoever can command the support of the legislative. If you think about the US system it makes no sense. An executive can just ignore the rules created by the legislative by just not enforcing it and the only means to stop that is a 2/3 majority in a body that by it's nature is not representative of the population but rather of States.

As far as I can tell the US system is designed for gridlock. Things like filibuster, lower house elections every two years, state elected upper body, electorate system are all designed to create girdlock.

While Americans as a whole are to blame for some of this they are working in a completely broken system. In tech we try not to blame a person when something goes wrong so we look at what process allowed this to happen. I think many of the US problems are explained by their underlying system which is basically a copy of the English one at the time of Independence with a monarch and a parliament. Unlike the English system though it barely evolved since then.

Have a proper mature parliamentary democracy made of multiple parties, not just two, and a prime minister that is always one vote away from resigning.

Slower democracy, sure, but fits advanced economies that need consistent small refactors and never full rewrites every 4 years.

I'd like to see a change in voting system to make voting for smaller political parties more viable. My country did this in 1993[1] so I've seen to some extent that it works. A lot of other issues in the US seem downstream from that top-level issue.

But sometimes I think about the fact that you guys don't even have the metric system yet...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_New_Zealand_electoral_ref...

The problems are a product of the constitutional system. I think the main problem is the elected king presidential system nonsense. Parliamentary democracy is the way to go.

> I don’t see how constitutional changes would help.

At the very least, we need a clarification on presidential immunity.

The American constitution is riddled with problems that many later democracies managed to fix. In general, the founding fathers envisioned a system where amendments were far more common and they didn't realize they made the bar too high. And that doesn't even touch on the electoral college, first-past-the-post voting, vague descriptions of the role of the supreme court, and no method for no confidence votes. Of course, it would be next to impossible to fix these in America because it would require a significant rewrite of the constitution.

The only way this will change is if the rest of the world leaves America behind and the quality of life here becomes so bad that radical change becomes possible.

But you are right that Trump won the popular vote in 2024, so you can't blame that on the system. But a functioning democracy would have more constraints on him. Our legislative branch has been dead in the water for 20 years at this point.

> The majority of American voters in 2024 asked for this

It was 49.8%, which is not quite a majority.

It's also worth noting that Kamala Harris received precisely 0 votes in the 2024 Democratic primaries.

[EDIT:] I see that the parent comment has now changed "majority" to "plurality."

If I could make one Constitutional amendment, it would be this: publicly finance all election campaigns, and make private contributions illegal bribery, punished by imprisonment of both the candidate and briber.

Fix some of the ambiguities that allowed power to be concentrated in the executive branch. Automatically start elected officials so things like avoiding swearing in don't happen. Limit the power of these executive orders. Introduce recall votes. Switch to public funding for all elections.

Theres plenty we can do. That's off the top if my head. I'm sure if smart people sat down to think about it there are lots of practical and clever ideas.

The majority didn't ask for this. 49% of voters did.

The majority of American voters can be as dumb as they want - the two big failures here are the legislature and the judiciary. The judiciary let an obviously illegal thing sit for far too long while the legislature is too partisan to actually take actions against the administration (except in the case of the Epstein files which has been surprisingly admirable and a rare ray of light in the last year).

If the majority of American voters elect snoopy the dog snoopy can do all of the things snoopy wants to do within the bounds of the law. Snoopy can use his bully pulpit to fight against dog restrictions in restaurants and grant pardons to previous offenders. Snoopy can ensure efficient spending of money on public water fountains accessible to canines... but if snoopy starts issuing open hand-outs to the red baron (snoopy in a moustache) that's when the other branches of government are supposed to step in - we aren't supposed to need to wait four years for the next election to stop open corruption (especially since corruption is really good at funding more corruption so there's a vicious cycle that can begin if you let it fester @see the recent FBI raid on GA election offices).

Necessary changes, off the top of my head:

1. Ranked Pairs voting for national elections, including eliminating the electoral college. Break this two-party duopoly of bad-cop worse-cop.

2. Enshrining the concept of independent executive agencies, with scope created by Congress, with agency heads chosen by the same national elections. (repudiation of "Unitary Executive Theory", and a general partitioning of the executive power which is now being autocratically abused)

3. Repudiation of Citizens United and this whole nonsense that natural rights apply to government-created artificial legal entities (also goes to having a US equivalent of the GDPR to reign in the digital surveillance industry's parallel government)

4. State national guards are under sole exclusive authority of state governors while operating on American soil (repudiation of the so-called "Insurrection Act"). This could be done by Congress but at this point it needs to be in large print to avoid being sidestepped by illegal orders.

5. Drastically increase the number of senators. Maybe 6 or 8 from each state? We need to eliminate this dynamic where many states hate their specific moribund senators, yet keep voting them in to avoid losing the "experienced" person.

6. Recall elections by the People, for all executive offices, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices. (I don't know the best way to square courts carrying out the "rule of law" rather than succumbing to "rule of the fickle mob", but right now we've got the worst of both worlds)

Statutorily reduce the power of a rogue president by reinforcing the right of the administrative state to exist with some independence for the rank and file. Reduce conviction threshold in the Senate to 60. Eliminate the electoral college to guarantee the winner of a popular vote is the winner.

Importantly, prosecute every member of the Trump administration for their blatant respective crimes.

I agree with you that the Republican party has failed the country by allowing this to happen. But I think we can still do better.

More "big picture" ideas would be to fundamentally alter the House and Senate, and implement score/ranked voting to allow a multiparty system.

Genuinely, I think the US is pretty doomed if the Trump family and administration cronies aren't stripped of their wealth, tarred and feathered. If it is known that being president is a great way to make a bunch of money through corruption and there are no consequences then we'll be in the same situation as the Roman Republic in the waning days before Caesar. Caesar himself was funded by Crassus to make sure Crassus wealth making tactics stayed legal and grant him a big payout in the form of a rich governorship. Towards the end of the republic that sort of quid pro quo was standard operating procedure and if it happens and goes unpunished - if those benefiting see any positive RoI - then it'll just happen more and more.

Dunno. More than half the country was either enthusiastically in favor of electing a convicted criminal pathological liar or too apathetic to do anything about it. How do you fix that?

It's going to take a Constitutional Convention just for the states in North America to be able to regain their trust in Washington any time soon.

States' Rights have been slaughtered by these false patriots.

For sure, massive damage has been done to Brand USA. Remember the 'Allegory of Good and Bad Government" in the Siena public palazzo since the 14th Century? Everyone knows USA is just a bunch of grifters

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I think that a lot of people would disagree that the economy is spectacular. People can't even afford to buy a home in a decent part of the country.

Presumably congress could recreate the same tariffs, if they wanted.

The economy is not spectacular by any means. It's about average on paper, and without AI growth (which will surely slow down like the .com crash) and increased healthcare spending, it's been mildly slumping.

I'm guessing you're American?

There are many countries that have functioning constitutions that are regularly revised.

It’s not impossible for the USA to get there one day.

Doesn’t this decision exactly prove the opposite?

What piece of paper is worth more to you?

I think the root of the problem is our two party system and the polarization of our culture. Congress and the president often act as a single partisan unit, not a collection of independent thinkers with their own ideas about how the country should be run. That makes it very hard for congress to serve as an effective check on presidential powers.

That's really the achilles heel of a checks and balances system. Should an ideology gain control of all of them then the system doesn't work and it immediately sinks into authoritarianism. The Supreme Court acting on this just unfortunately gives the illusion of things working when it's a game of blitzkrieg. Make an obvious illegal action and get as much done as possible then when you are eventually checked, move on to the next thing. Just keep pushing in different directions until you cover the board.

> And it looks like they’re going to do the same thing Democrats do when they don’t like a SCOTUS ruling, and try to implement the same tariffs in a slightly different way to effectively ignore the ruling

This is kind of a bizarre whataboutism to throw in there. The current administration (with the full support of Congressional majorities in both houses that have largely abdicated any pretense of having their own policy goals) has been flouting constitutional norms pretty much nonstop for a year now and literally ignoring court orders in a way that probably no administration has ever done before, and yet the playbook they're following for extrajudicial activity apparently is from the Democrats? Just because there's bad behavior on both sides doesn't mean that the magnitude of it is equal, and in terms of respect for the rule of law the behavior of the current administration really has no comparison.

> If Trump wanted to use tariffs as a tool for emergency purposes, he should have just taken action against China.

What is the emergency with China?

Like Switzerland that basically has zero tariffs on export to the US but was initially slapped with 39% because trump can't stand women in power? What about Brasil where trump stated the 50% tariff is punishment for putting Bolsonaro in prison?

the "global damage" is largely because these tariffs were arbitrary, lacking strategic planning, and highly inflationary creating a turbulence tax. The frequent reversals and selective granting of exemptions showed that its another tool to enrich the Trump family, cabinet and their business associates. In other worlds the rest of the world stopped trusting the US and started making trade deals on their own.