America’s famed ‘checks-and-balances’ governance system is failing

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.
- 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.
Vigorous enforcement is necessary, but there's that whole "in group, out group, protect, bind" thing.
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.
Congress has abdicated their power for decades. The remedy is impeachment and scaling back administrative law for actual bills through Congress.
- But that would require them to actually work! What the hell kind of masochists do you take them for?

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?"
- Correct. Society as we know it is a social understanding
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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
  https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/sitting-president%E2%80%99s-amenability-indictment-and-criminal-prosecution
  Until there's an independent agency capable of holding the Executive accountable, there is no check and balance.

Someone writes the checks to tip the balance.

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.

*has failed.

**completely and totally
***repeatedly

laws mean nothing when you can just ignore them

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.

Someone just noticed this?

No shit Sherlock.

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.

"Famed"? Lol

It can only work if the government wasn't partisan. Kinda impressive it took this long for the facade to fall off.

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. 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.
- Oh you mean the checks and balances that kept us honest with all the Native American treaties!? We were always dogshit, there is no good time to look back on.

Let’s not forgot about not having publicly funded elections.

Is failing. Has failed. Same difference I suppose.

It’s never really existed to an extent. It’s been gamified from the get-go.

Failing?

Say it with me, kids. "We're fucked!"

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.