This is a problem our country has never faced. The designers of the American system of government built the American system of government on the basis of internal conflict that would act as a counterbalancing force, because after fighting a long and bloody revolutionary war and seeing the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the founders saw the need for a federalized system of governance that also did not allow power to be concentrated in a single set of hands or in a single branch of government.
This concept is a key foundation of our system of government.
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In 1788, James Madison wrote in Federalist 51:
In order to lay the necessary foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the several powers of government, which, in some measure, is recognized by all as essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department must have its own will; and therefore should be so constituted that the members of each have as little influence as possible in the appointment of the members of the others. . . .
It is also obvious that the members of each department must depend as little as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices. If the executive magistrate, or judges, were not independent of the legislative branch in this specific case, their independence in any other case would be only nominal. But the great security against a gradual concentration of the various powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the constitutional means and the personal motivations necessary to resist the encroachments of the others.
The founders relied on human nature and the ambition of people seeking to protect their own power as a mechanism for each branch of government to control the others.
It was a flawed idea, but it worked until 2025, when Republicans took control of the House, Senate and White House and ceded their power to Donald Trump.
The United States is in the midst of the second longest government shutdown in its history.
On Saturday morning, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) explained why Republicans would not mobilize to end the president’s paralysis.
Read on to find out how Republicans ceding power to Trump will impact all Americans.