House of Representatives

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Biden, Congress and the Eroding Separation of Powers

      by

      A curious constitutional drama unfolded in the nation’s capital last week. Having failed to pass a moratorium on evictions, members of Congress took to the steps of the U.S. Capitol to demand that President Biden impose one.For his part, Mr. Biden strode into the White House briefing room and suggested that the prerogative to make policy on the issue lay with Congress.Soon enough, though, Mr. Biden relented, and Democrats celebrated. As policy, it was a progressive victory. Constitutionally, it was both troubling and bizarre.The issue was not simply whether the moratorium was constitutional, though the federal courts have questioned the statutory authority the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claimed. The underlying constitutional derangement pertained to the way members of Congress and the president were eager to endorse each other’s authority without exercising their own.Democrats might protest that they had no choice but to turn to the White House because Republicans would not support a legislative moratorium. That may be, but the framers would have expected the defense of legislative power to take precedence over a policy dispute.The framers assumed that each branch of government would maintain the separation of powers by jealously guarding its authority from encroachments by the others. The evictions episode was less tug of war than hot potato: Congress wanted the president to use executive authority, and the president wanted the legislature to legislate.Democrats are not the only ones refusing to defend legislative authority. Republicans denigrating the House investigation into the insurrection of Jan. 6 — a physical assault on one branch of government incited by another — are unwilling even to defend the institution bodily.The acid test of separation of powers is whether members of Congress are willing to assert their authority against a president of their own party. Democrats failed that on evictions, just as Republicans did by handing off authority to Donald Trump. Given this bipartisan consensus for presidential authority, it may be time to acknowledge reality: The concept of the separation of powers — which depends on members of Congress unifying to protect legislative power — has collapsed in the United States. We have become a de facto parliamentary system in which competing parties battle for executive power. The problem is that we have acquired all the vices of such a system but none of its virtues.A parliamentary system typically has the effects of discouraging demagogues and ensuring competence, by seasoning leaders on the journey from the backbenches to the ones at the front. By contrast, three presidents who served before Joe Biden — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Mr. Trump — arrived in the White House as either newcomers or latecomers to national office. Parliamentary systems also feature vigorous debates with real consequences. Governments rise and fall on the basis of their legislative agendas. Debates in Congress are largely stagecraft, with actual governing being relegated to a vast executive branch empowered to turn vague laws into detailed policy.The primary vice of parliamentary systems is their incompatibility with the separation of powers. James Madison felt this separation was so important that the lack of it was “the very definition of tyranny,” even if concentrated powers were exercised benignly. Montesquieu warned that when executive and legislative power are mixed, “there is no liberty, because one can fear that the same monarch or senate that makes tyrannical laws will execute them tyrannically.”The separation of powers should not be romanticized. The only president to rise fully above party was the first one, and George Washington took office before parties solidified. But even after that, the fact that presidents and members of Congress were elected by different means, with different institutional loyalties, still enabled them to curb each other’s abuses.There are almost no curbs now. One might say elections control presidents, but Mr. Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential contest, which culminated in Jan. 6, showed that check is fragile. In addition, a single official who can marshal the direct power of his or supporters may be particularly dangerous, as Mr. Trump’s incitement leading up to and on Jan. 6 also demonstrated.These are palpable risks today. Between elections, presidents essentially run American government. Republicans and Democrats in Congress play the auxiliary part of either supporting or opposing whoever occupies the White House. Congress generally cedes the initiative on legislation to the executive branch, reserving for itself the role of merely reacting to the president.This obsession with the presidency also crowds out other advantages the separation of powers should provide. Legislators are chosen geographically in the United States, which ought to mean they reflect not only local interests but also the nuances of diverse views about national politics. Instead, many elections at all levels are proxies for national issues that are increasingly seen as civilizational battles. When Americans vote for members of Congress today, they are largely voting for parties that increasingly operate in lock step. In 2020, 16 out of 435 congressional districts voted for different parties for the White House and House of Representatives. That is less than 4 percent of congressional districts, down from as much as 40 percent in the 1970s and 1980s.Also lost in the collapse of geographic representation is Madison’s definition of the representative’s role: to “refine and enlarge the public views.” That presumes both acquaintance with those views and the judgment required to align them with the public’s true interest.Legislative debates now rotate around the president, often because the presidency is seen as an instrument for defending or capturing a legislative majority. That is characteristic of a parliamentary system. But because one is either for or against the president, a system that orbits the White House strips legislators of their ability to exercise independent judgment from issue to issue.If legislative issues are simply symbols of presidential fortunes, we should expect partisan gridlock: Alliances will solidify around the presidency or the majority rather than shifting from issue to issue. Democrats and Republicans may be able to push a president slightly in one direction or another, or block him or her altogether, but the presidency remains the center of attention. The bipartisan infrastructure deal, for example, originated in negotiations not between members of Congress but between them and the White House.Finally, by empowering all three branches of government to check one another, the separation of powers forces the nation to look at issues from different angles: the immediate and parochial perspectives of representatives, the national view of presidents and the constitutional outlook of the courts.The problems with abandoning the separation of powers may be difficult to see if one supports the current president, but it should not take much imagination to contemplate why you wouldn’t like having the bulk of national powers being exercised by a president with whom you disagree. Presidents now sit atop vast administrative apparatuses. They could easily abuse this power, such as by rewarding friends and punishing adversaries. The point for Montesquieu and Madison was not whether they actually did, but whether they could. And the ability to abuse power often leads to the abuse itself.The deliberate adoption of a parliamentary system would still entail these risks. But it might at least have conferred some of that system’s benefits. As it stands — with Congress unwilling to unite against even a physical assault incited by the president — we have maintained the empty shell of the separation of powers around the core of a partisan system. The result is a system capable of abusing citizens but not governing them. It would be difficult to conjure a worse combination.Greg Weiner (@GregWeiner1) is a political scientist at Assumption University, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Political Constitution: The Case Against Judicial Supremacy.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 63 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Ohio Special Primary Election Results

      by

      The special election to replace Marcia Fudge, who joined President Biden’s cabinet as housing secretary, is a contest largely between two Black women who represent divergent views of the future of the Democratic Party. It will pit the establishment favorite, Shontel Brown, who has the endorsement of Hillary Clinton, against the left’s favored candidate, Nina Turner, who has the backing of Senator Bernie Sanders. More

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Want to make Jim Jordan sing about the Capitol attack? Ask Jefferson Davis | Sidney Blumenthal

      by

      OpinionUS Capitol attackWant to make Jim Jordan sing about the Capitol attack? Ask Jefferson DavisSidney BlumenthalThe Ohio Republican admits he spoke to Trump the day the Confederate flag flew in Congress. Aptly, the investigation of John Brown’s raid sets precedent for what must happen next

      What did Jim Jordan know about the insurrection and when?
      Mon 2 Aug 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 2 Aug 2021 10.37 EDTThe House select committee on the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, according to chairman Bennie Thompson, should “not be reluctant” to include on its witness list Republicans including the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan and others who have knowledge of or may have been implicated in the attack.Kinzinger: McCarthy and Jordan should face Capitol attack subpoenas – but maybe not TrumpRead moreThose who would be requested to testify spoke with Donald Trump before, during and after the assault, attended strategy meetings and held rallies to promote the 6 January “Stop the Steal” event, and are accused by Democrats of conducting reconnaissance tours of the Capitol for groups of insurrectionists.But committee members and legal scholars are grappling to find precedent.“I don’t know what the precedent is, to be honest,” said Adam Schiff.There is one.After a bloody insurrection was quelled, a congressional committee was created to investigate the organization of the insurrection, sources of funding, and the connections of the insurrectionists to members of Congress who were indeed called to testify. And did.On the morning of 16 October 1859, John Brown led a ragtag band of armed followers in an attack on the US arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to attract fugitive slaves to his battle, take refuge in the Allegheny mountains and conduct raids on plantations throughout the south, raising a slave army to overthrow the government and replace the constitution with one he had written.Brown became notorious as pro- and anti-slavery forces fought over how Kansas would be admitted to the Union. Brown committed a massacre and rampaged out of control. Radical abolitionists idealized him as an avenging angel of Puritan virtue. Some of the most prominent and wealthiest, known as the Secret Six, funded him without being completely clear about how the money was going to be used.Brown confided his plan on the eve of his raid to the great Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass and asked him to join. Douglass told him he would be entering “a perfect steel-trap and that once in he would never get out alive” and refused the offer. Brown was undeterred.Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom review: a monumental biographyRead moreWithin hours of the assault Brown and his band were cornered in the engine room of the armory, surrounded by local militia. Then the marines arrived under the command of Col Robert E Lee and Lt Jeb Stuart. At Brown’s public trial, his eloquent statements against slavery and hanging turned him into a martyr. John Wilkes Booth, wearing the uniform of the Richmond Grays and standing in the front ranks of troops before the scaffold on which Brown was hanged on 2 December, admired Brown’s zealotry and composure.Nearly two weeks later, on 14 December, the Senate created the Select Committee to Inquire into the Late Invasion and Seizure of the Public Property at Harpers Ferry. Senator James M Mason of Virginia, the sponsor of the Fugitive Slave Act, was chairman. He appointed as chief prosecutor Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.Davis was particularly intent on questioning Senator William H Seward of New York, the likely Republican candidate for president.“I will show before I am done,” Davis said, “that Seward, by his own declaration, knew of the Harpers Ferry affair. If I succeed in showing that, then he, like John Brown deserves, I think, the gallows, for his participation in it.”In early May 1858, Hugh Forbes, a down-at-heel soldier of fortune, a Scotsman who fought with Garibaldi in the failed Italian revolution of 1848, a fencing coach and a translator for the New York Tribune, knocked on Seward’s door with a peculiar tale of woe. He had been hired by Brown to be the “general in the revolution against slavery”, had written a manual for guerrilla warfare, but had not been paid. Seward sent him away and forgot about him.Forbes wandered to the Senate, where he told his story to Henry Wilson, a Republican from Massachusetts. Wilson, who later became Ulysses S Grant’s vice president, was alarmed enough to write to Dr Samuel Gridley Howe, a distinguished Boston physician and reformer, founder of the first institution for the blind, and Massachusetts chairman of the Kansas committee. Wilson relayed that he had heard a “rumor” about John Brown and “that very foolish movement” and that Howe and other donors to the Kansas cause should “get the arms out of his control”.But Howe, a member of the Secret Six, continued to send Brown money.The investigating committee called Seward and Wilson. On 2 May 1860, Seward testified that Forbes came to him, was “very incoherent” and told him Brown was “very reckless”. Seward said he offered Forbes no advice or money, and that Forbes “went away”.Davis pointedly asked Seward if he had any knowledge of Brown’s plan to attack Harpers Ferry.Seward replied: “I had no more idea of an invasion by John Brown at that place, than I had of one by you or myself.”Wilson also testified, producing his correspondence with Howe, his recollection of strangely encountering Brown at a Republican meeting in Boston, and denying any knowledge of Brown’s plot. Other witnesses were subpoenaed and warrants were issued for the arrest of those who failed to appear. Howe testified that he knew nothing in advance of the raid.The Senate committee concluded its report citing the fourth section of article four of the constitution: “The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on the application of the legislature or of the executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) against domestic violence.”The martyrdom of Mike Pence | Sidney BlumenthalRead moreEight months after submitting the report, Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy, assuming command of the greatest insurrection against the United States in its history. His legacy as a senator before the civil war, however, established the precedent of a congressional committee calling members of Congress to testify about their knowledge of or participation in an insurrection: a precedent that can be used to investigate one in which for the first time the Confederate flag was carried through the Capitol.
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
      TopicsUS Capitol attackOpinionUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS CongressHouse of RepresentativescommentReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans will defend their Caesar but new revelations show Trump’s true threat | Lloyd Green

      by

      OpinionDonald TrumpRepublicans will defend their Caesar but new revelations show Trump’s true threatLloyd GreenThe DoJ has dealt two blows and the 6 January committee is winding up for more. They know democracy is in danger

      Sidney Blumenthal: What did Jim Jordan know and when?
      Sun 1 Aug 2021 01.00 EDTOn Friday, Donald Trump received two more unwelcome reminders he is no longer president. Much as he and his minions chant “Lock her up” about Hillary Clinton and other enemies, it is he who remains in legal jeopardy and political limbo.IRS must turn over Trump tax returns to Congress, DoJ saysRead moreTrump’s allies on Capitol Hill will again be forced to defend the indefensible. That won’t be a bother: QAnon is their creed, Trump is their Caesar and Gladiator remains the movie for our time.But in other ways, the world has changed. The justice department is no longer an extension of Trump’s West Wing. The levers of government are no longer at his disposal.Next year, much as Trump helped deliver both Georgia Senate seats to the Democrats in January, on the eve of the insurrection, his antics may cost Republicans their chance to retake the Senate.Documents that would probably not have seen the light of day had Trump succeeded in overturning the election are now open to scrutiny, be they contemporaneous accounts of his conversations about that dishonest aim or his tax returns.Those who claim that the events of 6 January were something other than a failed coup attempt would do well to come up with a better line. Or a different alternate reality.Ashli Babbitt is no martyr. Trump will not be restored to the presidency, no matter what the MyPillow guy says. Trump’s machinations and protestations convey the desperation that comes with hovering over the abyss. He knows what he has said and done.First, on Friday morning, news broke that the justice department had provided Congress with copies of notes of a damning 27 December 2020 conversation between Trump, Jeffrey Rosen, then acting attorney general, and Richard Donoghue, Rosen’s deputy.As first reported by the New York Times, the powers at Main Justice told Trump there was no evidence of widescale electoral fraud in his clear defeat by Joe Biden.He replied: “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me.”That goes beyond simply looking to bend the truth. As George Conway, a well-connected, prominent anti-Trump Republican, tweeted: “It’s difficult to overstate how much this reeks of criminal intent on the part of the former guy.”One White House veteran who served under the presidents Bush told the Guardian: “‘Leave the rest to me’ sure sounds like foreknowledge.”Just “connect the dots and the dates”, the former aide said.The insurrection came 10 days later. As the former Trump campaign chair and White House strategist Steve Bannon framed it on 5 January: “All hell is going to break loose.”Truer words were never spoken.Unfortunately for Trump, Friday’s news cycle didn’t end with the events of 27 December. A few hours later, the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), its policy-setting arm, once led by Bill Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, opined that Trump’s tax returns could no longer be kept from the House ways and means committee.Ever since Watergate, presidents and presidential candidates have released their tax returns as a matter of standard operating procedure. Trump’s refusal to do so was one more shattered norm – and a harbinger of what followed.The OLC concluded that the committee’s demand for those records comported with the pertinent statute. Beyond that, it observed that the request would further the panel’s “principal stated objective of assessing the IRS’s presidential audit program – a plainly legitimate area for congressional inquiry”.Here, the DoJ was doing nothing short of echoing the supreme court. A little over a year ago, the court rejected Trump’s contention that the Manhattan district attorney could not scrutinize his tax returns and, in a separate case, held that Congress could also examine his taxes.In the latter case, in a 7-2 decision, the court eviscerated the president’s argument that Congress had no right to review his tax returns and financial records. Writing for the majority, John Roberts, the chief justice, observed: “When Congress seeks information ‘needed for intelligent legislative action’, it ‘unquestionably’ remains ‘the duty of all citizens to cooperate’.”At that point, Trump had made two appointments to the high court. Both joined in the outcome. So much for feeling beholden.Prospective witnesses before the House select committee on the events of 6 January ought to start worrying. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, Congressman Jim Jordan: this means you. By your own admissions, you spoke with Trump that day.It was one thing for Merrick Garland’s justice department to continue the government defense of Trump in E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit. It’s a whole other thing to expect Biden’s attorney general to play blocking back for Trump. It is highly unlikely here.The justice department does not appear ready to come to the aid of those who sought to overturn the election. Already, it has refused to defend Mo Brooks, the Alabama congressman who wore a Kevlar vest to a 6 January pre-riot rally.‘Just say the election was corrupt,’ Trump urged DoJ after loss to BidenRead moreOn top of that, the Democrats control Congress and Liz Cheney, dissident Republican of Wyoming and member of the 6 January committee, hates Jordan. It is personal.“That fucking guy Jim Jordan. That son of a bitch,” Cheney told the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, about Jordan, according to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who like Cheney voted to impeach Trump over 6 January and has joined the select committee, may also be in the mood to deliver a lesson. Congressional Democrats may want to see Jordan and McCarthy sweat. The House GOP got the committee it asked for when it withdrew co-operation. It faces unwelcome consequences.As for Trump, he may well continue to harbour presidential aspirations and dreams of revenge. But as Ringo Starr sang, “It don’t come easy.” Indeed, after Friday’s twin blows, things likely became much more difficult.TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionTrump administrationUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS taxationUS domestic policycommentReuse this content More