It’s a problem our country has never faced before. The designers of the American system of government built in an internal conflict that would act as a counterbalance because the founders, after waging a long and bloody revolutionary war and seeing the Articles of Confederation fail, understood the need for a federalized system of government that also did not allow power to be concentrated in one set of hands or one branch of government.
This design is an important basis for our government system.
In 1788, James enrolled in Madison Federalist 51:
To lay a proper foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the several powers of government, which in some degree is admitted by all to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department must have a will of its own; and, accordingly, to be so constituted that the members of each shall have as little influence as possible in the appointment of the members of the others. . . .
It is equally clear that the members of each department should depend as little as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments incident to their offices. If the executive magistrate, or the judges, were not independent of the legislature on this particular point, their independence in all other cases would be merely nominal. But the great security against a gradual concentration of the different powers in the same department consists in giving those who govern each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments by 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 an imperfect idea, but it worked until 2025, when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House, handing their power to Donald Trump.
The United States is in the midst of the second longest government shutdown in its history.
On Saturday morning, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) explained why Republicans will not act and end the president’s shutdown.
Read on to discover how Republicans surrendering power to Trump will impact every American.
