It broke the minute Trump exposed the fact that the Constitution says exactly nothing about what to do if anyone chooses to violate it, and the answer to the question of "What are you gonna do about it?" was essentially "Nothing."
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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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.
Every president in some way or form pushed those boundaries without any consequences. Even the lightly better ones, like the shade of grey only lightly different than black.
Trump is the culmination of every president taking its way with the constitution without even a slap on the wrist.
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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.
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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.
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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?"
Mechanisms of enforcement still need enforcers who respect the rule of law. If the enforcers stop respecting the rule of law and prefer to play power politics then the won’t help you.
Enforcers are part of the honour system. If they aren’t honourable then the system breaks down.
Except in this case...there are no enforcers. At all.
There is no mechanism in place to actually enforce a court ruling, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There is no mechanism in place to enforce legislation that's been passed by Congress, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There aren't even any mechanisms in place to enforce Constitutional amendments that should actively restrict the executive branch's actions. They had a lot to say about what the executive branch should not be allowed to do...but they seemingly forgot to include any way of ensuring they would be held accountable, if they didn't follow the rules.
There are literally NO "checks and balances" in place to enforce anything if the executive branch decides to ignore the other two branches of government. It's like passing legislation that declares murder a crime...but not including any consequences for actually committing it.
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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.
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It relied on voters actually caring about corruption and imposing a cost on corrupt behaviour. Unfortunately, Americans gonna American.
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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.
Yup, and there's some other conditions that would benefit from an immediate recall, too. It's insane that the consequence for failing to pass a budget or raise the debt ceiling is that our financial system is damaged or collapses. Failure to get it done in a timely manner should result in an automatic extension or raise paired with snap elections on all members involved.
Or hell, even just allow recall petitions at the federal level. Better to have a revolving door than a legislature that's tempted to see what touching the third rail is like.
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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.
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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.
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laws mean nothing when you can just ignore them
Checks-and-balances rely on:
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Voter interest in civic participation
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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?”
"Famed"? Lol
It can only work if the government wasn't partisan. Kinda impressive it took this long for the facade to fall off.
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.
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.
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The Guardian. When news breaks, you can guarantee they'll say something about it in five to fifteen years.
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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.
*failed
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