Congress appears weak, not because the Constitution made it weak, but because members and party leaders have constructed systems that reward the avoidance of responsibility, suppress ordinary legislative bargaining, and make it easier for presidents to govern in Congress’ place.

This is a serious problem, as it undermines the essential constitutional barriers between the branches by inviting the President to step into the resulting vacuum.

One possible explanation is that the country is so bitterly divided that politicians, who are in the business of attracting votes, are afraid of alienating their constituents and losing their jobs. There is certainly an argument that can be made that a cowardly Congress will always be a passive legislative body. It would be hard to dismiss this out of hand.

On the other hand, it could be that the political parties have become so hyper-partisan that they refuse to work with the other party, making the idea of bipartisan legislation anathema to members of the House and Senate. As a result, both parties, when in the majority, have set up systems and rules designed to block the opposition party from any meaningful participation in the legislative process.

Since the turn of the century, in the House, both parties have set up a model of governing in the House that places almost all legislative power in the hands of the Speaker. Gone are the days of the strong Committee chair. Forgotten are the bipartisan victories on transformational legislation – like the Civil Rights Act, Welfare Reform, Tax Reform, and other laws that changed America. The Speaker, through a combination of the Rules Committee and his party’s fear of criticism, has all but choked out the minority, even offering amendments on the House floor. The House of Representatives has a less open process that virtually and state or local legislative body.

How does this work? Members voluntarily give up their independence to the Speaker in exchange for being protected from tough votes. One of the things members of the majority party fear most are “November Amendments” designed not to win a majority, but to force vulnerable members into taking tough votes. The Speaker controls this through the Rules Committee, where his or her handpicked members systematically prohibit open debate on the Floor while blocking any amendments from the other party (or frequently even their own party).

When you prohibit the other party from having any influence on the outcome of a bill, they have little incentive to do anything other than obstruct and criticize the process. Knowing they are not going to get any legislative accomplishments to put before their voters, their only option is to vilify the other party in speeches, on cable news, and on social media.

However, when the Speaker blocks the other party from participation on the floor, they must rely exclusively on their own party. And that empowers a small handful of members to use their votes as leverage to get what they want added to a bill. In the case of Mike Johnson, it seems to take acts of legislative magic to get almost anything through the House. His predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was victimized by less than five percent of his own party’s caucus, who were able to unite with the opposite party to remove him from the Speakership. And what did his successor do to punish these rebellious members? Well, not much, because he needed their votes for the next big thing.

Only Speaker Pelosi had managed to make this one-party system work. And that was through political skill accumulated over a lifetime of experience, and pure brute political strength that, unlike the Republican rebels, came with certain punishment for opposing her. No Republican has been able to duplicate her ability to manipulate power in the House, and it is hard to imagine a Republican Speaker reproducing that model under the contemporary Republican coalition. Nancy Pelosi, whether you agree with her politics or not, was the most powerful Speaker since Tip O’Neill, who frequently had lopsided majorities to help him manage the House. O’Neill also had a system of strong committee chairs, who built their own bipartisan coalitions to get legislation passed. One of the hallmarks of 21st-century governance in the House is the absence of strong committee chairs who can challenge the power of their own Speaker.

The fear that drives the House to hide behind the skirt of their leader, however, has more to do with politicians’ fears of their own party base. When redistricting started becoming dominated by computer software and the Voting Rights Act, districts became increasingly dominated by one party. Why? Because politicians tend to be interested in job security, or in the case of a state legislator, drawing a map, their next job. Today, districts are so lopsided on a partisan basis that fewer than ten percent of this year’s elections will be held in competitive seats.

Some people believed that lopsided districts would free members of the House to be more independent, no longer having to fear the other party in the next election. But something ugly happened on the way to Nirvana. While a Representative might not need to talk to anyone in the other party to win reelection, they now have to fear their own party’s base voters. Base voters, being highly partisan, tend to be more ideologically extreme. As a result, Republican legislators need to move to the right, and Democratic legislators need to move to the left, to protect themselves from a primary challenge.

The more lopsided the partisan makeup of a district, the more extremely partisan a Member of Congress is likely to be. Who are the few Members willing to be more bipartisan? Those ten percent represent the most competitive swing districts, where they need to gather votes from both sides of the aisle to win.

Yet these Members are the most viciously targeted by both their own party’s base and the other party. The base voters, being suspicious of a representative who talks to the other party, are constantly threatening the Member with a primary. And the opposition campaign committees, dedicated to capturing the majority in the next election run adds against the Representative almost from the start of their term. Congressional leaders discourage their members from working with members from “purple” districts, since they do not want them to achieve any accomplishments before the next election. As a result, the members most likely to be bipartisan often find they have no one in the other party to work with.

Not only that, but our campaign finance systems also mean that the Representative will have to start raising money almost immediately, knowing their opponent will have millions of dollars in national money, from all sorts of anonymous sources. One of the greatest contributors to the hostile environment for swing-seat members has been the nationalization of campaign contributions and the inordinate influence of a handful of megadonors. And, of course, these megadonors want something for their money, which has an out of the ordinary influence on Congressional leaders trying to preserve or capture the majority.

The Senate is no better. As I highlighted last month, the Senate has been rendered dysfunctional by the abuse of the filibuster. Today’s filibuster is not a tool for creating a bipartisan coalition, but a tool that has the accidental effect of giving any minority with 41 votes effective control of the Senate floor. And unlike the end of the 1990s, the purpose of the filibuster is no longer to force a moderation of critical legislation, but to block the majority party from accomplishing anything at all.

Perhaps there is a lingering belief that the Senate was an august body capable of rising above politics for the sake of the nation. If that was ever true, it certainly is not today. The Senate is not the same body it was, and defenders of the filibuster who wish it were are increasingly relying on wishful thinking and nostalgia.

The 21^st Century Senate governance is one where the minority’s goal is to block everything, unless the majority caves on every controversial point. Minority Leader Schumer will block a judge who will ultimately get 90 votes for confirmation just because he can. He will, sometimes, after inflicting enough pain, like in last year’s budget shutdown, concede to support the must-pass budget after the majority has given up everything of significance it had hoped to accomplish. Forget authorization bills, where government programs are examined for fraud and abuse. The goal of the minority today, unlike even a few decades ago, is to assert a level of control that prevents the majority from passing its agenda.

The majority, in retaliation, has developed legislative tactics that can rightly be referred to as an offensive filibuster. Harry Reid was the author of many of these tactics, but his Republican counterparts have kept pace. When the Senate brings up a bill, the Majority Leader files a cloture petition and then immediately goes to other business for 48 hours. At that point, a cloture motion is in order. If there are sixty votes for cloture, then debate and most amendments are blocked. That’s right. Senators are not even allowed to debate legislation, much less amend it.

If cloture fails, the Senate could go into a debate, but the Majority Leader has another trick up his sleeve. He can use his right of first recognition – the presiding officer must recognize the Majority Leader first – to “fill the amendment tree.” This is an arcane part of Senate rules that allows only a certain number of amendments to be pending at once. The Majority Leader files an amendment on each branch of the tree, files a substitute amendment, and a perfecting amendment on each of those, and then never calls any of the amendments up for a vote. As a result, there is no available branch for any other Senator, majority or minority, to offer an amendment.

Thus, like the House, the majority can prevent the minority from offering any amendments. The difference is that in the Senate, no member of the majority party can offer an amendment either. During Harry Reid’s last term as Majority Leader, only 15 total amendments for an entire session of Congress were allowed to be voted on. It’s hard to pass any kind of reform if a Senator is not ever allowed to amend an underlying bill.

Some suggest bringing back the talking filibuster. In the 1970s, the Senate changed its procedures to allow the majority leader to switch to another piece of legislation if the first one is being filibustered. This was called the two-track rule. The talking filibuster would require abandoning this rule, which the Majority Leader can do on his own, and staying on a bill until Senators have exhausted themselves and agree to allow a vote.

Sadly, this too might be misguided nostalgia. They all think that a “talking filibuster” would exhaust the minority, but this is the age of social media, where a significant number of Senators would want to talk forever, and others, who might not want to participate, would, if necessary, be forced by pressure from the base to help out. The same political imperatives that would keep a talking filibuster going forever also mean that Senators no longer are moved by loyalty to the chamber – even if it were true, which it is not, that the filibuster advances the reputation or institutional integrity of the Senate.

There is no Senate rule or constitutional imperative that the minority should, as a matter of right, be able to block the majority from voting on a bill. The only issue should be what procedure best advances the public interest in the substantive policies that do matter. The former success of the filibuster involved forcing the majority to moderate a bill sufficiently to attract enough minority votes to pass legislation. Those days are over. So long as the majority allows the 21^st Century filibuster to continue, the Senate will remain one of the democratic world’s most persistently dysfunctional national legislatures.

The consequences of a breakdown in Congressional capacity are that the President increasingly governs through emergency declarations, executive orders, agency rulemaking, and prosecutorial discretion. Congress is forced into a greater reliance on appropriations riders and massive must-pass packages instead of ordinary authorization and oversight. Meanwhile, presidents of both parties inherit precedents from their predecessors that they criticized in opposition but exploit once in office.

So what can be done? The Senate is pretty simple. Nuke the filibuster and return to a normal amendment process. Yes, the minority will occasionally win an amendment, and they might force some tough partisan votes. But two can play that game. The majority can offer just as damaging amendments that force the minority into tough votes. Eventually, those things work themselves out so that both sides simply table frivolous or blatantly partisan amendments.

The House is more complicated. Almost all solutions require the Speaker to surrender some of their power. The House needs to restore a strong committee system. Strong committee chairs, at least the good ones, know how to build bipartisan support for legislation within the committee. This includes allowing the minority to include amendments and legislative ideas that give them a stake in the bill. Then, when the bill goes to the floor, there is already bipartisan support, and members of the minority, acting as agents for their caucus in their committee, are in a position to win over more of their colleagues.

Instantly, what happens is that the number of minority members supporting the committee bill is sufficient to offset the uncooperative members of the majority party, looking for a reason to get on the evening cable news programs. Big issues get resolved and voted on.

The next step is to return to something resembling “regular order” on the House floor. This is the quaint notion that the House actually follows its own rules for debate that it passes at the start of every new Congress. Regular order allows for each member to speak for five minutes and allows for amendments to be offered, as well as substitutes and second-degree perfecting amendments (perfecting being in the eye of the beholder). Now you would actually have legislation going on that Members would, first, be interested in and second, have to pay attention to what is happening on the floor rather than leaving the Hill to make fundraising phone calls.

Modifications can still be made to keep the debate under control, such as a reasonable time limit on general debate and time limits on the amount of time an amendment might be considered. It can limit the number of amendments that each side will be allowed, forcing the minority to narrow down their goals. That is the beauty of the Rules Committee. It can create any modifications it wants. Right now, it does, but to the detriment of open debate. A Speaker willing to give up some of the control of what happens on the floor could appoint Rules Committee members (unlike most other committees, the Speaker handpicks the members of the Rules Committee) that will accommodate a commitment to sticking to the principles of regular order.

There are a number of ideas that would allow for a more respectful level of discourse in the House without undermining the voters’ ideological choice in the previous election. One can govern without being obnoxious to one’s opponents. Here, the principle behind our system of government is most clear. Every American gets to participate in choosing their representatives. Those elected should have the right to bring their constituents’ views before Congress, even if they lose a vote. Respecting a colleague is not a matter of surrendering one’s deeply held views, but merely allowing a process that respects the choices of the voters.

A minority cannot demand to prevail, but it should be able to participate, offer ideas, force a recorded vote, and sometimes win. The current system denies even that modest version of representative government.

One of the remarkable things about our Constitutional Convention was the fact that no delegate was always on the winning side, and no delegate was always on the losing side. They all won some and lost some. And in the end, they created one of the most remarkable documents in the history of the world. In 1787, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “For my own part, I sincerely esteem it [the Constitution] a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests.”

Perhaps it will once again require the “finger of God” to set Congress back on the right track, but it can also be accomplished, not by reform, so much as by respect. The first reform is therefore not technical but moral: Congress must recover the belief that participation is not capitulation, that compromise is not surrender, and that its members were sent to legislate -- not merely to perform for their partisan tribes. Budget reform is where that recovery ought to begin.

There is the famous story of a supposed meeting between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, who had been Ambassador to France when the Constitution was written, was incredulous that it had included a Senate. He thought the Senate reeked of nobility and the House of Lords in the British Parliament. Washington, pointing to Jefferson’s saucer, asks why he poured his hot coffee into it. When Jefferson replies, “To cool it,” Washington answers, “Even so, we pour our legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”

The story may be legend, but Federalist No. 62 expressed the same sentiment: that a smaller, longer‑tenured upper chamber would temper the “sudden and violent passions” of a more numerous, frequently elected lower house.

While the filibuster as we know it today took a long time to develop, the idea of an upper body made up of Senators nominated by their state legislatures and serving for six‑year terms would act as a brake on overly partisan actions by the House, and would provide the states with direct representation in the federal government. The states’ role ended when the 17th Amendment passed, making the Senate a directly elected body.

The ability to filibuster was also the result of another historical accident. Vice President Aaron Burr (yes, the guy who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel), acting as the President of the Senate, recommended that the Senate drop the “motion to call the previous question” from its rules, claiming it was redundant. The Senate complied, and after 1806 it no longer had a majority‑controlled motion to cut off debate, even though it did not immediately grasp how that gap could be exploited.

It took a long time; the tactic of using the filibuster by the minority party to obstruct the actions of the majority did not emerge until the mid‑19th century. And since there was no “motion to call the question,” debates could go on for days and even weeks. It wasn’t until 1917 that the Senate, at the request of an angry President Woodrow Wilson, created the cloture rule to allow a supermajority of the Senate to cut off debate.

Without going over the extensive history—though it is quite interesting—suffice it to say that the once rare and infrequent use of the filibuster has morphed into the default starting position of the minority on everything from appropriations bills to nominations of district court judges.

For a comprehensive look at the history of the filibuster, you can read “The U.S. Senate Filibuster: Options for Reform”, which I wrote with Tim Lang in 2017.

How the Senate Became a Filibuster Machine

Many people have argued, including me, that the benefit of the filibuster was that it forced the majority to moderate legislation sufficiently to gain a handful of Senators from the minority party. If the House passed a very partisan bill, and the Senate only had 55 Senators of the same party, to get to cloture of 60 votes, they would have to moderate the House legislation sufficiently to gain five Senators of the minority party.

Smart Senators from the minority party quickly figured out that they could strongly influence legislation and build a record of accomplishment by working with Senators of the majority to get things done. It frequently did not require actually using the filibuster. Committee chairs in the majority party were happy to work with a handful of constructive Senators of the minority party to craft legislation that could win a comfortable majority. Thus, the threat of a filibuster became an incentive for bipartisan cooperation.

That equilibrium depended on two conditions that no longer hold: a minority willing to trade cooperation for policy influence, and a majority willing to leave the amendment process open for constructive Senators in the minority.

That was the theory, at any rate. The filibuster was once a legislative tactic used by the minority party to force the majority party to compromise on legislation. At times in the past, it was used to block popular (and needed) legislation like the Civil Rights Act—something made possible by the fact that, in the 1950s and 1960s, the cloture threshold was 67 votes. But the filibuster was used infrequently and usually saved for issues of great consequence.

From “Cooling Saucer” to Frozen Pipeline

Those days are gone. Today, the Republicans control the presidency, the Senate, and the House, yet the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer can shut down the entire government simply by holding his Senators together to deny ending debate through cloture, which requires 60 votes.

As former Senator Jim Talent and I wrote, the government shutdown that started in October of last year was “the first time to our knowledge that the government has been closed by a Senate minority, against the wishes of the President, the House, and even a bipartisan if only a simple majority of the Senate itself.”

We went on to say:

“In other words, the Senate cannot because of politics legislate on a bipartisan basis, but at the same time cannot because of its own rules legislate on a partisan basis, so it is, increasingly, unable to legislate at all. It can still investigate issues through its committee process, and Senators can still influence public opinion because their office gives them virtually unfettered access to the public square; but the Senate cannot effectively exercise its most basic constitutional powers: passing laws and appropriating money.”

In short, the filibuster has made the Senate fundamentally dysfunctional. It cannot even perform its most basic duties under the Constitution and frequently has to resort to legislative gimmicks like reconciliation bills to pass anything of substance.

The filibuster has pushed both parties into playing permanent defense. The minority blocks cloture to prevent the majority from ever getting to a final vote, and the majority responds by using tools like “filling the amendment tree” to prevent the minority—and even dissenting Senators of the majority—from offering amendments. It is a kind of mutually assured dysfunction: each side protects itself from short‑term political risk by ensuring that nothing of consequence can pass.

To see how absurd this is, imagine an alternate reality where NBA teams only played defense. No fast breaks, no shots, no strategy except stopping the other side from scoring. That is the Senate today. The minority’s strategy is to block bills and then blame the majority when nothing happens. The majority’s strategy is to lock down the floor to avoid tough votes and then hope voters don’t notice that nothing is getting done.

You have to feel for Speaker Mike Johnson, who has to perform legislative magic tricks to get anything through a closely divided House, only to see those bills die in the Senate graveyard. Yes, eventually they pass something they call appropriations - but often as a last‑minute continuing resolution that simply extends last year’s spending, or as a massive omnibus that no one has read and in which no one has seriously examined individual programs for waste and fraud.

In short, thanks to the Senate filibuster, Congress is just barely doing the minimum it is required to do, and even then, it is doing a poor job of it.

The consequences of a dysfunctional Congress are severe. A legislature that cannot legislate does not simply leave a vacuum; it invites the executive to fill it. When Congress will not act, Presidents find a way—whether it is President Obama’s “pen and phone” or President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs—using executive orders and creative interpretations of existing statutes to achieve policy goals that should be hammered out in law. Every time Congress shrinks from its responsibilities, it becomes easier for Presidents to treat unilateral action as the norm rather than a last resort, and harder for Congress to preserve its constitutional role.

Ours is a constitution of checks and balances. It was never the intention of the framers that the courts would be the primary constraint on Presidential power. The political branches are supposed to check each other, vying for public approval to support their positions. Congress still has the power to investigate the executive and compel attendance at its hearings, but even that authority has been enervated as administration officials have realized that Congress cannot use its formal powers and therefore cannot assert its will either by statute or by control over funding.

The irony is not lost on Presidents. They know they are effectively seizing power from Congress when it fails to act. Perhaps that is one reason the only thing former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump agree on is that the filibuster should be ended. Of course, Presidents enjoy the increased latitude they have because of congressional weakness, but even they understand that many of the problems which the public wants them to solve cannot be solved as long as the Senate, and therefore the Congress, remains paralyzed.

Why Thune Should Pull the Trigger Now

There are many Chicken Littles who worry about what might happen if the filibuster is ended. Well, 49 state legislatures—the exception being the unicameral legislature of Nebraska—manage to run their states without a filibuster in the upper chamber (granted, some states have supermajority requirements for specific issues like taxes, but the Senate would still have constitutionally mandated supermajorities for things like treaties).

The Senate is likely to work better, as natural majorities will come together on different issues. We know from the annual vote on the National Defense Authorization Act that there is a bipartisan majority on defense issues. There are likely bipartisan majorities on agriculture, energy, housing, transportation policy, etc. Those majorities may change from one issue to another, but given a Senate where one party blocks passage and the other party blocks amendments, the American people would welcome a body where things can finally get done. They might even be able to solve issues like immigration and taxes.

The majority does not have to sacrifice its control of the agenda, but it may have to tolerate amendments to the legislation that are less partisan than they would be with strict party‑line voting. The Majority Leader has the right of first recognition, meaning only he can bring legislation to the Floor.

Now, as long as both parties in the Senate supported the filibuster, a strong argument – in fact, an argument I accepted for years – could be made in favor of it: that the risk of good legislation failing because of the filibuster was less than the risk of bad legislation passing if the filibuster were removed.

But that argument no longer holds because the Democrats have made clear that if and when they control the Senate, they will use a simple majority to add Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico as states, gaining four new Democratic Senators, and also pack the Supreme Court by adding four or five new justices.

That is exactly what the Democrats are campaigning on, and the current paralysis makes those outcomes more likely by alienating voters from the current majority. Voters who repeatedly see unified Republican control produce no tangible results are more likely to roll the dice on unified Democratic control instead.

So instead of waiting for the Democrats to fulfill their campaign promises, why not eliminate the filibuster now, pass a budget and five pieces of popular legislation in September, and give the voters a reason not to elect a Democratic Senate? There is a reason the voters keep switching the majorities in the House and the Senate—they are tired of nothing getting done.

I understand that Leader Thune, whom I deeply admire and respect, is a Senate traditionalist. But the long‑standing tradition of the Senate is the one that earned the title “The Greatest Deliberative Body in the World.” And it was. But that tradition has been stifled by overactive partisanship, where the minority sees an advantage in simply shutting the system down and blaming the majority when nothing happens.

Here is an idea for Leader Thune to consider. He could publicly ask if there are five Democrats in the Senate willing to go on record saying that they would not vote to eliminate the filibuster if their Party gains the majority. It’s highly unlikely that those Democrats will be forthcoming, but if they are, then the original arguments for the filibuster would still be valid, and the Leader would have a good basis for leaving it in place. If, on the other hand, the Democrats do not step up, Senator Thune would have the strongest possible basis for asking his Republican colleagues at least to reform the filibuster so that essential legislation could be passed.

Conclusion

I resisted this conclusion for more than forty years. I believed, and still believe, in the idea of the Senate as the “cooling saucer,” the chamber that tempers the hot passions of the House and forces broad coalitions. But that vision depends on a Senate that can actually legislate—debate, amend, and decide. The modern filibuster has not preserved that tradition; it has strangled it. A rule that once protected deliberation now protects inaction. It has turned the “greatest deliberative body in the world” into the least productive legislature in the developed world.

And if the Democrats as a body don’t support the current procedure, there is no point in the Republicans pretending that they can preserve the status quo on their own. A norm is not a norm unless it is, well, normal – unless it is accepted and followed by all the factions that are supposed to be subject to it.

Senator Thune is right to value tradition. But the true tradition of the Senate is to do its constitutional duty: passing laws, appropriating money, and checking the other branches. Ending the filibuster would not usher in unlimited majoritarian excess; the Senate’s structure, the presidential veto, the courts, and the voters themselves remain formidable checks. What it would do is restore the ability of elected majorities to govern and force them to accept accountability for the results.

The question is not whether the filibuster will survive. If Republicans do not end it in order to govern now, Democrats will end it to govern later. The only question is whether Republicans will use their current majority to reclaim Congress’s role in our system—or cling to a dysfunctional rule until it is taken from them and used against them. The time for nostalgia—for the Senate I first came to know—is over.

The President is allowing the bipartisan housing bill to become law without his signature. Under Article I, Section 7, Clause 2 of the Constitution, if ten days (Sundays excepted) pass after a bill is presented and the President has not signed or returned it, the bill “shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it,” so long as Congress has not adjourned in a way that prevents its return. In that circumstance, presidential inaction results in the bill becoming law.

There is another circumstance, however, where a President can effectively veto legislation without signing it, known as a “pocket veto.” A pocket veto can occur only when Congress has adjourned such that the President cannot return the bill with his objections within the ten‑day period. For example, if Congress sends the President a bill with only five days left before final adjournment of a session and then adjourns sine die, the legislation will die if the President neither signs it nor returns it, because Congress is no longer in session and thus cannot receive the veto message or attempt an override.

The Constitution gives the President ten days (excluding Sundays) to act on legislation passed by Congress. If he vetoes it during that time, the bill is returned to Congress, which has the opportunity to override the veto by a two‑thirds vote in each chamber. If he does nothing and Congress remains in session, the bill becomes law, as described earlier. But if Congress adjourns in a way that prevents the bill’s return before the ten days are up, the bill is considered dead unless the President proactively signs it; if he does not, the legislation is effectively pocket‑vetoed and Congress would have to repass the bill in a subsequent session.

About 150 years later, John Paul II wrote an encyclical with a similar message: moral truth is real, we can know it, and true freedom comes from following that truth. Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) is not a political text, but its main point—that “only the freedom which submits to the truth leads the human person to his true good”—matters for any country built on the idea of rights given by a Creator. In this way, it connects to the same moral foundations as the Declaration.

This belief—that freedom depends on moral truth—can be found in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ronald Reagan. Each of them, in their own way, reminds the nation of the promises in the Declaration. They are closer to John Paul II’s view of moral truth than to today’s idea that truth is just a personal choice.

The Declaration as Moral Charter

Often, we repeat the Declaration’s most famous sentence almost like a ritual, without really thinking about what it means:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights… That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

This is more than just words; it is a statement about moral reality. The Declaration presents equality, rights, and limits on government as facts about human nature, not just hopes or social ideas. Jefferson says rights are “unalienable” because they come from a Creator, and governments exist “to secure these rights,” not to create them.

This is the idea behind natural law. There is a moral order in the world—“the laws of nature and of nature’s God”—that we do not create but discover. Man-made laws are valid only if they match this deeper order. If they do not, the Declaration says people can resist them.

No matter what else you think about 1776, this is not an example of relativism.

Veritatis Splendor: Freedom Under Truth

Veritatis Splendor opens with a line that fits well with the Declaration’s preamble: “The splendor of truth shines forth in all the works of the Creator and, in a special way, in man, created in the image and likeness of God.” For John Paul II, the main questions concern morals and human nature: Can people know what is good, and what happens to freedom if we deny that a moral law exists?

The encyclical gives a clear answer. Truth is real, and people, with the help of reason and revelation, can truly know it. Freedom is not just doing whatever we want, but being able to choose what is good and true. As it says, “only the freedom which submits to the truth leads the human person to his true good.” If freedom is separated from truth, it turns into a license to do whatever we want, which can lead to a new kind of slavery.

Crucially, Veritatis Splendor insists that some acts are “intrinsically evil”—always and everywhere incompatible with human dignity—regardless of intentions or circumstances. It rejects moral theories that reduce ethics to balancing outcomes or maximizing usefulness, and it defends conscience as the servant of truth rather than its creator. When we judge slavery, segregation, or totalitarian repression as wrong—not simply illegal, but wrong—we are presupposing this moral order.

In other words, when we say some things can never be justified, no matter how strongly we feel, we are thinking like the writers of the Declaration and like John Paul II, not like today’s ethical relativists. This is the encyclical's main point: moral truth is the standard for freedom, law, and politics. The same idea appears in the next part of Veritatis Splendor.

“Patterned on God’s freedom, man’s freedom is not negated by his obedience to the divine law; indeed, only through this obedience does it abide in the truth and conform to human dignity. Man achieves such dignity when he frees himself from all subservience to his feelings, and in a free choice of the good, pursues his own end by effectively and assiduously marshalling the appropriate means.”

In another important passage, John Paul II says that as people move toward God, they must freely choose good and avoid evil. This decision, he says, “takes place above all thanks to the light of natural reason,” which reflects God’s image. He bases natural law not on animal instincts, but on human reason, which shares in and reflects God’s law. This supports the idea that truth can be known.

Lincoln: Renewing the Vows

Abraham Lincoln understood these ideas naturally. To him, the Declaration was “the father of all moral principle” in American life, not just a piece of history. He saw the statement that “all men are created equal” as a core belief the nation was built on, and he viewed the Civil War as a test of whether a country based on that belief could survive.

The Gettysburg Address distills this logic with startling economy:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure…”

“…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln knew the Founders had made compromises with slavery. Still, he did not see the equality clause as meaningless. He saw it as a moral standard—“a stumbling block” for tyrants and “a constant rebuke” to injustice—that required each generation to get closer to its true meaning. At times, he warned that Americans could easily lose sight of this standard:

“As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

Again, the connection to Veritatis Splendor is clear. Slavery is not just another policy preference; it violates the natural-law idea that all people are created equal and, consequently, is always unjust. In his Second Inaugural, Lincoln saw the war as a kind of divine judgment and called the nation to “firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.” This was his way of thinking about what it means for a nation to live by moral truth.

King: Natural Law in Birmingham

A hundred years later, Martin Luther King Jr. viewed the Declaration through the lenses of Augustine and Aquinas. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, King gives Americans perhaps the clearest explanation of natural law they will ever read.

“There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws… Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’

A just law is a man‑made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law… To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

For King, segregation laws are unjust because they harm human dignity and go against the equality promised in the Declaration. A law that does not match eternal law does not have real authority. Civil disobedience, then, is not lawlessness but loyalty—to a higher law, to conscience, and to the “promissory note” of 1776.

King’s argument closely matches the moral ideas in Veritatis Splendor: a well-formed conscience judges human law by objective moral truth; not every law from the state is binding in conscience; and some governing systems are always unjust. When King says he stands with the prophets, he is also, whether he says it or not, standing with natural-law reasoning.

Reagan and John Paul II: Moral Realism against the “Evil Empire”

Ronald Reagan is often remembered for his optimism and his sense of the American story. But in his most controversial speech, given to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983, he did something unusual for the time: he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and “the focus of evil in the modern world.” Like earlier leaders, this language assumes there is such a thing as moral truth.

“Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness—pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the State… they are the focus of evil in the modern world…

I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire… and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”

Reagan did not see the Cold War as just a political struggle. He described it as a moral conflict about what it means to be human and where rights come from. He reminded people that rights do not come from the government but from God, and that governments exist to protect these rights, not give them as gifts. A government that crushes conscience, worship, and speech is not just different; it is, as Veritatis Splendor would say, built on lies about people.

John Paul II had lived under both Nazism and communism, and he saw where those lies lead. Veritatis Splendor’s warning about an “alliance between democracy and ethical relativism” is similar to Reagan’s admonitions against those who would excuse or normalize totalitarianism in the name of détente. When the two men converged in the 1980s, their partnership was far more than geopolitical strategy; it was the meeting of two moral realists who believed, stubbornly, that good and evil are not empty words.

A Common Thread and a Question

The Declaration says there are self-evident truths about human nature and rights, based on a Creator and binding on governments. Veritatis Splendor says that moral truth is real, that people can know it, and that freedom is found by following that truth. Lincoln, King, and Reagan, each in their own time and way, call America back to these truths: Lincoln with a “new birth of freedom,” King by showing the difference between just and unjust laws, and Reagan by naming evil and saying rights come before the state.

The hard question is what happens if we stop believing these things. What happens to a country built on “self-evident truths” if we treat truth as just a personal choice? What happens to conscience if we see all moral claims as just struggles for power? And what happens to freedom if it forgets the truth that once gave it meaning?

We can already see in some parts of Europe what happens when current ethical trends replace the unalienable right to free speech. Suddenly, speech that is unpopular or just uncomfortable becomes a crime, punished by the government. Why? Because in those places, what you can say depends on what those in power allow.

These are the questions that Lincoln, King, Reagan, and John Paul II would ask us. Are the truths of the Declaration still self-evident to us, or have we lost the meaning of what it means to be an American?

The public has been so badly misled by politicians about how Social Security works that a real solution may be nearly impossible. First of all, Social Security is already running a cash-flow deficit, and we are borrowing roughly $160 billion this year to make up the difference—on top of everything else Washington is already financing with debt.

Second, the “trust fund” is made up of Treasury bonds, not taxpayer savings. When Social Security was running a surplus—that is, payroll taxes exceeded benefits—Congress used the surplus to reduce the deficit at the time; in exchange, the government credited Social Security with Treasury securities. Economically, that’s an internal IOU, but legally and financially, those bonds are real obligations of the Treasury.

In effect, this shifted costs over time—reducing deficits then while creating obligations that must be financed now. Given current fiscal conditions, that means the government will have to borrow even more to redeem the Treasury bonds in the trust fund and keep benefits flowing.

Third—and sorry to have to tell you this—there are not, nor have there ever been, individual savings accounts that your payroll taxes were paid into. Your payroll taxes have been used to pay the benefits of existing retirees. What is happening now is that benefits exceed the taxes paid, and this will only get worse as the population of working-age adults shrinks relative to the population of benefit-receiving seniors. Current law promises specific benefits, but it does not guarantee that your contributions were ever saved in a personal account. There is no mythical savings account that you have been putting money into.

So, what do we do? The government has been paying benefits using Treasury bonds held in the trust fund. Social Security’s shortfall is covered by redeeming those trust fund bonds. That redemption requires the Treasury to obtain cash—through taxes, spending cuts, or borrowing—which affects the unified federal deficit. According to the Social Security Trustees’ recent report, the bonds in the main Social Security retirement trust fund will be exhausted by 2032. In that year, the only money payable will be what workers pay into the system, and that will be only about 78 percent of what the law promised.

But who are we kidding? In theory, Congress could simply reduce Social Security benefits to 78 percent of what was promised. If you think that will happen, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you. Congress could raise payroll taxes, push back the retirement date for future retirees, or remove the income caps for FICA taxes, but all three would be politically unpopular. It could enact major reforms, as President George Bush proposed in 2005 and as many countries, such as Sweden, have already done—for instance, by shifting part of the system toward individually owned, market-invested accounts—but that was also politically unpopular.

So what will our Congress do? Regardless of which party is in power, it will borrow money to cover the difference between payroll taxes and the benefits that must be paid. The only real change will be explicit: Social Security benefits, above and beyond what is funded by the payroll tax, will be paid directly from general revenues. But as we’ve discussed, it has effectively been doing that already—using an accounting distinction that obscures the underlying fiscal reality. The Treasury “cashes out” bonds in the trust fund with money from the general budget and treats that as a separate transaction.

What does that mean? It means our budget deficit and national debt will balloon even further. Interest on the national debt already exceeds $1 trillion. As the trust fund is exhausted, Social Security will place increasing pressure on the rest of the federal budget—requiring higher taxes, more borrowing, or cuts elsewhere. Over time, that means higher interest costs, reduced fiscal flexibility, and a greater risk that markets begin to question Washington’s ability to manage its obligations.

So the economic stability of our children’s future depends on Congress making unpopular decisions to fix Social Security and other entitlement programs. Congress is unlikely to make those tough decisions—heck, it can’t even consistently make the tough decisions needed to manage our annual appropriation bills, much less future budgets.

In other words, “Bonne chance, mes enfants.” *

*When you have bad news, it is always better to say it in another language. Latin also works. Italics help.

On July 4, 2026, Americans will once again gather under banners and beside monuments to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We will hear the familiar words recited from courthouse steps and Capitol balconies: “We hold these truths to be self‑evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” We have repeated that sentence so often that it risks becoming background noise. Yet embedded in its brief lines is an entire vision of the human person—and it is not the vision that dominates many of our universities today.

The statesmen of 1776 spoke in a vocabulary that assumed there were such things as human nature, human dignity, and human rights, and that these realities were not inventions of politics but the very standard by which politics would be judged. As we mark the Semiquincentennial, the question is not only whether we still admire the Founders’ courage or approve their particular policies. The question is whether we still believe what they said about what a human being is. On that answer hangs far more than an anniversary speech.

The famous sentence from the Declaration is easily memorized, but it is worth slowing down long enough to see what it presupposes. “We hold these truths to be self‑evident, that all men are created equal…” The word “created” does enormous work here. The men in Philadelphia did not think of human beings as self‑invented wills floating free of any given nature. To be created is to have a nature you did not choose, to receive your existence and your basic powers as a gift. It is also to stand in relation to a Creator who is prior to every state and superior to every legislature.

They go on to say that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Rights, in this account, are not permissions granted by government or favors conferred by a majority. They are rooted in the way human beings actually are. Because a human person is a certain kind of being—a rational creature capable of deliberation, love, and responsibility—certain things are “due to” that person as a matter of justice. Government’s role is not to manufacture those rights, but to recognize and secure them.

Finally, the sentence claims that these truths are “self‑evident.” The Founders did not mean by this that every individual in every age will spontaneously affirm them. They meant that, upon due reflection, human reason can genuinely see certain moral facts about the human person—that it is wrong to treat persons as mere things, that it is unjust to deny them equal standing before the law—and that these facts do not depend on the preferences of the powerful. The Declaration is, among other things, a public act of confidence in our capacity to know at least this much about ourselves.

A republic built on this sentence assumes a great deal: that there is a human nature, that there is a real dignity grounded in that nature, and that we can know enough about both to bind even kings and parliaments. As we celebrate 250 years of independence, the uncomfortable fact is that much of our intellectual culture no longer shares those assumptions. That is the collision we now face.

Bishop Robert Barron has recently described this as an “anthropological crisis” within the university: a clash between a classical vision of the human person, ordered to truth, capable of wonder, made in the image of God, and what he calls a “pessimistic anthropology” drawn from Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Foucault. In his 2026 Neuhaus Lecture, ‘Recovering the University’s Soul,’ delivered under First Things’ auspices, Barron argues that students are now trained to approach texts and traditions not to see what truth they might disclose, but chiefly to ask whose interests they serve and what structures of domination they reinforce. My argument is that this same anthropology of suspicion now shapes not only the campus but the broader American elite—and it stands in profound tension with the account of the human person we commemorate every Fourth of July.

Two anthropologies: dignity vs suspicion

At 250, the United States finds itself living on the moral capital of an anthropology it no longer quite believes. The Declaration tells us that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” including life and liberty. Implicit is a claim about what freedom is for: men and women are free not as isolated wills, but as creatures capable of recognizing the truth about themselves and ordering their lives to it. The Founders debated the content of virtue, but they did not imagine a liberty detached from moral purpose.

Over two centuries later, Pope John Paul II, speaking from a very different institutional podium, said much the same thing in a more explicitly theological idiom. God gives man freedom, he insisted, so that he may be free to do what he ought, free for truth, for love, for the “sincere gift of self” that gives human life its deepest meaning. In his social teaching, there “exists something that is due to man because he is man, by reason of his lofty dignity,” and both politics and culture are to be judged by whether they respect that dignity and foster that freedom.

Set against this, the Foucauldian “culture of suspicion” now ascendant in much of the social sciences offers a very different picture. The human subject is no longer a creature with a given nature and vocation, but an “invention of recent date” produced by shifting regimes of power/knowledge, destined perhaps to be “erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.” Freedom, in this frame, is not ordered to what we ought to do, because there is no stable “ought,” only the perpetual contest of discourses. Dignity and duty become, at best, rhetorical tools within that contest. The question the Semiquincentennial forces upon us is whether a republic founded on the first anthropology can endure if it educates its future elites in the second.

Can the philosophy of the Founders in 1776 compete with the philosophy of the university in 2026? Let’s look at what is being taught.

Vignette 1: The Declaration in a sociology seminar

It is the week before July 4th in a sophomore sociology seminar. The syllabus assigns the Declaration of Independence, not as a founding charter to be understood on its own terms, but as an artifact in a unit called “Texts of Hegemony.” The professor projects the familiar sentence on the screen—“We hold these truths to be self‑evident, that all men are created equal…”—and immediately asks the class: “Whose interests are served by calling these truths ‘self‑evident’?”

A student ventures that the claim might be true, or at least that the idea of equal dignity has inspired abolitionists and civil‑rights leaders. The professor nods politely, but steers back to the preferred framework: “Notice that ‘men’ here means white, property‑owning males. ‘Self‑evident truths’ is the language a dominant group uses to naturalize its own power and make it appear beyond question.”

No one denies the historical exclusions; they are real and grave. But the only acceptable vocabulary in the room is that of power and exclusion. No one is encouraged to ask whether the proposition itself—that all human beings are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights—might be true and might therefore stand in judgment over the very men who first penned it. The anthropology of 1776—the idea that there are truths about the human person that bind rulers and ruled alike—never gets a hearing. In its place, students internalize a quieter lesson: language about dignity and rights is strategic at best, a mask for domination at worst.

Vignette 2: A social‑theory colloquium on “love”

Across campus, a small graduate colloquium in social theory is reading Michel Foucault and contemporary critical theorists on power and subjectivity. The topic for the week is ostensibly “Love and Care in Late Modernity.” A student proposes that perhaps, even in complex institutions, some people really do act from love: a nurse staying past her shift, a social worker going the extra mile for a client.

The seminar pauses, and then the familiar machinery starts to hum. Another student responds that what we call “love” in these settings is “a technology of normalization”—a way organizations secure compliance by inducing workers to internalize their roles. The professor affirms this insight, linking it to Foucault’s analysis of pastoral power: modern institutions “care” for us in order to shape us, to produce certain kinds of subjects.

Soon, every example of concrete concern for another person is redescribed in terms of biopolitics and discipline. The nurse’s sacrifice becomes a symptom of gendered labor norms; the social worker’s devotion is folded into the logic of the welfare state. No one denies that these structures matter; they clearly do. But there is no conceptual room left to say, without irony, “This person has a dignity that calls forth my love,” or, “I am free to do what I ought for their good.”

The students leave with sharpened suspicion and depleted hope. They are highly trained to unmask power, but poorly equipped to affirm the worth of the persons for whose sake they might one day wish to act. In such a classroom, the very words that animated the Founders and John Paul II—truth, dignity, love—have become, in effect, philosophically embarrassing.

How Foucault undercuts dignity

At the core of Michel Foucault’s project is the claim that what we take to be “truth,” “knowledge,” and even “the subject” are products of power relations and historically specific “regimes of truth.” Knowledge does not stand outside power as a neutral access to reality; power and knowledge are mutually constitutive, determining what can be said, who may speak, and what counts as true. The modern human subject, on this account, is not an enduring, unified self with intrinsic dignity, but the outcome of disciplinary mechanisms—surveillance, normalization, categorization—that shape how people understand and regulate themselves.

This is why Foucault is often grouped with “anti‑humanism.” He explicitly rejects the Enlightenment-style humanist picture of man as a stable, rational, autonomous center of meaning and value. Modern “man,” as he puts it, is a discursive construct, a recent invention that may one day disappear “like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.” In that frame, there is no given human nature to ground inviolable dignity, no vantage point “outside” regimes of power from which one could affirm the equal worth of all persons in the strong sense you find in the Founders or John Paul II.

The depressing spiral

If you are a student or professor who genuinely internalizes this view, you are almost compelled to think of yourself as an “intellectual slave” to cultures and discourses you did not choose. You are constituted by power; the very categories through which you think—normal/abnormal, sane/insane, citizen/deviant—are themselves products of disciplinary regimes. You can map and critique those regimes, but you do not get to step outside them as a free, rational subject possessing a dignity that transcends them.

Foucault often describes power as “productive, not just repressive,” emphasizing that it creates subjects, identities, and possibilities, not only constraints. Advocates will say this opens space for resistance, irony, and tactical reversal. But there is a cost, an unmistakable psychological and moral spiral:

· If every appeal to truth or human nature is just another “regime of truth,” then your own moral intuitions about the equal worth of persons become suspect from the start.

· If your loves and loyalties are read mainly as effects of power, you are discouraged from trusting them as starting points for action on behalf of the common good.

· If “man” is a contingent construct with no stable essence, then talk of a universal human dignity or vocation to truth and love looks not just wrong but naïve or oppressive.

And we wonder why so many young people are depressed. You are trained to turn the acid of suspicion on every motive—including your own—to such a degree that genuine commitment to the good of “the whole” becomes almost unintelligible.

Love, truth, and the “abhorrence” of humanism

The older concept of human dignity—whether in the Founders’ natural-rights language or John Paul II’s personalism—presupposes that human beings are ordered to truth, beauty, and love, and that it is fitting to strive to serve humankind through them. To love my neighbor in that tradition is precisely to affirm:

• You are more than your social location or your function in a system.

• You possess a worth that commands my respect and can call my own community and institutions to account.

• I can and should act on that truth, however imperfectly, for your good.

Anti‑humanist strands of postmodernism turn that impulse into something “monstrous.” One postmodern critic of liberal humanism describes it as a machinery that dupes “subjects” with the illusion of free will into oppressive social systems; humanist talk of value, dignity, and autonomy is treated as part of the ideological apparatus. Other postmodern‑friendly humanists explicitly argue that we must give up on “fixed human nature” and “ultimate rationality” as foundations, and rest content with our preferences for a democratic, caring society without deeper justification.

If love itself is redescribed primarily as a technique of normalization, a way institutions induce subjects to internalize discipline, then of course the very concept becomes suspect. To say “I love mankind” or “I love my students” risks sounding, in Foucauldian ears, like “I am participating in a regime that produces certain compliant subjects.” That is a philosophical abhorrence: love and care are no longer seen first as responses to the real dignity of others, but as moves in a game of power.

That is not just intellectually mistaken but spiritually dangerous. It disconnects the will to love from any secure conviction about who or what is lovable, and why.

Two philosophies on a collision course

On one side is the founding view:

• Human beings are created with a real nature and endowed with dignity, prior to the state and not conferred by it.

• Reason can grasp at least some basic truths about that nature— “self‑evident” truths about equality and rights—that bind rulers and ruled.

• Freedom is ordered to what we ought to do: to seek truth, to practice justice, to make a “sincere gift of self” in love.

This picture underwrites both the Declaration’s language of rights and John Paul II’s insistence that there is “something that is due to man because he is man, by reason of his lofty dignity.” It gives citizens reasons to act for the common good.

On the other side is the Foucauldian “culture of suspicion”:

• “Man” is not a stable kind but “an invention of recent date,” a figure produced by regimes of power/knowledge that may be erased.

• Claims about truth, nature, dignity, or rights are read primarily as effects of power—moves within a struggle, not answers to a reality that stands over us.

• Freedom is reconceived as resistance to normalization, not as a capacity to conform oneself to what one ought to do, because there is no stable “ought,” only shifting discourses.

Once this outlook becomes the implicit creed of the social sciences and humanities, it trains future lawyers, teachers, journalists, and policymakers to hear the founding language of equal, God‑given dignity not as a serious description of what humans are, but as a historically situated “hegemonic discourse.”

Real-world consequences of which wins

We are on a collision course: the grammar of 1776 and the grammar of Foucault cannot both govern our public life. Here are three areas where the conflict will be obvious:

• Law and rights: If rights are no longer grounded in a real human nature but in negotiated discourses, then courts and legislatures will increasingly treat them as adjustable, contingent arrangements. The phrase “unalienable rights” becomes nostalgia rather than a constraint. We already see judges and commentators arguing that sociological and cultural background so mitigates responsibility that even grave crimes are treated more as symptoms than as acts.

• Bioethics and the vulnerable: If the most intellectually sophisticated accounts of the person are suspicious of nature and universals, it becomes harder to defend the equal worth of the very young, the disabled, or the dying—the people John Paul II calls the first victims of a “culture of death.” We see it in Canada’s rapidly expanding MAID regime and in Iceland’s near disappearance of children born with Down syndrome—policies defended as progress, but intelligible only if some lives are judged less worth living.

• Civic motivation: A culture that tells its elites that “truth” and “love” are mainly masks for power will produce bright cynics, not citizens eager to “secure these rights” for others at cost to themselves. The habit of unmasking slowly eats away at the will to build. It also reduces the desire for relationships and community—as seen in declining marriage rates, falling birthrates, and an epidemic of loneliness in the middle of large populations.

The classroom vignettes above are miniature laboratories where this collision is already visible: students are explicitly taught either to see “created equal” as a meaningful claim about human beings, or as code for a particular group’s power. Which habit of mind graduates and spreads into the professions will—over the next generation—shape how our institutions interpret the very words they still recite on the Fourth of July.

Conclusion

On July 4, 2026, we will once again gather under the banner of a sentence that changed the world: “We hold these truths to be self‑evident, that all men are created equal…” We will print it on programs, inscribe it on lecterns, quote it from podiums. But the deeper question is whether we still believe what those words say about what a human being is. The Founders and John Paul II speak a common language: human beings are created with a real nature; they are endowed with a dignity and they are free in order to do what they ought—to seek truth, practice justice, and make a gift of themselves in love.

Much of our intellectual culture, especially in the social sciences shaped by Foucault and the wider “culture of suspicion,” speaks another language. In that idiom, “man” is an invention that can be erased, and appeals to truth, nature, or dignity are read mainly as moves within regimes of power/knowledge. Our universities are quietly teaching future leaders which language to trust.

The Semiquincentennial, then, is not only a birthday party; it is a fork in the road. Either we renew, with eyes open to our failures, the conviction that every person really is created equal and endowed with a worth that no state and no theory may erase—or we continue to celebrate words that our own institutions have hollowed out from within. Two anthropologies cannot both remain dominant. The question for 2026 is simple: which one will govern the next 250 years?

The war against Iran has dominated the news and already carries serious economic consequences for the world. Yet the justification for U.S. action was never adequately explained—before the war began or even after the initial strikes.

As I wrote in my last column, the President needlessly picked a fight with Pope Leo, practically guaranteeing a defensive reaction from loyal, even very pro‑Trump, Catholics. That was a careless mistake, especially since the Church’s position is not nearly as simple as Leo’s rhetoric makes it sound.

Pope Benedict XVI warned that “an absolute pacifism that refused to grant the law any effective means for its enforcement would be a capitulation to injustice.” Pope Leo’s absolutist rhetoric has seemingly made believers out of non‑believers and caused considerable consternation among believers—including me.

In Cameroon, he said, “Blessed are the peacemakers. But woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.” I assume he meant to quote “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt 5:9) and then add his own apostolic riff. I hope so, because my Protestant friends already think Catholics have enough trouble sticking to Scripture.

Without defending the President’s earlier remarks, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Pope has been dabbling in something that looks a lot like amateur politics. The danger is that we are getting a pope who is genuinely right to condemn the manipulation of religion for war and profit, but who is himself playing dangerously loose with both Scripture and the Church’s careful distinctions on war, peace, and the use of force.

I know this is fantasy, but here is what I wish the President had said, interspersed with notes from the Church’s own teaching. Humor me; I’m no Peggy Noonan, and I realize I’m asking Donald Trump to speak in a way wholly uncharacteristic of his signature style. Yet nothing in this contradicts the reasons he himself has offered for taking action.

The speech he never gave

Over the past month, the Iranian regime has done what tyrannies always do when they are afraid of their own people: it has answered courage with murder. The world has seen the bodies in the streets, the mass arrests, the attempted strangling of a movement that wants only what we claim to believe in—basic human rights and the chance to choose their own future. We cannot say we did not know.

At the same time, we face reports that this same regime is on the threshold of a nuclear weapon. A government that shoots its own citizens should not be trusted with the power to erase cities.

Tonight, I want to be very clear about what this moment requires of the United States.

First: we have used every serious non‑violent tool we have. That is not weakness; that is moral discipline. We have imposed targeted sanctions on the individuals, units, and industries directly responsible for repression and for the nuclear program. We have worked with allies to isolate the regime, not the Iranian people. We have supported efforts to document these crimes, to bring their authors before international courts, and to give Iranians a voice the regime cannot completely silence.

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church takes seriously both the urgency of avoiding war in an age of “terrifying” weapons and the duty to protect civilians who are being massacred or uprooted. It insists on exhausting non‑violent means, yet links the right of defense with “the duty to protect and help innocent victims who are not able to defend themselves from acts of aggression.” That is uncomfortably close to what we are now watching in Iran.

Second: we affirm something simple that too many are afraid to say—governments exist to protect their people, not to terrorize them. Law, whether national or international, has a purpose: to shield the innocent and restrain the violent. When a regime turns the machinery of the state against its own citizens and races toward nuclear arms, the world is not witnessing “internal affairs.” It is watching a threat to basic justice and to peace.

Benedict XVI, while still Cardinal Ratzinger, warned that “an absolute pacifism that refused to grant the law any effective means for its enforcement would be a capitulation to injustice.” If war is simply called, in Leo’s words, a “defeat for humanity” with little attention to who is defending whom, that can obscure the moral obligation to protect victims—whether in Iran, Ukraine, or elsewhere.

For a long time, the Christian just‑war tradition has lived with a hard truth. War is always a tragedy. It is always a defeat of human hopes. But the same tradition also warns against an “absolute pacifism” that refuses to give the law any real means of enforcement, and so surrenders the field to injustice. Refusing to act when innocents are being crushed is not peace. It is complicity.

So here is where the United States stands. We will not launch a war of aggression against Iran. We will not dress up a war of choice as “prevention.”

In 2012, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said essentially the same thing when talk of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities was in the air. They quoted the Church’s social doctrine: “Engaging in a preventive war without clear proof that an attack is imminent cannot fail to raise serious moral and juridical questions.” The bishops insisted that Iran’s bellicose statements and lack of transparency, “in themselves,” did not justify military action. They rejected precisely the kind of “war of choice” my imaginary President now disavows.

We have learned, at great cost, what happens when we pretend we can remake another society at gunpoint. Any use of force must be a last resort, tied to a clear and limited goal: to protect human life and to disarm those who threaten it.

Here, too, the Vatican has been consistent. Since John Paul II, the Church has affirmed that war must be a last resort, but it has also taught that the international community has an obligation to intervene—with force, if necessary—when entire populations face annihilation. John Paul’s message for the 2000 World Day of Peace famously spoke of the “legitimate and even obligatory” duty to “take concrete measures to disarm the aggressor” when all other means have failed and a people’s survival is at stake. Later, in response to ISIS, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said bluntly: “When all other means have been exhausted, to save human beings the international community must act. This can include disarming the aggressor.” Archbishop Giorgio Lingua, the papal nuncio in Iraq, agreed that U.S. strikes “had to be done, otherwise [ISIS] could not be stopped.”

But we will also not promise that force is off the table no matter what happens. If all serious diplomatic, economic, and political efforts fail; if the regime continues systematic violence against its own people; if it moves to deploy or use nuclear capabilities in a way that threatens massive loss of innocent life—then the United States will work with our partners, and in line with international law, to take concrete measures to disarm the aggressor and to protect the innocent.

That is not a threat. It is a responsibility. Sovereignty does not give any government the right to butcher its people or to prepare mass destruction with impunity. When a regime crosses those lines, the world cannot simply look away and call it “peace.”

Catholic theology starts with self‑defense, not with war. A person—and by extension a people—has the right, and sometimes the duty, to protect innocent life from unjust attack. That basic principle lies underneath everything else. Just war is what happens when the Church asks a further question: under what conditions may a state exercise that right by waging organized war, and how must it fight if it does? The answer is a much narrower category with many more brakes: just cause, right intention, legitimate authority, last resort, proportionality, a reasonable chance of success, and strict limits on targeting non‑combatants. Self‑defense is the moral foundation; just war is the heavily conditioned, reluctantly permitted way a political community may sometimes live that principle out.

One more thing: nuclear weapons. For decades we and others have lived under a nuclear shadow, telling ourselves that terror could keep the peace. Whatever one thinks of that history, we must admit that nuclear weapons are different. They do not distinguish between soldier and child, between the guilty and the innocent. No regime that treats human life as expendable should command that kind of power.

That is why we must prevent Iran from getting the bomb, but also, as I have long advocated, strengthen real arms control and move, step by step, toward a world less dependent on nuclear terror. We cannot credibly oppose an Iranian bomb while shrugging at an endless global nuclear status quo.

For many years the Church has been deeply hostile to nuclear weapons but tolerated deterrence as a temporary expedient on the way to mutual disarmament. Under Francis, the argument has sharpened: even possession is increasingly described as morally unacceptable. Given that trajectory, and the obvious incompatibility of nuclear weapons with the principles of discrimination and proportionality, it should be clear that the Church would strongly object to placing such weapons in the hands of a regime with Iran’s human‑rights record.

To the people of Iran: our quarrel is not with you. We see your courage in the streets. We hear your demand for dignity, for freedom, for a future that belongs to you. We do not come as conquerors. We stand, however imperfectly, for the belief that your lives are not bargaining chips in someone else’s negotiations.

To our allies: this is a test of our principles as much as our strength. It is easy to say “never again.” It is harder to act—carefully, lawfully, but decisively—when “again” is happening in real time. We must stand together, not as lovers of war, but as people who know that a peace purchased by turning our backs on victims is not a just peace.

To Americans: we are taking every precaution to protect innocent human life and using every available tool to keep our servicemen and women as safe as possible. But we cannot pretend that neutrality is possible when innocent blood is being shed and when a regime that despises human life stands on the edge of nuclear capability.

Our goal is a Middle East where the Iranian people are free from terror, where no regime can hold its neighbors hostage with nuclear blackmail, and where disputes are not settled by massacres in city streets. That is not utopia. It is simply the minimum justice that human dignity demands.

That is the path we will try to walk—with restraint, with resolve, and with a firm commitment to both justice and peace.

There is nothing in this speech that is incompatible with Catholic social teaching or with what Leo’s predecessors have actually said.

Last resort in a nuclear age

Whatever else one says about American policy toward Iran, it has not been a 47‑year sprint to war. Since 1979, we have tried almost everything short of invasion—sanctions, back‑channels, EU‑brokered talks, the JCPOA, “maximum pressure,” and a revolving door of threats and inducements. None of it has persuaded the Islamic Republic to stop murdering its own people or to abandon the nuclear option as the ultimate insurance policy. If “last resort” means “you must keep trying what has already failed for another fifty years,” then the phrase has quietly been emptied of content.

All of this brings us to the real knot in the rope: what “last resort” means in a nuclear age. For good reasons, Catholic just‑war teaching is allergic to talk of “pre‑emptive” or “preventive” war. The Church warns that striking first, without clear proof that an attack is imminent, raises serious moral and juridical questions, and the U.S. bishops leaned on that language when they opposed proposals to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2012. Preventive war is not just another policy choice; it is precisely the sort of “war of choice” the tradition is trying to fence off.

That said, nuclear weapons make the old notion of “imminence” harder to apply than it was when Augustine was worrying about Visigoths. When the weapon is a tank column, you can see it massing at the border; when the weapon is a nuclear device on a mobile launcher, your warning time may be measured in minutes. By the time you have courtroom‑grade proof that a regime intends to use a nuclear weapon, you may be looking at a radar screen, not an intelligence estimate. In that setting, “wait until the attack is imminent” can become a pious way of saying “wait until it’s too late.”

On nuclear weapons themselves, the Church has been getting steadily less patient. John XXIII and Vatican II condemned indiscriminate destruction and the arms race; later popes grudgingly tolerated nuclear deterrence only as a strictly conditioned, temporary expedient; today, Francis and many episcopal conferences openly question not just the use but even the possession of nuclear weapons as incompatible with respect for human life. A weapon that cannot be used without turning cities into mass graves does not sit comfortably inside a moral framework that demands discrimination and proportionality.

Put those two strands together and you get a genuine dilemma the magisterium has not fully worked through. On one side, the tradition says: no preventive wars of choice, no “we feel uncomfortable, therefore we bomb.” On the other, the same tradition now says: no morally acceptable nuclear use, no pretending that incinerating a metropolis can be squared with the Gospel. In between lies the hard question Iran forces back onto the table: what counts as a licit “last resort” when the cost of waiting for absolute certainty may be a mushroom cloud—and when our decades of non‑violent efforts to change the regime’s behavior have already failed?

Pope Leo’s rhetoric, for all its sincerity, tends to glide past that question. To say, over and over, that “war is always a defeat” and that we must seek an “unarmed peace” is admirable in the abstract; no sane person wants the alternative. But when you are dealing with a government that guns down its own citizens and edges toward a capability that could turn the next “war” into one afternoon of mass extermination, “never again war” is not a policy. It is a hope, and hope needs to be disciplined by the recognition that, in a nuclear age, the space between crusade and capitulation is agonizingly narrow.

President Trump is unwise to launch a personal attack against the Pope, who is the visible head of the Catholic Church’s 1.4 billion members (of which I am one). At the same time, Catholics know that a pope’s prudential political views are not covered by papal infallibility; they are serious, but not binding, judgments. Leo has been unusually sharp in his rhetoric compared to the way John Paul II criticized President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

In the Liturgy of the Hours, Catholics pray daily for the Pope and for the intentions he proposes to the Church. On prudential matters, Catholics are free to disagree respectfully, but they still owe a real devotion to the successor of St. Peter, whom they believe was chosen under the guidance of the Holy Spirit—not because he was useful to any particular head of state.

The President wrote on Truth Social: “Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American…”

In fact, among the American cardinals who might have been elected, Leo XIV is probably the least nationalistic and least likely to be chosen as anyone’s instrument for domestic American politics. Even if one adopts a highly cynical—and non Catholic—view of papal elections, it is hard to see his election as a clever move to “deal with Donald Trump.”

Is the U.S.–Israel war against Iran justifiable under the just war framework developed by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas? At most, it is borderline, and serious Catholic scholars and bishops are already divided on the answer. One major objection is that the opening strikes were pre emptive rather than clearly defensive in response to a large scale current attack. Yet it is also dangerous simply to say that one must “wait to be hit” when a regime has threatened the U.S. and Israel for decades and is credibly pursuing nuclear weapons. In a theocratic system where jihad is valorized by some leaders, waiting until Iran actually detonates a nuclear device against Israel or another target could plausibly entail casualties orders of magnitude greater than the (so far) under 2,000 Iranian deaths.

On the classic “jus ad bellum” (conduct during war) criteria, the picture is mixed at best. Was war truly a last resort? That depends on how close Iran actually was to weaponizing its nuclear program, and whether serious diplomatic avenues had truly been exhausted. Was it proportionate, in the sense that the expected good outweighed foreseeable harms? That again depends on the reality of the nuclear threat and on whether striking now reduces, or instead inflames, the long term risk of regional war. Is there a reasonable hope of success? That seems to depend on U.S. political resolve and the military’s ability to dismantle Iran’s enrichment capacity and secure or destroy existing stocks. On “jus in bello,” the record so far is mixed: apart from the apparently accidental bombing of a girls’ school on the first day, U.S. and Israeli forces have taken notable steps to limit civilian casualties—but the President’s threats to “destroy Iranian civilization” cut directly against the requirement to avoid targeting civilians and to fight with limited, discriminate means. On that last point, the Pope’s criticism is hard to gainsay.

The presidential criticism of the Pope is plainly unwise, and certainly the way Trump did it, is over the top. Still, the Pope has been less than accurate in his criticism, and perhaps, one might conjecture, overcompensating for his election as the first American Pope.

Defending wars against Muslim powers has a long record of papal support.

Pope Leo XIV said that “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war and try to use religion to justify it.” Taken literally and without nuance, Church history complicates this claim. Popes have not only tolerated armed force but at times organized, financed, and liturgically supported wars they judged necessary for the defense of Christian communities, even as Catholic teaching sought to restrain and morally evaluate warfare rather than bless it indiscriminately.

In 1571, Pope Pius V put together the “Holy League,” an alliance of Catholic maritime powers (Spain, Venice, the Papal States and others) expressly to break Ottoman naval dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. This coalition fought the Battle of Lepanto on 7 October 1571, decisively defeating the Ottoman fleet; contemporaries understood it as a papally sponsored Christian crusade at sea. Pius V helped bankroll the fleet, sent his own papal commander Marcantonio Colonna, blessed the League’s banner, ordered public prayers, granted plenary indulgences to those participating in or supporting the campaign, and later instituted a new Marian feast (Our Lady of Victory, now Our Lady of the Rosary) in thanksgiving for the victory.

When the Ottomans besieged Vienna in 1683, Pope Innocent XI supported the Habsburgs and their allies with substantial financial aid and spiritual incentives (indulgences) for those who came to the Empire’s defense, again, under a justificatory logic that today we would describe in just war terms.”. He was instrumental in encouraging the Polish–Habsburg alliance that brought King John III Sobieski and the relief army which broke the siege. In the aftermath, Innocent XI celebrated the victory, and later a “Holy League” was formed under papal auspices (including the Empire, Poland-Lithuania, Venice and eventually Russia) for the wider Great Turkish War against the Ottomans.

The papacy also supported wars against Muslim powers in the Crusades and in the Reconquista of Spain, with spiritual incentives and liturgical support that clearly linked prayer to military success.

Many of these campaigns—especially Lepanto, Vienna, and significant parts of the Reconquista—can be articulated in terms of just war criteria: defense against sustained aggression, protection of vulnerable Christian populations, and recovery of occupied territory. Whether every dimension of the medieval Crusades meets those standards is more contested, but it is at least clear that the Church has, in practice, sometimes blessed armed defense against Muslim powers.

Does the war against Iran, that has a record of supporting terrorists groups that target Christians and others, meet the definition of “just war?” Does the threat of Iran getting a nuclear weapon meet the definition of a defensive war? Maybe, maybe not, but would it be morally wrong to wait until Iran launched a nuclear weapon against Israel or a European capital before going to war? It’s a reasonable debate.

We should trust the Holy Spirit to guide the Pope and the Church, but it falls to the American public to restrain direct attacks on the papacy and the promotion of quasi messianic images by any president. Whatever one thinks of the Iran war—and reasonable Catholics will debate its justness—the President is unlikely to win a war of words with the Pope. In picking that fight, he forces the nation’s Catholics, roughly a quarter of the population, to confront a needless insult to their spiritual leader and to the ecclesial institutions that elected him.

This is my annual Easter message - since it contains timeless truths, I believe it is worth rereading once a year.

One of the familiar passages from the Easter story is Pontius Pilate’s questioning of Jesus. Pilate was essentially the only government in Jerusalem and had near-dictatorial powers. But he was also a politician. Rome was where the action was, and the way to get there was to perform well enough on undesirable assignments (of which Israel certainly was one) so that he could get promoted to a more desirable position elsewhere.

From the Gospel accounts, Pilate seems pretty sure that Jesus was not guilty of anything. The Pharisees, seeing Jesus as a threat to their power, wanted to have him killed, but as an occupied territory, they had no such power. So, their argument to Pilate was that Jesus claimed to be a King, which they argued was a direct threat to Caesar. Being no fool, Pilate was not tricked (the Pharisees were hardly worried about Caesar’s sovereignty) but nonetheless wanted to maintain whatever goodwill he could with the Pharisees to prevent a rebellion that would not please Rome.

So Pilate decides to question Jesus separately from the crowd. He asks Jesus if he is a king.

Jesus responded, “You say I am a King. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.”

To which Pilate replied, “What is truth?”

Pilate, probably a well-educated Roman, undoubtedly studied his Greek and recognized this as a question of philosophy, not criminal law. Nonetheless, he was more interested in his political career than in what truth was and eventually betrayed his conscience for what was politically expedient and sentenced Jesus to death.

Some things in politics never change.

However, “what is truth” is fundamental to who we are as human beings, what kind of civilization we will have, and how we will be governed.

The Declaration of Independence proclaims, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Moreover, “To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The very foundation of the American system of government is based on the answer to the question, “What is truth?” The truths described in the Declaration deal with the inherent dignity of each person and the purpose of government, which is to protect that dignity. This is not just a nifty idea a few sons of the Enlightenment thought up while drinking mead. It goes to the very concept of truth, which must be objective and timeless. 

Being objective and timeless means that it will never be right for the government to take a life for its own utilitarian purposes, to take away the liberty of freedom of speech or freedom of religious expression, or to tell you where to work, who to marry, or how to live your life (assuming you are not hurting others).

Truth is objective, which means it is not within the government’s competence to redefine truth. Of course, many governments do. Communist countries were famous for putting all kinds of rights granted by the State into their constitutions. But of course, a government that grants rights can take those rights away just as quickly. But even many modern democracies have substituted “values” for rights. Certainly, rights create specific values (also timeless), but too often, terms like “our common values” are little more than political platforms or the latest cultural fashion – changing with the times or even with the next election.

The United States has, over its history, been blind to certain truths. And we have paid a dear price for it, including a Civil War that killed 600,000 people. But our Constitution was created to be self-correcting so that while we will never make a perfect government, we will strive to create a more perfect union.

Why is the truth so important? Besides defining the struggle between God and man, it also establishes the worth each of us has as individuals.

Civilization depends on the belief in the dignity of every human person. From conception, every human possesses intrinsic dignity and worth as a person created in the image of God. Civilization is the rejection of the doctrine of might makes right and rule by a chieftain (whatever form that might take) over the tribe. It is the placing of the individual's rights above the interests of the collective.

Political freedom is essential for recognizing and respecting this inherent dignity. Human dignity is upheld when individuals can make choices, participate in society, and express their beliefs. When people are deprived of political choice, their dignity is threatened.

Political freedom provides the necessary conditions for individuals to exercise what John Paul II called “authentic freedom” responsibly. The Declaration referred to this as the pursuit of happiness. In a political system that respects human rights and allows for participation in the decision-making process, individuals can pursue their own well-being and the common good while respecting the rights and freedoms of others.

Human dignity requires freedom from coercion, oppression, and totalitarian regimes restricting fundamental human rights, including religious freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of association.

Political freedom should be grounded in a moral and ethical framework. While individuals should be free to make choices, in a healthy society, these choices should align with moral principles and the common good. A society without moral foundations could degenerate into license and moral relativism. Various philosophers have described the paradox of democracy, where freedom unbounded by an ethical framework becomes license and ultimately undermines, erodes, and eventually invites government action that restrains authentic freedom.

Political freedom is an essential aspect of authentic human freedom. Without it, individuals cannot pursue their personal and collective well-being while respecting the dignity and rights of others.

This might have been taken for granted not many years ago, but no longer. Indeed, authoritarian states are threatened by these truths, as evidenced by the fate of political opponents and the bombing of Ukrainian civilians by Vladimir Putin in Russia, the shrieks of death to Christians and Jews coming from Iran, and the religious persecution in China, North Korea, and Cuba. But it is also as close as your local college campuses where radical professors teach that there is no truth, that there is no moral difference between our society and a socialist one, or that killing and oppressing Jews (“from the river to the sea”) is not a violation of moral law.

The conflict is real. In progressive or socialist states, the individual’s value hinders a utopian society. The collective is what is essential. What is your value, as an individual, to the State? If you are healthy and can work, then you have value. If you are sick or disabled, you are a drain and, therefore, a threat to the State. Maybe you are from the wrong religion or undesirable ethnicity. Perhaps you are speaking out against the government and might influence the thinking of others against the collective. Your utility equals your value to the State.

And let’s be honest about the abortion issue today. The law is not the issue. It is the value and dignity of individual life. We see it every day. If a baby is wanted, it is celebrated. The parents hold a party to reveal their gender. Doctors prescribe vitamins and numerous sonograms to check on the baby’s health. Mothers invite loved ones to feel their baby kick. They play classical music and read to the baby to stimulate brain development and bonding. They are already in love with their child long before it is born.

But what about the same baby that is unwanted? Maybe the circumstances of the pregnancy are problematic and troubling. Maybe the doctors think there might be a medical issue. Perhaps the timing is just inconvenient. Maybe a Hollywood star or Instagram influencer thinks having a baby might hurt their livelihood. All of a sudden, this baby is whatever impersonal term we can come up with – fetus, a blob of protoplasm, a product of conception—anything to make the baby inhuman and, therefore, expendable.

It is a form of cultural schizophrenia that we seemingly cannot reconcile.

What the laws say doesn’t matter; what is in the human heart matters. It is how we all answer the question of “What is truth?” 

Pilate’s question will always remain very important. Pilate placing his political career above the question of truth will also remain a constant in all political systems. The question for everyone living in free societies is whether we will defend the truth and help others fight for their human dignity against those for whom truth is an inconvenient road bump on the way to personal gratification or political power. 

It is not just a question for Easter. Indeed, Christians believe that Jesus is the answer to that question. But it is a question for all who believe in the worth and dignity of every human life and want to live in a society that protects it.

So, when considering what kind of society you want to live in, how you want to be governed, and what is the best way to protect the freedom, dignity, and life of your family, neighbors, and country, periodically, it is essential to ask yourself the question Pilate asked of Jesus.

What is truth? And unlike Pilate, are you willing to defend it?

The inability of Congress to complete the budget process is once again on full display. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a 260,000‑person department that handles terrorism, border security, immigration, critical infrastructure, and disaster response through components like TSA, ICE, CBP, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service.

Congress is surrendering its constitutional power of the purse to the President by looking the other way while he pays TSA employees that Congress failed to fund in a regular DHS appropriations bill. The airports are a mess, ICE agents have been repurposed, and now the Administration has found roughly a billion dollars to pay beleaguered TSA employees.

Because fixing airport chaos during Easter week is politically popular, almost no one in Congress is challenging how the President is paying TSA.

Is this constitutional? Technically, probably yes. But it is yet another sign that Congress is failing to exercise its power of the purse as the Framers intended.

What’s Happening Under the Hood

Last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” tax/domestic package created large DHS‑related pots of money, including a multibillion‑dollar “border support” fund and other loosely drafted accounts for Homeland Security. Those appropriations are still law; they did not lapse with the current annual DHS bill, and they were written with few purpose restrictions and with substantial discretion for the Secretary to decide what counts as “border support” or related security activities.

The White House directive is to draw on those already‑appropriated, still‑available funds and move (transfer or reprogram) money with a “reasonable and logical nexus” to TSA operations so TSA can meet payroll.

Under the federal “purpose statute,” funds must be used only for the purposes for which they were appropriated. The Antideficiency Act, which governs during budget shutdowns, bars obligating in advance of or in excess of appropriations and bars using expired money. If the White House can say with a straight face that “border support” or similar language includes aviation security and TSA screeners, then, in its view, it is not violating those rules; it is simply using a flexible, still‑open appropriation to pay a particular subset of DHS employees.

On paper, that is how the Administration avoids the bright‑line “President appropriated money by Executive Order” problem. The order is cast as an internal management directive: use these existing dollars, in this way, within existing law.

The Constitutional Problem

Here’s the problem. When Congress deadlocks, the President uses this flexibility to solve the most politically salient pain points. Congress cannot pass a DHS bill, airports are melting down, and the President steps in and says, “I’ll pay TSA anyway from this other fund.” Because the money technically comes from an existing appropriation, many in Congress are content to look the other way rather than confront the separation‑of‑powers issue, especially when the underlying action—paying TSA—is popular.

Over time, this builds a precedent: big discretionary pots plus executive creativity can backstop congressional failure. The more often presidents use broad funds to effectively circumvent policy disputes over annual appropriations, the more Congress normalizes writing such funds, and the less pressure there is to do the hard work of timely, specific appropriations.

At some point, presidential priorities are being substituted for congressional priorities. The vaguer the text attached to massive appropriations in legislation like the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the greater the opportunity for the executive branch to usurp congressional power. The current TSA order is probably constitutional, but it pushes the edges of purpose and reprogramming doctrine and marks another step in a long trend in which Congress’ own drafting and inaction invite presidents to act as if they had a partial, contingent power of the purse.

One might be tempted to ask, “How does Congress fix this?” Unfortunately, you first have to ask, “Does Congress want to fix this?” Each time Congress allows a president to use broad, previously appropriated money to solve a high‑visibility problem (military pay one year, TSA the next) during a shutdown, it normalizes “selective executive budgeting” under the banner of using “available funds.”

As the Bipartisan Policy Center has pointed out, congressional provisions that allow the Administration to “use available funds” effectively let presidents reorder spending priorities inside the fiscal envelope Congress created, blurring the line between executing appropriations and making new budget choices. Essentially, budget shutdowns are becoming a mechanism for expanding executive budget discretion at Congress’s expense. If presidents can routinely say, “Congress gave me some broad money over here, so I can keep paying what I want over there,” shutdowns become less a check on the executive and more a license to reprioritize inside the appropriation envelope, especially where public sympathy is strong.

Over time, that erodes Madison’s idea of the power of the purse as the House’s “most complete and effectual weapon,” because the executive learns to maneuver around the immediate pain points with creative budget execution. Even if each individual move is technically defensible, the pattern can amount to a de facto reallocation of budget power from Congress to the President, precisely because it tends to occur in contexts—like paying TSA or soldiers—where political incentives all point toward “looking the other way.”

The Budget Process Has Completely Broken Down, But It Can Be Fixed

The recent DHS funding lapse and the President’s unilateral directive to pay TSA officers from pre‑existing “pots of money” offer a case study in how shutdown politics and vague appropriations invite executive encroachment on Congress’ power of the purse.

The President did not literally “appropriate” new money; instead, he instructed the Department of Homeland Security to search for broad, previously enacted accounts and reprogram funds that could be given a “reasonable and logical nexus” to TSA operations. That maneuver may be technically defensible under current appropriations law, but it underscores how far we have drifted from Madison’s vision of Congress holding the decisive power over spending.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about how Congress could fix the budget process. You can find that column here. The recent DHS shutdown and the President’s unilateral order to pay TSA officers out of broad, previously enacted funds have exposed how our broken budget process invites executive branch improvisation whenever a crisis becomes politically painful. The five reforms below are not abstractions—they are practical steps Congress can take to prevent future presidents from reshuffling spending priorities every time Washington manufactures a shutdown.

Automatic Continuing Resolutions

Had an automatic CR been in place, TSA employees would not have faced a funding cliff on October 1. The operational and political crisis that justified this reprogramming simply would not have existed. Automatic CRs deprive both parties—and the President—of the ability to use the pain of a shutdown as leverage. They keep agencies operating under prior congressional decisions rather than inviting the Executive Branch to rummage through old accounts to patch budget holes.

Biennial Budgeting

Biennial budgeting would give Congress a longer planning horizon to avoid these eleventh‑hour standoffs. With a two‑year cycle, appropriations and related DHS funding questions could be resolved in a more deliberate way, reducing the temptation to create enormous, loosely drafted funds that can later be stretched to cover whatever crisis is most politically salient. Fewer, more predictable budget cycles make it easier for authorizing and appropriating committees to write specific conditions on how money may—and may not—be repurposed during funding gaps.

Fixing the Authorization Process

Authorizations are where Congress gives instructions to agencies; without current authorizations, the governing law becomes whatever broad phrases appropriators used in the last omnibus, plus whatever the executive can argue fits. The TSA episode is also a story about weak or stale authorizations. When Congress fails to regularly authorize programs, agencies default to broad appropriations language and internal priorities. That vacuum is precisely what allows a President to argue that a “border support” fund enacted years earlier can now be tapped to pay airport screeners during a shutdown. Restoring the authorization process—by reducing spending on unauthorized programs and forcing debate on unauthorized sections of omnibus bills—would mean DHS and TSA operate under current, detailed statutory instructions. Those instructions can and should specify how funds may be used in a lapse, and how far reprogramming may go.

Six‑Year Sunset Cycle

A regular sunset cycle would guarantee that programs like TSA and major DHS security accounts come back before Congress on a predictable schedule. That gives authorizers the chance to narrow purposes, clarify shutdown rules, and explicitly tie or restrict reprogramming authority. It also makes it harder for large, multi‑year “slush funds” to persist indefinitely without renewed scrutiny. If an account is important enough to be used as a backstop in a crisis, it is important enough to be revisited in statute on a fixed timetable.

Changing the Fiscal Year

Finally, aligning the fiscal year with the calendar year would reduce the incentive to stage budget showdowns at the height of campaign season and then rely on last‑minute omnibus bills to keep the lights on. More time on the front end, especially in a biennial framework, would allow Congress to complete DHS authorizations and appropriations through regular order instead of scrambling in late September—when vague language and oversized discretionary pots are most likely to slip through.

Taken together, these reforms do more than tidy up process charts. They are an answer to the deeper constitutional danger exposed when a President can, under color of existing law, decide which functions continue and which do not during a shutdown. If Congress wants to prevent future executives from using “available funds” to reshuffle priorities whenever it is popular to do so, the only durable solution is to repair the budget process itself: end shutdown brinkmanship, restore authorizations, enforce sunsets, and give Members the time and structure they need to legislate instead of lurching from crisis to crisis.

The choice before Congress is straightforward: either keep improvising around each new TSA‑style crisis and watch the power of the purse slip away piece by piece, or repair the process so that future presidents never have the chance to spend first and justify later.

The SAVE Act is being considered by the Senate this week. Dictating its fate will be complicated Senate rules and procedures. In this column, I will attempt to walk you through this arcane process, understood by few.

The key to understanding Senate rules, which are usually enthusiastically ignored, is to understand the precedent that the Majority Leader has the right of first recognition. In other words, by precedent, the Presiding Officer of the Senate will recognize the Majority Leader before anyone else. This gives him the power to set the table for the debate. The Speaker of that House has significant control over debate, starting with the Rules Committee and extending to informal leverage such as control over the committee appointment process. In the Senate, the Majority Leader has only the right of first recognition. As I tell my students, the Speaker of the House is one of the strongest leaders of a legislative body in the world, while the Senate Majority Leader is one of the weakest.

Like his predecessors, Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) fills the amendment tree before filing cloture — but unlike them, he is using the filled tree as a sustained floor strategy rather than as a prelude to an imminent cloture vote. This prevents any amendments but allows unlimited debate. Thune’s amendments are essentially a lock on the Floor. Democrats can offer a motion to table the amendment, but Republicans only need a simple majority to defeat it. And even if, under some circumstances, the Democrats succeeded in tabling one of the tree-filling amendments, Thune’s right of first recognition would allow him to replace the tabled amendment and thus continue the stalemate.

Let us pause here to basically define the amendment tree, because without this understanding, it will be hard to follow Thune’s tactics. To understand the filling of the amendment tree, you first need to understand the amendment tree itself. Senate rules allow a bill to have multiple amendments pending simultaneously — but only a limited number, and only in a specific hierarchical structure. Think of it like a chess board with a fixed number of squares: there are only so many “slots” available for amendments at any given time, and they come in a prescribed order. The most important slot is the “first degree” amendment — a direct amendment to the bill itself. You can also have a “second degree” amendment — an amendment to the amendment. The rules govern exactly how many of each type can be pending at any given time, depending on the parliamentary situation.

The majority leader, by virtue of his right of first recognition, can be recognized by the Presiding Officer before any other senator and offer amendments to fill every available slot. When all the slots are occupied — when the tree is ‘full’ — no other senator can offer an amendment, because there is simply no room. The bill has no open branches left.

The key insight is that the amendments used to fill the tree need not be substantive. They can be placeholder amendments — minor technical changes, or even amendments that simply restate existing text. Their only purpose is to occupy space. Once the tree is full, the floor is effectively locked. No senator, Republican or Democrat, can add anything to the bill without Thune’s cooperation.

So, the Democrats cannot force an amendment as long as Thune keeps his amendments pending. The way a Republican can offer an amendment is for Thune to withdraw one of his amendments and immediately allow an amendment in its place. So let’s say Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) offers one of Trump’s desired amendments of restricting mail-in voting, the amendment would be pending, but the Democrats could filibuster this, talking, or using dilatory tactics like calling for a quorum (which they can do as many times as they like), forcing Republicans to invoke cloture to get to a vote. Cloture for legislation requires three-fifths of the body, not three-fifths of those present and voting (the only exception is a constitutional amendment, which requires two-thirds of those present and voting). So, practically speaking, any amendments would require 60 votes to come to a vote.

As a reminder, to end debate, a cloture petition is filed, usually by the Majority Leader. After 48 hours, the petition ripens, and a vote is held to cut off debate. Sixty votes are required for cloture to be successful. If it is successful, the Senate has 30 more hours of debate under restricted rules. If it fails, debate can continue, and cloture can be reconsidered, though it usually means the bill cannot pass and any further debate is pointless.

It is notable that anyone hostile to Thune still cannot offer an amendment to the tree. They could offer a motion to table an amendment, but Thune can just file a replacement. Besides, the motion to table would require 51 votes, which the Democrats do not have. It would require Republican Senators to vote to table their own Leader’s amendment. That would violate an unwritten taboo and would be highly unusual.

So how might Democrats ever get an amendment? Pre-cloture, the only way to get an amendment is for Thune to allow one. He could, if he wants to give Schmitt a vote, agree to a unanimous consent agreement with Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), that will allow specific votes on amendments - so the Republicans might get one, and the Democrats might get one. Keep in mind that unanimous consent requests can be very creative and complex. But it has to be unanimous so that any Senator can object. Usually, if Thune and Schumer make a deal, no one would object, but it’s possible.

Other than that, the Democrats might get a shot post-cloture to offer a germane amendment - so if cloture is invoked, a pending Democrat amendment (offered at least one hour before cloture is voted on) could be considered if the parliamentarian rules it germane to the bill. The germaneness requirement is the real constraint, and the Parliamentarian’s ruling on germaneness is the gatekeeper. Keep in mind that, even after cloture, the Republicans can vote to table a Democrat amendment with a simple majority, so germaneness does not guarantee a vote.

There is no path for a “free-for-all” amendment process under cloture. But, and this is the big “but”, politically speaking, the Democrats would never allow cloture to pass, as this would clear a path for a vote on final passage at the end of the 30 hours of debate that cloture allows.

Because Thune does not want to give the Democrats unlimited pre-cloture opportunities to offer amendments, he will likely keep the amendment tree full, allowing only the amendments he wants offered. Those amendments, as discussed earlier, would require 60 votes. So, while Senate rules allow unlimited amendments, practically speaking, Thune can block them for as long as he likes.

What is the endgame? Assuming Thune keeps the tree filled and files cloture, but cannot get 60 votes, he can end the debate. Thune can simply move to take up a different bill or resolution. If the Senate agrees — by unanimous consent or a simple majority vote on a motion to proceed to something else — the SAVE Act loses the floor and goes back to the Calendar. It is not killed; it remains on the Calendar and can be called up again at any time. Alternatively, Thune can request unanimous consent to temporarily set the SAVE Act aside. Any senator can object, but if no one does, the bill is off the floor without a recorded defeat.

One of the most powerful forces dictating Senate procedure is time. While this debate is going on, legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security, a reconciliation bill that Republican leaders are urgently trying to advance, and numerous other priorities and appointments sit idle. Eventually, the pressure to move on to something else will dictate the moment Thune files his cloture motion, triggering the process that will bring the debate to a close. In this way, Thune can likely allow an extended debate without ever allowing the Democrats an amendment, knowing that the debate will essentially end once he loses a cloture vote.

I do not see a pathway to passage for this bill. The Democrats have too many tools to fill up time. They could offer a thousand-page amendment and block a unanimous consent request to waive the reading of the bill, forcing Senate clerks to actually read the entire amendment, taking up a huge amount of time. A tactic like this might prompt Thune to raise a point of order that the amendment is dilatory, but the Parliamentarian has historically set a high bar for such rulings, and it is far from guaranteed to succeed. Still, Thune remains firmly in control of the process, and the Democratic free-for-all on amendments never happens. Frustration with such tactics could allow Thune to justify moving on to cloture earlier than planned.

There is an old maxim that the Senate is ruled by two things: unanimous consent and exhaustion. I expect exhaustion will win the day. The only question is how much time Thune will keep the bill on the Floor. My guess is he will keep it running until next week and then file cloture, showing the President that there are not the votes to pass this bill. Then it becomes strictly a political question of how Trump backs out of his declaration that he won’t sign any bills until the SAVE Act passes. Fortunately for him, Congress passes so few bills that he could probably maintain that position for some time to come.

Last year, I wrote that the Supreme Court would likely overturn President Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), which does not even mention the word “tariff.” I have also predicted that Judge Neil Gorsuch would lead the way based on his strong support for the “Non-Delegation” doctrine. Chief Justice John Roberts’ position was also obvious, given his support for the Major Questions doctrine.

You can find details and the Constitutional arguments here, here, and here.

This is the post: Update: Are Trump’s Tariffs Constitutional?

The U.S. Court of International Trade says “No”

By Mark Strand, May 19, 2025

As I wrote on April 4, the U.S. Court of International Trade has ruled that most of the tariffs President Trump imposed on “Liberation Day” are unconstitutional.

When the U.S. Court of International Trade rules against the administration on the constitutionality of tariffs, as it did with President Trump’s sweeping tariff orders, the administration’s next step for appeal is to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This specialized appellate court has exclusive jurisdiction over appeals from the Court of International Trade. If the parties are dissatisfied with the decision of the Federal Circuit, they may petition the U.S. Supreme Court for further review.

The Federal Circuit’s jurisdiction is defined by the types of cases it hears, not geography. Its exclusive subject-matter jurisdiction includes:

• Appeals from the U.S. Court of International Trade, U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.

• Patent and trademark cases from all U.S. District Courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

• International trade disputes, government contracts, federal personnel claims, veterans’ benefits, and certain money claims against the U.S. government.

• Appeals from administrative agencies such as the U.S. International Trade Commission, Boards of Contract Appeals, and the Merit Systems Protection Board.

The Federal Circuit does not hear criminal, bankruptcy, immigration, or state law cases.

Kimberly A. Moore, a George H.W. Bush appointee, is the U.S. Court of Appeals Chief Judge for the Federal Circuit. Of the 12 judges, four were appointed by Republican presidents, and Democratic presidents appointed eight. However, remember that until very recently, Republicans opposed broad tariffs and favored free markets. The party makeup of these judges may not tell us what to expect.

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will likely be the first stop of the Administration’s appeal. After that, the full court may also decide to hear the case. Appeals from this specialized court go directly to the US Supreme Court, which has the discretion to hear the appeal.

As I argued in “Are Trump’s Tariffs Constitutional?” the U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly asserted that Executive overreach violates Congress's role under the Constitution. In recent years, the court has cited two doctrines, the non-delegation and the Major Questions doctrines in an effort to stop Congress from surrendering its Constitutional powers to the Executive branch.

In 2019, Gorsuch argued in Gundy v. United States that the Court had too often abdicated its role in preventing Congress from abandoning its duty to set policy. He insisted that, for a given delegation of power to be constitutional, it had to be limited to cases where Congress enunciated clear and specific standards for major policy, where it listed conditions under which the official could act, or where the subject matter was within the official's constitutional powers (e.g., discretion granted to the president on an issue relating to foreign affairs).

And,

Another Supreme Court ruling on the Major Questions Doctrine is consistent with their ruling on the Chevron deference. That doctrine states that agencies do not have regulatory authority to issue regulations on issues of vast economic and political significance where Congress has not empowered the agency with that authority. For example, the Supreme Court held in Biden v. Nebraska that Congress did not authorize the Department of Education to issue a massive student loan forgiveness program. Justice Roberts held that the statutory grant of authority to the Secretary of Education to “waive or modify” loan terms could not be extended to the student loan forgiveness program. A debt cancellation of this scale required explicit congressional authorization and fell under the major questions doctrine.

Based on these recent rulings that included the overturning of the Chevron Doctrine, it is highly likely that the Supreme Court will rule against a broad tariff based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), which does not even mention the word “tariff.”

Ronald Reagan once said, “The only places where socialism works is in heaven where they don’t need it, and hell, where they already have it.” That gives some perspective to the “warmth of collectivism” longed for by New York Mayor Mamdani. Why the largest city in the world decided to try a mayor who espouses a philosophy with a zero percent success rate is bewildering, but hey, it’s New York.

The current example of failed socialism belongs to Venezuela, where hopefully, it will soon be replaced by a working democracy and a vibrant economy. Like Cuba, socialism starts with nice rhetoric but always devolves into totalitarianism.

When Hugo Chavez seized power in a coup, he sounded a lot like a Democratic Socialist, which turns out to be an oxymoron since the logical conclusion of socialism is the death of democracy. Raising taxes on the wealthy and middle class, redistributing income, taking over nationally important industries, including health care, food distribution, and energy, sounds pretty good to some people. The poor rallied to Chavez, and for a time, his government was popular.

For a while, things seemed good, especially for the poor. But soon, the government began to run through the newfound money generated by higher taxes and the nationalization of industry. The people whose income was being confiscated either stopped earning wealth or hid it overseas, forcing the socialist government to manage huge enterprises on a tightening budget while further raising taxes on the middle class.

Even assuming good intentions and a lack of corruption, the conflict between political popularity and hard business decisions exacerbates the financial difficulty.

Energy is an excellent example. The government can never run energy production as efficiently as the private sector and soon finds itself either unable to generate sufficient supplies or unable to turn a profit (which is collected as government revenue). As a result, energy supply decreases. Recalling elementary economics and the law of supply and demand, when the supply of oil decreases, energy prices naturally go up. But since the energy companies are now government-owned, increasing pump prices undermines the regime’s popularity. Raising gas prices is the same thing as raising taxes. So, as supply tightens while prices remain artificially low, the government creates shortages. Now the poor have low prices, but no gasoline. The same thing happens with food.

In health care, the government must make decisions that are increasingly difficult or create shortages there too – fewer doctors as medical professionals flee the country, long lines and waits for critical health care needs, fewer available hospital beds, and a rising cost (and inevitable shortages) of medicine.

And then one day, the poor realize that not only are they no better off under socialism, but maybe things are worse. At the same time, the redistributionist policies of the government have hurt the ability of the middle class to make independent decisions - they have less money. They face the same shortages, and middle-income citizens become lower-income citizens.

And so, the people become restless. When this happens, the government can back down and begin to re-privatize, as democratic socialist countries in Europe did. If not, the government must crack down on political dissent, restrict freedom of the press and freedom of religion, and suppress the political opposition. And this is precisely what Venezuela did under Hugo Chávez and then Nicolás Maduro. It is exactly what Cuba did under Castro.

Since it is a fool’s proposition to assume politicians are all well-intentioned and resistant to corruption (there is money to be made when you control a scarce resource), it is always the case that socialism and its economic pathologies go hand in hand with corruption and political oppression. In today’s Venezuela, the poor and middle-income are oppressed and suffer from shortages in essential goods and services. At the same time, those loyal to the regime become an elite that becomes wealthy at the expense of, to use a Marxian term, the masses.

This, historically, has always been the case - Venezuela is an egregious example because first Chavez justified his oppression in the name of ideology and revolution, making his opponents anti-revolutionary enemies of the state. And by state, he meant himself. Maduro was not even ideological; he was just a bastard holding on to power who sold out his own country to the Cubans, and increasingly, the Russians, Chinese, and the Iranians.

Our American “democratic socialists” like Mayor Mamdani and Senator Bernie Sanders like to cite small, white, homogeneous countries with populations under six million as their model. Still, even these perfect laboratories for socialist experimentation have dramatically retreated from the peak of state control in the 60s and 70s. They are now highly taxed democratic capitalist countries that are still reforming - look at their competitive corporate tax rates. Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Norway have corporate tax rates equal to or lower than those of the United States.

There is no example of socialism ever working - it either admits the folly and changes or ends up oppressing its own people for the sole purpose of maintaining power. Mamdani’s idea that an American experiment would be different is a denial of history, economic reality, and, ultimately, democracy. Venezuela is just the latest example of the failure of the “warmth of collectivism.” It is not that no country has really tried pure socialism. It is that every time it does, the people suffer and the “democratic” part of democratic socialism disappears into the blood-soaked hands of a socialist totalitarian state.

Minnesota's massive corruption scandal is a story about a good Republican theory gone bad. Ronald Reagan pushed “New Federalism,” which was supposed to shift federal spending on social programs to the states, who, it was hoped, would spend it more wisely and efficiently.

In reality, it has become an invitation to corruption. The Federal government borrows money it does not have to send it to the states, where anonymous bureaucrats spread that money around to favored political allies. The idea is pretty idiotic. If the federal government had a surplus, one could argue that directing that money to the states was better than creating a new federal program to spend it. Some issues, such as education, naturally favor local control over federal programs.

The federal government should stop all block grant programs and let the states fund and pay for programs they believe best serve their citizens. If the state wants to subsidize day care, be our guest. But there is nothing responsible or efficient about sending taxpayer dollars to Washington, only to have the Feds take their cut and send some of the money back to the states. Even worse is borrowing money and leaving federal taxpayers in debt for state governments' spending on local priorities.

If states want to borrow money to subsidize Medicaid, build community centers, fund welfare programs, etc., let the state legislators, who are accountable to their constituents, raise the funds to do so. Today, the argument is over who is bringing home the most money from Washington, rather than whether the merits of a particular program justify spending hard-earned taxpayers' dollars.

Corruption is endemic to any form of government spending. Right now, the focus is, correctly, on Minnesota, but this is the tip of the iceberg. We will soon see how far the corruption goes. Later this month, Congress is supposed to try to fund the government for the fiscal year that started last October.

If Congress is alarmed at the corruption scandal in Minnesota, it can defund the programs being abused. Will Republicans, who control the appropriation process in both chambers, cut the corrupted programs, or will they leave billions of dollars in place to be used for corrupt purposes, again and again and again?

The Republican leaders of Congress will suggest that any appropriations agreement is a finely tuned compromise with their Democratic counterparts. Really? Then why not make the cuts and allow the Democrats to offer an amendment to restore the funding? If the Democrats in Congress want to maintain the Minnesota day care block grants and dozens of other corrupt programs, let them vote to do so, on the record.

Voting on priorities is what Congress is supposed to do. Let's see if this current Congress is willing to go on the record and oppose future funding for the Minnesota day care program. Some people will argue that this is unfair because some programs are run properly. But surely, if this program is so precious to the state of Minnesota, its own legislature should be willing to raise the money and fund the honest day care centers.

As we saw earlier this year with the massive corruption at the Agency for International Development, providing billions of dollars to NGOs without any meaningful accountability, money unaccounted for makes corruption way too easy. As James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay made clear in the Federalist Papers, people are not angels and must be checked by others with an interest in holding them accountable. It requires honesty and morality for people to resist opportunities to use someone else's money for selfish purposes. And yes, there are honest people in government - but knowing what we know of human nature, President Reagan's admonition to "trust but verify" should be at the core of Congressional accountability.

As New York City is about to embark on an experiment in socialism, it might be high time for Congress to put greater checks on local government spending of Federal dollars transferred to the states. Borrowing money at the Federal level to force taxpayers from Iowa to pay for Mayor Mamdami’s collectivist schemes is no way to run a government.

If Republicans want to keep control of Congress, eliminating corrupt programs would be a great place to start. Better yet, perhaps they should start with themselves by banning Members of the House and Senate from buying and selling individual stocks. I’ll save that for a future post.

The Wall Street Journal put it very well this morning:

“Republicans complain about fraud, but too few want to tackle the perverse incentives that allow it to flourish. Annual government transfer payments have increased by some $1.7 trillion to $4.9 trillion since the start of the pandemic, roughly double the rate of inflation. Minnesota’s problem isn’t immigrants. It’s the welfare state that corrupts them.”

It’s time to reorganize federal spending and end the unaccountable spending that invites official corruption.

There is a great tradition in the United States of our presidents issuing Thanksgiving Proclamations. It is fitting that Americans pause to give thanks because, despite all the naysayers, we have a great deal to be grateful for. 

First and foremost is our freedom. We believe humans are born free. They have value and worth because we are made by God. We can use our freedom for good or evil, for others, or ourselves. The moral law – or God – holds us accountable for how we use our freedom. Our choices can be wise and good if we build them on moral truths found in revelation and human reason.  

Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful for our freedom and to remember those who have used their freedom unselfishly for our good. It would also be a good time for each of us to reflect on what we have been blessed with and commit ourselves to using our freedom for the good of others. 

George Washington issued the first presidential proclamation on Thanksgiving. He proclaimed:

“Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.”

In his proclamation, Washington recognized America’s many blessings from God, starting with the success of the American Revolution. As Benjamin Franklin said a few years earlier:

“And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that ‘except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this, and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be become a reproach and a bye word down to future age.”

Indeed, our current government may strongly resemble the Tower of Babel – lots of noise with no progress. Franklin and Washington saw the uniting influence of giving thanks to God. And while that thanks was well placed, they also recognized that God was a source of accountability for our national actions. 

In the church I attend, we have a prayer of general confession, where we ask forgiveness for the things we have done but also for the things we have left undone. Sins of omission are as serious as sins we actively commit. This can be true of nations as well. 

Lincoln’s proclamation during the Civil War pointed to both sins. He pointed out that slavery was a sin that had brought us to war, but that indifference to slavery was also a sin. Most Americans did nothing in the face of slavery until the war, where 600,000 people died to end the abomination.  

In today’s world, we find ourselves helping other nations to protect their freedom and human dignity. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has assassinated political opponents, jailed dissidents, and waged cruel war in Syria and Ukraine. He has deprived the Russian people of their freedom while attempting to steal the freedom of the Ukrainian people. His actions are evil, but it would also be a sin of omission if we, with our great capabilities, did nothing to stop him. Yes, for many reasons, helping Ukraine is in our national interests, but there is also a moral imperative to defend freedom for ourselves and others.

The same is true in Israel. Following the brutal attacks by Hamas on women, children, men, the elderly, and even those not even born yet, it was our duty to help a free nation survive. And yet, we see deep opposition to helping both Ukraine and Israel right here in the United States. It is almost as if some of us have lost our ability to recognize evil.

That has consequences. If you cannot recognize what is obviously evil, how can you hope to recognize what is good? And herein lies our national problem. If we have rejected the accountability from the Moral Law, then it is easy to make excuses for evil actions. Why? Because if there is no Moral Law – if there is no God – then there is no right and wrong, merely the rule of might. If it is not wrong for Hamas to kill a pregnant woman and cut her unborn child out of her womb, then what else is not wrong? Just about anything. And in our post-Christian country, we precisely see that. If you can develop some narrative to justify your position, you can make anyone seem “good” or “evil.” This is the essence of postmodernism: if you are not accountable to a higher standard, then your definition of truth becomes whatever suits your own needs or, in the case of politics, whatever helps you gain power. 

If there is no moral law and objective truths, then there are no moral boundaries and no anchor by which we can make common choices. Instead, our anchor becomes the memory of what was once known by our ancestors until even that fades away.

Gratitude helps prevent this hijacking of the common beliefs that have long held our nation together. Instead of thinking of ourselves or our desires for power, we are compelled to think of others and the good they have done that benefited us. Thanksgiving is inherently unselfish because it puts our focus on the things above and the people around us who have done good things for us.  

Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation was issued just months after the brutal battle of Gettysburg and well before Union victory was assured. In it, he still finds reasons to be grateful despite the war but also recognizes and repents the national sins that led to the war. 

“The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful Providence of Almighty God. 

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, the order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union ...

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. 

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they also do, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and Union.”

In giving thanks, these leaders acknowledged that we were not perfect and that our national sins had caused much suffering. But they also understood the power of gratitude as a unifying act to unite Americans. In one of his Thanksgiving messages, Ronald Reagan said,

“Although we are a pluralistic society, the giving of thanks can be a true bond of unity among our people. We can unite in gratitude for our individual freedoms and individual faiths. We can be united in gratitude for our nation’s peace and prosperity when so many in this world have neither.”

This Thanksgiving, let us be grateful for our freedom and the many blessings that freedom has provided us. At the very least, let us acknowledge the need for a common moral framework that defines our expectations of ourselves and others and gives us cause to be grateful to those who have sacrificed on our behalf.  

We forget that freedom and democracy are not the natural state of human nature. Without moral boundaries, people are subject to the tyranny of the state and the strength and power of others. 

The idea that everyone has rights and dignity, even the weakest among us, acknowledges that there are things more important than our own self-interests and the survival of the strongest.  This is the essence of the American idea.

Let’s thank God for our freedom and for the United States. We are not without our faults, but as long as we have the light to see right and wrong, we may still grow toward the good and thwart what is evil. 

The United States has been working behind the scenes on a peace plan for Ukraine, modelled on the 21-point peace plan for Gaza. It remains tough for Ukraine to accept all of the territorial concessions Russia wants in an agreement.

Reports on this peace initiative come at a time when Ukraine is successfully disrupting Russia’s oil production, which is vital to Russia’s struggling economy. This comes on the heels of the new sanctions imposed by President Trump that are widely believed to be making Putin’s life miserable.

But it also comes at a time when Russia is having some success on the battlefield. Russian efforts to take Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad - two cities in the Dombas region that Russian President Vladimir Putin highly covets. Also possible would be the encirclement of a large number of Ukrainian soldiers defending those two cities. Like all territorial gains by Russia, a horribly high price is paid in young Russian lives for the minimal gain of cities Russia has flattened with artillery and glide bombs.

It will be very difficult for Zelensky to win public support for the territorial concessions that are being leaked. Even conceding the preexisting battle lines from the 2022 invasion is unpopular, much less the currently Russian-occupied land in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. The security guarantees for Ukraine will have to be ironclad and include some presence of United States military personnel. Limitations on Ukraine’s army are a non-starter, unless this provision is a mutual agreement to move troops and artillery away from the line of demarcation.

It seems that now that many provisions have leaked, the plan will be examined and debated in capital cities around the globe. If it appears to be changing, that might be a sign of progress. We will see.

Summary of Trump’s Peace Initiative

• Ceasefire and Frontline Freeze: Immediate and permanent ceasefire with stabilization of current military frontlines, effectively freezing gains by both sides.​

• Territorial Arrangements: De facto recognition of Russian control over Crimea and the four oblasts (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson) occupied since 2022, with a possible review or “special status” provision for disputed areas.​

• Security Guarantees for Ukraine: “Robust” multinational security guarantees offered to Ukraine by the US, UK, France, Germany, and other allies, but without offering NATO membership.​

• Limitations on Ukrainian Military: Restrictions on the size and operational capability of Ukraine’s armed forces, especially near the new frontlines.​

• Sanctions Relief: Step-by-step removal of Western sanctions against Russia, conditional on Russia’s adherence to the ceasefire and other terms.​

• Humanitarian Measures: Unconditional return of displaced persons and civilians, broad prisoner exchanges (”all for all”), and restoring access for international humanitarian agencies.​

• Economic Cooperation and Reconstruction: US and international commitments to finance Ukrainian recovery and infrastructure as part of post-war stabilization.​

• Future of US-Russia Relations: Diplomatic normalization and restoration of some bilateral exchanges between Washington and Moscow if peace holds, as well as new cooperative frameworks in areas such as arms control and food security.​

• Monitoring and Compliance: Establishment of a large-scale international monitoring mission, likely under OSCE or UN auspices, to verify implementation of terms and monitor any violations.​

• European Security: Formation of a new European security consultation body, including Ukraine and Russia, and limitations on future deployment of offensive systems near borders.​

• NATO Exclusion: Ukraine is required to abandon its goal of joining NATO, though future association with the EU and other bodies may remain undefined.​

• Dialogue Mechanisms: Whether territorial questions may be revisited after a “cooling-off” period, to be addressed in a future diplomatic framework.​

• Additional unspecified technical, legal, and regional points round out the remainder of the list, addressing the logistics of enforcement, withdrawal sequencing, and dispute-resolution mechanisms.​

In what was the most stupid and meaningless government shutdown yet, we got to see both parties at their worst.

The Democrats clearly had no legislative objective to their actions. Instead, they had their minds set on establishing the Guinness Book of World Records for shutting down a government at 43 days (and who said the Democrats didn’t accomplish anything this year?).

The Republicans, who could have ended the shutdown at any time by using the nuclear option to pass a clean continuing resolution, were more interested in protecting their rights in a future minority than using the majority the voters granted them in the last election to actually do something. It seemingly never occurred to them that if they used the power given to them today, they might indefinitely postpone becoming a minority.

The most troublesome thing is that Congress is all set to do this again in January. The extremists in the Democratic Party are upset that the shutdown ended. They are threatening to retaliate against Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer by mounting a primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The threats from the left mean it will take considerable political courage for the Democrats to rally eight votes to stop the next government shutdown, which will take place on January 30 when the new CR runs out.

And despite drama worthy of a daytime soap opera, Congress has still not passed a single appropriation bill for the President to sign. Not one – and they were all due back on September 30. To top that off, they didn’t pass a single appropriation bill last year either. The Democrats controlled the Senate last year, and the Republicans control it this year. Both have failed.

Legislatively, the incentives to do the hard bipartisan work of enacting a budget are relatively low compared to the political incentives to disrupt the air traffic control system, some 900,000 federal workers, and dozens of other federal programs and services.

So, what can Congress do to prevent future government shutdowns?

They could, as Senator Talent and I suggested last week, pass a rule in the Senate that only requires a simple majority to pass a clean continuing resolution. Unless eight Democrats were willing to go along, Republicans would need to use the nuclear option to pass the new rule. There is some merit to the idea of passing an actual Senate rule using the nuclear option rather than merely changing how precedent has been interpreted.

As we wrote:

Every legislative body has rules, and most legislative bodies formally adopt or readopt their rules as soon as they organize after each biennial election. On that occasion, a simple majority of those legislative bodies has the opportunity and power to update their rules as necessary to accommodate the public interest as the majority sees it.

But the Senate considers itself a continuing body, because only a third of the Senate is elected every two years. It therefore also considers that, its rules are continuing as well, so the Senate does not adopt rules at the beginning of each Congress. That is understandable in principle, but the practical effect is that Senators have no regular opportunity to reconsider the rules by which they operate.

Of course, the Senate can choose to change its rules any time, including in the middle of any biennial Congress, but only by a process that complies with its existing rules, which means that a supermajority is required to change the rules -- if the regular order is used to change them.

That is why the “nuclear option” was developed and used with respect to the executive or confirmation calendar. The only thing the Senate considers to be superior to its own rules is the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution provides that both the House and Senate are the masters of their own internal processes. No court will ever question how a simple majority of either body decides to interpret or change its own rules, provided that the change does not transgress a limit imposed by the Constitution itself – such as the Constitutional provision that only a two thirds majority of the Senate can ratify treaties.

So, a simple majority of the Senate, if it wishes, is privileged by the Constitution to ignore the rules of the Senate. That is the “nuclear option”. Over the last 15 years, it has been used by both Democratic and Republican leaders to gradually eliminate the ability of a Senate minority to block or indefinitely delay confirmation of judges or executive branch officials.

Or the House and Senate could pass a law creating an automatic continuing resolution when appropriations expire. I wrote this back in September:

Senator James Lankford (R-OK) has introduced the End Government Shutdowns Act. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has introduced a similar bill. House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) has introduced a bill to do the same thing in the House. This legislation provides an automatic continuing resolution for 90 days at the previous year’s levels if an appropriation for some activity or office has not been adopted by October 1. After that, funding is cut by 1% every 90 days. It would prevent a shutdown, and the spending reduction would provide a strong incentive to finish the normal appropriations bills, which could fund the government at adequate levels.

An automatic continuing resolution would end the practice of using government shutdowns as leverage for policy debates. It is a powerful option since both parties have funding priorities they want to protect. Republicans might wish to increase defense spending, while Democrats may be willing to make a deal in exchange for hikes in healthcare spending. Both sides in this example have potent reasons to complete the budget process on time. The idea is to change from the current state of affairs that creates an incentive for a budget shutdown to one that creates an incentive to complete the budget process.

The problem, of course, is that this legislation would need a supermajority to pass the Senate, which leads us back to the same situation we find ourselves in today. Unless the Senate can muster some bipartisan backbone, passing this legislation would require the nuclear option to overcome a filibuster. But since this is a legislative change, not a procedural one, it would actually be a far bigger step to nuke this bill than to merely pass a rule change.

Either approach would be an improvement over the dysfunction in the Senate today. With an automatic continuing resolution, the government would remain open while negotiations on the actual appropriation bills continue.

The politics of the day is dreadfully short-sighted. The Constitution gives Congress broad powers of taxation and spending, but, as we see, the failure of Congress to act empowers a President to, through executive action, do what should be done through legislation. While the two parties bicker, the power of Congress is eroding and empowering the Executive branch at its expense. And once power is surrendered, it isn’t easy to recover.

One thing Americans do understand is that their Congress is woefully inept at passing legislation that matters to their lives — legislation that passes both chambers and is signed by the President. Congress risks not only losing its delegated powers to the Executive branch but also discovering that the people it represents hardly notice and don’t care. And an Executive unchecked by legislative power is, by definition, authoritarian. If one day the United States wakes up to an all-powerful president, Congress will have no one to blame but itself.

Government shutdowns have become a fairly regular feature of our political landscape, but in the past, they were always the product of a fight between the President and a majority of the members of either the House or the Senate, or both. The current shutdown is the first time to our knowledge that the government has been closed by a Senate minority, against the wishes of the President, the House, and even a bipartisan if only a simple majority of the Senate itself.

The immediate cause of most shutdowns is political, and this one is no exception. Senate Democrats needed to show their fighting side to their own base and cannot now back down without appearing, to that very same base, even weaker than when the fight began. Meanwhile Senate Republicans don’t want to reward a tactic they see as setting a dangerous precedent, and in addition are concerned that if they compromise to resolve the impasse, they will alienate their own activists.

Neither side is, as of now, suffering too much politically from the shutdown, so political logic – which in Washington is always a determinative factor – suggests that the shutdown will continue unless and until the political consequences change.

But the longer-term cause is more fundamental than the partisan or ideological divisions in the country. It is rather the way that the peculiar rules of the Senate empower and encourage a Senate minority to weaponize those divisions against the interests of the country.

In other words, it’s the combination of politics and process that caused and is now extending the shutdown.

Politically active people are aware that the United States Senate is for most purposes not a majoritarian body. By that we mean that a simple majority of the Senate cannot determine and drive to a vote the agenda which the Senate leadership wants to consider.

In the vast majority of legislative bodies, from city councils to the United States House of Representatives, that is not the case, but it is the case in the Senate, where there are only two ways of bringing any legislation to a vote: by unanimous consent, which means exactly what it appears to mean, or by a cloture motion, which requires a supermajority to pass.

Partisan supermajorities in the Senate are pretty much a thing of the past, and philosophical supermajorities are increasingly unlikely, given that activists, influencers, and therefore many politicians, tend automatically to oppose whatever the other side supports. The effect over time has been to gradually paralyze the Senate, at least as a legislative body.

In other words, the Senate cannot because of politics legislate on a bipartisan basis, but at the same time cannot because of its own rules legislate on a partisan basis, so it is, increasingly, unable to legislate at all. It can still investigate issues through its committee process, and Senators can still influence public opinion because their office gives them virtually unfettered access to the public square; but the Senate cannot effectively exercise its most basic constitutional powers: passing laws and appropriating money.

The growing dysfunction of the Senate has for some time grossly distorted the legislative process, forcing both the House and Senate to shoehorn normal enactments into the narrow channels that are available to avoid the effect of the Senate rules. That is the reason why so many otherwise normal people have taken the time to learn what congressional “reconciliation” means; the reconciliation process, despite being the most arcane and unworkable legislative mechanism ever devised by the mind of man, is the only way most substantive legislation can pass the Senate by a simple majority vote.

With this latest shutdown, the dysfunction engendered by the combination of politics and process has now reached its inevitable, ad absurdum result. It has rendered the Senate incapable of acting at all, even when there is a clear bipartisan majority that wants to carry out the most basic legislative function – appropriating money for purposes virtually everyone agrees are necessary.

And if the Senate cannot appropriate, the Congress as a whole can’t either. It’s a bicameral legislature. If you don’t like that, blame James Madison.

So, what is to be done?

We will not enter into the debate about whether what is commonly called the Senate filibuster should be eliminated or fundamentally changed. There are strong arguments on both sides of that issue. But it does seem to us that it is time for the Senate majority to force a narrow process change that will allow a simple majority of the Senate to fund the government temporarily when regular appropriations bills have not been enacted before the end of the fiscal year.

Why must the change be forced rather than adopted in a regular fashion? Here a digression is necessary. We must, unfortunately, delve into another peculiar aspect of Senate process.

Every legislative body has rules, and most legislative bodies formally adopt or readopt their rules as soon as they organize after each biennial election. On that occasion, a simple majority of those legislative bodies has the opportunity and power to update their rules as necessary to accommodate the public interest as the majority sees it.

But the Senate considers itself a continuing body, because only a third of the Senate is elected every two years. It therefore also considers that, its rules are continuing as well, so the Senate does not adopt rules at the beginning of each Congress. That is understandable in principle, but the practical effect is that Senators have no regular opportunity to reconsider the rules by which they operate.

Of course, the Senate can choose to change its rules any time, including in the middle of any biennial Congress, but only by a process that complies with its existing rules, which means that a supermajority is required to change the rules -- if the regular order is used to change them.

That is why the “nuclear option” was developed and used with respect to the executive or confirmation calendar. The only thing the Senate considers to be superior to its own rules is the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution provides that both the House and Senate are the masters of their own internal processes. No court will ever question how a simple majority of either body decides to interpret or change its own rules, provided that the change does not transgress a limit imposed by the Constitution itself – such as the Constitutional provision that only a two thirds majority of the Senate can ratify treaties.

So, a simple majority of the Senate, if it wishes, is privileged by the Constitution to ignore the rules of the Senate. That is the “nuclear option”. Over the last 15 years, it has been used by both Democratic and Republican leaders to gradually eliminate the ability of a Senate minority to block or indefinitely delay confirmation of judges or executive branch officials.

Those changes arose from the necessity of the case. Had they not been made, and, given that the political environment encourages both parties to be as adversarial as possible, the judiciary and the executive would have been starved of the officers they need to operate. Under the pressure of that imperative, even Senators who support the traditional process were persuaded to carve out exceptions.

They really had no choice. It’s one thing for Senate rules to allow a determined minority to shut down the Senate; as we have said, there are principled arguments on both sides of that question. It’s another thing entirely if a Senate minority with the political incentive to be as oppositional as possible is empowered to shut down the rest of the government as well.

The same logic applies to the appropriations process, at least with regard to the most basic function of appropriations: keeping the government open.

That is why we believe another narrow exception to the Senate rules is appropriate. We propose that the Senate adopt a rules change, if necessary, through the nuclear option, permitting the Senate to pass by a simple majority continuing resolutions (CRs) that meet three criteria:

• They are short term;

• They neither raise nor lower previously appropriated levels of spending; and

• They do not contain any changes in legislative policy, like “riders” which forbid money to be used for certain disapproved policies.

In other words, “clean” CRs, like the one which the House enacted to keep the government open this fall, could be passed by a simple majority vote in the Senate.

In our view, it would be an elegant if not perfect solution. It would reopen the government in a way that accommodates the political imperatives of both sides, because neither side would have to back down. Republicans could show they can make the trains run on time, and Democrats could vote no, cry foul, and hold more rallies to protest Republican authoritarianism. Going forward, both sides could continue to use the normal rules to consider, or prevent the Senate from considering, the policy issues which the Democrats have raised as a fig leaf to explain why they caused the shutdown in the first place.

Having been through shutdowns ourselves, we suspect that most Senators would breathe a sigh of relief that the government has reopened, that they have personally emerged unscathed politically, and that they have some hope of finishing appropriations in time to get home for the Christmas if not for the Thanksgiving holidays.

We understand that many Republican Senators will be concerned about creating yet another crack in the filibuster rule. (The Democrats have already signaled their willingness to get rid of the filibuster entirely when they have the votes to do so.) That concern is the downside of our proposal. But what we propose would restore Senate tradition more than violate it, because whatever the formal rules have allowed over the last 230 years, it was until recently never the practice in the Senate to filibuster everything that Senators opposed on the merits.

Besides, as Thomas Sowell famously said, “there are no solutions; there are only tradeoffs”. This is the best tradeoff we can think of to get everyone, and the country, out of the corner in which politics and process have painted them.

Jim Talent was a member of the U.S. Senate from 2002-2007. Mark Strand, former President of the Congressional Institute was his chief of staff.

With the government shutdown nearing two weeks, there is little reason to believe it will end soon. Compromises have been offered, but the Democrats in the Senate continue to vote against ending the shutdown. The Republicans, for their part, are not in a particular hurry to reopen the government either, because the shutdown also serves their purposes.

Democrats insist the shutdown will only end if Republicans concede to a permanent extension of Obamacare premium subsidies, reverse recent Medicaid cuts, and lift restrictions on previously appropriated funds.

Democrats are demanding the permanent extension of expanded Obamacare premium subsidies (COVID-era) for tens of millions of Americans (note to self: this is why you never support “temporary” spending subsidies). They want to repeal the Medicaid cuts and restoration of prior coverage rules included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) passed earlier this year. And they want guarantees that previously appropriated funds, including aid and state grants, cannot be clawed back or held up by administration rescissions.

That’s not bad politics for the Democrats, even though most voters do not understand the intricacies of the Obamacare spending. As we all remember from studying the “Hierarchy of Needs,” good health is a top need for most people (that is, if you equate federal spending with improved health). (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological theory by Abraham Maslow proposing that human motivation stems from a five-tier hierarchy of needs, starting with basic physiological and safety needs, moving to social needs like love and belonging, then esteem needs, and finally, the peak of self-actualization.)

The latest polls show that most Americans blame both parties and President Trump for the ongoing government shutdown, but Republicans receive slightly more blame in several surveys. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 67% say Republicans in Congress deserve a fair or great deal of blame, compared to 63% for Democrats and 63% for President Trump. An Economist/YouGov poll found that 41% blame Trump and Republicans, 30% blame Democrats, and 23% blame both parties equally. Navigator Research reports a similar result: Americans blame Republicans by a 13-point margin over Democrats (45% vs. 32%).

So, for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, this is a winning issue. Schumer is using the issue to help shape the battlefield for the 2026 Senate elections, where he hopes to recapture the majority. As long as polls indicate the shutdown is not hurting the Democrats, Schumer will continue to urge his Democratic colleagues to oppose reopening the government.

It’s pure politics (to paraphrase a memorable line from Casablanca, “I’m shocked, shocked to see politics going on here). No matter who gets hurt, no matter the strain on governing, Schumer will not support any compromise to reopen the government until the polls start to turn against him.

Passage by the Senate of the House bill would end the government shutdown. They need eight Democrats to agree to pass a short-term continuing resolution (CR) with current spending levels and no significant policy changes, especially regarding health care subsidies and Medicaid reforms.

The Republican position is that the Senate should approve the House-passed stopgap funding bill without additional health care expansions or Medicaid reversals. They oppose the permanent extension of COVID-era Obamacare subsidies but are open to limited subsidy expansions once the government reopens. Republicans would maintain current Medicaid amendments passed in the OBBBA, including work requirements and limits on enrollment for certain groups. And they would allow executive authority over federal spending rescissions contained in the constitutionally suspect pocket rescissions proposed by the Trump Administration.

So, the Republicans are also not in a hurry to compromise. According to most Republicans, the changes to Medicaid are already a compromise from the much greater cuts they had proposed during the OBBBA debate. Some politically vulnerable Republicans would like to find a compromise, but they will not get a receptive hearing from the Democrats so long as voters blame Republicans for the shutdown.

The Trump White House, particularly OMB Director Russ Vought, is using the shutdown to reshape the government. Since all discretionary federal funding has expired, there is no way for the Democrats to compel any government spending. If given the chance, Vought will cut entire programs. Look for tens of thousands of federal employees to be permanently fired. If the Administration has its way, the shutdown will be like a super pocket rescission, allowing them to cut programs without the consent of Congress. And to a certain extent, Congress cannot complain because the whole reason for the shutdown is that they failed to fund any discretionary programs by the beginning of the new fiscal year that began on October 1.

Republicans, of course, are watching the polls, too. President Trump’s move to pay active-duty military personnel was a response to one of the main concerns average Americans have about the shutdown.

There are also recent polls addressing public opinion on whether the military should be paid during the government shutdown. An Economist/YouGov poll found that a substantial majority of Americans—including 85% of Republicans, 91% of Democrats, and 88% of independents—support paying military personnel during shutdown periods, signaling broad bipartisan approval for ensuring uninterrupted pay for active-duty service members.

Democrats and Republicans may stink at budget math, but they are whiz kids when it comes to polling data.

What about the hundreds of thousands of non-military federal employees who are not getting paid? Other than a handful of members with large constituencies of federal employees, very few people in government seem to care too much, including those in states and congressional districts with the most federal employees. Virginia’s and Maryland’s Senators or Representatives are not working on a compromise and are mostly silent on the issue. Virginia Democrats are hopeful the shutdown can be used to boost the suddenly threatened leads for the Gubernatorial election next month.

There may be hope that other issues, such as the Middle East peace deal, will influence the Democrats to reopen the government. There is no doubt, if history is a guide, that President Trump’s approval numbers will rise following his success in negotiating an end to the war in Gaza. If Trump’s poll numbers increase significantly, perceptions of the government shutdown among Republicans and Democrats will likely shift towards the Republicans. It doesn’t have to change much for Schumer to accept whatever gains he made and signal a willingness to reopen the government.

So how will the shutdown end? When Schumer is ready to deal, Republicans will likely offer to extend the Obamacare subsidies temporarily and agree to debate the other Democratic demands in December when the short-term CR expires. This will be mostly face-saving language for Schumer to agree to accept the House-passed language.

That means we will face this whole big mess again in December, just before Christmas. At least that is what the Ghost of Christmas Past is likely to be warning us of in our sleep.

And to that, the American public is likely to say, “Bah humbug.”

Washington should memorize a maxim: “The party that causes a government shutdown always loses the battle for public opinion.” Always.  

Yet once again we are watching shutdown shenanigans over the next two weeks. Today, Americans are worried about horrific political violence with the assassination of Charlie Kirk; a young Ukrainian girl is murdered on Charlotte public transportation by a criminally insane repeat offender (and the government officials who continually let him out on the street are trying to do so again); Russian President Putin is thumbing his nose at President Trump, resulting in night after night of civilian deaths in Ukraine; and Communist China is accusing U.S. companies of anti-trust violations (the irony is rich). Why, then, is America once again demonstrating to the world that our Congress is so divided that it cannot even accomplish its most basic duty?

In almost every other democracy, the failure to pass a budget would result in the collapse of the government and new elections. But our Congress is barely even embarrassed.

Senator Schumer seems to be unaware of just how great the real crisis facing America is. Our maybe he does and is just trying to change the subject. But he has a little leverage and so he will attempt to shut the government down. Never mind that when the Republicans threatened to do the same thing when President Biden was in office, Schumer claimed a shutdown was the height of irresponsibility. Someone ought to read him his old press releases.

Congress should reform the budget process so government shutdowns never happen. Here are three ideas that Congress should consider.

Automatic Continuing Resolutions

The deadlines in the current budget process are ripe for partisan exploitation. One party can use them to exact concessions from the other and hold up appropriations for unrelated budget items. An easy way to end the incentive for a budget shutdown would be to pass a law requiring an automatic continuing resolution if appropriation bills are not passed by the start of the fiscal year. Since one of the main incentives for delaying the passage of appropriations is the leverage a government shutdown creates, an automatic continuing resolution eliminates the possibility of a shutdown.

Members of Congress are introducing legislation along these lines. Senator James Lankford (R-OK) has introduced the End Government Shutdowns Act. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has introduced a similar bill. House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) has introduced a bill to do the same thing in the House. This legislation provides an automatic continuing resolution for 90 days at the previous year’s levels if an appropriation for some activity or office has not been adopted by October 1. After that, the funding is cut by one percent every 90 days. It would prevent a shutdown, and the spending reduction would provide a strong incentive to finish the normal appropriations bills, which could fund the government at adequate levels.

An automatic continuing resolution would end the practice of using government shutdowns as leverage for policy debates. It is a powerful option since both parties have funding priorities they want to protect. Republicans might wish to increase defense spending, while Democrats may be willing to make a deal in exchange for hikes in healthcare spending. Both sides in this example have potent reasons to complete the budget process on time. The idea is to change from the current state of affairs that creates an incentive for a budget shutdown to one that creates an incentive to complete the budget process.

Biennial Budgeting

Automatic continuing resolutions are a stopgap and cannot replace a functional budget process. Biennial budgeting should be the centerpiece of a reformed budget process. Biennial budgeting switches all or part of the congressional budget process to a two-year cycle rather than the current annual one.

Every two-year Congress would have its own budget and two years to complete the required authorization bills. One variation of biennial budgeting would require the entire budget process, including appropriations, to be completed every other year. Another would have the budget resolution every other year, but lawmakers would wrangle through appropriations bills annually. Decreasing the frequency of one or more steps in the budget process can eliminate the opportunities for time-consuming legislative conflicts. Lawmakers can then use the time they spend on appropriations for other priorities.

This reform has been discussed for decades and is a fix that many people in both parties have supported. Biennial budgeting should be a major and relatively uncontroversial part of any reform package.

Changing the Fiscal Year

Under the category of “Who are we kidding?” Congress should accept reality and change the start of the fiscal year to January 1. Congress never completes its work by October 1, and given that the entire process is too big and too complicated, it should not surprise any of us. Congress has not passed the budget on time and according to law since 1996.

Typically, the budget process is initiated by the President submitting a budget on the first Tuesday in February. President Biden did not submit his budget until March (President Obama was the worst – always late by months). President Trump never did submit a full budget proposal this year. Then the Congressional Budget Office and the House and Senate Budget Committees are supposed to review the President’s request, hold hearings to get the views of all the Committees, and come up with a budget blueprint by mid-April that must pass both Chambers (the President does not sign a budget resolution). In the next six months, according to the 1974 Budget Control Act, all authorizing committees are supposed to pass reauthorization bills that, in theory, become the basis for 12 appropriation bills. All these bills must then pass both Chambers and be signed into law by the President before October 1. In fairness to Congress, it’s practically a miracle that it ever worked. But in the highly polarized Congresses of the 21st Century, the government has never completed the budget process on time and according to law. 

 Making January 1 the start of the fiscal year would buy Congress another three months, lengthening the appropriations season to 11 months. If Congress passed a biennial budget, it would allow 12 months in the second year of a Congress to complete the appropriation process. Making this change also takes the end of the budget season away from the end of the campaign season, which heightens the chances for political shenanigans around such a critical function of Congress.

The arguments for extending the fiscal year based on experience over the last two decades are close to undeniable: Congress so often does not finish its appropriations until December, so changing the fiscal year would conform the budget process to how lawmakers work today.

Next Steps

Reforming the budget process is not simply a matter of procedural changes. The written rules are essential, but the way Congress follows these rules should also be considered part of the budget process. The government could have brilliant rules but would have no effect if Members didn’t follow them. Yet the experience over the last few years shows that the procedures that incentivize shutdowns are usually championed by party extremes, much to the frustration of the political center of Congress. The ability of the extremes in either party to disrupt the Congress disproportionately to their numbers can be reduced by these reforms.

But those reforms make little sense if Congress can’t keep the government open. Shutdowns weaken the American people’s confidence in government and undermine America’s image in the world. Members of Congress can advocate for significant tax increases, or they can advocate for giant budget cuts – but no Member, regardless of ideology, can pass budget policy unless the system works. It is time to reform what has become a dysfunctional process and create a system by which Members of Congress can implement the priorities of their constituents in an orderly and timely way. Congress must seriously reform its budget process instead of going from showdown to catastrophe and back again.

Hopefully, though not with certainty, Congress will pass a short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) on September 30, hoping to pass a massive omnibus appropriation bill sometime in December (which is its own problem). However, there is also a strong possibility that there will be a government shutdown like there was in 2013 and 2018 and 2019. CRs have become the norm (there have been well over 200 CRs in the modern budget era), but there have also been 24 government shutdowns of various lengths over that same period.

Whether Einstein said it or not, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome. Congress needs to end the insanity and pass some fundamental budget reforms that result in a rational, deliberate, and transparent budget for the United States.