4 ms·

Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

83 points by marojejian 4mo ago

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
Five Constitutional amendments we need: 1. Strike pardon power; 2. First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; 3. Abolish the electoral college; 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; and 5. Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. (President still names and Senate still confirms appointments. But they can be insulated from “the executive Power.”) Everything else, including judicial reform, expanding the House and implementing a wealth tax (1% over $100mm, 2% over $1bn, 3% over $10bn, 4% over $100bn and 5% over $1tn), can be done through statute.
- superxpro12 4mo ago
  Throw something in there about gerrymandering. Maybe even ranked choice voting?
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > Throw something in there about gerrymandering Can be done through statute. And, I’d argue, is better done there. Independent redistributing commissions? Proportional representation? Expanding the House? Combination thereof? I don’t know if we know the answer; hard coding a solution ex ante seems unnecessarily risky.
    - ceejayoz 4mo ago
      > Can be done through statute. And undone through statute, or SCOTUS intervention.
      - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > And undone through statute This is generally hard. And should be possible for something as intricate as election mechanics. > or SCOTUS intervention Oh, I have lots of ideas for Court reform. Worst case, add justices. (Or, my favorite, every Supreme Court case gets a random slate of appellate judges.)
        superxpro12 4mo ago
        18 year term limits. Each president gets to pick 3, or something. I forget the specific number. Any one judge per district. Our House was supposed to scale with the population. IT only makes sense that the courts should too. There should be more than 9 given how large the population is.
  - bufbupa 4mo ago
    if we're making a wish list, I also want: - term limits for congress - voter day national holiday - if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election - repeal citizens united (maybe covered by op) - and change all fines/tickets to paid in human hours of community service rather than money
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      Most of this can be done through statute. I’d strongly argue against the community-service bit, however. That’s just job loss for those who earn income from labor and an inconvenience for those who earn it from capital.
      - ncallaway 4mo ago
        Yea, I think a better option would be to make fines proportional to income, and then give a flat hourly rate that you can earn for fines from community service as an option
        pasc1878 4mo ago
        No that does not fix the issue. If you have capital rather than income then this is still better for you. e.g. a retiree has capital but not income and for someone like Musk will have plenty of capital but proportionally much ledd income as that will be the best way to avoid tax.
        ncallaway 4mo ago
        Sure, tying it to net worth instead of income is fine too.
    - knappe 4mo ago
      - if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election Ask Colorado how TABOR[0] is going. The answer is a 1.5 BILLION[1] deficit because TABOR restricts how money is collected and spent by the state. A balanced budget isn't actually all it is cracked up to be. The deficit spending at the federal level we have now is bonkers, but a balanced budget every year is just unrealistic. Learn from Colorado and do not put yourself into an unrealistic corner. A budget will grow and shrink with the economy -- a balanced budget over X years seems much more realistic. It would mean we could have never, at a federal level, done the kind of spending necessary to cope with COVID, for example. What I'd like to see is Congress be entirely unable to draw a paycheck while the government is shutdown. Shutdowns are a last resort, but are now so common we have normalized them. This is immensely unfair to federal workers and everything downstream that depends on a functioning government, like SNAP benefits. If the government shuts down over budget issues, make the people who made that decision pay HEAVILY for the action. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxpayer_Bill_of_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxpayer_Bill_of_Rights [1] https://coloradosun.com/2026/03/19/colorado-budget-shortfall-grows-2026/ https://coloradosun.com/2026/03/19/colorado-budget-shortfall...
- jfengel 4mo ago
  Constitutional amendments that can actually be passed:
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    We haven’t tried in a generation. I could see pardon power and independent agencies getting through recent Congresses. (Between Biden and Trump, the former has been thoroughly abused. And the Congress likes creating independent agencies.)
    - jkaplowitz 4mo ago
      > We haven't tried in a generation. Longer than a generation if you include the Congressional stage of the process as part of the attempt - the last time Congress sent an amendment to the states was in 1978. Yes, an amendment was ratified as recently as 1992, but that amendment was approved by Congress all the way back in 1789 (!) along with ten other amendments which we now know as the Bill of Rights and one additional amendment that has still never been (and probably won't ever be) ratified. The story of why that ended up getting ratified in 1992 is quite interesting, but it has nothing to do with how to get new amendments through Congress these days.
    - lovich 4mo ago
      Independent agencies are not getting through recent Congresses unless the Republicans party has a total collapse and the Dems simultaneously find their balls again and stop being allergic to the use of power. The removal of Humphrey’s executor was a goal of Project 2025, they are elated at this ruling. > One example includes potentially seeking the overruling of Humphrey's Exec- utor v. United States. 62 This case approved so-called independent agencies whose directors are not removable by the President at will. The Supreme Court has chipped away at Humphrey's Executor in cases like Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 63 but the precedent remains. The next conservative Adminis- tration should formally take the position that Humphrey's Executor violates the Constitution's separation of powers.[1] [1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042/project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise.pdf#page=592 https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042/project-2025...
- Detrytus 4mo ago
  > 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; This one is completely useless. Congress may regulate, but why would they? They directly benefit from more money in politics. If anything this should be more direct, and read: "Political donations may only come from individual US citizens, and cannot exceed the amount of monthly minimum wage per person, per year". Or maybe just add a field in the tax return form where anyone can name a party to receive some fixed amount donation, subtracted from person's taxes.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > Congress may regulate, but why would they? They directly benefit from more money in politics One, they have. Repeatedly. Two, the reasons historically varied, but it tended to range from it being good for them when winning elections to most electeds being okay fundraisers and not wanting to compete with the great fundraisers.
  - moduspol 4mo ago
    Campaigns already have strong limits. They get around it by giving money to PACs, which can spend money opposing other candidates or talking about issues in particular. Should there be limits on spending on messaging opposing a certain candidate? Or supporting / opposing a specific policy? It's going to be pretty tough to draw a line there that doesn't sound a lot like solidifying and entrenching the powers that already exist. And it usually includes an ugly way of determining what speech is "political" and what is not.
    - comfydragon 4mo ago
      > Campaigns already have strong limits. The SC decided today that political parties can spend as much money as they want in coordination with candidates.
      - moduspol 4mo ago
        Do you expect this to result in much substantive change relative to before the ruling was made?
- apparent 4mo ago
  No chance 3 ever passes, and a wealth tax would require an amendment unless it is "apportioned among the states" or some such thing (and it can't be because wealthy people are concentrated in a handful of states). Editing to add: It would also be a bad idea to abolish the EC because then candidates would only ever campaign in cities. They would completely ignore rural areas, which are financially and culturally different. This would not end well. Separately, it would also mean we wouldn't know who the president is until all states are done counting, and it would complicate the recount process. Both are simpler under the EC, assuming the slow states are not close calls or big enough to swing the EC count (which they usually are not).
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > No chance 3 ever passes It’s honestly the hardest one on there. > a wealth tax would require an amendment Genuine question, why? > It would also be a bad idea to abolish the EC because then candidates would only ever campaign in cities This doesn’t mathematically work. Most Americans live in suburbia. (We define “urban” very, very broadly for statistical purposes.) And this effect is more than compensated for by the existence of the Senate and even House. > it would complicate the recount process No messier than now. And you’d only be delayed in close elections, in which case carefully recounting everywhere is fine.
    - nickff 4mo ago
      >”Genuine question, why?” A wealth tax would clearly be a ‘direct tax’, which must be apportioned among the states according to the constitution.
      - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        Eh, this is debated. (Moore.) It could be written as an excise tax, too, push come to shove.
        nickff 4mo ago
        Capital gains are permissible because of the 16th amendment; the 16A does not permit the congress to tax assets. It seems like quite a stretch to apply Moore to cash holdings.
- KaiserPro 4mo ago
  I mean yes, but the bigger issue is that the 14th amendment only survived by one fucking vote. The supreme court is one vote away from not upholding the constitution.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > the bigger issue is that the 14th amendment only survived by one fucking vote We have two corrupt justices. Until a President has the balls to enforce the law, this won’t be a problem solved by changing text on paper.
    - AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
      Um, which laws are you referring to here, that you claim the president is not enforcing?
  - apparent 4mo ago
    > the 14th amendment only survived by one fucking vote. Slavery was almost brought back? Or are you referring to the birthright citizenship case, which involves an ancillary aspect of the 14th amendment?
    - KaiserPro 4mo ago
      If you're not reading primary sources, I don't know what to say. the 14th amendment only has 5 sections, none of which are about banning slavery. They are there to make sure that states can't disenfranchise people based on who their parents are. But for your benefit: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/ > which involves an ancillary aspect of the 14th amendment? SECTION 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Its 25% of the entire amendment. Its not ancillary. The point of it was to allow the emancipated slaves to actually have citizenship. Otherwise not only would they have not been able to vote in the states that they were born in, neither would their kids, as their children would not have been US citizens.
- Noumenon72 4mo ago
  It would be better to make the Constitution unamendable than to let people like you get their hands on it. People are just not smart enough to foresee the consequences of their choices, so it's better to stick with choices that at least worked once.
  - ncallaway 4mo ago
    The more sclerotic the Constitution becomes, the more likely it is to have the entire system overturned and replaced wholesale. If you try to make the Constitution unamendable, you guarantee that the Republic that is founded on the Constitution will eventually fail. I can't think of a worse idea for the long-term health of the Republic.
    - moduspol 4mo ago
      If it were easy to change, there would be no purpose to having a Constitution.
      - pasc1878 4mo ago
        There is a great difference between immutable and difficult to change. Do you want to be in a US without the Fourteenth Amendment? Actually it strictly immutable without any of the Amendments, no 1st, 2nd etc.
        moduspol 4mo ago
        I think ratification by 2/3 of states fairly meets the definition of "difficult to change, but not immutable." That it's been done numerous times in the past suggests it is quite far from immutable.
- ncallaway 4mo ago
  I agree with everything, other than the two caveats below: > Strike pardon power; I'd go slightly narrower. I think pardons and clemency are a good thing to have in the system. I think we can put reasonable guardrails around it - Require pardons to be published to a public register to be effective - Allow a 2/3 vote of both chambers of congress to veto a pardon within 90 days - Disallow pardons in the final year of the term - Explicitly affirm that Congress can make bribery and other forms of direct/indirect quid-pro-quos for a pardon illegal > Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. I think we should also create room for Congress to create rule-making agencies that exist within the Congressional branch.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > pardons and clemency are a good thing to have in the system Congress can do it any time. The fact that it will probably result in a statute change, too, versus a one-off benefit, is a feature of that process. I debated this for a while, myself. Kept creating carve-outs. But at the end of the day, pardons are a shitty and ineffective check on either the judiciary or criminal statute, and they have been known to be a potential source of corruption since at least the Roman Republic, which denied this power even to their dictators. > we should also create room for Congress to create rule-making agencies that exist within the Congressional branch Eh, I prefer independent agencies. If the Congress wants a law it can pass it.
  - popalchemist 4mo ago
    These are all great ideas.
  - twobitshifter 4mo ago
    If we keep pardons, no reason to give that power to the executive branch at all.
    - markhahn 4mo ago
      There are lots of executive actions which require consent of congress. I think that would work fine here. Obviously, the point is for congress to have a means of overriding a corrupt pardon (not that such a thing would ever happen!)
- ecshafer 4mo ago
  Other than 4 I disagree whole heartedly. The worst part of the Fed government might be the Federal Reserve (abolish the fed), which would be like your 5. Electoral college is an important step to relegating the power of the masses. Pardon should be clarified in scope but not removed, Bidens indefinite pardons for any possible crimes was absurd.
  - lovich 4mo ago
    lol, abolish the fed and only complain about Biden’s pardons. I thought I was the most the openly partisan person on this forum but apparently I have competition.
    - apparent 4mo ago
      I believe Biden granted clemency to entire classes of people, which was unprecedented. Previously it was only done by name, and therefore limited to much smaller numbers of people. Trump may have been more egregious in other ways (and he'll likely pardon his family/friends on the way out, to avoid having them be targeted), but Biden was unprecedented in this respect.
      - lovich 4mo ago
        I forgot about the precedent of pardoning a group of people who tried to overthrow an election to keep you in power. Luckily Trump is only a “may” for being more egregious.
- paulddraper 4mo ago
  > 3. Abolish the electoral college; Many people think the EC is somehow a distinctly idiosyncrasy of the United States, but the Presidential election of the European Union is similar. The difference is that somewhere along the way, the member states of the USA lost most of their power. That hasn't yet happened to the members states of the EU. But perhaps it will?
  - darksaints 4mo ago
    The president of the European Commission is practically an inconsequential figurehead because of how the EU is structured. The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the US because of how the US is structured. It might be fine for them to have an electoral college like system for that but it absolutely is a disgrace that our most powerful person is elected by a handful of swing states.
    - paulddraper 4mo ago
      Even if you discard the President himself... The entire EU Commission (executive branch) is also not proportionally elected. Nor is the European Parliament (legislative branch) proportionally elected. Nothing about the EU is proportionally representative, but it's understood that it's a union of member states, not a union of people. The United States was created similarly. You can argue whether that's good or bad, but the dissonance between the US's original purpose -- an American Union -- and its current reality is the source of the wtfs.
- LorenPechtel 4mo ago
  I think the ship has sailed on #4. It's simply too easy to do it overseas now.
- brightball 4mo ago
  You can’t abolish the electoral college without standardized voting across all states. A single state or even county allowing frivolous or unverified voting can swing the entire election. The EC provides a failsafe by capping the max impact of a single state in the event of an anomaly. In other words, you can’t talk about abolishing the EC without a national voter ID law.
  - kelseyfrog 4mo ago
    > you can’t talk about abolishing the EC without a national voter ID law. Sure we can. We can even do it right here. I'd never let someone tell me what I can and cannot talk about.
    - throwaway85825 4mo ago
      Technically yes you can, but most everyone else will do a bit more scrutiny than you.
  - brainwad 4mo ago
    This is not a problem in other western countries, so why would it be in the US? It sounds very much like post-hoc justification to me.
    - striking 4mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism Once you see it as a throughline of your conversations with people who have been steeped in the American culture for so long, it is hard to unsee.
    - brightball 4mo ago
      [dead]
  - darksaints 4mo ago
    Voter ID laws would not be a problem if said IDs were free. They’re not, and nobody that ever proposes such laws ever proposes a way to make IDs free, because they aren’t actually caring about election integrity, they only care about the practical disenfranchisement that would result from it.
- tremon 4mo ago
  Your president is already hard at work “executing the laws of the United States of America”. They're taking them behind the shed one at a time.
- AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
  > Five Constitutional amendments we need Let's consider these then. > Strike pardon power What are you going to replace it with? What happens to someone who is convicted in a case where the law is both clear and clearly wrong? The courts can't help them when they actually did it but there are scores of laws that "innocent people" violate without knowing it on a regular basis. You need something else to address that if you're going to take away the thing that was intended to. > First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; That sure sounds like the abolition of prosecutorial discretion, which is the same problem but worse. You would have to repeal the majority of existing regulations to keep the general population from overwhelming the prisons because existing laws are drafted to be overly broad to prevent "bad people" from getting away and then rely on prosecutorial discretion to prevent prosecutions when that's unreasonable. The existing system sucks, but are people prepared for something that works very differently than that? Actual rule of law isn't flexible. People go to jail for breaking the law even when they're sympathetic and get off on technicalities even when they're unsympathetic. > Abolish the electoral college The electoral college is old and kind of silly and structurally very similar to the process for amending the constitution, thereby ensuring that the people who would have to do it continuously have the incentive not to. That's why politicians complain about it -- they love to complain about things that are almost impossible to change because then people vote for them wanting it to change even though they can't actually change it, allowing them to run on it again next time having accomplished nothing. > Congress may regulate money in politics There are two ways you could try to do this. The first is that they could only regulate money, but not in-kind contributions like a media outlet providing favorable coverage or a company sending employees to volunteer for a campaign. This would be completely pointless because they would obviously just use in-kind contributions instead and nothing would change. The second is that you're passing the political speech version of the interstate commerce clause, because 100% of speech requires you to consume resources in order to do it. People talking about politics on the internet are contributing computer time, internet bandwidth and labor hours and their views favor one candidate over another. You would essentially be granting Congress the power to regulate political speech, which seems Very Bad. > Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. This is like the pardon thing again. The executive is currently the only elected official with authority over executive agencies. Suppose the head of one of these independent agencies goes rogue. Who is supposed to rein them in? Creating something which is immune from public accountability seems bad.
- miyoji 4mo ago
  Why don't we just eat the entire elephant and abolish the Presidency?
  - krapp 4mo ago
    The US might actually do better with a parliamentary system. We could even change the Presidency to an actual monarchy, since that seems to be what many Americans really want, but as a ceremonial position only.
- keernan 4mo ago
  SCOTUS is the fly in the ointment with Constitutional Amendments. The Bill of Rights were intended to restrict government action. When there were exceptions, the wording of the Bill of Rights made them clear. The Bill of Rights were intended to be absolute things the government never could do. That is not how they work today. SCOTUS has changed the Bill of Rights to require citizens to affirmatively assert them and has ruled that citizens can consent to permit the government to engage in activities the Bill of Rights made clear were prohibited. As a result, our lives are very different than what was originally intended. Today when the police pull you over for a traffic stop, the police engage in conversations they learn in police training - conversations that are explicitly intended to lead to the driver waiving his constitution rights - rights that were intended to be absolute unaidable automatic restrictions upon government conduct. SCOTUS will always be the fly in the ointment.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    What’s your proposed solution?
ahartmetz 4mo ago
It is funny that these things are done by """conservatives""". To be conservative means to conserve things, keep them as they are, and to develop them further guided by traditional values. These """conservatives""" are not conserving anything, they are destroying old institutions with the motivation to build an autocracy.
- ceejayoz 4mo ago
  "Reactionary" is the term you're looking for.
  - ahartmetz 4mo ago
    Probably. The linked article calls them conservatives, which seems like something they'd like to call themselves as well.
- FergusArgyll 4mo ago
  They're not """conservatives""" they're """textualists"""
  - dgellow 4mo ago
    Aka “trust me bro, I can decipher the hidden meaning that will surprisingly match my preferred political outcomes”
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
beezlebroxxxxxx 4mo ago
Even if you ignore the, frankly, incredible impact of this ruling on the very idea of a modern independent civil service, it is crazy to see this opinion come alongside another that protects the Fed from the exact same thing for reasons that very few learned people (conservative and liberal) buy. Understandably, applying the unitary executive theory to the Fed is basically a recipe for disaster, but they're just blatantly trying to have it both ways in a way that deeply undercuts the credibility of the current court's opinions. Afterall, if it's a disaster for the Fed it might also be a disaster for all the other agencies...
apparent 4mo ago
Here's a reliable alternate source. [1] I try to avoid single-sourcing on important news, since most outlets have a bias one way or the other. 1: https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-allows-trump-to-fire-ftc-commissioner-and-overturns-major-restraint-on-presidential-power/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-allows-trump-to-fir... EDIT: adding that it's sad that people downvote an alternate source that is from an expert outlet. I don't think I've ever heard anyone claim SCOTUSblog is biased, and NPR has surely been credibly accused.
- the_sleaze_ 4mo ago
  It's difficult to find anything except wildly biased news sources. After reading the article I know I should be upset about what the supreme court has done, and I should be fearful about what could possibly happen tomorrow because of it. But I don't have a very clear picture about what actually happened. How could one possibly build their own opinion one way or another from this piece?
  - oldsklgdfth 4mo ago
    IANAL, but pretty curious of SCOTUS. I just read a lot of the opinions. (I hate that the pdf does not have a table of contents). I've used the mental model of math and theorems to reason about it. In this model, all laws have to be consistent with base axioms from the constitution (and common law maybe?) I have come to realize that it is not a great analogy. The model breaks down when you realize that the law is not about "truth" (objectively true statements), but about "goodness" - what is right or wrong. That's the subjective component. Reading opinions help guide through the logic and what is thought of as good. Dissents are useful to glee into different perspectives. Some dissents are high tower rants though. Learn to discern the two. Take a look at Marbury v. Madison[0] for the background on how SCOTUS gained the power of judicial review, i.e. power to strike down laws as unconstitutional. Judicial review is not granted in the constitution. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
    - the_sleaze_ 4mo ago
Glandalf 4mo ago
Long Marchers spent like a half century wasting their lives, it turns out. Ahhhhh well, they’re nothing if not persistent.
hn_throwaway_99 4mo ago
The mental gymnastics that jurists attempt to go through to justify their rulings as "principled" in some sense is just baffling to me. The right railed against "judicial activism" for years, but it is plainly obvious that is what is happening here (overturning precedent after precedent solely based on their current feelings), especially by giving credence to the "unitary executive" theory that obviously makes separation of powers a moot point when taken to its conclusion. The executive branch, as the one tasked with "faithful execution of the laws", is really the only branch that actually does anything substantial. I mean, yes the Congress passes laws and the SC interprets them, but the only branch that can actually carry out those laws is the executive branch. These rulings by the SC basically say that the President can do whatever he wants because (a) he can't be prosecuted for any official actions, and (b) all regulatory decisions are now solely within his control. Starting with Citizens United, this crop of SC justices will go down in infamy as some of the worst since Dred Scott. Let's hope we don't need another actual civil war to rectify their buffoonery.
- superxpro12 4mo ago
  Just stop trying to find logic in the hypocrisy. "Every accusation is a confession" by them rings true louder and louder with each passing day. Precedent and reason is no longer a metric for the conservative justices. Only the party's wishes. Which means they are a political body now.
- draw_down 4mo ago
  [dead]
- the_sleaze_ 4mo ago
  Please don't forget the gifts and donations the judges receive because "Until recently, the judiciary’s ethics guidance didn’t explicitly address the ownership issue." > If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000 https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un...
throwaway85825 4mo ago
What most people miss when reading court news headlines is that most cases are decided based on federal law not on the constitution. Laws of course can easily be changed by a majority of congress. If congress abdicated its power, the court is not the problem, congress is.

83 points by marojejian 4mo ago

Five Constitutional amendments we need: 1. Strike pardon power; 2. First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; 3. Abolish the electoral college; 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; and 5. Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. (President still names and Senate still confirms appointments. But they can be insulated from “the executive Power.”) Everything else, including judicial reform, expanding the House and implementing a wealth tax (1% over $100mm, 2% over $1bn, 3% over $10bn, 4% over $100bn and 5% over $1tn), can be done through statute.

superxpro12 4mo ago
Throw something in there about gerrymandering. Maybe even ranked choice voting?
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > Throw something in there about gerrymandering Can be done through statute. And, I’d argue, is better done there. Independent redistributing commissions? Proportional representation? Expanding the House? Combination thereof? I don’t know if we know the answer; hard coding a solution ex ante seems unnecessarily risky.
  - ceejayoz 4mo ago
    > Can be done through statute. And undone through statute, or SCOTUS intervention.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > And undone through statute This is generally hard. And should be possible for something as intricate as election mechanics. > or SCOTUS intervention Oh, I have lots of ideas for Court reform. Worst case, add justices. (Or, my favorite, every Supreme Court case gets a random slate of appellate judges.)
      - superxpro12 4mo ago
        18 year term limits. Each president gets to pick 3, or something. I forget the specific number. Any one judge per district. Our House was supposed to scale with the population. IT only makes sense that the courts should too. There should be more than 9 given how large the population is.
- bufbupa 4mo ago
  if we're making a wish list, I also want: - term limits for congress - voter day national holiday - if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election - repeal citizens united (maybe covered by op) - and change all fines/tickets to paid in human hours of community service rather than money
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    Most of this can be done through statute. I’d strongly argue against the community-service bit, however. That’s just job loss for those who earn income from labor and an inconvenience for those who earn it from capital.
    - ncallaway 4mo ago
      Yea, I think a better option would be to make fines proportional to income, and then give a flat hourly rate that you can earn for fines from community service as an option
      - pasc1878 4mo ago
        No that does not fix the issue. If you have capital rather than income then this is still better for you. e.g. a retiree has capital but not income and for someone like Musk will have plenty of capital but proportionally much ledd income as that will be the best way to avoid tax.
        ncallaway 4mo ago
        Sure, tying it to net worth instead of income is fine too.
  - knappe 4mo ago
    - if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election Ask Colorado how TABOR[0] is going. The answer is a 1.5 BILLION[1] deficit because TABOR restricts how money is collected and spent by the state. A balanced budget isn't actually all it is cracked up to be. The deficit spending at the federal level we have now is bonkers, but a balanced budget every year is just unrealistic. Learn from Colorado and do not put yourself into an unrealistic corner. A budget will grow and shrink with the economy -- a balanced budget over X years seems much more realistic. It would mean we could have never, at a federal level, done the kind of spending necessary to cope with COVID, for example. What I'd like to see is Congress be entirely unable to draw a paycheck while the government is shutdown. Shutdowns are a last resort, but are now so common we have normalized them. This is immensely unfair to federal workers and everything downstream that depends on a functioning government, like SNAP benefits. If the government shuts down over budget issues, make the people who made that decision pay HEAVILY for the action. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxpayer_Bill_of_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxpayer_Bill_of_Rights [1] https://coloradosun.com/2026/03/19/colorado-budget-shortfall-grows-2026/ https://coloradosun.com/2026/03/19/colorado-budget-shortfall...
jfengel 4mo ago
Constitutional amendments that can actually be passed:
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  We haven’t tried in a generation. I could see pardon power and independent agencies getting through recent Congresses. (Between Biden and Trump, the former has been thoroughly abused. And the Congress likes creating independent agencies.)
  - jkaplowitz 4mo ago
    > We haven't tried in a generation. Longer than a generation if you include the Congressional stage of the process as part of the attempt - the last time Congress sent an amendment to the states was in 1978. Yes, an amendment was ratified as recently as 1992, but that amendment was approved by Congress all the way back in 1789 (!) along with ten other amendments which we now know as the Bill of Rights and one additional amendment that has still never been (and probably won't ever be) ratified. The story of why that ended up getting ratified in 1992 is quite interesting, but it has nothing to do with how to get new amendments through Congress these days.
  - lovich 4mo ago
    Independent agencies are not getting through recent Congresses unless the Republicans party has a total collapse and the Dems simultaneously find their balls again and stop being allergic to the use of power. The removal of Humphrey’s executor was a goal of Project 2025, they are elated at this ruling. > One example includes potentially seeking the overruling of Humphrey's Exec- utor v. United States. 62 This case approved so-called independent agencies whose directors are not removable by the President at will. The Supreme Court has chipped away at Humphrey's Executor in cases like Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 63 but the precedent remains. The next conservative Adminis- tration should formally take the position that Humphrey's Executor violates the Constitution's separation of powers.[1] [1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042/project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise.pdf#page=592 https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042/project-2025...
Detrytus 4mo ago
> 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; This one is completely useless. Congress may regulate, but why would they? They directly benefit from more money in politics. If anything this should be more direct, and read: "Political donations may only come from individual US citizens, and cannot exceed the amount of monthly minimum wage per person, per year". Or maybe just add a field in the tax return form where anyone can name a party to receive some fixed amount donation, subtracted from person's taxes.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > Congress may regulate, but why would they? They directly benefit from more money in politics One, they have. Repeatedly. Two, the reasons historically varied, but it tended to range from it being good for them when winning elections to most electeds being okay fundraisers and not wanting to compete with the great fundraisers.
- moduspol 4mo ago
  Campaigns already have strong limits. They get around it by giving money to PACs, which can spend money opposing other candidates or talking about issues in particular. Should there be limits on spending on messaging opposing a certain candidate? Or supporting / opposing a specific policy? It's going to be pretty tough to draw a line there that doesn't sound a lot like solidifying and entrenching the powers that already exist. And it usually includes an ugly way of determining what speech is "political" and what is not.
  - comfydragon 4mo ago
    > Campaigns already have strong limits. The SC decided today that political parties can spend as much money as they want in coordination with candidates.
    - moduspol 4mo ago
      Do you expect this to result in much substantive change relative to before the ruling was made?
apparent 4mo ago
No chance 3 ever passes, and a wealth tax would require an amendment unless it is "apportioned among the states" or some such thing (and it can't be because wealthy people are concentrated in a handful of states). Editing to add: It would also be a bad idea to abolish the EC because then candidates would only ever campaign in cities. They would completely ignore rural areas, which are financially and culturally different. This would not end well. Separately, it would also mean we wouldn't know who the president is until all states are done counting, and it would complicate the recount process. Both are simpler under the EC, assuming the slow states are not close calls or big enough to swing the EC count (which they usually are not).
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > No chance 3 ever passes It’s honestly the hardest one on there. > a wealth tax would require an amendment Genuine question, why? > It would also be a bad idea to abolish the EC because then candidates would only ever campaign in cities This doesn’t mathematically work. Most Americans live in suburbia. (We define “urban” very, very broadly for statistical purposes.) And this effect is more than compensated for by the existence of the Senate and even House. > it would complicate the recount process No messier than now. And you’d only be delayed in close elections, in which case carefully recounting everywhere is fine.
  - nickff 4mo ago
    >”Genuine question, why?” A wealth tax would clearly be a ‘direct tax’, which must be apportioned among the states according to the constitution.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      Eh, this is debated. (Moore.) It could be written as an excise tax, too, push come to shove.
      - nickff 4mo ago
        Capital gains are permissible because of the 16th amendment; the 16A does not permit the congress to tax assets. It seems like quite a stretch to apply Moore to cash holdings.
KaiserPro 4mo ago
I mean yes, but the bigger issue is that the 14th amendment only survived by one fucking vote. The supreme court is one vote away from not upholding the constitution.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > the bigger issue is that the 14th amendment only survived by one fucking vote We have two corrupt justices. Until a President has the balls to enforce the law, this won’t be a problem solved by changing text on paper.
  - AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
    Um, which laws are you referring to here, that you claim the president is not enforcing?
- apparent 4mo ago
  > the 14th amendment only survived by one fucking vote. Slavery was almost brought back? Or are you referring to the birthright citizenship case, which involves an ancillary aspect of the 14th amendment?
  - KaiserPro 4mo ago
    If you're not reading primary sources, I don't know what to say. the 14th amendment only has 5 sections, none of which are about banning slavery. They are there to make sure that states can't disenfranchise people based on who their parents are. But for your benefit: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/ > which involves an ancillary aspect of the 14th amendment? SECTION 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Its 25% of the entire amendment. Its not ancillary. The point of it was to allow the emancipated slaves to actually have citizenship. Otherwise not only would they have not been able to vote in the states that they were born in, neither would their kids, as their children would not have been US citizens.
Noumenon72 4mo ago
It would be better to make the Constitution unamendable than to let people like you get their hands on it. People are just not smart enough to foresee the consequences of their choices, so it's better to stick with choices that at least worked once.
- ncallaway 4mo ago
  The more sclerotic the Constitution becomes, the more likely it is to have the entire system overturned and replaced wholesale. If you try to make the Constitution unamendable, you guarantee that the Republic that is founded on the Constitution will eventually fail. I can't think of a worse idea for the long-term health of the Republic.
  - moduspol 4mo ago
    If it were easy to change, there would be no purpose to having a Constitution.
    - pasc1878 4mo ago
      There is a great difference between immutable and difficult to change. Do you want to be in a US without the Fourteenth Amendment? Actually it strictly immutable without any of the Amendments, no 1st, 2nd etc.
      - moduspol 4mo ago
        I think ratification by 2/3 of states fairly meets the definition of "difficult to change, but not immutable." That it's been done numerous times in the past suggests it is quite far from immutable.
ncallaway 4mo ago
I agree with everything, other than the two caveats below: > Strike pardon power; I'd go slightly narrower. I think pardons and clemency are a good thing to have in the system. I think we can put reasonable guardrails around it - Require pardons to be published to a public register to be effective - Allow a 2/3 vote of both chambers of congress to veto a pardon within 90 days - Disallow pardons in the final year of the term - Explicitly affirm that Congress can make bribery and other forms of direct/indirect quid-pro-quos for a pardon illegal > Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. I think we should also create room for Congress to create rule-making agencies that exist within the Congressional branch.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > pardons and clemency are a good thing to have in the system Congress can do it any time. The fact that it will probably result in a statute change, too, versus a one-off benefit, is a feature of that process. I debated this for a while, myself. Kept creating carve-outs. But at the end of the day, pardons are a shitty and ineffective check on either the judiciary or criminal statute, and they have been known to be a potential source of corruption since at least the Roman Republic, which denied this power even to their dictators. > we should also create room for Congress to create rule-making agencies that exist within the Congressional branch Eh, I prefer independent agencies. If the Congress wants a law it can pass it.
- popalchemist 4mo ago
  These are all great ideas.
- twobitshifter 4mo ago
  If we keep pardons, no reason to give that power to the executive branch at all.
  - markhahn 4mo ago
    There are lots of executive actions which require consent of congress. I think that would work fine here. Obviously, the point is for congress to have a means of overriding a corrupt pardon (not that such a thing would ever happen!)
ecshafer 4mo ago
Other than 4 I disagree whole heartedly. The worst part of the Fed government might be the Federal Reserve (abolish the fed), which would be like your 5. Electoral college is an important step to relegating the power of the masses. Pardon should be clarified in scope but not removed, Bidens indefinite pardons for any possible crimes was absurd.
- lovich 4mo ago
  lol, abolish the fed and only complain about Biden’s pardons. I thought I was the most the openly partisan person on this forum but apparently I have competition.
  - apparent 4mo ago
    I believe Biden granted clemency to entire classes of people, which was unprecedented. Previously it was only done by name, and therefore limited to much smaller numbers of people. Trump may have been more egregious in other ways (and he'll likely pardon his family/friends on the way out, to avoid having them be targeted), but Biden was unprecedented in this respect.
    - lovich 4mo ago
      I forgot about the precedent of pardoning a group of people who tried to overthrow an election to keep you in power. Luckily Trump is only a “may” for being more egregious.
paulddraper 4mo ago
> 3. Abolish the electoral college; Many people think the EC is somehow a distinctly idiosyncrasy of the United States, but the Presidential election of the European Union is similar. The difference is that somewhere along the way, the member states of the USA lost most of their power. That hasn't yet happened to the members states of the EU. But perhaps it will?
- darksaints 4mo ago
  The president of the European Commission is practically an inconsequential figurehead because of how the EU is structured. The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the US because of how the US is structured. It might be fine for them to have an electoral college like system for that but it absolutely is a disgrace that our most powerful person is elected by a handful of swing states.
  - paulddraper 4mo ago
    Even if you discard the President himself... The entire EU Commission (executive branch) is also not proportionally elected. Nor is the European Parliament (legislative branch) proportionally elected. Nothing about the EU is proportionally representative, but it's understood that it's a union of member states, not a union of people. The United States was created similarly. You can argue whether that's good or bad, but the dissonance between the US's original purpose -- an American Union -- and its current reality is the source of the wtfs.
LorenPechtel 4mo ago
I think the ship has sailed on #4. It's simply too easy to do it overseas now.
brightball 4mo ago
You can’t abolish the electoral college without standardized voting across all states. A single state or even county allowing frivolous or unverified voting can swing the entire election. The EC provides a failsafe by capping the max impact of a single state in the event of an anomaly. In other words, you can’t talk about abolishing the EC without a national voter ID law.
- kelseyfrog 4mo ago
  > you can’t talk about abolishing the EC without a national voter ID law. Sure we can. We can even do it right here. I'd never let someone tell me what I can and cannot talk about.
  - throwaway85825 4mo ago
    Technically yes you can, but most everyone else will do a bit more scrutiny than you.
- brainwad 4mo ago
  This is not a problem in other western countries, so why would it be in the US? It sounds very much like post-hoc justification to me.
  - striking 4mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism Once you see it as a throughline of your conversations with people who have been steeped in the American culture for so long, it is hard to unsee.
  - brightball 4mo ago
    [dead]
- darksaints 4mo ago
  Voter ID laws would not be a problem if said IDs were free. They’re not, and nobody that ever proposes such laws ever proposes a way to make IDs free, because they aren’t actually caring about election integrity, they only care about the practical disenfranchisement that would result from it.
tremon 4mo ago
Your president is already hard at work “executing the laws of the United States of America”. They're taking them behind the shed one at a time.
AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
> Five Constitutional amendments we need Let's consider these then. > Strike pardon power What are you going to replace it with? What happens to someone who is convicted in a case where the law is both clear and clearly wrong? The courts can't help them when they actually did it but there are scores of laws that "innocent people" violate without knowing it on a regular basis. You need something else to address that if you're going to take away the thing that was intended to. > First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; That sure sounds like the abolition of prosecutorial discretion, which is the same problem but worse. You would have to repeal the majority of existing regulations to keep the general population from overwhelming the prisons because existing laws are drafted to be overly broad to prevent "bad people" from getting away and then rely on prosecutorial discretion to prevent prosecutions when that's unreasonable. The existing system sucks, but are people prepared for something that works very differently than that? Actual rule of law isn't flexible. People go to jail for breaking the law even when they're sympathetic and get off on technicalities even when they're unsympathetic. > Abolish the electoral college The electoral college is old and kind of silly and structurally very similar to the process for amending the constitution, thereby ensuring that the people who would have to do it continuously have the incentive not to. That's why politicians complain about it -- they love to complain about things that are almost impossible to change because then people vote for them wanting it to change even though they can't actually change it, allowing them to run on it again next time having accomplished nothing. > Congress may regulate money in politics There are two ways you could try to do this. The first is that they could only regulate money, but not in-kind contributions like a media outlet providing favorable coverage or a company sending employees to volunteer for a campaign. This would be completely pointless because they would obviously just use in-kind contributions instead and nothing would change. The second is that you're passing the political speech version of the interstate commerce clause, because 100% of speech requires you to consume resources in order to do it. People talking about politics on the internet are contributing computer time, internet bandwidth and labor hours and their views favor one candidate over another. You would essentially be granting Congress the power to regulate political speech, which seems Very Bad. > Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. This is like the pardon thing again. The executive is currently the only elected official with authority over executive agencies. Suppose the head of one of these independent agencies goes rogue. Who is supposed to rein them in? Creating something which is immune from public accountability seems bad.
miyoji 4mo ago
Why don't we just eat the entire elephant and abolish the Presidency?
- krapp 4mo ago
  The US might actually do better with a parliamentary system. We could even change the Presidency to an actual monarchy, since that seems to be what many Americans really want, but as a ceremonial position only.
keernan 4mo ago
SCOTUS is the fly in the ointment with Constitutional Amendments. The Bill of Rights were intended to restrict government action. When there were exceptions, the wording of the Bill of Rights made them clear. The Bill of Rights were intended to be absolute things the government never could do. That is not how they work today. SCOTUS has changed the Bill of Rights to require citizens to affirmatively assert them and has ruled that citizens can consent to permit the government to engage in activities the Bill of Rights made clear were prohibited. As a result, our lives are very different than what was originally intended. Today when the police pull you over for a traffic stop, the police engage in conversations they learn in police training - conversations that are explicitly intended to lead to the driver waiving his constitution rights - rights that were intended to be absolute unaidable automatic restrictions upon government conduct. SCOTUS will always be the fly in the ointment.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  What’s your proposed solution?

ahartmetz 4mo ago

It is funny that these things are done by """conservatives""". To be conservative means to conserve things, keep them as they are, and to develop them further guided by traditional values. These """conservatives""" are not conserving anything, they are destroying old institutions with the motivation to build an autocracy.

ceejayoz 4mo ago
"Reactionary" is the term you're looking for.
- ahartmetz 4mo ago
  Probably. The linked article calls them conservatives, which seems like something they'd like to call themselves as well.
FergusArgyll 4mo ago
They're not """conservatives""" they're """textualists"""
- dgellow 4mo ago
  Aka “trust me bro, I can decipher the hidden meaning that will surprisingly match my preferred political outcomes”
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

beezlebroxxxxxx 4mo ago

Even if you ignore the, frankly, incredible impact of this ruling on the very idea of a modern independent civil service, it is crazy to see this opinion come alongside another that protects the Fed from the exact same thing for reasons that very few learned people (conservative and liberal) buy. Understandably, applying the unitary executive theory to the Fed is basically a recipe for disaster, but they're just blatantly trying to have it both ways in a way that deeply undercuts the credibility of the current court's opinions. Afterall, if it's a disaster for the Fed it might also be a disaster for all the other agencies...

apparent 4mo ago

Here's a reliable alternate source. [1] I try to avoid single-sourcing on important news, since most outlets have a bias one way or the other. 1: https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-allows-trump-to-fire-ftc-commissioner-and-overturns-major-restraint-on-presidential-power/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-allows-trump-to-fir... EDIT: adding that it's sad that people downvote an alternate source that is from an expert outlet. I don't think I've ever heard anyone claim SCOTUSblog is biased, and NPR has surely been credibly accused.

the_sleaze_ 4mo ago
It's difficult to find anything except wildly biased news sources. After reading the article I know I should be upset about what the supreme court has done, and I should be fearful about what could possibly happen tomorrow because of it. But I don't have a very clear picture about what actually happened. How could one possibly build their own opinion one way or another from this piece?
- oldsklgdfth 4mo ago
  IANAL, but pretty curious of SCOTUS. I just read a lot of the opinions. (I hate that the pdf does not have a table of contents). I've used the mental model of math and theorems to reason about it. In this model, all laws have to be consistent with base axioms from the constitution (and common law maybe?) I have come to realize that it is not a great analogy. The model breaks down when you realize that the law is not about "truth" (objectively true statements), but about "goodness" - what is right or wrong. That's the subjective component. Reading opinions help guide through the logic and what is thought of as good. Dissents are useful to glee into different perspectives. Some dissents are high tower rants though. Learn to discern the two. Take a look at Marbury v. Madison[0] for the background on how SCOTUS gained the power of judicial review, i.e. power to strike down laws as unconstitutional. Judicial review is not granted in the constitution. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
  - the_sleaze_ 4mo ago

Glandalf 4mo ago

Long Marchers spent like a half century wasting their lives, it turns out. Ahhhhh well, they’re nothing if not persistent.

hn_throwaway_99 4mo ago

The mental gymnastics that jurists attempt to go through to justify their rulings as "principled" in some sense is just baffling to me. The right railed against "judicial activism" for years, but it is plainly obvious that is what is happening here (overturning precedent after precedent solely based on their current feelings), especially by giving credence to the "unitary executive" theory that obviously makes separation of powers a moot point when taken to its conclusion. The executive branch, as the one tasked with "faithful execution of the laws", is really the only branch that actually does anything substantial. I mean, yes the Congress passes laws and the SC interprets them, but the only branch that can actually carry out those laws is the executive branch. These rulings by the SC basically say that the President can do whatever he wants because (a) he can't be prosecuted for any official actions, and (b) all regulatory decisions are now solely within his control. Starting with Citizens United, this crop of SC justices will go down in infamy as some of the worst since Dred Scott. Let's hope we don't need another actual civil war to rectify their buffoonery.

superxpro12 4mo ago
Just stop trying to find logic in the hypocrisy. "Every accusation is a confession" by them rings true louder and louder with each passing day. Precedent and reason is no longer a metric for the conservative justices. Only the party's wishes. Which means they are a political body now.
draw_down 4mo ago
[dead]
the_sleaze_ 4mo ago
Please don't forget the gifts and donations the judges receive because "Until recently, the judiciary’s ethics guidance didn’t explicitly address the ownership issue." > If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000 https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un...

throwaway85825 4mo ago

What most people miss when reading court news headlines is that most cases are decided based on federal law not on the constitution. Laws of course can easily be changed by a majority of congress. If congress abdicated its power, the court is not the problem, congress is.