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Toward a Mixed Parliamentary–Presidential System in the U.S.?

A strange thought has been bouncing around in my head lately. If the current administration gets its way regarding how the various departments and agencies are run, even whether or not money appropriated by Congress for them is spent in the first place, that could do more than simply create a governance and democracy problem for the country. Presidential overreach and malfeasance could force Congress to adopt radically different solutions to the national problems we want and need it to address.

Most dramatically, it could consider establishing administrative bodies responsible directly to it, not to the executive branch. Assuming the United States survived whatever the interim brought, the Trump–MAGA–DOGE approach to politics and rule could eventually lead the way to a more parliamentary form of government that limited the president’s role to the things specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The Necessary and Proper Clause speaks to Congress, after all, not the executive.

This idea still sounds outlandish to me, mainly because I don’t see the administration getting away with its unitary executive theory. If it does, however, then Congress would have to start thinking hard about what is necessary and proper, even removing agencies and departments from the executive branch. Or it could starve these institutions of funds and set up its own. Trump and DOGE have already done a lot of work to make this last option possible.

The president would still have his plenary powers to appoint major officials with the consent of the Senate, but Congress would be under no obligation to fund this cabinet beyond whatever it deemed prudent. Over time, Congress might find it necessary and appropriate to appoint officials from within its own ranks with duties that resemble those of a prime minister and that legislator’s cabinet. If the U.S. president has too much power and can’t be trusted to exercise it with prudent restraint, why shouldn’t Congress begin governing in a way that might lead in this direction?

Parliamentary government might not be the specific goal, but reining in an out-of-control executive certainly needs to be. The result could then well turn out to be a place not unlike where monarchical misrule led in Britain. If the Supreme Court oversteps in order to defend an authoritarian executive, Congress could seek a remedy there as well, changing its size and structure, for example. In short, the extreme degree of power that the Trump administration is trying to assert need not end in the direction they seek or in the pre-MAGA status quo either.

Of course, the nation itself is currently too divided for such sweeping legislation, which would require veto-proof majorities, at least initially. Nonetheless, state initiatives to require run-off elections or weighted voting could yield legislators with more nuanced views and the desire and ability to work for their constituents instead of for a tyrant.

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Timothy Snyder summing up Russia’s relationship to NATO from 1999 to 2010:

The eastward enlargement of NATO in 1999 was not presented by Putin as a threat. Instead, he tried to recruit the United States or NATO to cooperate with Russia to address what he saw as common security problems. After the United States was attacked by Islamist terrorists in 2001, Putin offered to cooperate with NATO in territories that bordered Russia. Putin did not present the EU enlargement of 2004 as a threat. On the contrary, he spoke favorably that year of future EU membership for Ukraine. In 2008, Putin attended the NATO summit in Bucharest. In 2009, Medvedev allowed American aircraft to fly over Russia to supply troops in Afghanistan. In 2010, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, the radical nationalist Dmitry Rogozin, expressed his concern that NATO would leave Afghanistan. Rogozin complained of NATO’s lack of fighting spirit, its “mood of capitulation.” He wanted NATO troops at Russia’s border.

Source: Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (Tim Duggan Books, 2018), chap. 3.

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'Nothing but the Truth' (Sony Pictures, 2008)

I recently watched “Nothing but the Truth” and found it to be engaging because of how rooted it is in its time, even as the issues it treats are much more broadly relevant. At its heart is the freedom of the press versus the federal government’s powers of coercion in ostensible national security matters. Womanhood and especially motherhood are also important to the story, with mainstream gender norms employed to help viewers relate to (or feel no sympathy for) the woman who the government attempts to coerce. The film is a work of fiction, but its author, Rod Lurie, draws on real events for its initial premise.

During the movie’s first ten or twenty minutes, I got nostalgic vibes because there is a news-making national newspaper in DC that hasn’t been corrupted by a billionaire, a newspaper whose print distribution still matters. There is an FBI that follows the law, and reporters who think that officials lying is newsworthy, even if short attention spans run counter to this belief. The DC location, regardless of where it was actually filmed, was also familiar because of the occasional overlap between work life and home life, even if the filmmakers restricted that overlap to the two main women characters, a journalist and an outed spy.

As the film went on, I was reminded of how out-of-control the federal government can get when pursuing an administration’s aims because the judiciary typically defers to the executive branch on national security matters. The movie shows the U.S. government trying to coerce a reporter to give up her source: it jails her for contempt during a grand jury investigation. Her loss of liberty lasts for nearly a year before there is even a court decision on the specific issues involved. Images of the reporter being transported in leg chains still resonate today. The CIA adds an additional low by threatening its own outed agent, reminding her about her upcoming custody hearing.

Since the journalist and the outed spy are both moms, the film connects the two on a personal level by situating their daughters in the same school. The women both volunteer in the school, but don’t know each other personally in the beginning, although the journalist knows the other woman’s child because of her particular volunteer duties. (If any fathers volunteer, it doesn’t come up.) Why is motherhood relevant to the plot? The jailed and then imprisoned journalist pays a high personal cost, being unable to see her young son and probably losing her husband. At the same time, this personal cost can be interpreted by some viewers as her putting a principle ahead of her duty as a mother.

At the very end of the movie, we see that the journalist’s initial unintentional source (before she began her actual reporting) had been her son’s classmate, the daughter of the outed CIA agent. This makes her principled stand for freedom of the press also about protecting a child. Perhaps, for some people, this lets her off the hook for leaving her own son without a mother for so long. Unfortunately, it also almost overshadows the constitutional issues behind her refusal to be coerced by the U.S. government. Or is that the point? Is this another example of the personal manifesting as political?

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Yesterday I received my first ever skeptical question about my wearing a mask in the grocery store. I doubt she was from around here because we are pretty much live-and-let-live in NH, which is not unlike DC in this respect. 😷

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I am a sucker for a good Jean Arthur movie, so I was happy to run across “Only Angels Have Wings” (Columbia Pictures, 1939), in which she plays opposite Cary Grant. I remember enjoying it once or twice before, and I wasn’t disappointed this time either. The movie offers good actors, believable and often likable characters, and a gripping tale centered around a dangerous air mail and air freight business connecting a small South American port to remote areas in the mountains with small aircraft and harrowing flight conditions.

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Newspaper ad featuring Stanwyck's legs and shoulders. The teaser asks, 'How would you lead your life—if you weren't afraid of being talked about?'

I enjoyed the pre-Code film "Ladies They Talk About" (Warner Bros., 1933), starring Barbara Stanwyck. This fast-paced drama features a bank robbery, a revivalist with a radio program, and an interesting portrayal of inmates in a women's ward at San Quentin State Prison. The film also offers sex appeal and comic relief.

Image: Ad clipped from the studio's pressbook ("merchandising plan") at the Internet Archive, archive.org….

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In the beginning was the word, and shit got weird…

“People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies” www.rollingstone.com…

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📺 I’ve watched two episodes of “Surface” (Apple TV+, 2022–25), but I think I’ll leave it at that. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is interesting in the lead, but the show is emotionally flat. It seems to have more style than substance, and none of the characters is distinguished by depth or likability.

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📺 A 25-minute report by DW on the old Zaporozhets automobile, which still enjoys fans today: “Putin loved this car. Now it drives Ukraine’s resistance,” youtu.be…. 🇺🇦

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📺 Anders Puck Nielsen offers clear, level-headed analysis of the U.S. administration’s changed posture toward Ukraine in a new 12-minute video called “Trump gives up on fast peace process” at youtu.be…. 🇺🇦

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📺 I watched the first episode of “Masters of the Air” (Apple TV+, 2024), and that was enough. Its soundtrack, emotional arc, and flat characters made it feel cliched, predictable, inauthentic.

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Sounds from Diana's Baths Walk

The brook before the falls

From the bottom of the falls

Next to some of the rushing water

Photo taken from about the same spot where I recorded the last, loudest sound

Water rushing over granite on the side of a small mountain, some of the rocks have been smoothed over the centuries.
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Partial view of a small lake surrounded by pines and small trees that have just started to bud. This is a somewhat shady image, but with some shadows still visible.
Partial view of a small lake surrounded by pines. There is also a sandy beach and a couple people in the water because the lake is shallow and warms up sooner than most in this part of New England. This is a sunny photo with some shadows at play. The sky is bright blue.

Echo Lake, North Conway, NH, on May 1, 2025. There were already a couple people in the water because the lake is small and relatively shallow.

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The game just got bigger. Did you?

– Helen Hunt playing Nancy Campbell in “A World On Fire” (PBS, 2020), s. 1, ep. 1.

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Photo of 1909 Child Labor Protest

Library of Congress summary: photograph shows half-length portrait of two girls wearing banners with slogan 'ABOLISH CH[ILD] SLAVERY!!' in English and Yiddish, one carrying American flag; spectators stand nearby. Probably taken during May 1, 1909 labor parade in New York City.

Child labor protest, probably in New York City on May 1, 1909. Note the U.S. flag that the girl wearing a sash in Yiddish is holding. The girl with a sash in English seems to be holding a flag, too, albeit one in a single color, perhaps socialist red. The message on the sashes is uncompromising: “ABOLISH CHILD SLAVERY!”

Bain News photograph, via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/97519062.

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View of river from a higher elevation, trees on each side. The river itself has a lighter, almost aqua color.

August 2, 2019: I like the color of the Niagara River south of the falls.

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Indoor market stall, one man seated to the left, lots of red dried peppers of various kinds on offer.

Hot peppers at a market in Guiyang, China, July 13, 2015.

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A variety of shapes and sizes of soy products, mainly in varying shades of brown and some white. Hand made and sold without any packaging.

Various soy products at an outdoor market in Guiyang, China, July 13, 2015.

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Visited extended family in another part of the state today. One of them will be the first in their family to attend college, starting this fall. I am so happy for this kid.

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“Teaching Gandhi in a Texas Detention Center,” by Nader Hashemi, New Lines Magazine, April 23, 2025.

A visit to the ICE facility housing the Georgetown postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri, whose case parallels those of Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk.

There are so many illegal detention stories. I’m sharing this particular one because of the man’s inspired response to his incarceration. I’m also proud to have earned my PhD from an institution that has been standing up to the administration’s attacks on higher education, Georgetown University.

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Bernard Clasen, “Trump und Selenskyj im Petersdom: Ein wundersamer Trump-Moment,” Die Tageszeitung, April 27, 2025.

Ein vertrautes Gespräch zwischen Trump und Selenskyj ist nur eine Momentaufnahme. Aber mehr Respekt ist in Zeiten von Krieg oder Frieden nicht wenig.

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'Women and Children First' by Theo Matejko, ca. 1939

Pariserplatz in Berlin, the Brandenburg gate damaged, a mother lying dead on the ground, her small child in a carriage looking up at the sky.

Source: "'Bombs Over Us': Prophetic Drawings by a German Artist," Life, September 11, 1939, pp. 27--28, via "a book … recently published in Germany," presumably Das Theo Matejko-Buch: Zeichnungen als Aufzeichnungen aus zweieinhalb Jahrzehnten (Berlin: Kommodore-Verlag, 1938).

This drawing imagining an air war coming to Berlin was one of a series that Theo Matejko conceived before Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland. It seems to convey antiwar sentiment, but the artist supported the Nazi regime, and he regularly contributed to the propaganda magazine, Die Wehrmacht. Given this context, his drawing and the following public explanation might be understood as projection instead.

An idea which came to me years ago with unholy force and persistence was the image of an air attack over a big city in some future war. I saw in this dreadful vision the merciless heavens pouring destruction upon peaceful people.… I offer these pictures in the deep and sincere hope that these nightmare visions may never become a reality.

The drawing doesn’t capture anywhere near the reality, but it offers up two powerful national symbols, the Brandenburg Gate and German motherhood. The choice of the latter was an effective way to underline the indiscriminate nature of this kind of warfare while portraying the Germans as innocent victims.

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Congress was once the proud equal of the executive and judicial branches of our government. Now it stands drained of both power and respect, partly through abdication of its responsibilities and partly through the eager gathering of power by a burgeoning presidency. That phenomenon started with Franklin Roosevelt, and every President since has been unable to resist taking more decision-making responsibility on himself. The power to make war and to decide how our money is spent is no longer the unquestioned province of Congress …

– “Fresh Blood for a Sick Congress,” Life, November 17, 1972, p. 42.

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The creatures out back are even louder tonight.