Authoritarianism
I thought the Library of Congress was Congress’s, not a plaything of the executive.
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.
“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.
JD Vance is terrible at most things, including passing for a human, but he has accomplished one thing I wouldn’t have thought possible: He’s made me nostalgic for Mike Pence. 👀
Who needs a department of education or a legislature when we have the executive orders and social media posts of a malicious, camera-addicted, very presidential, orange buffoon?
Margarita Simonyan's Death Wish
The pro-Kremlin media personality Tigran Keosayan has been in a coma since late December. Recently, his grief-stricken wife, RT chief Margarita Simonyan, pondered going to front, if he dies (youtu.be…). I’ve never heard Simonyan say anything that wasn’t calculated, so this line made me scratch my head a little. Simonyan is still all-in on the “special military operation,” of course, but it is strange to hear her death wish expressed this way.
Don’t her words come close to admitting what Putin’s soldiers need when headed to the front? I’m thinking of the Russian “meat assaults” and their use of soldiers to fire at their own, should they dare not advance or even retreat. Still, Simonyan’s words lean on such a common literary trope that they needn’t be seen as destabilizing. If there is one thing about Simonyan we can still be sure of, she is an expert information warrior.
Prophetic Comedy
A prophetic comedy for these upside-down times: "Rapture-Palooza" (Lionsgate, 2013). Also foundational: "Idiocracy" (20th Century Fox, 2006).
Another chapter in the administration’s war on knowledge, accountability, and the public’s wellbeing: “Trump Halts Data Collection on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change, More,” www.propublica.org….
Knowledge Commons, which includes a public-access repository, has also been hit by the current administration’s war on knowledge. Here’s the latest from Kathleen Fitzpatrick: “On the NEH and Our Path Forward."
Echoes of Abu Ghraib and inspiration for more prison porn by Kristi Noem: “Russian Police Caught Beating, Humiliating Migrants in Footage of a Raid,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Librty, youtu.be…. This treatment also demonstrates an understanding of Russia’s economic limitations as keen as Trump’s.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers “advises academics against non-essential travel to the U.S.” Details: www.caut.ca/latest….
Ambassador Oleksii Makeiev’s speech on freedom for the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Berlin, April 10, 2025: germany.mfa.gov.ua/de/news… (in German). 🇺🇦
Has anyone else been feeling nauseous about submitting their tax returns to a government led by criminals, profiteers, and incompetents? 🇺🇸
Regarding our past:
Americans would experience moments of unity … but its distinction has been its ability to withstand division …
– David M. Shribman, “History Lends Context to Contemporary Conflicts,” Conway Daily Sun, April 11, 2025
Shribman’s hope is necessary, even as the U.S. history he musters does little to banish the very real specter of fascism we know from Europe.
The ink of political fiction is blood.
– Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap. 2.
Turns out some 800 people were at the protest I attended in Conway, NH, on Saturday.
In a conversation about the information disorder we’re all grappling with, I found myself saying that the constant barrage of existentially bad news from Washington these past few months has been wearing me down, making me dumber.
Protest
My sign is hiding a lot of the crowd. I haven't heard an official number, but preliminary counts suggest at least 500 for my small town.
I joked cautiously with a neighbor who I think of as Republican or independent about Social Security worries. He told me that for him it’s a double whammy—Social Security and the Veterans Administration. News like this finds a way.
I saw a license plate from Quebec in North Conway yesterday, the first in a long time. It was on a flatbed truck. Earlier in the week, I heard French from north of the border in the grocery store. It was noticeable because it’s become so rare.
#TrumpTariffs
Other countries will boycott us, and we’ll be consuming less because of fear about the economy. Meanwhile, His Royal Donaldliness will dazzle us on our screens with his big-league genius ability to use a Sharpie in his unbridled pursuit of the dumbest, most unthinkable fuckery. 🤬
“FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot to Just Sit Back and Enjoy Collapse of United States,” theonion.com….
Chris York of the Kyiv Independent interviews historian Marci Shore on why she’s leaving Yale University for the University of Toronto: youtu.be….
See also “Three prominent Yale professors depart for Canadian university, citing Trump fears” by Ariela Lopez and Yolanda Wang for the Yale Daily News yaledailynews.com….
Killing and Fueling Hatred
We Germans refuse to believe that people want to be free.… All we’re good at is killing, killing, killing! We’ve strewn all of Europe with corpses, and from their graves rises up an unquenchable hatred. Hatred… hatred everywhere! That hatred will devour us.
These words are the subtitle translations of lines spoken in the famous early postwar film, “Rome Open City,” dir. Roberto Rossellini (Italy, 1945). They issue from the mouth of a drunk German officer to his Gestapo commander, who was sure he could make a staunch Italian partisan talk that same night.
The scene reminds me of assertions by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince (1532): It is better to be feared than loved because fear is something the ruler can control. But the ruler should avoid awaking the hatred of his subjects because that emotion could prove fatal to him (chaps. 17 and 19).
For Machiavelli, hatred resulted from a ruler taking the property and women of his subjects. For the drunk officer in “Rome Open City,” the German masters' attacks on honor, dignity, and human life inspired deep hatred, but the Gestapo officer denied that emotion’s power.
In our own time, Putin seems to appreciate the personal danger that he is in. He likely doesn’t blame himself for this circumstance, but he knows that his system of rule will continue to demand political assassinations, the ruthless suppression of free speech, and predatory corruption.
His war against Ukraine helps him legitimize his tyranny inside Russia, but he seems incapable of grasping that he will never bend Ukraine itself to his will. No matter how much property he destroys, no matter how many bodies and lives he disfigures or ends, Ukrainians refuse to surrender their personhood, nationhood, and dignity. If anything, Putin has turned this European neighbor into a formidable enemy. The hatred he fuels as he robs Ukrainians of their children and other loved ones cannot be overstated.