E.U. Emergency Assistance to Venezuela: Coordinating Federalism

Whereas when the U.S. responds to natural disasters abroad, the resources of all 50 states are combined in a federal-level response, the E.U.’s Civil Protection Mechanism limits the federal level to coordination and instead relies on the states to deploy resources, including personal. I contend that the European arrangement is more in keeping with federalism than is the federal-only arrangement of the Americans. Moreover, involvement at both federal and state levels reflects and facilitates one of the benefits of federalism, wherein each level has the strength to act as a check on the other. Programs in which the federal level coordinates and the state governments deploy can help keep a federal system from lapsing into a “one-size-fits-all” consolidated rather than federal system. The U.S. could stand to take a lesson in this respect.

Severely impacted by earthquakes of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude and with more than 50,000 people still missing, Venezuela welcomed the first E.U. emergency responders on 27 June, 2026. Deploying “rescue teams and other emergency assistance to Venezuela,” the European Commission relied initially on eight states who actually did the deploying, with the Commission only coordinating for a united response.[1] In other words, the eight states “mobilized for deployment through the E.U. civil protection mechanism.”[2] Separately, the E.U. “also activated its Copernicus satellite service to ‘emergency mapping mode,’ which provides free of charge data in cases of natural and man-made disasters around the world.”[3] The E.U. thus acted on its own with regard to one program while being limited to activating and coordinating state-level deployments in another program. In other words, it was not a federal-only show.

To be sure, direct involvement of state governments abroad could potentially destabilize federal foreign policy and even undercut it, as was the case when Viktor Orbán of the E.U. state of Hungary visited Russian President Putin in Moscow as the Van Der Leyen administration was attempting to pressure Putin into pulling his troops and weapons out of Ukraine. It can be asked, therefore, whether the government officials in Caracas would feel obliged to the E.U. or to any of the state governments as a result of the emergency assistance. If the latter, then limiting the Commission to merely coordinating, rather than sending its own personnel and resources, could be risky in terms of the E.U. being able to negotiate with foreign governments in regard to federal foreign policy.

Assuming the risk is nugatory, then the benefits of the federal-level institution merely activating and then coordinating to the federal system itself could be realized without much of a drawback. The federal level in a federal system wherein governmental sovereignty is divided between the two levels (i.e., not a confederation, in which the states are fully sovereign) is in an excellent position to coordinate, including taking the decision to activate a program, and the state-level governments are well suited to deploying personnel and resources, and the benefit to those states in terms of federalism lies in taking part rather than remaining on the sidelines while federal agencies act and thus gain power that could, if aggregated over time, result in an unbalanced federal system in which power at the federal level enables it to dominate the state governments such that the latter could no longer act as a check on the power wielded at the federal level.

When the E.U. activated its two programs to help Venezuela with the Commission restrained to coordinating state-level deployments, the U.S. was about to celebrate 250 years since thirteen British colonies in North America declared themselves to be sovereign countries. Those countries did not even ratify a treaty that established a confederation of continued national sovereignties under the Articles of Confederation until 1781, and then to delegate some of their respective governmental sovereignties until eight years after the commencement of the Articles. By late June, 2026, however, when the Commission activated its two programs for the benefit of Venezuelans by relying on state-level deployments in one of the programs, the American federal system of dual sovereignty had gone severely off-track due to too much of an imbalance of power between the Union and the states. The consolidation of power by the U.S. at the expense of that of the state governments impaired the ability of the latter to act as a check on abuses of power at the federal level. It is in precisely this respect that the Commission’s coordinating role is so important, lest the E.U. follow its American cousin towards a lopsided federalism, for balance is a key feature of this system of public governance.

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1. Lucy Davalou, “Europe Send Search and Rescue Personnel to Venezuela in Response to Massive Quakes,” Euronews.com, 27 June, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Empire-Scale Representative Democracy: The American Presidency

On the very day in which a health-care company’s executive collapsed in the Oval Office, with U.S. President Trump being the only person in the group standing and looking away in what looks like callous disregard instead of compassion or empathy, that president directed his Administration to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that the U.S. Government had to immediately fund food-assistance, or SNAP (formerly “food stamps”) completely for the month then more than a week in, in spite of the "government shutdown." On the next day, the Trump Administration demanded that the member-states that had just paid out full November benefits to recipients “undo"  the difference between the partial and full amounts that had just been "paid out under judges’ orders” because the U.S. Supreme Court “stayed those rulings.”[1] The photo of Trump literally looking the other way while everyone else in the Oval Office is bending over the collapsed man out of concern perfectly aligns with his lack of concern for Americans going without food due to the sudden stoppage of money for food without notice. That many employees of the U.S. Government who had been laid off without pay since earlier that November would be especially reliant on food-assistance money precisely because they were no longer obtaining income (or else they were receiving unemployment compensation at less than full pay) could be understood to be a matter of callousness rather than moral sentiments from Trump simply by looking at the photo.

President Trump's emotional indifference is palpable. (source: Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)

Looking at that photo, not even psychologists should conclude that a majority of the electoral (and popular) votes went to elect a psychopath. However, callousness in the face of a medical emergency can reasonably be inferred from the president’s non-verbal stance and emotionless facial expression. Had that photo been available to voters in the days before the 2024 presidential election, Trump may have lost that election. Such a hypothetical is useful ex post facto because it raises the question of whether so many voters as vote in a U.S. presidential election have enough actual information on the candidates. If the photo shocked many such voters just over a year after the 2024 election, the implication is that relying on “brand” marketing by presidential campaigns because so few voters even know people who know even just one of the candidates is deficient.

The Electoral College was established in the U.S. Constitution not only because the member-states, like those of the E.U., would retain some governmental sovereignty, but also because with even just 7 million people voting for president, so few of them could be expected to know the characters of the candidates beyond what reaches news print that a check by electors who could meet the candidates was deemed to be necessary. That the political parties captured the Electoral College such that such a check did not in fact operate means that American representative democracy as regards the federal president of the Union has been allowed to operate at a deficiency, which is to say that the elections have been vulnerable to the electorates (of the states) being misled by presidential campaigns.

In short, my point is that if even some of the millions of Americans who had voted for Donald Trump in November, 2024 were subsequently shocked a year later when they scrutinized the photo of Donald Trump being so visually inert emotionally, and perhaps even annoyed at the unwanted delay in his office, while antipodally the other people there could be seen as so obviously concerned about a guest who had just collapsed. Trump stood out so much from the others that even the president’s supporters could have been surprised, even marveling in the privacy of their own minds that they had known so little about Trump the man when they had voted for him. I am assuming that only a small minority of the electorate would favor voting for a person who at the very leeast appears to be so callous in person, for judgment, which involves not just reasoning, but also emotion, is salient in governing. The photo of Turmp in the Oval Office paradoxically demonstrates the importance of humane emotion in governance by so clearly dipicting the utter absence of emotion in a very human situation in which we would naturally expect to find spontaneous emotion. In this surreal way, Trump's repeated efforts to stop food-assistance from reaching the poor judicially and in policy can be grasped in terms of Trump as a person.

Perhaps as in the E.U., the chief executives of the U.S. member-states should nominate a candidate for federal president, with the U.S. House of Representatives, whose counterpart in the E.U. is the European Parliament, confirming or rejecting the candidate. The idea of the states' chief executives, who are themselves elected closer to the people, choosing the federal president outright was considered in the Constitutional Convention, but the proposal was unfortunately voted down in favor of the ill-fated Electoral College. The U.S. federal system can indeed be improved by borrowing some ideas from the E.U., and vice versa; this just takes some humility on both ends. 

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1. Scott Bauer and Nicholas Riccardi, “Trump Administration Demands States ‘Undo’ Full SNAP Payouts as States Warn of ‘Catastrophic Impact,’” The Associated Press, November 9, 2025.

E.U. President Von der Leyen Survives A No-Confidence Vote

Falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass on July 10, 2025, the no-confidence vote on President Von der Leyen of the Commission in the E.U.’s parliament mustered only 175 representatives in favor while 360 voted against the motion and 18 abstained. Although commentators discussed whether the president was weakened anyway, a more important matter relates to the politics of the vote as distinct from the Parliament’s institutional interests as they relate to the Commission and the European Council. I contend that the Parliament, which represents E.U. citizens, has a vital interest that is vital to the E.U. itself in maintaining a balance between the collective power of the representatives of the citizenry and the power the state governments at the federal level. Parties making deals with Von der Leyen on policy positions undercut the vote as a means of holding the Commission to maintaining that balance.

For example, the Socialists and Democrats Party “extracted a pledge on the next long term budget in exchange for their support.”[1] The right-wing Patriots for Europe Party and Europe of Sovereign Nations Party both voted in favor of removing Von der Leyen, but certainly not because she left made a deal with the states to sidestep the Parliament on certain matters of policy, for those parties favor more power for the state governments at the federal level. In fact, those parties even deny that there is a federal level! Therefore, we cannot assume that the vote of no-confidence was on the matter of the Commission siding with the state governments to marginalize the Parliament.

The Commission under Von der Leyen had “invoked Article 122 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to set up SAFE which allows member states to directly approve a Commission proposal ‘if severe difficulties arise in the supply of certain products’ or if a member state is ‘seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control.’”[2] Because the Commission and the state governments were able to set up a federal defense-loan program without the approval of the European Parliament, and thus the citizens of the E.U., Roberta Metsola, the head of the Parliament, wrote to Von der Leyen of the “deep concern” in among the representatives that excluding the Parliament meant “putting at risk democratic legitimacy by undermining Parliament’s legislative and scrutiny functions.”[3] The democratic legitimacy of the federal level depends on the involvement of the Parliament, as it is the only institution representing E.U. citizens directly, rather than state governments, which have their own institutional interests even apart from state residents.

It is highly significant that Metsola “stressed that ‘the European Parliament is not questioning the merits of this proposal for a regulation’.”[4] The objection was not one of policy; rather, the concern was based on the democratic viability and overall balance of the E.U. itself as a federal system. By involving policy in the deal-making leading up to the censure vote, certain political parties in the Parliament undercut that institution’s interest in protecting itself against the Commission giving too much power to the state governments at the federal level. The Socialists should not have extracted a political gain from Von der Leyen, and the Green Party members should not have voted on the basis of how much Von der Leyen had prioritized environmental policy. Instead, the parties apprehensive about the Parliament having been circumvented by the state governments and the Commission should have voted to offset the state-rights ideology of the far-right parties in the Parliament. Had this been done, the next Commission would have been very cautious about circumventing the voice of the people by making deals with the governors of the several states. 

Generally speaking, protecting the viability of the federal system itself, including the checks and balances at the federal level, does not get done by prioritizing political deals and even particular policies, as if the pushing for certain policies in the aggregate were tantamount to protecting the system of governance itself.

1. Jeremy Fleming-Jones, et al, “Von der Leyen’s EU Commission Survives Parliament Confidence Vote,” Euronews.com, July 10, 2025.
2. Alice Tidey, “MEPs Vote for Parliament to Sue Commission over €150 bn Defense Loan Programme,” Euronews.com, June 25, 2025.

3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

The U.S. Supreme Court Clipping Judicial Overreach

The separation of powers that characterizes governments in the United States assumes that each branch will act to further its own interests, given the salience of self-interest (and self-preservation) in human nature. It is assumed that the checks and balances between legislative, judicial, and executive branches will keep any one branch from dominating the other two, and, moreover, the government itself from becoming tyrannical at the expense of the liberty of the citizenry. It is not assumed or relied upon that a branch will prune itself without external pressure from one of the other branches. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court may have done so in ruling on June 27, 2025 to limit “the ability of lower-court judges to block executive branch policies nationwide.”[1] I contend that any real wing-clipping by 6 of the 9 justices is illusory rather than indicative of the federal judiciary unilaterally restricting itself.

“With their decision, the justices appeared to upend the ability of single federal judges to freeze policies across the country,” according to The New York Times.[2] The appearance is belied by the fact that the ruling would not go into effect for 30 days and “the justices laid out a potential path for challengers, saying that district court judges could consider whether to take up class-action suits seeking to bar enforcement of the executive order on a statewide, regional or even national basis.”[3] The latter basis would essentially enable a district-court federal judge to block an executive order from going into effect anywhere in the United States.  Groups that had challenged the executive order at issue—invalidating birth-right citizenship for children of illegal immigrants—quickly filed class-action suits in Maryland and New Hampshire, with others expected in the following week—well within the 30 days. As for the validity of the executive order itself, the court would decide that in a case scheduled in the court’s next term.

It is interesting that the justices “split along ideological lines” on a matter of judicial process rather than on the substance of the executive order.[4] Perhaps political ideology has more of an imprint on judicial rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court than most people realize. After all, Justice Sandra Day O’Conner wrote the majority opinion for Bush v. Gore (2000) before oral arguments were heard. Might it be that the conservative justices on the bench wanted President Trump to see a win for him even though the national judicial block of his executive order would likely continue uninterrupted? That president had been very critical of Justice Amy Barrett for another ruling, and she wrote the majority opinion on the case on whether district federal judges could block an executive order nationally. Indeed, the president declared himself the winner from the ruling even though the six conservative justices left open a way for district court judges to be able to continue wielding nationwide injunctions to block the president’s policies issued as executive orders.

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1. Abbie Vansickle, “Justices Put Limit on Judges’ Power, In Win for Trump,” The New York Times, June 28, 2025.
2. Ibid., italics added.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

A U.S. Senator Thrown to the Ground: Security on Steroids

A U.S. Senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed rather than escorted out of the building because he asked a difficult question for the speaker holding a news conference illustrates not only the bias towards using excessive force that having police power lavishes on human nature, but also a proclivity toward excessiveness without any internal mental check that is entwined in virtually any human brain. That the primary arresting FBI employee was the only person in the room wearing a bulletproof vest inside the federal (government) building may also reveal his penchant for exaggeration—or, going too far without realizing it. The prescription in terms of public policy is a strengthening of checks on law-enforcement employees even, if possible, by embedding other municipal (or federal) employees whose sole function it is to evaluate police conduct either by listening in or observing even in real time. A U.S. senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed in a federal building in California rather than escorted out of the building evinces a power-trip more base, violent, and primitive than the typical power-trips that occur on the “floor” of the U.S. Senate. It must have been a shock to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on June 12, 2025 to be physically shoved to the ground, especially if the rationale for his removal from the press conference was itself an exaggeration.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was holding a news conference in early June, 2025 as protests against the arrests of illegal aliens were going on outside in downtown Los Angeles in California, when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla said, “I have questions for the secretary!”[1] Even if the senator was trying to visibly score political points with his constituents by interjecting, which, by the way, would be in the realm of the sort of power-trip that is quite common in politics, the reaction of the Trump Administration may point to a trumped up political reason for the violent way in which the senator was manhandled by Secret Service employees and then the FBI agent. The White House accused Padilla of “disrespectful political theatre” and Noem herself accused the senator of having ‘made a scene.”[2] If these opinions were behind the manhandling of the senator, then “criminalizing politics” steeped to a new low: instant violence against the elected representative for being political. The violence itself is much worse than merely charging someone for being political in a way that offends someone else in power.

For its part, the Secret Service lied that Padilla had “lunged at Secretary Noem,” and furthermore that the agents there “thought he was an attacker.”[3] Reviewing the video of the event shows the willingness of people with guns to lie to protect themselves, which I contend is reason enough for additional checks on law-enforcement employees, whether federal or state. That the senator, the most senior Democrat on the U.S. Senate’s Border Security and Immigration subcommittee, announced repeatedly that he was a U.S. Senator belies the credibility of the claim that he was thought to be an attacker.

California’s Gavin Newsom, head of state, chief executive, and commander-in-chief of California’s National Guard (i.e., army) wrote online a poignant point worthy of our consideration: “If they can handcuff a US Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do to you.”[4] Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much imagining to consider the actuality of employees of a government in law enforcement presuming that the law is theirs to make in real time—casting a blind eye intentionally on the actual law—and lying and threatening even victims of a crime with arrest should they object. Enforcing existing law does not give a government employee the discretion with which to ignore the law and even come up with one’s own law and yet how easy it is simply to ignore this vital point in the carrying out of one’s “duties.” I have witnessed this mentality enough to know that it is too common to ignore, and thus I contend that more checks are needed on law-enforcement employees on the non-supervisory level locally, at the member-state level, and at the federal level in the United States. The problem is worse “on the ground” than has reached the public air-waves.

Even if Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, was right in opining, “Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theatre-kid stunt” because “he wanted attention,”[5] treating the senator as if he were an attacker rather than simply escorting him out of the building—or even letting him remain and treat the altercation between him and Noem as political—reveals an emotionally jejune, hyper-“trigger-happy” mentality among the Secret Service and FBI employees in that federal building. Such a mentality among government employees who have been given the legal right to use force is, I submit, dangerous, and thus should be exculpated from the ranks of law enforcement in any jurisdiction, lest the trend eventuate in people being surrounded by security simply for being angry and even raising one’s voice at a political event. Treating such as a threat is itself passive-aggressive, which as we have seen can turn outright aggressive given the human, all too human proclivity to go to far. 

Put more plainly, assuming that lies used to cover-up the underlying mental ailment, Secret Service employees who perceived the senator lunge at Noem and thought Padilla was an attacker should be put on mental-health leave so they can relax and untighten, and be subjected to psychological tests on latent aggression, for their sort of power-trip is much more dangerous than that which goes on in the U.S. Senate—and the White House, for this incident is but a glimpse toward a realization that not enough had been done even in multiple jurisdictions to root out the sordid pathology from the field of law-enforcement. De facto absolute power “on the ground” loves a vacuum of accountability, and is even willing to lie to keep it at bay.

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1. Ali Abbas Ahmadi and Kwasi G. Asiedu, “US Senator Dragged Out of LA News Conference and Handcuffed,” BBC.com, June 13, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Pulling the Curtain Back on President Biden’s Retirement Address

There is an expression in politics referring to how legislation is made; it is likened to the making of sausage, the public display of which is not generally desired. Furthermore, it is unrealistic and even counter-productive for the American electorate to know the intricate mechanisms by which a bill makes its way through Congress before being signed by the president to become a law. Nevertheless, the strategic and self-interested manipulation of public perception by elected representatives in order that the electorate will have an overstated positive view of its representatives, who can have more discretion and thus power with the vote of confidence, is counter to an effective democratic republic, which after all is distinct from direct democracy. I contend that the desire to falsely manipulate popular opinion went into President Biden’s address on his decision to serve only one term, as well as in the comments of high ranking members of his party in support of his decision not to run for reelection. That there might be more political capital, not to mention a better legacy, in being straight with the American people is a possibility that seems to elude American politicians.

American political philosophy posits unintentional beneficial consequences from the pursuit of self-interest, which springs from self-oriented love, as does Adam Smith’s price-oriented theory of competitive markets. That such benefits are possible does not mean that a self-centric pursuit of one’s interest is itself normatively good, and thus laudatory. Indeed, Smith is careful to condition even the unintended beneficial economic consequence of the individual’s pursuit of one’s interest on the presence of competition wherein no individual seller, or oligopolistic group thereof, can sent a price by fiat. Smith even enveloped his economic theory on his other major work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the title of which speaks for itself even if such sentiments are in practice hardly strong enough against the love of greed even in a competitive market. Translated into political terms, the check-and-balance vital function in the separation of powers, or branches, of the U.S. Government, and even between the governments of the member states and that of the union, is an institutional means by which the ambition of individual representatives and even governmental bodies can be held back from overreaching at the expense of the liberty of the people. It is vital that the self-interest qua political ambition of elected representatives (as well as their respective appointees) be held in check not only by criminal law, but also by the very arrangement of political institutions within a government, and even between governments in a federal system. 

Of course, in addition to institutional checks and balances, elections should have consequences. An officeholder who deftly trades monetary favors (aka campaign contributions) for support on legislation favorable to the private interest (and thus the officeholder’s own interest in gaining more power) but unfavorable to the public interest or at least the interests of the electorate can be voted out of office at the next election. However, the stealth that the elected representatives usually use to enact such private trades render the electorate’s judgment and thus decision suboptimal. In short, a lot goes on behind the scenes that is pertinent to an electorate’s ability to exercise effective judgment in holding officeholders accountable from the standpoint of the electorate’s interests. It is in the political interest of elected representatives to create and sustain the impression publicly of being worthy of the public trust, so more is needed to counter this natural inclination among the powerful in line with the central principle of a republic that the electorate—the popular sovereign—is superior to its elected representatives—the governmental sovereign. For an agent to willfully mislead a principal, taking advantage of there being too much “daylight” existing between an elected representative and the electorate, is essentially to turn a republic upside down.

Speaking from the Oval Office on television on his decision not to run for reelection, U.S. President Joe Biden said that “saving our democracy” is “more important than any title.”[1] Actually, former U.S. presidents were in the practice of retaining the title. At the time, President Carter, President Bush, President Clinton, and President Obama were still alive. So, President Biden could expect to continue to be referred to as such after his term as president. It was power that he was giving up by not running for reelection. Although he casted his decision as one of voluntarily putting the interests of his party and country above his political ambition, the fact what that his two top advisors had just days earlier explained to him why it was virtually impossible for him to win reelection. Additionally, according to CNN, “Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told President Joe Biden . . . that polling shows that the president cannot defeat Donald Trump and that Biden could destroy Democrats’ chances of winning the House in November.”[2] The press also reported that Pelosi also told the president that she would make the polling numbers public if he did not bow out on his own within in a week or so. Because the president took “the easy way” rather than “the hard way,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ majority leader in the U.S. Senate, used a press conference to characterize Biden’s decision as selfless and patriotic, when it was actually a realistic assessment that he would lose power anyway by losing the election. Because Biden took Pelosi’s “easy way” to make the decision on his own, Schumer even said that he “deeply” loved the president. If it was love, it was a very conditional sort.

As if Schumer’s declaration of love were not over the top enough, Biden “presented himself as a truth-teller” during his address. He even said, “The truth is that the sacred cause of this nation is bigger than any one of us,” as if he had just selflessly given up power to save democracy in America from a tyranny under Don Trump rather than just been shown the exit by the other top leaders of the Democratic Party.[3] He made no reference to his elderly infirmities and how they could be expected to be worse during a second term, or the intractable electoral math, which in turn was due to the obvious display of the toll that age had already taken on his body during the presidential debate a month earlier.

In short, he was essentially pushed out by his own party because he refused to do the responsible (and selfless) thing by leveling with the American people that he should not serve a second term even if he could. His decision was not really voluntary, as if he was giving up something that he could otherwise have (a second term). His decision was neither selfless nor patriotic, for he had held on to his nomination even when it was clear that he would be too old to be president in a term that would not even begin for six months. He did not “fall on his sword.” Like Schumer’s false declaration of “deep love” for the president, Biden’s claim of giving up power for the good of his party and the nation was a lie, even as he had the audacity to say in his brief address, “When I was elected, I promised to always level with you, to tell you the truth.”[4]

My point is not to criticize Joe Biden or even other leaders of the Democratic Party. Decades earlier, when I was a student at Yale, I had been very impressed in a small-group setting—at what used to be called Master’s Teas at Yale—listening to Sen. Biden discuss the federal deficits and debt and the implications for the international financial system. I raise the case of his public address on his retirement from politics to make a broader claim.

The president said in his address, “The great thing about America is here, kings and dictators do not rule. The people do. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America—lies in your hands.”[5] This case shows just how much the people’s elected representatives can mislead the people in civic matters. The reality behind President Biden’s decision not to run for reelection was much different, much less stellar, than what the president and many elected Democrats presented to the people. The upshot is that the elected representatives, including the president of the United States, are less saintly—less willing to be selflessly patriotic—than the electorate has been led to believe. The need to keep an eye on officials is greater than what is implied by Biden’s address. Government of the people, through elected representatives, is not at altruistic as the political elite, for selfish reasons, would like the people to believe. Rather than trying to save American democracy, Pelosi and Schumer did not want to see the president’s reelection campaign result in Republican control of both chambers of Congress. This issue here is thus not Joe Biden, or even the Democratic Party; rather, the problem is how little the American people actually see and know of the real motives and strategies of the political elite, which includes both parties.

Assessing candidates at election time is likely not as effective as the American electorate  believes on account of being subtly manipulated from afar; more is kept from the electorate than it realizes concerning the people running for public office. On Capitol Hill and in the West Wing, more effort than the American people realize is put into how things will be perceived by the people. For example, it is enough that the people perceive members of Congress being vocally critical of powerful CEOs, such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and Mark Zuckerberg of (formerly) Facebook during the user-data privacy scandal, who contribute lots of money to political campaigns (which generally is not well publicized), without actual legislation being enacted contrary to the financial interests of the CEOs or their companies. It is enough that the public sees angry elected representatives. The superficial implication is that they are protecting the public interest so the electorate can have confidence in its public officials rather than having to double the effort to disentangle big business from Congress and the White House.

To put a private, or partial, interest above the public good is to doom the later to interests that care little of the good of the whole relative to the welfare of the part. The good of a whole is never the same as that of one of its parts unless all of the parts are identical. The interests of the United States do not reduce to those of Texas any more that those of the European Union reduce to those of France. This is why the political dominance of a large state in either union at the federal level is problematic, such as was evinced by Germany in E.U. policy during the European debt crisis.

The private (including political) interests of an elected representative are, I submit, not generally speaking well known by voters, who in turn are tasked with assessing the qualities of candidates rather than merely voting on policy positions. Perhaps more of the latter could be decided by referendum, leaving to elections the primary matter of the sort of people who are to be elected to serve the public interest. Moreover, popular sovereignty could stand to be strengthened, given the distance between elected political elites and their electorates. Simply put, that distance should be reduced, and journalism can go only so far, especially with journalists relying of officeholders for interviews.

In the film, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s dog Toto pulls open the curtain that had been hiding the actual Wizard from view. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! This is one of the all-time iconic lines in cinema. And Toto too! is not far behind. It is in the Wizard’s interest to keep his actual condition—that he is just a person rather than a giant head with raging flames on both sides—hidden from view so he can continue to exercise extraordinary power by instilling fear. It is interesting to ponder what this uncovering might look like writ-large in America’s representative democracy. I submit that pulling open the curtain that acts as a beltway around Washington D.C., formerly a swamp, is vitally needed to restore the proper relationship between popular and governmental sovereignty in the United States.

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1. Eli Stokols and Lauren Egan, “Biden Is Passing the Torch ‘to Unite Our Nation,” Politico, July 24, 2024.
2. M.J. Lee, Jamie Gangel, and Jeff Zeleny, “Pelosi Privately Told Biden Polls Show He Cannot Win and Will Take Dow the House; Biden Responded with Defensiveness,” CNN, July 18, 2024.
3. Eli Stokols and Lauren Egan, “Biden Is Passing the Torch ‘to Unite Our Nation,” Politico, July 24, 2024.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

The Senate Trial of President Trump: Riddled with Conflicts of Interest

At the beginning of a U.S. Senate trial on whether to remove an impeached U.S. president from office, the senators take an oath to be impartial jurists. The impartiality is important because the senators are theoretically to listen to the partial U.S. House prosecuting managers and the president’s defense lawyers. Were the senators themselves partial, they would simply reflect the two sides that make their respective cases. In the trial of Donald Trump, I submit that few if any senators had any intention of being impartial and thus as serving as a jurist rather than as an extension of the prosecutors or defense. In effect, the verdict is left to whichever political party controls the Senate. I contend that having the Senate try presidents is problematic due to a conflict of interest.

To be sure, removal from office requires a two-thirds majority so the verdict cannot be made only by one party—especially if it is other than that which the president heads. Yet to reply in such a scenario on the party that the president heads brings in a conflict of interest. Such a conflict is particularly pronounced when the president’s party controls the Senate. In such a case, even the rules of the trial, which are decided by majority vote, can be expected to be skewed in favor of the defendant (i.e., the president). It is simply too much to ask human nature to be impartial whether in setting up the trial or in acting as an impartial jurist in such a conflict of interest. This is why I contend in Institutional Conflicts of Interest that conflicts of interest are inherently unethical (i.e., even they are not exploited for personal or institutional gain).

The gravity of the conflict of interest can be easily detected when it is being exploited in rather obvious ways. Sen. Lindsey Graham (Republican), “a close ally of the [Republican] president, criticized Democratic House managers’ arguments at the trial in recent days, calling Thursday’s presentations ‘like way too much. [1] Graham made the comment when the prosecutors were making their opening statement, so the implication is that he was already not impartial for he did not wait until even the conclusion of both opening statements to make his statement. The sheer brazenness suggests that senators of both parties may have regarded the oath of impartiality as a sham. Indeed, even the labeling of the prosecutors as Democrats and the defense attorneys as Republicans can tell us that political partisanship dwarfed the oath.

In the trial of President Trump, the party he headed at the time controlled the Senate. Given this conflict of interest, it is not surprising (sadly) to find the trail schedule modified to suite the president. After he complained about low television viewership-levels on Saturdays being “Death Valley in T.V.,” the Senate’s majority leader announced that the first day of the president’s defense attorneys’ opening statement, which was on a Saturday, would only be for a few hours. The defense was “planning a more robust presentation for Monday and Tuesday.[2] To be sure, two Democratic Senators running for president had campaign events scheduled for that Saturday night, but I submit that the majority leader was more attentive to the defendant’s wishes than to campaigning senators of the other party—the one that the president does not head. The defendant was able to schedule his own trial.

The president’s reach extended even to whether the trial would have witnesses! Former National Security Director John Bolton could have provided a first-hand account of the president having admitted to holding appropriated military aid to Ukraine until the Ukraine president publicly announced that his government was launching an investigation into Trump’s likely presidential rival in 2020, Joe Biden (and his son). But the president’s majority party in the Senate refused to allow the witness nonetheless, even as the president’s defense argued that the prosecutors had not provided first-hand account testimony from an impeachment witness in the House (which in turn is debatable).

Impartial jurists of the president’s party argued as if they were part of the defense that calling witnesses could run into the obstacle of the president claiming executive privilege. One of the prosecutors, a member of the opposition party, replied that the U.S. Chief Justice, who was presiding over the trial, could make such a determination, but such a rule could be overridden by a majority vote (the president’s party being in the majority) by the Senate.[3] Here again the institutional conflict of interest is evident. Senators of the president’s own party could vote to override the Chief Justice to block witnesses in the trial.

Even in terms of documents that the president had refused to provide to the U.S. House in its impeachment investigation, the Senate’s majority looked the other way. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a prosecuting manager, said in the opening statement, "The House investigative committees sought a total of 71 specific categories of documents from six different agencies and offices. President Trump blocked every single one of these requests, all of them." Between Dec. 27, 2019 and Oct. 10, 2019, Garcia said, “House investigative committees issued subpoenas to the State Department, the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Defense and the Energy Department. Some agencies initially suggested that they might comply. Some turned over documents to the Trump administration so they could be turned over the Congress. But in the end, the president turned over nothing in response to the House impeachment inquiry,” she said.[4] Surely national security would not have been compromised in all of those documents, yet the Senate exploiting the conflict of interest would tell future presidents that supplying documents critical of the administrations can be avoided. What then of the legislative check on the executive branch?

Was the trial of President Trump even a trial without witnesses, potentially critical documents, and even an impartial jury? To the extent that the defendant could get his way even in the voting on the trial’s rules, could the trial be viewed as valid? Apparently it was. Not even the Chief Justice could enforce the oath of impartiality. Senators having made statements showing prejudice for or against the defendants could perhaps have been disqualified. The two-third majority could then perhaps have been applied to senators with an open mind, although silence does not necessary mean that a person is impartial. Also, presumable the Senate could override the ruling on particular senators or forbid such rulings, as no one likes to be excluded. Again we would find a conflict of interest in the disciplined being able to overrule the impartial judge.

Hamilton suggested at the constitutional convention that the U.S. Supreme Court decide whether an impeached president should be removed from office. It was felt, however, that such a role would put the impartial court into the political realm, especially to the extent that the justices are biased toward the defendant one way or the other. Justices are nominated by presidents, after all. I contend that such bias would be less intense than in the U.S. Senate because judicial reasoning and judgment can temper the influence of politics in the Supreme Court even though ideological bias is likely present generally (though it may be indirect, rather than direct as in the Senate). Put another way, the defendant’s party controlled the Senate, but the justices would be less likely to take orders from the defendant, especially given the Court’s reverence for the institution of a trial (e.g., witnesses, impartial judges and thus scheduling). In contrast, senators may tend to view a trial of a president as fitting within the framework of a political debate, wherein no one is impartial and “horse-trading” to get votes to exploit a conflict of interest are acceptable. Imagine a jury of a criminal trial making deals in deliberation such as, “You vote guilty and I’ll see that you get a car loan.” In the Senate, the majority (and minority) leader could privately promise something of political or economic value to a senator of the same party who would otherwise vote to allow witnesses. Indeed, if enough majority-party senators are not impartial, setting the rules of the trial is also a conflict of interest. In the Trump trial, the majority leader was opposed to witnesses even before he took the oath of impartiality. Rather than having the Senate establish the rules, the U.S. Supreme Court could do so in order to obviate the conflict of interest, which is especially pronounced when the Senate votes on rules (such as whether to allow witnesses) during the trial!

What about having the American electorate act as the jury? Is there any basis to assume that We the People would be less partisan? The biases in the Senate may be a muffled representation of a polarized electorate. Additionally, the electorate was largely not following the trial, let alone listening to the opening and closing statements. In the case of the Trump trial, the next presidential election would be in less than a year. In a presidential election, a myriad of factors come into play--the articles of impleachment being just two. Less knowledge of the case is needed; the matter is more one of an overall judgment of the incumbent (as well as the challenger). Lest it be argued that the regular elections be sufficient to hold a president accountable, such reliance would do nothing to purge the U.S. of a criminal such as Nixon mid-term in order to stop the bleeding. It may be that a majority of the senators assessed the two articles of impeachment against Trump as not sufficient to justify removing the president from office, but given the institutional (and possibly personal) conflicts of interest, the electorate cannot be confident. Judging from the smile on the majority leader's face just after he met with a republican senator previously in favor of allowing John Boltan to testify, I believe that horse-trading went on regarding the setting of at least one of the trail's rules. If it sounds strange that jurists in a trial would do such a thing even on whether to alter the trial rules, remember that institutional conflicts of interest can operate like black holes in that the gravitational force is powerful and light cannot escape.

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1. Rebecca Ballhaus, “Lindsey Graham Says Bidens' Actions Need More Scrutiny,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan 24, 2020.

2. Natalie Andrews and Rebecca Ballhaus, “Impeachment Schedule for Today and Tomorrow,” The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2020.

3. Linsey Wise, “Schiff Calls Fears of Witness Fights Delaying Trial ‘Nonsense’,” The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2020.

4. Linsey Wise, “Demings: Trump’s Obstruction Was ‘Categorical, Indiscriminate, and Historically Unprecedented’,” The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2020.

Bolivia's President Morales: A De-Facto Dictator Undemocratically Removed from Office

Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, resigned on November 10, 2019 after an audit by the Organization of American States found that the results of the election held the previous month could not be validated because of “serious irregularities,” including “failures in the chain of custody for ballots, alteration and forgery of electoral material, redirection of data to unauthorized servers and data manipulation.”[1] Election officials had stopped the count for about 24 hours without explanation; when the count resumed, Morales’ lead was much greater. Accordingly, along with Morales, the vice president, and the president of the state senate, the president and vice president of the electoral council resigned. Before the end of the day, the two officials of the council had been arrested for “electoral crimes.”[2] Although the state police were justified in arresting the officials, I submit that the police acted beyond their proper sphere when they joined with the military, which also acted beyond its sphere, to force Morales to resign.

To be sure, Morales controlled both chambers of the state legislature, the electoral council, and even the Constitutional Court, rendering the problem of holding the president accountable to the law particularly acute. As for the legislature, the presidents of both chambers resigned along with Morales, making the matter of Morales’ successor quite messy even from a constitutional standpoint. These resignations suggest that the leadership of the legislature would have been unlikely to act as a check on the president.

As for the high court, Morales had argued that it was his human right to run for reelection for a third term even though the constitutional limit was two terms. In 2019, he was running for his fourth term, sailing through the constitutional constraint yet again. Citing the American Convention on Human Rights, the Constitutional Court ruled that the term limits violated Morales’ human right to run for a third term. The Court had a basis to consider the treaty on par with the state’s constitution. In the U.S. Constitution, for example, Article VI, Clause 2 states that a treaty, like the Constitution itself, is the “supreme Law of the Land.” In the Bolivian case, the Constitutional Court put the treaty above the constitution. In general, where two parts of supreme law conflict, one must be put above the other.

Article 23 of the Convention, which covers the right to participate in government, is the relevant part of the treaty. Every citizen has the right and opportunity “to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representative; to vote and to be elected in genuine periodic elections . . .; [and] to have access, under general conditions of equality, to the public service of his country.”[3] Taking part in the conduct of public affairs can be by being elected to a governmental office. Such participation can be regulated “only on the basis of age, nationality, residence, language, education, civil and mental capacity, or sentencing by a competent court in criminal proceedings.”[4] Even though term limits do not fall under any of these legitimate means of constraining the underlying right to the opportunity to run for office, term limits are under general conditions of equality concerning public service, of which serving in elected office pertains. That is to say, being elected to a governmental office falls within public service, and term limits are consistent with general conditions of equality because the limits apply to any citizen. Hence we need not look at the legitimate rationales for constraining the right. I am assuming that the enumerated legitimate means by which to regulate the right to serve in elected office are exceptions to the general conditions of equality. We need not look at the exceptions because term limits satisfies general conditions of equality. The Bolivian Court thus erred in determining whether term limits falls within any of the exceptions.

The Court had no legal justification for putting the treaty above the state’s constitution. The leap in having done so is suspicious because the Court’s primary role is to interpret the constitution. Molares had “packed the court” (i.e., put the sitting justices on the bench),[5] so the errant legal reasoning may have been more the fault of political bias than logic. If so, Molares had control over the judiciary as well as the legislature, electoral council, and executive branch. Without any operative checks on his power, he could turn a democracy into a de facto dictatorship for life. Indeed, up until the end, he controlled the state police and military.

That the police and military are under the executive power of a president does not justify the involvement of the police and the military in taking it upon themselves to remove that president. If the Bolivian military chief made a deal with the opposition party, then he became a partisan politically. In his designated capacity to defend the state from foreign enemies, a military chief does not have the authority to pick partisan sides in a political dispute. Likewise, in unilaterally deciding to stop guarding the presidential palace, the police went beyond their authority and became partisans. That the police kept to their designated duties in arresting the president and vice president of the electoral council suggests that the decision to walk away from the presidential palace was partisan in nature.

Even relative to Morales’s usurpation of constitutional prerogative by running for a fourth term in violation of the term-limit general restriction, the refusal of the police and military to stay within their respective spheres of authority is particularly problematic because they possess weapons. Even in requesting that the president step down, the military chief acted inappropriately because the president is the commander-in-chief. In other words, the military chief evinced an unwillingness to stay within his gift. Such a mentality, plus the legal possession of many accumulated weapons, is why it is important that a military answer to a civilian, such as a president, who is not subject to the military. In a democracy, that civilian is an elected official, and it is not within the purview of a military (or police department) to question the veracity of the election as that would violate the president not being subject to the military (or police). In the U.S., this is why the impeachment and removal from office are conducted by the Congress. This is also university police-departments in the U.S. are inherently problematic from a democratic standpoint, for the chiefs of such departments report to university managers rather than elected officials. 

  

That the Bolivian police and military sided with the president’s political opposition in removing the president from office demonstrates the maxim that the ultimate power in a government lies with whomever can legally hold a (near) monopoly on weapons. Parchment is no match for officials with power and guns if a self-aggrandizing, even aggressive mentality is involved. The matter of holding such officials accountable can be quite difficult, as has been demonstrated by all the failed efforts to hold municipal police accountable in the United States. Unfortunately, a police employee can leverage his or her power to arrest and ultimately to use a gun to be able to act disproportionately (and prejudicially) on even trivial local laws.

On the very evening of Morales’ resignation, I was stopped by a policeman in Tempe, Arizona while I was walking in an alley. He informed me that walking in alleys is illegal in the city, which is home to Arizona State University. Doubtless the local police had looked the other way when students take such shortcuts, but in my case, the policeman assumed that enough residents of the apartment complex where I was living use alleys as shortcuts that he would issue me a formal warning, which means that I would be arrested the next time I was apprehended in an alley. Such a serious matter in Arizona! Being from another state, I felt myself a semi-foreigner there in part because the police tended to over-react, even in demonstrating an excessive police-presence on the supposition that intimidation is the best deterrent. In my case, the policeman was trying to use me as a deterrent for other residents in a low-income apartment complex even though as a research scholar I had very little in common with the other residents (except for the few students who lived there). I had the impression that the policeman was grouping me in with homeless people just because I was carrying my laundry to a nearby laundry-mat. That Arizona was ranked 49^th out of the 50 states of the US on primary education, including High School, suggested to me that I was being confronted by ignorance (and prejudice against the poor) with a gun. So police (and even a military) can go too far even in a state in which democracy is ostensively well-established. Personal discretion can be easily misused by people with the authority to arrest and use lethal force.

Therefore, when government institutions are captured by a president, such as Molares in Bolivia, it is a mistake to look to police or the military to use their threat of lethal force beyond their sphere of authority; their power is too much to rely on their discretion. When a democracy has succumbed to a dictator, the People, who together are the popular sovereign, have a duty to restore their democracy. In a representative democracy, the People are the font of sovereignty, whereas governmental sovereignty is delegated. The duty is not rightly preempted by the will of the police or military, because, as parts of a government, they are below the popular sovereign and its elected representatives. To be sure, the weaponized machinery of the state could fall under the control of the People as they make progress, but the movement would not be led by the police or military. Put another way, the police and military would no longer be so as individuals from those departments decide to join the People against the state. In a democracy, the People, acting as the popular sovereign, are the foundation. For the will of the People to be preempted by the wills of the police or military is itself dictatorial rather than democratic. Even if the heads of the police and military have good intentions in getting rid of a corrupt government, doing so lies with the People even if doing so is extraordinarily difficult.

In conclusion, protecting a democracy, such as against violations of term limits or, moreover, against a dictator generally, is the right and duty of the People acting as the popular sovereign. This duty is particularly pressing when no checks and balances exist within and between the three branches of government, such as when a dictator controls the legislature and judiciary. This does not mean that police or a military share that duty, for they are not only artifacts of government, but also given to the temptation for absolute power owing to the power of the threat of arrest and their use of guns. Also, enforcing criminal law does not extend to assuming a political role, especially if it is partisan. The U.S. Department of Justice, which houses the FBI, is thus not supposed to do the president’s political bidding. It would be ludicrous for the head of the Justice Department to join the opposition party in “requesting” that the president step down; to use the FBI to enforce the “request” would violate the constitutional language that puts the president as the head of the executive branch, as well as the fact that Congress, made up of elected officials, makes the case for impeachment and determines whether the president is to be removed from office. Otherwise, the president’s political opposition could simply call the FBI or even the local police to have the president arrested. The same logic pertains to the military, as if it could legitimately detain or remove its commander-in-chief, thereby violating the constitutional language on impeachment and removal from office as a political matter. The sovereign state of Bolivia violated its democratic system even in how Morales was removed from office in 2019.

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[1] Kay Guerrero and Dakin Andone, “Bolivian President Evo Morales Steps Down Following Accusations of Election Fraud,” CNN.com, November 10, 2019 (accessed on November 12, 2019).

[2] Ibid.

[3] The American Convention of Human Rights, Art. 23, sec 1.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Guerrero and Andone, “Bolivian President Evo Morales Steps Down Following Accusations of Election Fraud.”

.U.S. Constitutional Checks and Balances Under Threat: Congressional Oversight

Ambition checked by ambition. The assumption that political ambition can be counted on is the key to the “checks and balances” feature of the U.S. Constitution. Each of the three “arms,” or “branches,” of the federal government is checked by at least one other. This is not to say that the other arm takes over the function or even has greater competence; rather, the other arm is oriented here to providing accountability on abuses of power and investigating cases of gross negligence or incompetence. An offended branch should thus not be permitted to claim that oversight is not appropriate because it interferes with the function the branch. Treating oversight by another arm of the federal government as inherently partisan or illegitimate eviscerates the vital “check and balance” aspect of the U.S. Constitution. 

In disputes on oversight between two branches, the benefit of the doubt ought to go with the overseeing branch because it is only natural for human beings to resist being held accountable and so accountability itself needs a boost. I have in mind the case the director of national intelligence, Joe Maguire, blocking the inspector general from sharing an intelligence-whistle-blower’s complaint with Congress in September, 2019.

The contents of the complaint included a phone call between President Trump and another national leader in which Trump made a commitment. Ukraine was relevant. Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, had been concerned that Trump’s delay in assistance to Ukraine had been politically motivated. The Democrats had planned to investigate whether Trump’s withholding of military assistance was not to get the Ukrainian government to reduce corruption, but, instead “to coerce the Ukrainian government into pursuing politically motivated investigations” into Joseph Biden, President Obama’s former VP and a contender to run against Trump in 2020 for president.[1]

Providing the U.S. House Intelligence committee with the contents of whistleblower complaint was “generally required by law.”[2] The executive branch insisted that the requirement must involve the funding, administration or operations of an intelligence agency, whereas Democrats maintained that the law did indeed apply. Regardless, Congressional oversight of the executive branch goes beyond particular statutes mandating the providing of whistle-blower complaint information to Congress. Nevertheless, the inspector general, Michael Atkinson, wrote to the committee that the complaint fell within the jurisdiction of the director of national intelligence and “relates to one of the most significant and important of the D.N.I.’s responsibilities to the American people.”[3] Atkinson was conflating a jurisdiction within the executive branch with oversight by another branch of the government. Put another way, oversight does not in itself rid the director of his jurisdiction; rather, oversight investigates the contents within that jurisdiction. Furthermore, that the director of national intelligence has an important job does not mean that it is immune Congressional oversight of the executive arm. I submit that the importance of the job is an argument for a greater need for oversight—not less.

It is as if Atkinson believed that the intelligence agencies were immune from such oversight, and thus from the vital checks-and-balance feature of the U.S. Constitution. For oversight to be viable, the branch of the government being overseen cannot decide whether oversight is allowable. Rather, the branch doing the overseeing can make that assessment and the other branch can contest it in the courts. The judiciary arm would serve as a check against the overseeing arm. In other words, the prerogative in the executive branch of somehow being beyond Congressional oversight stands in the way of the functioning of the checks-and-balances constitutional design. Ambition should not be allowed to bar contending ambition. What employee of a company would claim, “I can’t do my job if there is any supervision of my work!”? What department would claim that it is exempt from oversight from the company’s management because of the nature of the work being performed? Rather than cohere, such a company would eventually break apart.

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1. Julian E. Barnes et al, “Whistle-Blower Complaint Sets Off a Battle Involving Trump,” The New York Times, September 19, 2019.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.