A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to suspend construction of a $400 million ballroom after it demolished the East Wing of the White House. U.S.
If some weird genie wish suddenly granted me the ability to rewrite the American constitution from the ground up, I think my main focus would be to end the two-party system by switching Congress to proportional representation.
After that, a lot depends on the details of the genie wish. If I can impose whatever changes I wanted I’d probably go further - a drastic reduction of presidential power is an obvious step, perhaps have both a president and a prime minister like many European countries do with the duties split between them. Strict term limits might also be good, though I’d want to study that issue a bit more - there are some upsides to having very experienced politicians in government along with the obvious downsides we’re seeing.
The Supreme Court needs reform, maybe give the judges a fixed term so that they don’t end up stuck with random health conditions determining who gets to appoint who and for how long. More broadly, we’re seeing a lot of flaws in the judicial branch and law enforcement that need correcting. Maybe have multiple Department of Justices with separate leadership to keep each other in check? Tricky.
Or just put an AI in charge of it all and see what happens.
I think my main focus would be to end the two-party system by switching Congress to proportional representation.
If I understand your comment correctly what you are describing is how Congress was originally setup! It was broken by the Re-Apportionment Act of 1912. No need to re-write the Constitution it’s “just” a Federal Law.
a drastic reduction of presidential power is an obvious step
The President only has as much power as they do because Congress has been steadily handing it over since the 1940s.
perhaps have both a president and a prime minister like many European countries do
We weren’t far away from the spirit of that but we broke it in 1804 with the passage of the 12th Amendment.
The Supreme Court needs reform…
It’s really not SCOTUS that needs reformed it’s actually our Constitution. It was simply never meant for the environment in which it now exists, it’s unfit for purpose. The easiest way to explain is that the US Constitution wasn’t meant to control an all powerful central authority, it was meant to prevent one. SCOTUS twisted that shortly after the Civil War and now here we are trying to manage ourselves by looking at a mirror reflection of our guiding document.
Proportional representation, and no artificial limit on the size of the House. A lot of our current problems are made much worse by the 435 limit created in 1929 in large part because they didn’t want to have to keep making the building bigger. Using the same proportions as then we should be at like 1500 House seats now. District sizes should be determined by the smallest district on the country. If the smallest district has 30,000 people, then that’s what every district must represent.
Definitely at least 2 heads for the Executive, maybe even make it three. One of the originally proposed systems had 3 executives elected separately operating as a committee.
The Supreme Court matches the number of federal judicial districts, so 12 at the moment. No more than 2 appointments per presidential term. The judicial branch also takes over control of the Marshal service. Separate from the Executive, specifically to enforce Judicial decisions. Relying on the Executive for this was a ridiculous oversight.
Or just put an AI in charge of it all and see what happens.
If some weird genie wish suddenly granted me the ability to rewrite the American constitution from the ground up, I think my main focus would be to end the two-party system by switching Congress to proportional representation.
After that, a lot depends on the details of the genie wish. If I can impose whatever changes I wanted I’d probably go further - a drastic reduction of presidential power is an obvious step, perhaps have both a president and a prime minister like many European countries do with the duties split between them. Strict term limits might also be good, though I’d want to study that issue a bit more - there are some upsides to having very experienced politicians in government along with the obvious downsides we’re seeing.
The Supreme Court needs reform, maybe give the judges a fixed term so that they don’t end up stuck with random health conditions determining who gets to appoint who and for how long. More broadly, we’re seeing a lot of flaws in the judicial branch and law enforcement that need correcting. Maybe have multiple Department of Justices with separate leadership to keep each other in check? Tricky.
Or just put an AI in charge of it all and see what happens.
If I understand your comment correctly what you are describing is how Congress was originally setup! It was broken by the Re-Apportionment Act of 1912. No need to re-write the Constitution it’s “just” a Federal Law.
The President only has as much power as they do because Congress has been steadily handing it over since the 1940s.
We weren’t far away from the spirit of that but we broke it in 1804 with the passage of the 12th Amendment.
It’s really not SCOTUS that needs reformed it’s actually our Constitution. It was simply never meant for the environment in which it now exists, it’s unfit for purpose. The easiest way to explain is that the US Constitution wasn’t meant to control an all powerful central authority, it was meant to prevent one. SCOTUS twisted that shortly after the Civil War and now here we are trying to manage ourselves by looking at a mirror reflection of our guiding document.
Stupid.
Proportional representation, and no artificial limit on the size of the House. A lot of our current problems are made much worse by the 435 limit created in 1929 in large part because they didn’t want to have to keep making the building bigger. Using the same proportions as then we should be at like 1500 House seats now. District sizes should be determined by the smallest district on the country. If the smallest district has 30,000 people, then that’s what every district must represent.
Definitely at least 2 heads for the Executive, maybe even make it three. One of the originally proposed systems had 3 executives elected separately operating as a committee.
The Supreme Court matches the number of federal judicial districts, so 12 at the moment. No more than 2 appointments per presidential term. The judicial branch also takes over control of the Marshal service. Separate from the Executive, specifically to enforce Judicial decisions. Relying on the Executive for this was a ridiculous oversight.