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At 250 years of age, our democracy faces serious challenges. Conditions favorable to an authoritarian-minded president like Donald Trump existed before he came on the scene and will continue after he’s gone. The key problem is the collapse of Congress as an independent, coordinate branch of government and effective check on presidential excess. This, in turn, results from the polarization of our politics and its capture by the far left and right. If our democracy is to endure, ordinary Americans must heed Ben Franklin’s warning, reclaim our politics, and restore functionality to Congress.    

At our Nation’s 250^th birthday and the Constitution’s 237^th year in effect, what can be said about the state of our democracy and its future prospects?

The evolution of our government

For starters, governance within our democracy has evolved in many ways since the Nation’s founding. In fact, the balance of governmental power today is almost the inverse of the model envisioned by the founders.

The ascendancy of the federal government. The founders considered the individual states to be the primary source of governmental authority over American citizens with the federal government limited to specified (“enumerated”) powers. Over the course of our history and for various reasons, however, the federal government assumed the dominant position. It now holds pervasive influence over the states, individual citizens, and public and private entities through the direct exercise of legal authority and indirectly through massive spending programs that come with strings attached. Virtually all major contemporary policy issues, including those concerning domestic matters, are or eventually become federal issues.

The decline of Congress. Within the federal government, Article I of the Constitution established Congress as the first and arguably predominate branch and assigned it primary responsibility for setting federal policy through legislation. However, Congress has effectively demoted itself to the least important branch, abdicating much of its responsibility to the executive branch and even the courts. Federal policymaking now emanates primarily from the president and the vast executive branch bureaucracy with Congress reduced to a mainly reactive role. 

The primacy of the president. Within the executive branch, power “belongs to the President alone,” as the Supreme Court puts it. The president always exercised plenary legal authority over most executive agencies. The Court recently extended this control to so-called independent regulatory agencies, once described as a “fourth branch” of the federal government.^[1]It carved out a lone exception for the Federal Reserve Board, seemingly based on pragmatic rather than legal considerations.

The enhanced importance of the judiciary. The federal judiciary, which the founders considered the least significant branch, has assumed a considerably broader role than originally envisioned. This is due to the greatly expanded reach of the federal government and with it federal law, the need to resolve gaps in the law left by a derelict Congress, and sometimes activist judges both liberal and conservative.

In short, the dispersion of governmental authority that the founders anticipated has yielded to a much more centralized system in which most powers are concentrated in the federal government and within it the president. 

The Trump effect

Given the federal government’s vast authorities and the president’s command over them, contemporary occupants of the White House begin to resemble, at least potentially, the kind of monarch we rejected 250 years ago. Even more so considering the sweeping king-like immunity from civil and criminal liability that the Supreme Court has conferred on them. The potential for an authoritarian president existed before Trump but was less obvious since none of his predecessors, whatever their faults and excesses, demonstrated his wholesale disregard for democratic values.

Trump distains the rule of law and democratic norms, claiming to be constrained only by his own “morality” and governs erratically by personal whim. He’s filled his administration with sycophants and enablers, many of whom apparently share his indifference to legal norms and even their own oaths of office and ethical obligations. He makes no effort to appeal beyond his base or to work with his political opposites. He unabashedly uses his office to enrich himself and his family and to indulge his vanity. 

No doubt the founders would be greatly disappointed that someone who apparently sees himself as the second coming of King George III is president at the Nation’s 250^th birthday. But they might not be shocked. James Madison presciently observed:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

What surely would shock them is the breakdown in the internal controls–separation of powers and checks and balances– they carefully built into the Constitution to rein in a profoundly non-angelic character like Trump.

Congress has hit rock bottom. Republican majorities in the House and Senate allow and even encourage Trump to usurp their constitutional authorities in many areas including government organization, tariffs, war powers, and their most basic power of the purse.^[2]See here and here. Critical oversight of the executive branch is wholly lacking. Incredibly, some in Congress actually help Trump undermine their own oversight authorities.^[3]See here and here. Congress’s highest ranking official, House Speaker Mike Johnson, is essentially a Trump minion as Trump has insultingly but accurately noted.

With Congress AWOL and the executive branch stocked with yes-people, the federal judiciary is left as the only significant internal check on the president. However, courts are not well suited to serve as the first, much less only, line of defense against presidential excesses. They are necessarily reactive and limited to resolving justiciable disputes brought by parties with legal standing. Their role is particularly limited in matters relating to foreign affairs and military operations.  

Political polarization

The ever-increasing polarization of our politics is a major factor in the demise of Congress as well as the general decline in our democracy. As a result of residence patterns, resurgent gerrymandering, and efforts of the two major parties to suppress third-party rivals, few congressional races remain competitive. Real competition is usually confined to the primaries where turnout is typically light and voting is dominated by the more partisan and ideologically extreme bases of each party. Candidates win primaries and then cruise through general elections by appealing to those base voters; they remain in office by continuing to play to the base in order to avoid being “primaried” in the future.

The once-popular notion that politics is the art of compromise has no place in this environment. Members of Congress survive by operating as loyal foot soldiers in Team Red or Team Blue rather than free-thinking legislators focused on the broader public interest and the interests of their constituencies as a whole. They have no incentive to work across the aisle or stray from their team’s many ideological red lines and every reason not to.

The result of this is frequent gridlock in times of divided government. Alternatively, when (as now) a single party holds the “trifecta” (control of the presidency and both houses of Congress), partisan steamrolling generally prevails. Majority party members function as an extension of the executive branch instead of a separate, co-equal body.

Polarization increasingly characterizes our public discourse beyond Congress as well. A healthy democracy depends on broadly shared agreement among the citizenry over core values along with reasoned, respectful debate about how best to achieve them. Both are in short supply today. Opposing ideological factions can’t agree on objective facts much less subjective values. Demonization of people who think differently and talking past each other substitute for reasoned debate.

Social media influencers exacerbate the problem as do traditional media outlets. Few are unbiased and even most media fact-checkers have an ideological bias. Unsurprisingly, public confidence in the media and indeed almost all institutions, public and private, is low and falling lower. The confidence ratings themselves often reflect sharp ideological divides.   

Lessons learned courtesy of Trump

A silver lining to Trump’s presidency is that it provides a useful stress test for our democracy. Thankfully, democracy has not failed entirely. The federal judiciary countered some of Trump’s worst excesses. So has the public. Ordinary citizens pushed back against his extreme anti-immigration tactics and efforts to indict some of his perceived enemies. Strongly negative public opinion constrained him in other areas as well.

On the other hand, Trump’s presidency highlights two major vulnerabilities. One is the unreliability of Congress as an independent branch of government and check on the president especially during periods of one-party rule. The second is the ease with which a president—potentially any president—can weaponize and abuse the awesome regulatory, law-enforcement, military, and other resources at their disposal to serve their ends, whatever they may be. To paraphrase Trump, the health of our democracy depends to a great extent on the conscience of whoever happens to be president.

How to strengthen our democracy

The current distribution of power is unlikely to change fundamentally; the federal government will remain predominant as will the president at the head of it. Trump may turn out to be a uniquely awful president, but that’s hardly guaranteed given our debased politics. Hopefully, the courts will continue to be a significant check on presidential lawlessness. However, the judiciary is increasingly subject to political attacks from all sides that threaten to undermine its credibility and effectiveness.^[4]See here, here, here, and here.

The key to shoring up our democracy is to bring Congress back to life. It’s unrealistic to expect Congress to regain its original primacy in the constitutional scheme, and perhaps it shouldn’t. But Congress must be restored to a functioning independent branch of government and meaningful check on presidential power regardless of which party is in control of what. Referencing Madison again, “there can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person.”

This is certainly doable. Congress was reasonably functional not too long ago. It included many members from both parties who were serious legislators, not just knee-jerk partisans. Compromise and bipartisanship were considered virtues and positive job qualifications rather than firing offenses. Candidates regularly campaigned on their ability to work across party lines to achieve results. Remarkably (from today’s perspective), members sometimes rose above party loyalty at important moments. It was Republicans who ultimately forced the resignation of President Nixon. 

The conditions seem favorable for a return to such Congresses. Our increasingly polarized two-party duopoly doesn’t reflect the views of most Americans. The public is much more ideologically diverse  with only a minority fitting into either extreme. A majority of Americans hold moderate, pragmatic views; in fact, there is broad public consensus on many issues that divide the parties. Most Americans prefer collaboration, compromise, and problem-solving to ideological posturing.^[5]See, e.g., here, here, and here. Unsurprisingly, most are estranged from both parties.

Furthermore, both parties are ripe for change. The Republican Party is little more than a cult of Trump and will have no clear identity once he leaves office. The Democratic Party has been searching for an identity for years. Either party stands to gain by moving closer to the values of most Americans.

It would not take a massive political groundswell to force major change. Despite the dearth of competitive individual elections, the Nation as a whole is closely divided and narrow majorities are the norm in both houses of Congress. Electing moderate, bipartisan-minded members to a relatively few more House and Senate seats could provide a critical mass necessary to hold the balance of power in each body, especially if they aligned with the relatively few like-minded members still there.

But the only sure means of accomplishing such change is for ordinary Americans to shake off their (understandable) frustration and cynicism and engage more actively in politics, particularly in primary elections, either to force the two parties closer to the center or to support independent candidates or third parties who better represent their values. In a democracy, citizens get the government they deserve. When asked what kind of a government the founders gave us, Benjamin Franklin famously replied “a republic, if you can keep it.” Everyday citizens need to step up now and reinvigorate our democracy if we are to keep it.

 

 

Judges today are regularly chastised from both the left and right for deciding cases based on their personal or political biases rather than “the law.” Two closely related guardrails to help keep them focused on the legal merits are “textualism” and “originalism.” 

Textualism simply recognizes the obvious fact that when interpreting a legal document (statute or constitution), the law is what the text says it is; thus, the answer must be embodied in or at least anchored in the text. Originalism holds that legal text must be interpreted in accordance with how its meaning was publicly understood at the time of its enactment. Attaching a new and different meaning to the text amounts in effect to amending the law, which is a job for elected legislators not unelected judges.^[1]See here and here for background.

While textualism and originalism are usually associated with conservative jurisprudence, they are fundamentally sound interpretive approaches and should be followed whenever possible. Their only real limitation is practical rather than conceptual: The legal text often does not provide a clear original public meaning even after applying the standard interpretive tools available to judges. This is particularly true of cases that reach the upper levels of judicial review.

One would think, therefore, that when a rare ideal case comes along judges who claim to be textualists/originalists would make short work of it. This brings us to Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case just decided by the Supreme Court. The issue was whether an executive order by President Trump that attempts to deny U.S. citizenship to offspring of illegal immigrants and some others born in the United States violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

When Trump originally proposed this executive order, I was confident that ruling against it would be a slam-dunk for the courts, including SCOTUS if the case got that far. After all, the children are indisputably born in the United States, and they are clearly subject to its “jurisdiction” in the obvious, everyday sense of being required to comply with its laws and powers. Indeed, the exception for those not subject to U.S. jurisdiction was understood to apply only to children of foreign diplomats and a few other narrow categories of people such as members of certain Indian tribes who were considered exempt from U.S. sovereignity at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.

SCOTUS did ultimately declare the executive order unconstitutional, as had every other court that considered it. However, the decision was essentially 5-4 with only two of the Court’s six conservative justices joining the three liberals to rule it unconstitutional.^[2]Justice Kavanaugh disagreed with the majority’s constitutional analysis but technically concurred in the result on the grounds that the executive order violated a similarly worded statute. Moreover, the various opinions consume almost 200 pages delving into a wide range of common law, legislative, judicial, and historical sources discussing different approaches to establishing citizenship as well as exploring policy considerations.

Chief Justice Roberts’ relatively brief 26-page majority opinion notes (pp. 10-11) that the Fourteenth Amendment’s key phrase “subject to [U.S.] jurisdiction” required the result the Court reached since it “uses jurisdiction in its ordinary sense—referring to the power of the United States to govern those within its territory.” The dissents discuss at length concepts and terms the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment could have used but didn’t. As Roberts pointedly observes (p.22), the main dissent “has little to say” about the operative legal text—“subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States—that the drafters actually did use. Other dissents strain to create ambiguity where none reasonably exists on the face of the operative language. 

The dissents also emphasize that the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment did not confront the issues the Nation now faces over widespread illegal immigration, “anchor babies,” and “birth tourism.” This is certainly true, and they might well have adopted different language if faced with current conditions. However, as any textualist/originalist worth their salt would insist, the remedy in such cases is not for judges to adopt a “revisionist” interpretation (as Roberts puts it) to update the meaning of the text but rather to amend the law through the appropriate legislative process.^[3]Actually, there’s much that can be done administratively to blunt the perceived negative consequences of birthright citizenship. Notably, there’s nothing to stop the federal government from … Continue reading

Five justices did the right thing here, but this should have been a much shorter and straightforward 9-0 decision. How can the four dissenting conservative justices maintain their credibility as textualists/originalists when they abandon these principles in a tailor-made case like this?

Donald Trump’s “settlement” of his claims relating to the leak of his tax returns is outrageous on many levels.^[1]See, e.g., here, here, here, and here.  One is that the financing scheme for the settlement’s “anti-weaponization fund” is unconstitutional. The proposed source, the Judgment Fund, clearly is not available for this purpose nor is there any other legitimate source. Consequently, payments by the anti-weaponization fund would violate Article I, § 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution, which provides:

“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” 

Such payments would also run afoul of the Antideficiency Act (31 U.S.C. § 1341), which carries criminal penalties for knowing and willful violations (31 U.S.C. § 1350).

Like all federal expenditures, payments to satisfy court judgments against the United States or settlements of claims potentially leading to judgments require a congressional appropriation. To avoid having to review each individual judgment and settlement, Congress enacted a permanent, indefinite appropriation known as the Judgment Fund (31 U.S.C. § 1304).^[2]See also 28 U.S.C. § 2414 with reference to compromise settlements. However, the Justice Department’s attempt to use the Judgment Fund in this case is manifestly illegal for two reasons.

First, to be payable from the Judgment Fund a compromise settlement must result from the resolution of a genuine dispute between opposing parties.^[3]See, e.g., U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), 3 Principles of Federal Appropriations Law (3d ed., 2008) at 14-35, citing GAO and Justice Department opinions. The settlement here gives every indication of being a sham. Trump initially sued a federal agency of the executive branch he heads. He dropped the lawsuit as (and probably because) the judge questioned whether it involved a sufficiently adversarial relationship between the parties to constitute a case or controversy amenable to judicial resolution. Trump described the ensuing negotiations as “work[ing] out a settlement with myself.”  The Justice Department apparently offered no opposition to Trump’s claims at any stage although it had strong defenses, most notably that the claims were barred by the statute of limitations.   

Second, even if this is somehow regarded as a bona fide compromise settlement, it does not qualify for payment from the Judgment Fund. The Judgment Fund is available for the payment of money damages to identifiable parties to final judgments and compromise settlements.^[4]Id. at 14-38 and decisions cited. Consistent with many other precedents, a 1989 opinion by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel holds that the Judgment Fund can be used only for judgments and settlements “to pay specified sums of money to certain parties.”^[5]More broadly, a memo issued by former Attorney General Bondi strongly discourages settlements from including payments to individuals or entities that weren’t parties or victims in a case.

Under the terms of this settlement, none of the proposed $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund goes to the parties or to any specifically identifiable recipients. Moreover, the stated purposes of the fund are wholly unrelated to the leaked tax return claims on which the settlement is supposedly based. Even the amount appears symbolic rather than a credible measure of damages related to the underlying claims. In essence, the settlement has nothing to do with the claims it purports to settle.

Acting Attorney General Blanche cites Keepseagle v. Vilsack as precedent for use of the Judgment Fund here. Keepseagle involved a class action settlement of discrimination claims by Native Americans. Using the Judgment Fund, the court-approved settlement established a fund to pay claims by class members but further provided that any amounts left over after paying class members would be paid to non-profit organizations that supported Native Americans.

When it turned out after five years that class member claims were far less than anticipated and over half the settlement would go to non-profits, some class members sought to reopen the settlement. One of their arguments was that payments to non-profits violated the Judgment Fund. A federal district court and a court of appeals rejected this argument but not on its merits; rather, they ruled only that it was too late to raise the issue.

None of the four judges in Keepseagle endorsed use of the Judgment Fund for payments to non-parties. Indeed, the district judge expressed doubt that the Judgment Fund could be used for this purpose. One appellate judge wrote a lengthy dissent asserting emphatically that the non-party payments were a clear misuse of the Judgment Fund that the court should correct.^[6]The dissent (p. 36) was prescient in predicting the abuse that could result from allowing Judgment Fund payments to non-parties. It offered as a hypothetical an executive branch settlement of $1 … Continue reading Thus, Keepseagle provides no legal support for the settlement here, and if anything, cuts in the opposite direction.^[7]Furthermore, the settlement in Keepseagle is readily distinguishable from the Trump settlement in many ways. It was an arms-length, court-approved resolution of a real dispute between adverse parties … Continue reading

In sum, it seems clear beyond reasonable doubt that the settlement here is a charade that ignores the claimants and has nothing to do with their claims. Rather, it’s merely a cover to illegally use the Judgment Fund to bypass Congress and raid the federal treasury to finance a large unauthorized spending program. The key players in this farce surely understand its illegality and potential criminal implications. It’s probably no coincidence that the general counsel of the Treasury Department, which is responsible for certifying payments from the Judgment Fund, resigned on the same day the settlement was announced.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has flouted the Constitution and the Antideficiency Act to spend taxpayer funds without the requisite congressional appropriation. It paid TSA and other Homeland Security Department employees during the recent partial government shutdown although no appropriation for their salaries was legally available. That action drew little scrutiny since it was popular with the public and politically expedient for both parties. This far more egregious abuse is already attracting much greater attention and skepticism.

What if anything will be done about this travesty remains to be seen. Two police officers who served during the January 6 Capitol riot have sued to stop it; however, their suit (and probably any others) will face major standing challenges. Perhaps this blatant affront to Congress will finally rekindle some interest by its members in performing their constitutional duties. But Congress will also face a steep climb since it would presumably take veto-proof majorities to overturn the settlement. Perhaps the best hope is that public and political pushback will become sufficiently intense to force Trump to do a TACO.

 

       

It shouldn’t be too surprising that the Virginia Supreme Court invalidated the state’s travesty of a gerrymander. Attorneys apparently warned that the process by which the Virginia General Assembly developed a constitutional amendment to enable the gerrymander posed legal risks. Even as the Supreme Court initially declined to stop an April 21 referendum on the proposed amendment it acknowledged that the challengers presented “weighty assertions of invalidity against the process” that “are of grave concern to the Court.”  

The Court’s eventual 4-3 decision held that the General Assembly violated the Virginia Constitution’s multi-step process for enacting constitutional amendments. The Constitution requires the General Assembly to pass proposed amendments in two consecutive legislative sessions with an intervening election. The intervening election gives citizens an opportunity to factor their views of the amendment into their votes for legislators who will act on it for the second and final time. The last step in the process is a referendum on the proposed amendment.

In this case, the first General Assembly session passed the gerrymandering amendment on October 31, 2025. Election day for the next session was November 4, 2025, but early voting for that session started on September 19. Thus, the “intervening” election was well underway before the first passage of the proposed amendment took place; about 40 percent of the electorate had already voted by October 31. The Court held that this sequence of events failed to comply with the constitutional framework. It rejected the state’s argument, embraced by the dissent, that the term “election” as used in the constitutional provision governing amendments referred only to the single election day of November 4.

While the issue is technical and perhaps reasonably debatable, the Court’s conclusion seems consistent with the constitutional text and structure and certainly aligns better with its underlying purpose. Notably, because the Court held that the process was unconstitutional, it declined to address several statutory challenges to the proposed amendment that had also been raised. One of these was that the referendum ballot description of the amendment’s purpose “to restore fairness in the upcoming elections” was misleading. Clearly, it was not just misleading but patently false.

While Virginia Democrats of course expressed disappointment at the decision, few had much to say about its substantive legal merits. Some chose to attack the Court’s integrity. Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones described the decision as politically motivated and accused the Court of elevating “politics over the rule of law.” He appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court although the case presents no apparent federal question.^[1]Contrary to the SCOTUS appeal, the Virginia decision is not “predicated” on federal law; rather, it’s based exclusively on provisions of the Virginia Constitution. It cites several federal … Continue reading  

Congressman Don Beyer was either uninformed or disingenuous in condemning the Court’s “indefensible decision to release [the decision] after the referendum was held.” In fact, Virginia lawyers defending the amendment argued that the Court lacked authority to enjoin the referendum and could rule on the amendment’s legality only after the referendum was held. Reportedly a few Democrats are exploring a wild scheme to undo the decision by replacing the entire Virginia Supreme Court.

In the final analysis, Virginia legislators have only themselves to blame for the outcome. They cut corners in rushing to push through the proposed amendment with little regard for the legal details and paid the price for it. So did supporters of the amendment, who reportedly spent more than $60 million on it mainly from dark money sources.

Moving beyond the decision itself, what are its consequences?

First and foremost, Virginia will keep its current eminently fair congressional district map—at least for now.^[2]One interesting side note is that this map was actually put in place by none other than the Virginia Supreme Court after the state’s bipartisan commission failed to reach an agreement. However, the General Assembly may well take another shot at bypassing the state’s constitutionally mandated bipartisan redistricting process given national gerrymandering trends. (See below.) If so, presumably it will adhere more scrupulously to the constitutional and statutory requirements next time.

The political impact is uncertain. Democrats won’t be favored to gain the four House seats they hoped to flip in 2026 by their gerrymander. However, prognosticators think they may still pick up one or more of these seats fair and square if 2026 proves to be as strong a year for Democrats as many predict.

Looking beyond Virginia, the decision is obviously a negative in terms of Democratic hopes to gain control of the House in the 2026 elections, but it’s not likely to be a major factor. Its impact will probably be eclipsed by the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s also very recent Voting Rights Act decision in Louisiana v. Callais. This decision has already unleashed a new wave of gerrymandering potentially more significant than the initial wave Trump launched last year that led to the Virginia gerrymander. (See here.)

Both waves are bad news for our politics. Until recently, the grossly anti-democratic practice of gerrymandering seemed to be on the wane. Redistricting typically occurred only once every decade as required by the decennial census; a number of states adopted nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting processes like Virginia’s; and state courts occasionally overturned partisan gerrymanders. However, we are now entering what has been described as an “era of perpetual redistricting” in which politicians of both parties engage in partisan gerrymandering whenever and wherever they can as they accelerate their race to the bottom.

How it all ends, if it ever does, remains to be seen but the consequences for the overall health of our political system are grim. Most if not all independent redistricting systems are likely to fall victim to the politicians at some point. And, of course, tens of millions of Americans of all races, backgrounds, and political leanings will see their constitutional voting rights diminished.  

Much of this would have been avoided if the Supreme Court hadn’t shirked its responsibilities in its unfortunate 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause decision, which foreclosed federal judicial review of partisan gerrymanders no matter how blatant or extreme.

 

 

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais prompted strong reactions, mainly intense criticism on the left. It deals with the controversial subject of racial gerrymandering and the Voting Rights Act (VRA) on which the Court’s jurisprudence is complex and often confusing.

The case is complicated factually, legally, and procedurally. Adding to its perplexity, the majority opinion and dissent have very different takes on the decision’s significance. The majority opinion by Justice Alito claims to be faithful to existing precedents and merely “update” their interpretations of the VRA. Justice Kagan’s fierce 48-page dissent counters that the decision effectively overrules existing precedents and fundamentally changes how the VRA is interpreted and applied, “eviscerating” it in the process.

Despite the confusion, the bottom-line holdings of Callais are clear:

• • • The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits race-conscious electoral districting unless required by the VRA to remedy race discrimination.
    • The VRA “as properly construed” prohibits only intentional race discrimination in districting and does not reach actions that have discriminatory effects but lack provable racist motives.
    • To establish the necessary “strong inference” of intentional race discrimination in districting, challengers must “disentangle” race from all “legitimate” alternative motives, including partisan politics.
    • Applying the foregoing principles, the race-based majority-minority electoral district at issue in Callais was not required by the VRA and therefore constituted a racial gerrymander prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The decision’s practical consequences are likewise clear. First, since African Americans (and some other minorities) vote heavily Democratic, it’s very challenging to “disentangle” race from politics in modern day gerrymandering. Finding evidence of overt racism is also very difficult in this day and age.^[1]Whether this is because racism has in fact receded or just gone underground is debatable. Therefore, it will now be virtually impossible to successfully invoke the VRA to overturn a gerrymander no matter how much it may adversely impact minority voters.

Second, while devaluing the vote of African Americans based on racist motives remains illegal (at least in theory), devaluing their vote based on partisan political considerations is perfectly OK. As the Callais majority puts it, “a minority voter is entitled to nothing less and nothing more” than the same opportunity as any other voter to elect their preferred candidates. Thus, minority voters also share the same opportunity to be victimized by partisan gerrymandering.^[2]Partisan gerrymandering may still be limited or outlawed under state law. 

Third, the Callais decision severely jeopardizes many current majority-minority House districts and adds considerable fuel to the gerrymandering war that President Trump ignited last year. (More on this below.)

There’s ample room for debate over the legal merits of the Callais decision. All agree that the Fifteenth Amendment, the ultimate source outlawing race discrimination in electoral districting, prohibits only intentional race discrimination.^[3]Justice Kagan’s dissent acknowledges this point. But the Fifteenth Amendment authorizes Congress to enforce it by appropriate legislation. That’s what Congress did in the VRA. The VRA seemed to be expanded to reach actions having discriminatory effects under a 1982 amendment and was apparently so viewed in subsequent judicial decisions, including those of the Supreme Court.

Given the above, Justice Kagan makes a convincing case that the Callais majority fundamentally changed rather than just “updated” how the Act is interpreted. The majority opinion does come across as an attempt (perhaps a compromise among the majority justices) to downplay the extent to which it departs from the current understanding of the law.

Nevertheless, the fact that the majority’s explanation may be disingenuous in parts doesn’t necessarily mean its conclusions are wrong. Surely, Congress cannot rewrite the Fifteenth Amendment in the guise of enforcing it. Thus, it’s not unreasonable to maintain that Congress’s enforcement authority operates only within the parameters of the Fifteenth Amendment and doesn’t extend to enlarging the scope of what it prohibits.     

Whether one agrees with it or not, the Court’s decision in Callais seems less outrageous from a strict legal viewpoint than the liberal commentariat makes it out to be. But there’s another decision lurking in the background that is truly outrageous: Rucho v. Common Cause, the 5-4 decision in which the Court held that partisan (as opposed to racial) gerrymandering raised political questions that the federal judiciary is unable to resolve. Had the Court done its job in Rucho, the outcome in Callais would be far less concerning. No citizen, minority or majority, should be subject to the pernicious, grossly anti-democratic gerrymandering practices that Rucho effectively condoned.^[4]See, e.g., here and here.  

The majority’s reasoning in Rucho was exceptionally lame while the dissent, here also written by Justice Kagan, was far more persuasive in every respect. It begins:

     “For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities.

     “And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives.”

Justice Kagan renews her criticism of Rucho in her Callais dissent. She observes (correctly) that Rucho’s “adverse effects have never been more obvious than today, as this country’s two major parties compete in a race to the bottom.”   

The combined effect of Callais and Rucho is sure to supercharge the current gerrymandering frenzy. In fact, it already has. Southern red states are rushing to eliminate majority-minority House districts established under the VRA. Blue states will likely enact retaliatory gerrymanders. Two such states (Colorado and New York) are working to undo their independent redistricting processes so they can join in. Two others (California and Virginia) that already “temporarily” sidestepped their independent processes will probably do so again or simply repeal them.

It’s hard to know which party will come out on top when the dust settles—if it ever does. However, the losers are all too obvious. Millions of Americans of all races and political leanings will be effectively disenfranchised. Competitive House districts will become even rarer than they are now; the most extreme factions in each party will become even more dominant with primaries increasingly being the only meaningful election stage; and House members will become even more polarized, reflexively partisan, and less representative of their constituencies as a whole. In short, our politics and governance will sink even lower.

Much of this could have been avoided if the Court hadn’t washed its hands of partisan gerrymandering in Rucho. There’s no way the courts can stamp out gerrymandering completely; politics will always play a role in electoral districting. However, it’s hardly challenging to identify and overturn the blatant, openly acknowledged partisan gerrymanders that are commonplace today. Even the threat of judicial scrutiny would probably be enough to deter many of them.

Sadly, there’s little chance that the Court as now constituted will revisit this issue and “update” Rucho based on current conditions.       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While mid-decade gerrymandering has attracted more attention, another initiative with potentially broader impact on voting is advancing largely under the radar. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is a proposed agreement among states to award each participating state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes nationwide regardless of whether that candidate won the popular vote in that state. Its premise is that presidential elections should be decided by direct popular vote rather than the current electoral college process.

The NPVIC movement began in 2006, inspired mainly by the 2000 presidential election in which George W. Bush narrowly lost the popular vote to Al Gore but prevailed in the electoral college. There have been four other instances, most recently 2016, when the presidential winner lost the popular vote.^[1]Donald Trump in 2016, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, and John Quincy Adams in 1824. Adams lost both the popular vote and in the electoral college but was elected by the House … Continue reading By its terms, the NPVIC will take effect only if it attracts enough states to control 270 electoral votes, the number needed to decide presidential elections. According to its website, 18 states and the District of Columbia, now holding a total of 222 electoral votes, have signed up so far. The most recent addition is Virginia, which joined just this year. The NPVIC currently needs to add states having only 48 more electoral votes to become operative.^[2]The exact number is subject to change since the allocation of electoral votes among states will undergo revision following the 2030 census.

A reasonable case can be made that the NPVIC would advance democratic principles. Electing the president by popular vote certainly seems more democratic. It’s fair to argue that the electoral college is anachronistic and the Constitution would instead provide for direct popular election of the president if it were written today. Presidential elections by popular vote should also enhance citizen engagement since the competition would truly be nationwide rather than limited in practice to the handful of swing states that now tend to determine the electoral college winner.

However, the NPVIC also carries many potential downsides. For starters, there are profound issues over its constitutionality. It’s an obvious attempt to circumvent the state-based process adopted by the framers of the Constitution, who specifically rejected presidential election by direct popular vote. Indeed, it would  nullify the formula for allocating electoral votes the framers carefully crafted to strike a balance between larger and smaller states.

While the Constitution grants states broad discretion over how to choose their electors, it’s questionable whether this extends to making themselves irrelevant by scrapping the state-based system that is central to the Constitution’s design and essentially outsourcing their electoral vote to other states. Another issue is whether the Constitution’s Compacts Clause requires congressional consent to the NPVIC.^[3]See here and here for a detailed discussion of these and additional legal issues.

Elections subject to the NPVIC would present many practical complications as well. A system in which every vote in every state is in play would likely increase election challenges and recount demands exponentially, perhaps requiring nationwide recounts. Simply arriving at initial national vote totals would be a protracted process.^[4]It took California five weeks to certify its 2024 popular vote. All this could leave the presidential election outcome in limbo for an inordinate period.^[5]See here and here for more on these and other practical challenges.

Additionally, the NPVIC has a pronounced partisan tilt. While the initiative has received scattered bipartisan support, its proponents lean heavily Democratic. Every state to adopt the NPVIC so far as well as the District of Columbia is deep blue or blue-leaning. Democrats held a “trifecta” (control of both legislative chambers and the executive) in 17 of the 19 jurisdictions.^[6]In another, Hawaii, the Democratic legislature overrode the Republican governor’s veto of the bill to join. Public opinion polls also show a sharp partisan divide. While a majority of Americans favor popular election of the president, support is much higher among Democrats than Republicans.^[7]See the 2024 polls by Pew and Gallup. Importantly, these polls were taken before the 2024 presidential election.

Another question is whether citizens would readily accept the consequences of the NPVIC if it took effect. It’s one thing to favor direct popular election in the abstract, but would majority voters in states whose electoral votes went to the candidate they opposed really be OK with that? While Democrats apparently feel that popular vote election gives them an edge, they should be careful what they wish for. Trump won the popular vote in 2024; thus, under NPVIC he would have won the electoral vote from all solid blue states whose majorities voted against him. His narrow popular vote margin over Kamala Harris (about 1.5 percent) would have translated to a landslide win in the electoral college.

Finally, there’s a clearly legal, less convoluted alternative to the NPVIC that would achieve the democratic benefits of presidential election by popular vote while preserving the Constitution’s current electoral college framework as well as the integrity of each individual state’s electoral vote. It would also avoid many of the NPVIC’s practical complications.

The fundamental problem with our current system isn’t the electoral college per se but the fact that most states award their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. This problem could be solved if each state instead allocated its electoral votes to reflect as closely as possible the popular vote within that state. For example, if the presidential candidates split the popular vote in a state with 10 electoral votes 60 to 40 percent, the winner would receive six of those electoral votes with the losing candidate getting the other four. This approach would consistently align electoral college and nationwide popular vote results, and it’s clearly constitutional. In fact, two states, Maine and Nebraska, now use a variant of it.

Alas, preferable as this approach might be, it seems politically infeasible in our current polarized, hyper-partisan environment. Implementing it would require a degree of collaboration between red and blue states that is hard to envision. Solid Republican and Democratic states would have to cede a significant portion of their now reliable electoral votes to the other party. Nevertheless, those who genuinely seek more democratic presidential elections might at least consider it.

 

 

 

 

 

Confusion abounds over exactly why the United States started the current war on Iran, what its strategic objectives are, and what the war’s likely outcome and long-term consequences will be. Major military operations are necessarily complex and unpredictable; hence the term “fog of war.” However, the evolving and frequently inconsistent explanations by the Trump administration along with President Trump’s erratic threats, actions and increasingly unhinged rants compound the inevitable uncertainty.

Two accounts–one unverified but plausible, the other clearly true–do shed light on how the war came about. Both are troubling. 

A remarkable New York Times story offers a detailed narrative of the presidential decision-making process. It suggests that the pivotal event was a February 11 White House meeting at which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made a “hard sell” for the war to Trump and a small circle of his advisors. Netanyahu insisted that the war could be completed quickly and would result in ousting Iran’s radical regime. He discounted the risk that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz or attack neighboring countries. After listening to Netanyahu’s pitch, Trump supposedly replied “sounds good to me.”

Of Trump’s advisors, only Defense Secretary Hegseth shared his enthusiasm; the rest expressed varying degrees of skepticism. Over the following days, U.S. intelligence officials assessed Netanyahu’s prediction of an uprising leading to regime change as “detached from reality” and “farcical.” Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine warned Trump that a major campaign against Iran would drastically deplete U.S. weapons stockpiles and emphasized the risk of Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Vice President Vance opposed the operation outright.

The timetable for reaching a decision was pushed up by intelligence that Iran’s ayatollah would be vulnerable to assassination on a particular day. In the end, none of Trump’s advisors pushed back significantly against his initial inclination to go to war despite their reservations. According to the article, all deferred to Trump’s instinct that the war would be a quick and decisive win.

If even the gist of this account is true, it presents a disturbing picture: Trump launched a major military action based largely on his own instincts, favoring the rosy scenario pushed by Netanyahu over cautionary assessments by military and intelligence officials as well as mainly skepticism by the few advisors he consulted. While its accuracy can’t be established definitively, this account does align with Trump’s consistent tendency to operate mainly by whim with little interest in or tolerance for opposing views. 

The second disturbing feature, which is clearly true, is the absence of any consultation with Congress. The Constitution explicitly vests the power to declare war in Congress. Over time, war powers have shifted dramatically from Congress to the president. Nevertheless, the total absence of congressional participation in this case is striking. Law Professors Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith describe the Iran war as “among the most consequential [congressionally] unauthorized presidential uses of force in all of American history,” probably second only to the Korean War, and also “a new nadir in the decline of Congress’s check on presidential war.”

The lack of congressional input is more than an abstract legal concern. Bauer and Goldsmith note that the constitutional authority to declare war was assigned to Congress “to ensure a democratic check on unilateral presidential military adventurism.” They see a direct connection between the absence of consultation with Congress before or since the Iran war began and the volatility with which the administration has conducted it. They submit that “the need to justify and explain [the war] to government leaders outside the presidential bubble might have surfaced the many problems that have become apparent over the last month and counseled a steadier course.”  

Nothing illustrates this better than the conundrum over Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Most experts regard this tactic by Iran as entirely foreseeable. General Caine reportedly highlighted the risk to Trump, but Trump brushed it aside and his “bubble” offered little resistance. They now face a variant of Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule (“you break it, you own it”). One expert submits that the crisis Trump created regarding the Strait may have caused the war to morph from one of choice to one of necessity.

Trump’s varying responses to the closure have ranged from asserting that reopening the Strait is someone else’s problem, to saying it will somehow reopen itself, to making the reopening an essential part of any settlement of the war. He has now ordered the U.S. military to conduct its own blockade of the Strait.

How the war turns out remains to be seen, but all outward signs along with the above reporting suggest that Trump started it with no coherent, realistic strategy. Moreover, he is operating without either internal or congressional guardrails.

Clearly, the U.S. military is performing at a high level; perhaps the war will achieve strategic outcomes justifying its huge costs and other consequences. However, surely this is not the way to initiate and conduct a major war. The track record of U.S. military actions over recent decades is not good even when undertaken by more conventional presidents with more serious advisors than the ever more bizarre Trump and his gang of sycophantic enablers.       

 

One downside (among many) of the age of Trump is the tendency of his opponents to stoop to his level, adopt his tactics, and join him in a race to the bottom. Virginia’s radical gerrymandering proposal is a case in point:

• • It would debase Virginia’s redistricting process from one of the fairest in the Nation to the least fair.
  • It would make Virginia the most extremely gerrymandered of all states.
  • While promoted as a “temporary” measure to counter Trump, it would remain in effect for at least three election cycles, well after Trump leaves office, and perhaps longer.
  • It’s unlikely to significantly impact the net outcome of the 2026 House elections.
  • What it’s certain to do is devalue the constitutional voting rights of hundreds of thousands of Virginians and further degrade our already abysmal politics.

The official explanation for the proposal on the April 21 ballot is a Trump-worthy masterstroke of misinformation. The claim that its purpose is “to restore fairness in the upcoming elections” is patently false. The proposal would do precisely the opposite by restoring the unfairness of gerrymandering that the independent redistricting process it overrides was designed to prevent. Indeed, it would change Virginia’s grade on the nonpartisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project’s Redistricting Report Card from an A to an F.

The other claim in the official explanation, that the proposal would only “temporarily” supersede the independent process, is highly misleading. The gerrymandered districts would remain not just for the 2026 elections but for at least the following two election cycles reaching into the next decade. By then, those districts and their incumbents would be entrenched. If Democrats still control the state government, they will almost surely try to keep their advantage by putting off the independent process again. Conversely, if Republicans control the state, they will be itching for payback and anxious for a gerrymander of their own, invoking the Democratic “precedent.”

The new map that has already been enacted by Virginia Democrats is extreme even by gerrymandering standards. If it works as intended, it would flip one-third of the state’s U.S. House seats from a fairly balanced 6-5 split in favor of Democrats (reflecting Virginia’s political makeup) to 10 Democrats and only one Republican. This would make Virginia the most gerrymandered state in the Nation, with Republican-leaning voters more underrepresented than minority party voters in any other heavily gerrymandered state, red or blue. For example, Republicans would hold a higher proportion of House seats in deep blue Illinois than in Virginia; Democrats would be more proportionally represented in deep red Texas (even with its new gerrymander) than Republicans in Virginia.^[1]Virginia Republicans would have about the same minimal proportional  representation as California Republicans (taking California’s new gerrymander into account), but of course Virginia has a far … Continue reading 

Even proponents find the proposal distasteful but justify it as necessary to counter Trump’s mid-decade gerrymander push. Democratic Congressman Don Beyers conceded that while the proposal “seems unfair in Virginia,” voters should “hold their nose” and support it. But the justification that this is only a defensive measure to counter Trump is belied by the fact that Virginia’s gerrymandered districts would continue for at least four years after Trump leaves office.

Moreover, it’s doubtful that the proposal would significantly affect the national election outcome in 2026. Trump’s gerrymandering push lost steam after Texas and California cancelled each other out. Even if other states belatedly join in, most experts think the most likely nationwide outcome from any additional gerrymandering will be a wash or at most a net gain of only a seat or two for one side or the other. Whether Democrats win a House majority in 2026 depends on many factors that are much more influential than newly gerrymandered districts.

In sum, there is no substantive or high-minded justification for this major assault on the constitutional voting rights of Virginians. Approval of the proposal would be a huge step backward for Virginia and yet another step lower in our national politics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fact that Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees are now receiving their pay again is, of course, a good thing. For weeks they had been unfairly forced to work without pay, imposing great hardships on themselves and major inconvenience to the public, because Washington politicians refuse to do their jobs. However, the method of payment is patently illegal.

This inconvenient and somewhat obscure problem has attracted little attention given the popular outcome, but it sets a terrible precedent. If the president can bypass Congress and pay TSA salaries after Congress fails to act on the specific appropriation for this purpose, he can dip into the treasury and spend money directly for a host of other purposes he favors without congressional approval and even in the face of congressional opposition.

By way of background, the appropriation for TSA employee salaries expired on February 14 as part of the current partial government shutdown and remains nonexistent since Congress failed to agree on a carveout to revive it. Notwithstanding this, President Trump ordered the Secretary of Homeland Security in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to pay TSA employees from funds that have a “reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations.”^[1]The order consists mainly of a political attack on Democrats.

This order contradicts the express terms of the Constitution (Art. I, § 9, Clause 7), which provides: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”  Where, as here, Congress fails to enact the specific appropriation for a particular object, the President can’t invoke another more general funding source that might arguably have some “nexus” to it. Obviously, doing so would effectively nullify the constitutional prohibition.^[2]See, e.g., here: An agency cannot use an appropriation account having a logical relation to an expense when another appropriation account specifically covers that expense.

The so-called Antideficiency Act (31 U.S.C. § 1341) has been interpreted to permit the president to order essential employees to continue working during an appropriations lapse, receiving backpay after their appropriation is enacted. However, it does not permit such employees to actually be paid during the appropriations lapse. On the contrary, the Act restates the general prohibition against any federal officer or employee making or authorizing an expenditure exceeding the amount available in an appropriation. Indeed, the Act (31 U.S.C. § 1350) makes knowing and willful violations of this prohibition a crime.

Trump is probably oblivious to these legal constraints (or indifferent if he has been briefed on them). On the other hand, OMB Director Russell Vought surely is not. Vought undoubtedly knows that paying the TSA employees here is illegal. This is another all too familiar example of a fringe ideologue and sycophantic Trump enabler violating his oath of office to do Trump’s bidding.

Certainly, congressional leaders and at least senior members of both parties are likewise aware of this illegality. However, they appear willing to cynically ignore it since the end result eliminates one major cause of public outrage justifiably aimed at them for failing to perform their basic obligation to fund these important government services. Ending this significant pain point also eases pressure on them to come to their senses quickly and fulfill their constitutional responsibilities. (Congress is now on a two-week break.)

Once more, it’s great that TSA agents are being paid and airport screening delays are abating. But for anyone paying close attention this comes at a heavy potential cost to the proper functioning of our government whose ramifications remain to be seen.      

Parsing the decision-making of any president is difficult given the many complexities involved. Trump presents added challenges since he is a serial fabulist and the explanations he and his underlings offer frequently conflict and change radically. Could Occam’s Razor help? This principle holds that the simplest answer to a problem—i.e., the one with the fewest complexities, assumptions, and variables—is often the best. One straightforward, readily observable, and consistent theme goes a long way toward explaining Trump: virtually everything he does seems to be fundamentally about himself, specifically advancing his personal interests or feeding his insatiable ego.    

Allen Frances, a psychiatrist who helped write the criteria for a condition known as “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” (NPD), describes Trump as “an undisputed poster boy for narcissism” who “demonstrates in pure form every single [NPD] symptom.” Dr. Frances cautions that this does not mean Trump is mentally ill; indeed his main point is to criticize those who leap to this conclusion.^[1]For one thing, it is unethical under the so-called “Goldwater Rule” to diagnose anyone as mentally ill without examining them; for another, many politicians and other public figures exhibit NPD … Continue reading However, it is abundantly clear that Trump is a world-class narcissist.

According to the Mayo Clinic, people with NPD can exhibit the following symptoms:

• • Have an unreasonably high sense of self-importance and require constant, excessive admiration.
  • Feel that they deserve privileges and special treatment.
  • Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements.
  • Make achievements and talents seem bigger than they are.
  • Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate.
  • Believe they are superior to others and can only spend time with or be understood by equally special people.
  • Be critical of and look down on people they feel are not important.
  • Expect special favors and expect other people to do what they want without questioning them.
  • Take advantage of others to get what they want.
  • Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others.
  • Be envious of others and believe others envy them.
  • Behave in an arrogant way, brag a lot and come across as conceited.
  • Insist on having the best of everything.

They also have trouble handling anything they view as criticism; become impatient or angry when they don’t receive special recognition or treatment; easily feel slighted; react with rage or contempt; and belittle other people to make themselves appear superior.

Trump regularly displays most if not all of these characteristics in his public statements and behavior. To cite just a few examples:

• • He’s stocked his White House staff and administration with compliant, unquestioning sycophants.
  • He engages in unhinged rants against those who challenge his positions from political opponents, to media figures, to judges and Supreme Court justices.
  • He seeks vengeance against perceived enemies through frivolous legal attacks.
  • He names things for himself and covets awards and recognition.
  • He can’t accept his 2020 election loss and obsessively seeks ways to relitigate it.
  • He far exceeds former presidents in embellishing his accomplishments, frequently telling obvious lies.
  • He scorns foreign leaders who express insufficient praise and gratitude to him and favors those who flatter him.
  • His gratuitous, nonsensical, and cruel comments on the  murder of the Reiners and the death of Robert Mueller highlight both his need to make everything about himself and his total lack of empathy.

Moreover, there’s no obvious explanation for Trump’s behavior other than indulging his ego. He functions transactionally with no apparent core ideological beliefs. He flouts traditional democratic values and has no respect for the rule of law. Notably, he declared himself to be  constrained only by his own “morality.”

Nor does he adhere to any consistent policy agenda. He ran in 2024 on a platform of opposing illegal immigration, improving the economic lot of ordinary Americans, and keeping the nation out of foreign military entanglements. While he successfully secured the southern border, he pushed his anti-immigrant campaign well beyond what most of the public expected or wanted. He shows little interest in specific steps to improve the economic welfare of non-wealthy Americans, and some of his key policies do the opposite. 

Most surprisingly, he did a complete about-face on military adventurism. He sought to annex Greenland, he used the military to kill alleged drug smugglers, he attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, and he seized Venezuelan President Maduro. His most consequential action is the current war on Iran. Efforts abound from all ideological quarters to understand the rationale for starting this war, what its objectives are, and how it will end. These efforts are hampered by statements from Trump and others in the administration that are even more vague, shifting, and conflicting than usual.^[2]See, e.g., here, here, here and here.  

What is consistent in Trump’s words and actions is a focus on himself. According to Trump’s press secretary, he said he started the war because of a “a good feeling” that Iran was about to attack U.S. assets. He posted an image of himself captioned “the most badass president of all time.” He demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” He insisted that he must be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next leader. He declared the war will be over “any time I want it to end” and “when I feel it in my bones.” He said he “chose” not to wipe out Iran’s oil infrastructure on Kharg Island “for reasons of decency,” but later added that “we may hit it a few more times just for fun.”  

All of this points to an unserious person consumed by self-importance who operates by whim and caprice. It suggests that Trump’s ego played a major, perhaps pivotal, role in his decision to go to war. With the exception of his ludicrous Greenland escapade, Trump’s previous adventures worked well for him; they kept him in the spotlight and made him look macho, decisive, and formidable. These quick successes probably emboldened him to undertake the Iran war with the same aims in mind.

The war now rages on and its consequences expand while Trump contemplates his next potential adventure: Cuba.