US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

TBH The Right in the US has such a structural advantage, that Congress's silence becomes de-facto acceptance. Congress choosing to not do oversight becomes a de-facto repeal of the law.

The only other option is to find someone with standing being harmed and sue. And that will take time to wind through the courts, with not great chances at SCOTUS.

> Congress's silence becomes de-facto acceptance. Congress choosing to not do oversight becomes a de-factor repeal of the law.

Yes, but why is that surprising? If a majority of any legislature doesn't care to see a law enforced, they could vote to repeal the law anyway. It's only because of the artifice of the filibuster in the U.S. system that there's a meaningful difference between those two things.

Because they now control the Congress and SCOTUS, there is effectively no recourse. Congress is paralysed and SCOTUS will almost always rule in favor of the Administration.

They studied and effectively undermined the system patiently. Now armed forces are being deployed to all major cities.

I agree, I'm not sure it is surprising.

(there would be tremendous oversight if the GOP was in power in Congress, and the President was a Dem)

It's not just a structural advantage, it's a de facto suspension of the Constitution.

Political parties are in theory subordinate to the Constitution, but when the executors and interpreters of the law are first and foremost agents of a political party, and they refuse to be constrained by the Constitution, that's the ballgame. You have a self-coup.

What we are witnessing is the aftermath of the self-coup, the Constitution is just a polite fiction that must be given lip service to prevent the already massive protests from turning into an outright color revolution.

a giant 147000 square mile space like Montana with 1.1 M people, 2.8% the size of California's population, gets 2 Senators regardless.

That is, the Senate gives representation to empty land.

That's pretty structural !

The difference is that uneven enforcement is the tool of autocrats. Ignoring the law breeds contempt for it. Madison said requiring a supermajority for normal legislation would poison democracy, and I think the modern usage filibuster has proven him correct. I hope the GOP ditches the whole thing, not just for continuing resolutions. The senate will no longer have any excuses for abdicating its responsibilities. Thrashing laws are a small price to pay. I do wish judicial appointments still required a supermajority.

"oversight"

Like the Benghazi and Hunter Biden investigations. In other words, sideshows.

One nice thing about pointless witch hunts that go nowhere despite enormous efforts is that you can be sure a much-quicker process ending with something like actual consequences would ensue if there were real criminality to investigate.

If all they can come up with is bullshit, things must be going ok, and if they’re committed to pursuing bullshit, odds are good they’d be thrilled to find something real to attack, if they could. Similar deal with Republican election complaints: if they don’t bother to investigate when they can, or find nothing substantial when they do, those concerns can be safely dismissed, which is nice.

Picking and choosing which laws to enforce is baked into the concept of prosecutorial discretion. There is a reason the country’s prosecutor in chief is an elected position. It was understood to be a fundamentally political office even in Jefferson’s day: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/02/thomas-je...

I agree we should abolish the filibuster. It makes incremental changes difficult and fosters extremism.

In the Senate at least outside of a few carve outs, you really need 60 Senators to get anything passed not just a majority. The only reason the ACA ever passed was during the brief window they had 60 Senators

This is often described in terms of adherence to democratic norms, but I like your framing better.

If we have to distill the problem down to its simplest essence, it's the political parties. In particular, it's the existence of the two political parties, whose priorities have transcended those of the Republic itself (mostly the members' self interest). It just so happens to be the Republicans in power when the consequences of this have spiraled out of control.

We are, it appears now, a country of laws…uits.

Yeah, that's not how things work. Senate can't pass anything unless the House agrees and the House is representative of the population. Also, footnote, we've been structuring governments this way for thousands of years. Rome, etc.

The house is similarly disproportionate

You're not wrong, but Congress has been broken for a long, long time. Congress really doesn't do anything except for agree (if they've got a majority with the president) or disagree (if they're in the minority against the president) with the current president. They don't really make laws, they don't hold anyone accountable, they don't fund the government. They don't govern at all, they just try to keep getting re-elected.

how does that favor one side?

Vermont has fewer people than Montana. How does that impact your structural analysis?

Because the whole point of laws is that they are not merely the whims of whoever currently sits on the throne. They provide guidance to people as to what they can reasonably expect will and will not be permitted, and the obligations of various people to eachother. Laws need to be changeable, because the world changes, but that process is purposefully made somewhat difficult so that only worthwhile changes are made, so that the changes can be explicitly communicated, and those who make the changes can be both advised before and held accountable after.

If congress wants to see the laws changed, it has that power. Indeed, that's its entire reason for existing. The fact that it is not doing so, and instead ignoring laws on the books while leaving them there, is at best dereliction of duty, if not tacit acceptance that they don't actually have the votes to make those changes.

How so?

I think distilling in that far is missing the point that this is a republican and right wing issue. It doesn’t “just so happen” that republicans are in power while this is happening, they are the ones who are doing it.

The Senate heavily favors rural voters. The House is supposed to be representative, but favors rural voters thanks to gerrymandering and the cap on congressional representatives (Nebraska should have less than 1 rep in a truly representative institution, for example). Then you’ve got the presidency itself, where the electoral college favors rural voters. And the courts, which reflect the will of the president in cooperation with the senate, so also heavily biased toward rural voters.

There’s a reason the U.S. is the only modern democracy with a system like this. Almost any other country you’re likely to want to live in has a parliamentary system.

This isn’t true though. Lots of legislation has been passed. Government shutdowns have become common but they’re not universal. Your absolutist take is observably false. It is worth looking deeper at who the obstructionists in congress actually are. A minority of bad actors can cause immense harm.

The House is not as skewed as the Senate. But it still has a "rural" bias through two mechanisms: 1. gerrymandering, and 2. the 435 cap on the number of representatives.

Both parties do gerrymander. But there are more "red" states than blue, so it systemically favors one party.

The cap on reps also skews things. Nebraska, Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont all have less than 1/435th of the U.S. population, so they're over-represented in the House. That over-representation comes at the expense of big states like California being under-represented.

You can see this effect by looking at the popular vote vs the representation in The House. In the 2016 election, Trump won the election with just 46.1% of the popular vote. Republicans maintained control of The House with 55.4% control. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won 51.3% of the popular vote. And Democrats gained control with slightly less than that, 51.03% of The House. In the 2024 election, Trump won 49.81% of the popular vote, Republicans won 50.8% of seats in The House.

> Because the whole point of laws is that they are not merely the whims of whoever currently sits on the throne.

That views laws as self-executing abstractions, which they are not. Laws necessarily are enforced by people. For that reason, in the U.S., law enforcement is typically assigned to elected officers and their delegates. From the beginning of the republic, enforcement of federal law has been a political activity: https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2017/04/MARKOWITZ.pdf

“While there was no direct conversation about the general power of prosecutorial discretion in the record of the framing of the Constitution, prosecutorial discretion was an uncontroversial power of the President from the start. President George Washington personally directed that numerous criminal and civil prosecutions be initiated and that others be halted. It has been observed that President Washington’s control over ‘prosecutions was wide- ranging, largely uncontested by Congress, and acknowledged—even expected—by the Supreme Court.’ In the earliest days of the Union, future Chief Justice John Marshall had the opportunity to opine on the nature of the President’s prosecutorial discretion authority in discussing the decision of the President to interrupt a prosecution of an individual accused of murder on board a British vessel and to instead deliver that person to British authorities. On the floor of Congress, then-Representative Marshall described the President’s prosecutorial discretion power as ‘an indubitable and a Constitutional power’ which permitted him alone to determine the ‘will of the nation’ in making decisions about when to pursue and when to forego prosecutions.”

there's a very basic reason, you really don't know what it could be?

The 5 smallest states by population are:

- Wyoming

- Vermont

- Alaska

- North Dakota

- South Dakota

4 of these 5 are consistently "red". 1 is consistently "blue".

The 5 largest states by population are:

- California

- Texas

- Florida

- New York

- Illinois

3 of these are consistently "blue". 1 is consistently "red", and 1 is "purple" (though appears to be skewing "red" in the most recent elections)

They have subpoena power and a jail. They just refuse to exact accountability unless you're something critically important like a baseball player.

We have that, for now.

The talking heads on Fox have started to prepare us for a country without judges and lawsuits. Or at least without any Democratic judges.

That’s not true.

Prosecutorial discretion exists because the executive can always say they’re just prioritizing their limited resources.

They absolutely ARE NOT allowed to just say “I’m not enforcing this because I disagree with the law.”

They also absolutely ARE NOT allowed to say “I’m enforcing a specific law against Party X but not against Party Y because I’m exercising discretion and I just like X.” That’s why dismissal for selective or vindictive prosecution exists.

In principle, the Constitution is quite clear: the President SHALL take care that the laws be faithfully executed…

If you go that route Nebraska will lag ever more behind other states given they don't get to have any political power.

Look, I'm just someone from the other side of the pond. This is what happens: when you have no substantial representation for the country side your political system rewards centralisation, rural areas will stagnate, leading to less people there. A cycle that fuels itself.

As someone that has had to live through this I can assure you that those feeding the country should be given proper representation. Not doing so favours huge metropolies, rises urban house prices, prevents proper traffic flow, increases crime rate, etc...

Of course no system is perfect but a middle ground is preferable in my view.

> They absolutely ARE NOT allowed to just say “I’m not enforcing this because I disagree with the law.”

Prosecutors are allowed to do that and do so all the time: https://www.aei.org/articles/viewpoint-on-not-enforcing-the-... (“Indeed, the ability of prosecutors to pick and choose among offenses is part of the constitutional structure of our government, as the Supreme Court has held too many times to recount. President Jefferson refused to enforce the Alien and Sedition Acts because he was convinced that they were unjust, and unconstitutional to boot. (In 1964 the Supreme Court vindicated him.) President Carter pardoned most selective service violators and halted further prosecutions. President Johnson’s Antitrust Division published antitrust guidelines that proclaimed a policy of not bringing suit against small mergers, even though the Supreme Court had held repeatedly that similar mergers were unlawful. Many state and local governments decline to prosecute small drug offenses, saving resources for bigger game.”).

With all due respect, being "from the other side of the pond", I don't think you understand the U.S. well enough to be commenting. For example, California is both the largest producer of food in the U.S., and the state being most significantly under-represented in all three branches of government.

The U.S. is also, easily, the most volatile (extreme partisanship) country of comparable rich, democratic nations. The system we have is pretty unique in its attempts to bend-over backwards to boost rural voters' importance, and we're worse off in virtually every "bad thing" you mention than countries that don't do this.

Centralization? Our president is independently murdering people in the carribbean, demolishing an entire wing of Whitehouse to build himself a new ballroom, independently changing funding (i.e. has hijacked the power of the purse from Congress), is independently sending in the U.S. military into states run by his political opponents against their will, pardoning violent criminals who supported him (one of whom was caught plotting to murder the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries), etc.

Rural areas will stagnate / people will move away? Dawg. That's already been happening despite the political concessions they've been given. That ain't the problem.

Urban house prices skyrocketing? Happening. NYC is among the least affordable major cities on the planet.

Crime rate? Generally highest in the places where we give disproportionate political sway to.

Are you suggesting the 66x more representation Wyomingers get over Californians in the Senate isn't enough? Is the ~3.5x more voting power they get in presidential elections not enough? What is a fair "middle ground" in your estimation? Because it feels extraordinarily unfair in the exact opposite direction, to me.

(Editing to add): It's also worth pointing out that this delta in voting power is much more extreme today than it was when this system was designed. In the 1800 census, the most populous state, Virginia, had 885,000 people, around 15x more than Delaware, the least populous state. Today, California has 67x the population of Wyoming.

Did you read the article you posted? The entire thing is about allocation of finite resources. You can read the original Antitrust enforcement policy and see that it lays out a system of prioritization which (surprise surprise), prioritizes larger monopolization efforts over smaller ones.

It does not say "we don't think small companies can behave monopolistically so we aren't enforcing the law on them."

President Jefferson did not come out and say he's not enforcing ASA because he disagreed with them. Instead, he (secretly) wrote a memo against them as VP, then as President let them expire and pardoned everyone convicted under them.

I will reiterate the plain language of the United States Constitution: [the President] SHALL take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

SHALL does not mean MAY or AT HIS DISCRETION or any such thing.

The essence of the problem is not political parties, we've had them for hundreds of years and nothing this bad has happened. The actual simplest essence of this problem is malignant narcissism and cult-like behavior embedded in political parties.

Donald Trump is an actual cult leader (Jim Jones was also a malignant narcissist), MAGA is an actual cult (not just a cult of personality), and they are also ostensibly but not actually a political party. Insofar as a two party system isn't ideal, it at least provides a level of stability. But when one of the two parties is an actual cult, then the whole thing falls over. Parties must not be cults. That's the root of our current predicament.

> It just so happens

This didn't just "happen", it was predicted far in advance, and not on the basis of parties but on the basis of antisocial personality disorders. For instance:

https://medium.com/@Elamika/the-unbearable-lightness-of-bein... and https://medium.com/@Elamika/tyranny-as-a-triumph-of-narcissi...

  If we as a species are to flourish and prosper, we need to understand that our urgent and necessary task is transcending and dismantling of our narcissism, both individual and collective.

Note the date, May 13, 2016 to 2018. Her body of work from that time predicts with extreme prescience what has come to pass. Thinking back to when she made these predictions, people called her crazy, alarmist, unprofessional, all ignored her warnings. And yet, she turned out to be 100% right, even predicting the insurrection years before J6. Even as Trump was calling for a mob to descend on Congress days before J6, people refused to believe it would happen. Yet she got it right just by being lucid about who Trump is at his core.

How did she do it? She used her professional experience to recognize Trump as a malignant narcissist, and her lived experience as a Polish national who watched the rise of authoritarianism in her country to put 2 + 2 together.

So it wasn't something that "just happened" as if it was only a matter of time before Democrats act this way. There are precise reagents needed to make it happen. Political parties are necessary but not sufficient. The cult leader is the necessary ingredient that was missing. People who knew what to look for recognized it early, called it out, predicted this would happen, and they were ignored.

We can't rewrite that history now, we have to learn the lessons we missed. "It just so happens to be the Republicans in power when the consequences of this have spiraled out of control" is not the lesson. "A two party system where one of the parties turns into an actual cult destabilizes completely" is the lesson.

> That views laws as self-executing abstractions, which they are not. Laws necessarily are enforced by people.

No it doesn't. The laws are statements of what people in power will do under particular circumstances. This view only makes sense if people are executing the laws. The moment you stop executing the laws, suddenly you don't have laws.

Prosecutorial discretion is another beast entirely. Considering circumstances on a case by case basis is necessary for functional justice, as lawmakers can not possibly foresee all circumstances and even if they could the enforcers of laws have practical limits. A cop letting you off with a warning for speeding is discretion. It is not permission for you or anyone else to ignore the speed limit in the future. The law is still there, and you should expect to suffer the consequences if you break it.

We don't need laws when they ask us to do something we'd want to do anyways. Laws exist for the sole purpose of getting people to do the things they would rather not do, or to prevent them from doing things they would prefer to do. If the law can be violated when it is convenient for the lawmaker, you do not live in a nation of laws.

People still refuse to believe J6 happened. They instead Trump got 1 trillion dollars from Qatar. That fictional version of reality is much nicer, of course.

I fear you misunderstood me.

I am but stating the dark side of equal voting power when you elect representatives per "region" dictated by the population they have. It is meant to be a warning, something to bear in mind when you do attempt to change the system you have.

I am not arguing in favour of what you have right now, hence the middle ground point at the end.

Regardless, my understanding of the US is not important. What is important in my comment is my understanding of what you don't do, and potential footguns.

A good middle ground would be to still have it entirely dictated by population (I understand this seems contradictory but hang on). But, in order to prevent votes from low population regions from being useless, your system uses "preferential voting". Most other countries do not do this, hence my previous comment. The key here is that at a national level, politicians still need to value less populated regions, because at least a percentage of their votes came from someone who voted in an order that still got them a seat (even though they weren't the top pick). Given rural regions have less seats to vote for, this vote would likely come from someone from the country side.

This solution however is only important when you do have more than 2 parties. If you don't do this, having more than 2 parties would be moot in these regions, because they need to vote strategically if they want representation. And 90% of the time that means your vote is limited to only one of the top 2 parties (as perceived by national polls before voting day). This is yet another dark side of the system my country does have, it incentivizes the status quo to prevail, even when your current leaders are a bunch of corrupt fellas.

> President Jefferson did not come out and say he's not enforcing ASA because he disagreed with them. Instead, he (secretly) wrote a memo against them as VP, then as President let them expire and pardoned everyone convicted under them.

He didn’t enforce the ASA because he disagreed with it, just like Jimmy Carter didn’t prosecute people for selective service violations because he disagreed with it. It wasn’t because the resources weren’t available to enforce those laws.

You actually can’t know what their motivations were — which is the point.

For example, if Congress had appropriated funds specifically for doing those things, the executive would be obligated to do them, because it’d be unambiguous as to whether resources existed to do them.

This is again an absolutely unambiguous consequence of Congress’s Constitutional control of spending and of the Take Care Clause.

What you are describing is effectively a line-item veto, which doesn’t exist in the US.

So far all the evidence you’ve posted is actually evidence of my argument, not yours.

> You actually can’t know what their motivations were — which is the point.

But we know the motivation because Jefferson wrote it down. It wasn’t resource management, it was opposition to the law on principle.

Why can't you find a record of him publicly saying so? If it's just an established check and balance in our system, why can't you produce evidence of him saying "I'm not enforcing this law because I disagree with it" in any forum in which he could be held accountable (or not accountable, per your theory) for that decision?

Here's why: because it's not!

Here's SCOTUS in Kendall v United States:

> To contend that the obligations imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully executed implies a power to forbid their execution is a novel construction of the Constitution, and is entirely inadmissible.

> "This doctrine cannot receive the sanction of this Court. It would be vesting in the President a dispensing power which has no countenance for its support in any part of the Constitution, and is asserting a principle which, if carried out in its results to all cases falling within it, would be clothing the President with a power to control the legislation of Congress and paralyze the administration of justice."

> The result of the cases of McIntire v. Wood and McCluny v. Silliman clearly is that the [court's authority to command an officer of the United States] to perform a specific act required by a law of the United States is within the scope of the judicial powers of the United States under the Constitution"