The Constitution is collapsing

Karen Tumulty, Washington Post - Congress’s abdication of its constitutional powers and responsibilities to an executive branch run amok — or, you might say, run-a-Musk — would surely have horrified the Founders.

“In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates,” James Madison wrote.

But during Donald Trump’s first weeks in office, he has begun to unilaterally dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was made an “independent establishment” by Congress. He set a target on other parts of government with a legislative mandate, including the Education Department. He put a block on trillions in funding that lawmakers appropriated to a host of federal programs, until a court order stopped him. He fired 17 inspectors general without giving the 30-day notice to Capitol Hill required by law.

The framers clearly never envisioned a Congress that would be so supine in the face of such a barrage. Or a Senate majority that would, rather than advise, merely consent to such preposterously unqualified Cabinet choices as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to run the Pentagon.