The Premature Guide to Post-Trump Reform [View all]

[Passages]

American history offers three general strategies of repair and renewal.

by Paul Starr July 31, 2025

Donald Trump is teaching us about the limitations of America’s constitutional system. We may have believed that the Constitution’s separation of powers, checks and balances, and guarantees of rights would protect us from a president with authoritarian and corrupt ambitions. But the framework we have counted on is failing.

Trump’s abuses of his office have met no effective opposition from the other branches of government. As he has overreached his executive powers, Congress has done nothing to deter him, and the Supreme Court has done more to embolden than to contain him. In his first term, the “adults” Trump appointed to top positions had some cautionary influence on him, but he has now thrown off restraints and surrounded himself with sycophants, enablers, and ideologues. Only half a year into a second term, he is acting, in the words of the conservative former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, with “utter contempt for the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

SNIP*
The immediate task for the opposition to Trump is to use every available legal means of appeal and political mobilization to stop or slow him down. But there must be a long-run agenda too. Trump’s actions are not popular, and they are likely, sooner or later, to blow up and produce a reaction. As distant as a post-Trump future may now seem, we should look ahead to a time when Americans are ready to repair both the harm done by Trump and the institutions that have allowed it.

History offers three models for institutional repair: changing the laws, changing the Supreme Court, or amending the Constitution. The first is the post-Watergate model, which primarily involves codifying unwritten norms in legislation and executive branch rules. The second is the politically treacherous path of judicial reform. The third, amending the Constitution, is only a dim possibility but still useful to consider, because some of the problems highlighted by Trump lie in the Constitution itself.
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-31-premature-guide-to-post-trump-reform/

A way out.