The People Have Spoken

But will the Trump administration listen? It is too soon to tell, and the early moves suggest they aren't, but we will see after December.

 

Here's the question I keep coming back to: is the law the same for everybody, or does it just look that way from where most of us stand? Start with voting. The whole idea of this country is that voters pick their leaders. But lately it feels backward. Many of the rules about how we vote are written by the people on the ballot. When lawmakers draw their own districts, they get to pick their voters instead of the other way around. When they change voter ID rules, close polling places in certain neighborhoods, or purge voter rolls, it's usually the folks least likely to vote for them who have the hardest time. That should bother everyone, no matter for whom they vote. Making it easier to vote and taking the map-drawing out of politicians' hands shouldn't be a partisan fight. It's simply making sure the people in charge still answer to the people. Participatory government was our founders' vision. We just have to demand that they fix it.

 

Money makes it worse.

 

A candidate who depends on a small number of big donors spends a lot of time calling those donors and not much time listening to the folks back home. Since Citizens United outside groups can spend without limits, and plenty of them never tell us who's paying. If you know a small group of rich backers can end your career in a primary, you'll answer to them first, even if that group isn't even an American group. Disclosure, fair maps, eliminating outside interference, ending Citizens United, and easier access would go a long way toward fixing that.

 

Now Healthcare

 

For many of us, insurance comes through a job. That sounds fine until you consider what it really means. Maybe your kid has asthma, your spouse has cancer, or you have a heart condition, and you can't afford to lose coverage. So, you stay in a job you hate. You don't start that business. You turn down the better offer. Economists call this "job lock," and research shows how common it is. Your health shouldn't be the leash that keeps you in place. Most wealthy countries have adopted some form of universal system, so nobody has to make that trade. I think Medicare for All deserves a serious look, including the hard questions about how to pay for it and what it does to taxes and wages. But it's hard to argue that a country that spends more per person than anyone else and still ends up with lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality is getting its money's worth. What we have is not working. Too much of that spending goes to billing, insurance paperwork, and profit, not care. And the folks who get squeezed hardest are the ones with the least leverage to push back. If a system is more expensive and gives you less, it's not doing its job.

 

Then there's accountability.

 

 This is where I think the problem is clearest. If you steal a car or skip a court date, you can be arrested, get a record, and end up in jail. But when a big company defrauds investors, dumps pollution on a town, or hides a dangerous product, the usual result is a settlement the company pays, and the shareholders eat with no admission of wrongdoing and often no charges against executives. It wouldn’t surprise me if more people died from corporate decisions than from guns. After the 2008 crisis, very few senior bankers faced criminal charges, even as millions of families lost their homes. When the penalty lands on the company and never on the people who made the call, the lesson people take away is simple: the rules are for folks without good lawyers. Accountability only means something if it starts at the top. The more fortunate should be treated as though they have as much to lose as anybody else. That means charging individuals, not just companies. It means ending the habit of settling for fines that are small change compared to what was made. It means treating white-collar crime with the same seriousness as street crime. And it means officials who abuse power face consequences instead of a quiet exit or a pardon. Trust in the law depends on believing it applies to everyone, and that belief wears away every time the powerful walk.

 

That brings me to victims.

That brings me to victims. Families harmed by abuses in immigration enforcement have too often waited for answers while agencies investigated themselves. Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes waited years for anyone to look hard at the powerful people connected to his network, and many still have questions nobody has answered. None of those billionaires have gone to jail. In both cases, the people with the most to lose from a full accounting often have the most say in how the process goes. Justice should mean independent investigations with real power to subpoena, release records wherever the law allows, and hold officials accountable for misleading the public or obstructing the process. Victims are witnesses whose testimony matters, not problems to be managed. Money should not mean that you can stall the process to escape accountability.

 

Then there's the military budget.

 

The United States spent about 954 billion dollars on its military in 2025, more than the next six countries combined, according to SIPRI. Many of those countries are our allies, and NATO members have been stepping up their own spending. That's the right direction, and it raises a fair question: if allies are supposed to share the load, why does America's share keep growing? Strong alliances should make defense cheaper, not more expensive. Our military spending should not be a cash cow for billionaires. That starts with an honest audit of the Pentagon, which has never passed a full financial audit. Spending more doesn't guarantee safety. Spending on the right things, and being able to show where the money goes, does. If you believe in limited government and fiscal discipline, you should be the first one asking why the defense budget gets a pass.

 

The Supreme Court is the last piece.

 

I wish to be careful here. Court packing is tempting when you're angry about where the Court is headed. But adding seats gives one side a short-term win and invites the other side to do the same the next time it holds power. The deeper problem is that the Court has operated without real, enforceable ethics rules. In 2023, ProPublica reported on undisclosed gifts and travel paid for by wealthy benefactors to sitting justices. They call them gifts; rich people don’t give something unless they want something in return. I call them bribes. The Court then adopted a code of conduct, but it has no outside enforcement, and justices largely decide for themselves whether to step aside from a case. That is not a true fix. The fix is structural. Congress and the Court should set binding ethics rules with an independent body to enforce them. Justices should fully and on time disclose gifts, travel, and financial interests. Recusal standards should be clear enough that they don't depend on one person's gut feeling. To make it even better, maybe Justices shouldn't be able to accept gifts at all. Term limits would give future presidents a regular, predictable function in forming the Court, without the cycle of retaliation that comes with packing. And judges should be judged by whether their rulings follow the Constitution and precedent, not by which party's agenda they seem to serve.

 

So how do all of these issues fit together? Because voting access, healthcare, justice for victims, the military budget, and the Court all test the same idea. Power has to be checked, no matter who holds it. Conservatives have long believed that and so have plenty of progressives. That lesson should apply to the powerful, the connected, and the wealthy just as much as to everybody else. A country that holds ordinary people to the law while giving a pass to those at the top isn't living up to its own promises. Fixing that isn't a left or right project. It's the work of making the system do what it says it does. We should expect that of our leaders, and we should demand it from anyone asking for our vote. I am not naive enough to think these are the only problems that need fixing. That damage that Trump and the Republicans have caused will not be totally fixed for probably generations. We have to start somewhere. Maybe the start should be Impeach, Convict, and Remove.