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About a year ago I made a post (with motte discussion here) about an immigration reform bill that would have handed Republicans a major victory on the issue with the most conservative comprehensive reform in a generation. Dems would have agreed to the bill since Biden's whoopsie defacto-open-borders made the issue a huge liability for them. Trump tanked it for purely cynical reasons, and the discussion hinged on whether the legislation was somehow a "trap" since Dems were agreeing to it, and whether Republicans should risk getting nothing if they lost in 2024. I contended that Republicans should take the deal and then maybe do additional legislation that was even more stringent if they won, that way they'd have something even if they lost, which was about at a 50% chance on betting markets at the time. But MAGA and Trump won out, going all-in on the double-or-nothing strategy.
In a sense that bet paid off, since Trump won and got a trifecta! There's just one little problem: he's not actually trying to pass any comprehensive enduring immigration legislation. There was the Laken Riley act, but it's quite small in scope. Overall, it's back to his first term tactics of mangling the interpretation of laws through executive orders, and hoping the courts don't stop him. It's likely to be about as successful as it was in his first term. Why do it this way? Why not just ask Congress to give you the powers to do what you want so you don't have to gamble on the courts? Matt Yglesias has a potential explanation in his mailbag post
So MAGA as a political movement has a better chance to change immigration than Republicans have probably ever had, and they're pissing it away with Trump cultism. They'll try to hide behind excuses like the filibuster, which could be ended with 50 votes in the Senate, and Republicans have 53 right now. Alternatively they'll try to hide behind political nihilism and say that passing laws doesn't matter since Dems could just ignore anything they pass -- this is wrong because the laws could help Trump (or other Republicans in the future) do things while there's a friendly president in power, and they could do a variety of things to try to force the Dem's hand when out of power like writing hard "shall" mandates in laws, giving Republican governors or even private citizens the standing to sue for non-enforcement, attach automatic penalties like sequestration-style clawbacks if removal numbers fall below some statutory floor, add 287(g) agreements with states giving local officers INA arrest authority, create independent enforcement boards, etc. None of these are silver bullets obviously since Dems would always be free to repeal any such laws (there are no permanent solutions in a Democracy, just ask Southern Slavers how the Gag Rule went), but that would cost them political capital or otherwise force them to try gambling with the courts if they tried to circumvent things by executive fiat.
But doing any of this would require telling Trump he needs to actually do specific things, and potentially punish him in some way if he fails to enact an ideological agenda he (vaguely) promised. That's very unlikely to happen.
On filibusters and the Senate..............
The US senate is an odd institution.
The house does the legislation. The executive executes. The courts maintain constitutional sanctity. The states already elect governors to represent them. What is the role of the Senator ? It made made some sense until the 1913 (17th amendment), when Senators were effectively subordinate (selected) to Governors. That way, state elections served as a useful way to remove both unpopular governors and senators.
An elected senate is just odd.
Most democratic nations don't have anywhere near as powerful of a Senate (or equivalent institution). The Indian Rajya-Sabha & House of Lords can only delay a bill by a short amount. A balancing counter-weight also makes sense in a parliamentary system where the executive (Prime-Minister) is selected by the house (making the house too powerful) unlike the US where the President is separately elected.
This means, in India, a person only thinks about 2 elections. Once for their state (governor, who selects senators) and once for the nation (house, which selects the executive). A British person only thinks about the Commons.
In comparison, An American must think of 4 elections. The governor, senators, house reps and the President. That's exhausting. Only takes 1 lapse, 1 midterm rando, to block legislation for the next 6 years. Doesn't the US already have enough checks-and-balances ? The house churns every 2 years. The last time someone held onto Senate+House in a midterm was in 1978.
I am just learning about the 17th amendment & the history of filibuster. so bear with me. Some wikipedia exerpts:
Appears that it made things worse than better. In an era where they were capable of pushing constitutional amendments, it's hilarious to think that they were complaining about deadlocks. Yeah buddy, try getting anything done in 2025.
Interestingly, the most important change on senate filibusters was also made in the same decade (1917). Clearly they knew filibusters were a bad idea. House filibusters were eliminated in 1842 ! Not sure why they left it half-complete in 1917.
The purpose of senates and similar elder chambers in most bicameral systems is to:
With this in mind and the general American distaste for titles and nobility, the oddities of the American Senate are unsurprising.
Yes Senates are anti-democratic. This is no accident. They are designed by republics to specifically thwart the passions of democracy.
That's why I specifically compared it to other bicameral systems.
Can't slow down a stationary object. The Senate can only limit the power of the house, a house that already moves at snails place. The Executive and Courts wield their power independently.
Works better when people were dying at age 50. When the average age of the Senate is higher than the life-expectancy 100 years ago, you know something went wrong.
All elections become popularity contests. Why make the senate elected, if the goal is to bring in experienced statesmen.
The American system was created for a different America. A white-protestant nation run by proven men who rose up the ranks through merit (college, military achievement). 75% of the Senate had a college degree in 1945, when less than 5% of the nation had gone to college. The need for fund-raising and media-access meant that running for office was exclusively limited to the elites. This meant a high degree of consensus on what America should be. Therefore, they worried about the excesses of democracy.
In 2025, America is a diverse nation with public-office having exceptionally low barriers to entry. Consensus is nonexistent and core values of various groups are at odds with each other. In such a place, the system should encourage compromise. This means giving power back to the house.
If an downstream institution can unilaterally torpedo a bill (Senate filibuster), then the house would never go through the painful process of reaching compromise. The congress can override the president, but not the senate.
I'm not quite sure what killed the ability of Congress to do its job. There are many suspects. Including the filibuster. But I can assure you that if it ever did regain some measure of power, it would still be necessary to have breaks on the car. The history of functional parliaments is full of nice sounding stupid bills that almost became law but for some high chamber pointing at the practical problems with them.
Maybe getting rid of the fillibuster would help, but the American Republic is chockful of vetoes precisely because it's designed to make exercising power difficult. I'm not sure that would be enough to be worth the trouble.
Because one is bigoted against nobility, presumably.
There are alternatives, I like the idea of a random sampling of taxpayers personally, provided the right caveats.
Take it from someone who's having it imposed on them by circumstance: parliamentary regimes are a terrible idea when your country is experiencing factionalism.
I think that devolution/decentralization/"states rights"/localism is a better and more fitting solution to this problem actually.
In the UK we sort of did that (city Mayors, Scottish/Welsh/NI governments) but the result always seems to be hard left nonentities who have very little history of practical achievement (even less than our top-level MPs). I’m not sure if that’s a structural problem or simply what the regions prefer, but implementing localism in a way that doesn’t end up with virtue-signalling parasites constantly invoking ethnic grievances for more money seems like a serious problem.
I know it didn't go very well in the UK, but I think it would be a better fit for the US where there's already some good local institutions per state that actually hold some power and responsibilities (with their own budgets and such).
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American statute is not stagnant. It certainly doesn't line up with what I'd like but plenty gets done.
Wealthy people that cleared the early years never had particularly low life expectancies. The average age in the American Senate at the moment is indeed shameful but it's not a product of medical advances.
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