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How constitutional guardrails have always contained presidential ambitions
The article discusses concerns regarding Trump’s second term and potential threats to American democracy, highlighting historical presidential power expansions and emphasizing the resilience of democratic institutions against authoritarianism in the U.S.
Victor Menaldo, University of Washington
As Donald Trump’s second inauguration fast approaches, concerns he threatens American democracy are rising yet again. Some warnings have cited Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric, willingness to undermine or malign institutions meant to constrain any president, and a combative style that strives to stretch executive power as far as possible.
Authoritarianism erodes property rights and the rule of law, so financial markets typically respond with alarm to political unrest. If major investors and corporations really believed the United States was on the brink of dictatorship, there would be large-scale capital flight, equity sell-offs, spikes in U.S. credit default swaps or rising bond yields unexplained by typical macroeconomic factors such as inflation forecasts.
Instead, there have been no systematic signs of such market reactions, nor an investor exodus from American markets. Quite the contrary.
This absence of alarm is not conclusive proof that democracy is safe forever, nor that Trump cannot damage American democracy at all. But it does suggest that credible institutions and investors who literally bet on political outcomes for a living do not view an American autocracy as imminent or even likely.
This is probably because the mechanics of upending American democracy would entail surmounting a thick tangle of constitutional, bureaucratic, legal and political obstacles. As a political economist who has written widely about the constitutional foundations of modern democracies, I submit it’s far more complicated than one man issuing brash executive orders.
Presidents have long seized more power
Throughout American history, presidents have achieved far greater expansions of executive power than Trump did in his first term.
Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, allowing detention without trial. He bypassed Congress through sweeping executive actions, most notably the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared freedom for enslaved people in Confederate states.
Woodrow Wilson created administrative agencies and imposed draconian censorship during World War I via the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s court-packing plan failed to pass, but it still cowed the Supreme Court into deference. His New Deal bureaucracy centralized vast powers in the executive branch.
Lyndon B. Johnson obtained the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, transferring major war-making powers from Congress to the presidency. Richard Nixon invoked executive privilege and ordered secret bombings in Cambodia, steps that largely bypassed congressional oversight.
George W. Bush expanded executive prerogatives after 9/11 with warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention. Barack Obama faced criticism for the dubious legal rationale behind drone strikes targeting U.S. citizens deemed enemy combatants abroad.
These historical examples should not be conflated with an actual ability to impose one-man rule, though. The United States, whatever its imperfections, has a deeply layered system of checks and balances that has repeatedly stymied presidents of both parties when they tried to govern by decree.
Trump’s openly combative style was in many ways less adept at entrenching presidential power than many of his predecessors. During his first term, he broadcast his intentions so transparently that it galvanized numerous institutional forces – judges, bureaucrats, state officials, inspectors general – to resist his attempts. While Trump’s rhetoric was more incendiary, other presidents achieved deeper expansions of the executive branch more discreetly.
Trump’s Jan. 6 plan was never realistic
Trump’s failure to impose his will became particularly evident on Jan. 6, 2021, when claims that an “auto-coup” was afoot never translated into the real-world mechanics that would have kept him in office beyond the end of his term.
Even before the Electoral Count Reform Act made the process clearer in 2022, scholars agreed that under the 12th Amendment the vice president’s role in certifying the election is purely ministerial, giving him no constitutional basis to replace or discard certified electoral votes. Similarly, state laws mandate that certification is a mandatory, ministerial duty, preventing officials from arbitrarily refusing to certify election results.
Had Pence refused to certify the Electoral College vote count, it is more likely than not that courts would have swiftly ordered Congress to proceed. Moreover, the 20th Amendment fixed noon on Jan. 20 as the end of the outgoing president’s term, making it impossible for Trump to remain in power just by creating delay or confusion.
The idea that Pence’s refusal to certify could erase state-certified votes, or coerce Congress into accepting alternate slates, had no firm grounding in law or precedent. After Jan. 20, the outgoing president would simply cease to hold office. Thus, the chain of events needed for an auto-coup to occur in 2021 would have fallen apart under the weight of well-established procedures.
A massive bureaucracy
Potential avenues of power consolidation during Trump’s impending second term are equally narrow. The federal bureaucracy makes it exceedingly difficult for a president to rule by fiat.
The Department of Justice alone comprises roughly 115,000 employees, including over 10,000 attorneys and 13,000 FBI agents, most of them career civil servants protected by the Civil Service Reform Act and whistleblower laws. They have their own professional standards and can challenge or reveal political interference. If an administration tries to remove them en masse, it runs into protracted appeals processes, legal constraints, the need to conduct a bevy of lengthy background checks and a crippling loss of institutional knowledge.
Past episodes, including the George W. Bush administration’s politically motivated dismissals of U.S. attorneys in 2006 and 2007, illustrate that congressional oversight and internal department practices can still produce major pushback, resignations and scandals that thwart political interference with the Justice Department.
Independent regulatory agencies also resist being dominated by the president. Many are designed so that no more than three out of five commissioners can belong to the same political party, ensuring some measure of bipartisan representation. Minority commissioners can deploy a host of procedural tools – delaying votes, demanding comprehensive studies, calling for hearings – that slow down or block controversial proposals. This makes it harder for a single leader to unilaterally impose policy. Those minority commissioners can also alert the media and Congress to questionable moves, inviting investigations or public scrutiny.
In addition, a 2024 Supreme Court ruling shifted the power to interpret federal laws, as passed by Congress, away from executive branch government agencies. Now, federal judges play a more active role in determining what Congress’ words mean. This requires agencies to operate within narrower bounds and to produce stronger evidence to justify their decisions. In practical terms, an administration now has less leeway to stretch statutes for partisan or authoritarian ends without encountering judicial pushback.
Layers of defenses
American democracy has vulnerabilities, and other democracies have collapsed under powerful executives before. But in my view, it’s not reasonable to draw definitive lessons from a tiny number of extreme outliers, such as Hitler in 1933 or the handful of elected leaders who staged more recent auto-coups in fragile or developing democracies such as Argentina, Peru, Turkey and even Hungary.
The United States stands out for having a complex federal system, entrenched legal practices and multiple layers of institutional friction. Those protections have historically proven adept at limiting presidential overreach – whether subtle or bombastic.
In addition, state-level politicians, including attorneys general and governors, have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to challenge federal overreach through litigation and noncooperation.
The military’s professional culture of civilian control and constitutional fidelity, consistently upheld by the courts, provides another safeguard. For instance, in 1952 the Supreme Court ruling in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer reversed President Harry Truman’s order that the military seize privately owned steel mills to ensure supply during the Korean War.
All those institutional checks are further buttressed by a robust civil society that can mobilize legal challenges, advocacy campaigns and grassroots resistance. Corporations can wield economic influence through public statements, campaign funding decisions and policy stances – as many did in the aftermath of Jan. 6.
Taken together, these overlapping layers of resistance make the path to autocracy far more challenging than many casual observers might assume. These protections also may explain why most Americans are resigned to Trump’s second term: Many may have come to realize that the nation’s democratic experiment is not at stake – and probably never was.
Victor Menaldo, Professor of Political Science, Co-founder of the Political Economy Forum, University of Washington
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Making a Difference
Why Christian clergy see risk as part of their moral calling
As clergy join protests against harsh immigration enforcement, a religious ethics scholar explains why many Christian Clergy view personal risk—arrest, backlash, even violence—as part of their vocation to protect vulnerable neighbors.
Laura E. Alexander, University of Nebraska Omaha
As Christian clergy across the United States participate in ongoing protests against harsh immigration enforcement actions and further funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, many are still pondering the words of Rob Hirschfeld. On Jan. 18, 2026, Hirschfeld, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, encouraged clergy in his diocese to “prepare for a new era of martyrdom” and put their wills and affairs in order.
He asserted that “it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”
Hirschfeld’s words attracted a lot of attention, with clergy generally responding positively, though at least one priest argued that he “did not sign up to be a martyr” and had a family and church relying on him.
Other clergy have willingly faced arrest for their advocacy on behalf of immigrants, seeing it as a moral calling. Rev. Karen Larson was arrested while protesting at the Minneapolis airport. She stated that when people are being separated from their families and taken to unknown detention centers, “this is our call” to protest on their behalf.
As a scholar of religious ethics, I am interested in how Christian clergy and thinkers consider personal risk when they feel called to engage in social action.
Ethics of risk
There are many examples of Christian leaders who have taken on risks out of a religious and moral obligation to provide spiritual care for people in need or advocate for oppressed communities.
Most data on the risks that clergy face in their roles as religious leaders comes from studies of religious leaders in institutional settings, such as hospitals or prisons.
Scholarship on clergy and chaplains in medical settings points to a professional obligation to take on risks. Similar to medical providers who often see risking exposure to infection as part of their professional responsibility, many clergy and chaplains in medical settings understand their vocation to include such a risk.
Questions about professional risks became particularly acute during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, when researchers were uncertain exactly how the disease was spread and caregivers feared they might acquire HIV through their bedside work.
In her memoir about chaplaincy with HIV patients, Audrey Elisa Kerr notes that Riverside Church in New York continued to organize funerals, ministries and support groups for HIV/AIDS patients despite “terror” in the wider community about contagion.
As a chaplain herself, Kerr says this story of “radical hospitality” inspired her to set aside her own fears and embrace her professional role caring for people who were ill and dying.
Priests and nuns of the Catholic Church who cared for HIV/AIDS patients in the 1980s risked both the fear of contagion and the disapproval of their bishops and communities, since many of the people they cared for were men who had sex with men.
Some felt, however, that they must care for those at the margins as part of their role in the church or their monastic order. Sister Carol of the Hospital Sisters of Saint Francis felt that it was simply her moral duty as a sister to “go where she was needed,” despite potential risk.
Examination of the ethical obligations of chaplains and clergy ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic when at least some priest, pastors and hospital chaplains felt an obligation to continue visiting patients for spiritual care.
In a reflection from 2020, Rev. David Hottinger, then working at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, noted that chaplains “felt privileged” to use their professional skills, even though they took on extra risk because they did not always have access to adequate protective equipment.
Risks in other institutional settings are not such a matter of life and death. Because of their professional preaching function, however, clergy in church settings do accept the risk of alienating church members when they feel religiously called to speak about social issues. Rev. Teri McDowell Ott has written about taking risks when discussing LGBTQ+ inclusion and starting a prison ministry.
Risk-taking during social protest
For many clergy, religious and ethical obligations extend beyond their work in institutions like churches and hospitals and include their witness in public life.
Many feel an obligation to preach on issues of moral importance, even topics that are considered controversial and might elicit strong disagreement. It is common for priests and pastors in conservative churches to include messages against legalized abortion in their sermons.
Tom Ascol of the Center for Baptist Leadership urged Baptist pastors to preach about abortion in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.
Rev. Leah Schade, a Lutheran minister and scholar, has argued that since 2017, mainline pastors have preached more often on issues like racism, environmental justice or gun violence. Schade says pastors are inspired to speak more bluntly about social issues because of their religious concern for people who are at risk of harm from injustice or government policies.
Some clergy view their moral obligations as going beyond preaching and leading them to on-the-ground advocacy and protest. Rev. Brandy Daniels of the Disciples of Christ denomination examines these obligations in an article on her participation in a group of interfaith clergy in Portland, Oregon. The group was convened by a local rabbi and supported protesters for racial justice in Portland in 2017. In Daniels’ analysis, clergy took on the risk of staying in the middle of protests and facing a violent police response in order to “bear moral witness,” something they were both empowered and obligated to do as religious leaders.
Risking their lives
There are more extreme cases in which clergy who challenged government leaders or policies were killed for their words and actions of protest.
In a well-known historical example, Bishop Oscar Romero, canonized as a martyred saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 2018, was assassinated in 1980 after speaking out against human rights violations against poor and Indigenous communities committed by the government of El Salvador. Romero viewed himself, in his priestly role, as a representative of God who was obliged to “give voice to the voiceless.”
During recent protests against ICE in Minneapolis and elsewhere, many clergy risked arrest and bodily harm. Rev. Kenny Callaghan, a Metropolitan Community Church pastor, who says that ICE agents in Minneapolis pointed a gun in his face and handcuffed him as he tried to help a woman they were questioning, said, “It’s in my DNA; I have to speak up for marginalized people.”
On Jan. 23, 2026, over 100 clergy were arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport as they protested and prayed against ICE actions. Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard said that she and others accepted being arrested as a way of demonstrating public support for migrants who are afraid to leave their homes.
In Chicago, ministers have been hit with projectiles and violently arrested. Presbyterian pastor David Black was shot in the head with a pepper spray projectile while protesting outside an immigration detention center in October 2025.
The clergy have told reporters that they feel a particular call to be out in public and to protect and support their vulnerable neighbors against ICE raids, at a time when families are afraid to go to school or work and U.S. citizens have been swept up in enforcement tactics as well.
As I see it, for these and many Christian clergy and ethicists, the call to ministry includes an obligation to express their values of care for vulnerable neighbors precisely through a public willingness to accept personal risk.
Laura E. Alexander, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Nebraska Omaha
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Chinamaxxing: The Viral Trend Turning Geopolitics Into Aesthetic Fantasy
A viral social media trend called “Chinamaxxing” is turning geopolitics into aesthetic comparison—revealing more about generational frustration than China itself.
Last Updated on February 11, 2026 by Daily News Staff
At first glance, the videos seem harmless enough.
Clean subways gliding into spotless stations. Neon skylines glowing at night. Clips of high-speed trains, cashless stores, orderly crowds. Overlaid text reads something like, “Meanwhile in China…” or “They figured it out.”
This is “Chinamaxxing,” a loosely defined but increasingly visible social media trend where mostly young users frame China as a model of efficiency, stability, and modernity—often in contrast to life in the West.
What makes the trend notable isn’t just its subject, but its tone. Chinamaxxing is rarely explicit political advocacy. It’s not a manifesto. It’s a mood. Aesthetic admiration blended with subtle critique, delivered through short, visually compelling clips that invite comparison without context.
And that’s precisely why it has sparked debate.
What Is “Chinamaxxing,” Really?
Despite the provocative name, Chinamaxxing isn’t a coordinated movement or ideology. It’s better understood as an algorithm-driven pattern—a recurring style of content that rewards certain visuals and emotional cues.
Most Chinamaxxing content emphasizes:
- Infrastructure and urban design
- Technology embedded in daily life
- Perceived order and efficiency
- Implicit contrast with Western dysfunction
What it typically omits:
- Political repression and censorship
- State surveillance
- Limits on speech and dissent
- The lived diversity of Chinese experiences
The result is a highly curated portrayal—less about China as a nation, and more about what viewers want to believe is possible somewhere else.
Why It’s Gaining Traction Now
The rise of Chinamaxxing says as much about the West as it does about China.
For many young users, particularly Gen Z, the backdrop is familiar: rising housing costs, student debt, healthcare anxiety, political polarization, and a growing sense that institutions no longer function as promised.
In that environment, visually persuasive content showing order and functionality carries emotional weight. It offers relief from chaos—real or perceived.
Social platforms amplify this effect. Short-form video rewards clarity, contrast, and immediacy. A clean subway platform communicates more in five seconds than a policy analysis ever could. Nuance does not trend well. Aesthetics do.
The Social and Political Criticism
Critics argue Chinamaxxing crosses a line from curiosity into distortion.
By focusing exclusively on infrastructure and surface-level efficiency, the trend risks:
- Normalizing authoritarian governance through lifestyle framing
- Reducing political systems to consumer experiences
- Ignoring the tradeoffs that make such systems possible
Supporters counter that Western media has long flattened China into a single negative narrative, and that admiration for specific aspects of another society is not the same as endorsing its government.
Both perspectives, however, miss something important.
What the Trend Actually Reveals
Chinamaxxing isn’t primarily about China. It’s about disillusionment.
It reflects a generation that:
- Feels let down by existing systems
- Engages politics emotionally rather than institutionally
- Uses visual culture to express dissatisfaction indirectly
In this context, China becomes a projection surface—not because it is perfect, but because it appears functional.
That distinction matters.
Why This Matters
Chinamaxxing highlights how political understanding is evolving in the digital age. Governance is increasingly consumed not through debate or civic participation, but through comparison clips, memes, and aesthetics.
The risk isn’t admiration. It’s oversimplification.
When complex societies are reduced to visuals alone, public discourse loses depth. But when those visuals resonate, they also signal real unmet needs: stability, competence, and trust in institutions.
Ignoring that signal would be a mistake.
The STM Daily News Perspective
Chinamaxxing is not an endorsement, a conspiracy, or a joke. It is a cultural artifact—one that reflects generational anxiety, algorithmic storytelling, and the widening gap between expectations and reality.
The question it raises isn’t whether China is better.
It’s why so many people feel their own systems are no longer working.
Related Reading
- BBC News: China Coverage and Global Context
- The Atlantic: Technology, Media, and Internet Culture Analysis
- Pew Research Center: Global Attitudes and Political Perception
- The New York Times: China and International Affairs
- Brookings Institution: China Policy and Global Governance
More on This Topic from STM Daily News
Stay tuned to STM Daily News for more stories exploring internet culture, social media trends, and how digital platforms shape public perception. We’ll be publishing in-depth pieces that break down the societal impact of viral phenomena like Chinamaxxing, the psychology behind online political trends, and the evolving language of Gen Z culture.
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family fun
Jurassic Quest Brings Life-Size Dinosaurs to Phoenix in February 2026
Jurassic Quest is roaring back into Phoenix in February 2026 with towering life-size dinosaurs, interactive exhibits, and hands-on activities for kids and families at the Arizona State Fairgrounds.
Last Updated on February 9, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Phoenix, AZ — Jurassic Quest, billed as North America’s largest traveling dinosaur experience, is set to return to Arizona with a limited engagement at the Arizona State Fairgrounds from February 6–8, 2026.
The family-friendly attraction features life-size animatronic dinosaurs, immersive walk-through exhibits, and hands-on activities designed to blend entertainment with education. Guests will encounter towering recreations of iconic species such as Tyrannosaurus rex and Spinosaurus, along with interactive fossil digs, dinosaur rides, inflatables, and meet-and-greet opportunities with baby dinosaurs.
Jurassic Quest has become a popular touring event across the United States, particularly among families with young children. The experience combines museum-style displays with high-energy attractions, allowing visitors to explore at their own pace. Most attendees spend one to two hours navigating the exhibit.
The event will take place at the Arizona State Fairgrounds, located at 1826 W. McDowell Road in Phoenix, with multiple daily sessions scheduled throughout the weekend.
Tickets and additional event details are available through the official Jurassic Quest website.
- Jurassic Quest Phoenix 2026 – Official Event Page
- Arizona State Fairgrounds – Venue Information
- More Entertainment News from STM Daily News
- Family & Kid-Friendly Events on STM Daily News
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