đŚŚEroding the Guardrails: How Checks and Balances Are Being Undermined
Published: 5/24/2025
From congressional subpoenas that go unanswered to inspectors general shown the door, a growing pattern under former-President-now-Speaker Donald Trump and his congressional allies is hollowing out the very guard-rails the Framers built. Each paragraph below spotlights one constitutional or statutory check, shows why it matters, recalls a moment when it protected the nation, and explains how it is being chipped away right now. Taken together, those chips amount to a slow-motion landslide.
1. Congressional Oversight & Subpoena Power
Congress's ability to demand documents and testimony is the oxygen of legislative oversight, first asserted in 1792 during the St. Clair expedition inquiry and later used to expose Teapot Dome and Watergate. The Trump White House's blanket refusal to cooperate with the 2019 impeachment inquiryâspelled out in an eight-page letter from Counsel Pat Cipolloneâmarked an unprecedented stonewall of every subpoena and witness request. Even after the Supreme Court affirmed in Trump v. Mazars that the House can subpoena a president's records (while sending that specific dispute back for narrowing), the administration continued to litigate and run out the clock, eroding a check that had restrained presidents from Grant to Nixon. A new provision, §70302 (Read the text of §70302), further weakens enforcement by limiting the courts' ability to compel compliance.
2. The Power of the Purse
Since 1789, Congress alone decides where federal dollars go; presidents who ignore that (think Andrew Johnson) risk impeachment. In 2019 Trump declared a "national emergency" to redirect Pentagon funds to his border wall, but courts blocked the maneuver as unauthorized military construction. The next year the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the White House violated the Impoundment Control Act by freezing $214 million in Ukraine security aid appropriated by Congress. Flouting the purse strings converts constitutional brakes into suggestions.
3. Advice-and-Consent on Top Officials
The Senate's confirmation power prevents any single leader from stacking the executive branch with unvetted loyalists. Yet by 2020, more than one-third of Cabinet-level posts were filled by "acting" officials, some installed illegally. GAO concluded that Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli's appointments at DHS violated the Vacancies Reform Act, bypassing the rightful line of succession. Operating without Senate scrutiny lets ideologues steer vast agencies while dodging the accountability our system demands.
4. Independent Inspectors General
Created after Watergate to root out waste and abuse, inspectors general have saved taxpayers tens of billions and exposed scandals from Katrina fraud to secret service lapses. In barely six weeks of 2020, Trump fired or sidelined five IGsâincluding Michael Atkinson, who had forwarded the Ukraine whistle-blower complaint, and State-Dept. watchdog Steve Linick, who was probing Secretary Pompeo. The purge chilled future investigations and warned career watchdogs that independence could be a pink slip.
5. A Politically Neutral Justice Department
Since the post-Watergate reforms of 1978, DOJ has prided itself on "independent law enforcement." Critics say Attorney General William Barr reversed that norm by intervening in cases involving Trump allies (Flynn, Stone) and launching probes that advanced Trump's political narratives. Career prosecutors testified to Congress that decisions were warped for political ends, eroding faith that the rule of law applies equally.
6. Merit-Based Civil Service Protections
Civil-service rulesâborn of the 1883 Pendleton Actâshield federal experts from political retaliation, ensuring continuity from one administration to the next. Trump's 2020 "Schedule F" order (re-issued in January 2025) would let managers reclassify tens of thousands of policy jobs and fire them at will. Re-politicizing the bureaucracy blurs the line between objective expertise and partisan loyalty.
7. Congressional War Powers
The Constitution gives Congressânot the presidentâauthority to declare war. After Trump's January 2020 drone strike on Iran's General Soleimani, lawmakers invoked the War Powers Resolution; a bipartisan Senate majority passed a measure barring further hostilities without approval. Trump vetoed it, and Congress failed to override, illustrating how executive overreach plus partisan discipline can neuter this critical check.
8. Nonpartisan Watchdogs (GAO)
The GAO's audits have policed spending since 1921. Today, GOP leaders aligned with Trump are attacking the agency's legitimacy and even seeking to slash its budget. Undermining GAO removes Congress's own eyes on the executive wallet.
9. Safeguarding Free & Fair Elections
State officialsâoften of the president's partyâhave historically certified results independent of Washington. Trump's January 2 2021 call urging Georgia Secretary Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes" crossed that line, pressuring a state check meant to shield elections from federal coercion. That officials held firm is a credit to the system; the pressure itself is a warning of its fragility.
Where We Otter Go From Here
Checks and balances are only as strong as the norms upholding them. When any branch shrugs at subpoenas, spends money it wasn't given, or purges the referees, the damage is cumulative and often invisibleâuntil a crisis demands those safeguards. The OTTER Party believes that rescuing democracy starts with repairing every one of these broken guard-rails: enforcing subpoena compliance, locking down the power of the purse, protecting career officials and watchdogs, and rooting out the politicization of justice. The river of self-government can carry us forward only if its banksâthe checksâremain intact.