For more than a century, presidents have expanded the powers of the executive branch while Congress holds the door open. Compounding the problem, an increasing number of Americans see the person who occupies the presidency as an avatar with whom they should place their value, their hopes, and even their sense of purpose.The result has been disastrous.

Embracing a monarchical spirit in everything but name has pulled people away from tending to their local communities, fueled cults of personality, and done great harm to the checks and balances designed to protect our political system.

Borne by the overreaches of the Nixon administration, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. began referring to the executive branch of the American regime as the imperial presidency. Lamentably, despite a few brief interludes, weve witnessed the nations chief executive transform into something worse: The exalted presidency.

Leaders of the White House have become messianic figures to their political and media allies; their missteps and failures are explained away by a majority of their voters, and they receive more and more delegated power from a cowardly U.S. Congress that continues to shrink from its constitutional duties.

How we fix this will be an integral part of any attempt to restore balance to our republic. Indeed, reversing this trend is one of Americas best hopes to roll back the growing sense of disunity that plagues society. First, however, we need to know what we have to return to, and why we should.

Just as the ancient Romans overthrew their last king in favor of a republic in c. 509 B.C., the American Revolution was a denunciation of monarchy in total, not merely a rejection of King George III. Our Founders rightly identified monarchs as emblems of corruption, recognizing that one-man-rule as a way of governing was fundamentally wrong and incompatible with a society that values freedom.

As when Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was deposed, rule by kings was the normal state of affairs for the vast majority of the world when the Declaration was signed in the summer of 1776. One of the seminal characteristics of both the Roman and American republics was their courageous and firm understanding that they were choosing to be set apart from the ways of other nations.

The American government was designed to be representative of the will of the people and granted legitimacy via their enlightened consent. Safeguards, checks, balances, and divisions of power were established to deter both the dominance of a passionate, intemperate mob and of a single individual.

Although the esteemed Roman senator Cato the Elder spoke for the Roman Republic, his words apply all the more to our own American Republic two millennia later:

The reason for the superiority of the constitution of our city to that of other states is that the latter almost always had their laws and institutions from one legislator. But our Republic was not made by the genius of one man, but of many, nor in the life of one, but through many centuries and generations.

In republics both ancient and modern, reason and historical evidence repeatedly prove the greatest threat to liberty comes from concentrated power.

Americans used to hold tightly to a deep-rooted, enduring suspicion of concentrated power of any kind especially when it crept into the presidency. Unfortunately, that well-earned wisdom didnt last past the 19th century. By the 20th century, as George Reedy writes, the presidency had taken on all the regalia of monarchy except ermine robes, a scepter, and a crown.

In his work The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu rightly observes, There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person.Forty years later in Federalist No. 46, James Madison echoes his concern:

The accumulation of all power, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

With its origins dating back to Progressive President Theodore Roosevelt, the innocently named yet insidiously pernicious stewardship theory of presidential power threatens to further weaken the already eroded safeguards barely holding our republic together. In his 1913 autobiography, TR offers up his justification for the more hands-on Progressive approach he took while occupied the Oval Office:

I acted for the public welfare, I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition.

For TR, the president was to be a steward of the people bound actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people and not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin.

Yet his successor, William Howard Taft, took up a position far more in line with the original intent of the Constitution and vision of the separation of powers desired by the Founders. In 1916, in the book Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers, Taft writes:

The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power of justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary to its exercise.

Unlike TR, who viewed the presidency as an office imbued with nearly limitless undelineated powers, Taft explains:

There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest. The mainspring of such a view is that the Executive is charged with responsibility for the welfare of all the people in a general way, that he is to play the part of a Universal Providence and set all things right the wide field of action that this would give to the Executive one can hardly limit.

Barely five years leaving office, TRs belief in a powerful presidency filled with a grandiose persona was the template exploited by arch-Progressive Woodrow Wilson.

During the span of just two administrations, the occupant of the Oval Office went from executing laws to writing them corralling the whole U.S. government to do his will.

Wilson expanded on TRs blank-check stewardship approach, believing America needed a leader who could arouse and harness lies waiting to be stirred. For Wilson, whole masses of men were to be like clay in the hands of a Great Leader:

The competent leader of men cares little for the interior niceties of other peoples characters: he cares much-everything for the external uses to which they may be put. His will seeks the lines of least resistance; but the whole question with him is a question of the application of force. They have no thought for occasion, no capacity for compromise.

As Charles Kesler has noted, in 12 of the 14 instances the Federalist Papers mention the word leader or leaders the word is used negatively associating leaders with demagoguery, factionalism, and vice.

Since the United States is, at its core, a nation founded on self-government and small-r republicanism, Wilsons insistence that the country ought to be led by a great Leader of Men is not only misguided but a complete departure from Americas philosophical and political moorings.

During the last century, weve allowed the presidency to be turned into precisely the entity that Wilson wanted it to be, a turn of events that should fill us with shame. Wilsons vision of the presidency was taken up by FDR in 1932 through his New Deal program, then further expanded by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

By the time of the election of Barack Obama, the presidency had not just assumed Johnsons Great Society manta of being the source of all future healing promising not just to end poverty, but abstractions like loneliness itself but had become a full-blown celebrity outfit catering to egotistical personalities surrounded by legions of adoring and undyingly loyal cheerleaders.

Oprah Winfrey dubbed Obama The One. Columnist Mark Morford called Obama a Lightworker, an attuned being to help usher in a new way of being on the planet.Ezra Klein couldnt contain himself after the 2008 Iowa Caucuses, saying of Obama, He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.

Not to be outdone by his fawning admirers, Obama himself claimed to be able to repair this world and fundamentally transform the United States of America, and audaciously proclaimed his triumph marked the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

As for the successive administration, Hogan Gidley, the former national press secretary for Donald Trumps re-election campaign, referred to Trump as the most masculine man to ever hold the White House. Senior advisor Stephen Miller called Trump the most gifted politician of our time and the best orator to become president in generations. In his most recent book, writer Victor Davis Hanson goes so far as to liken Trump to Achilles, Augustus, Martin Luther, and Julius Caesar (meant as a compliment).

Trump himself asserted theres nobody bigger or better at the military than I am, maintainedat his 2016 Republican National Convention speech that only he could fix what ailed America, and proclaimed he was a Presbyterian Christian who never asked God for forgiveness.

The humility and grace of statesmen like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln is a tall order for anyone to emulate, but both Obama and Trump fell far short of the humble dignity the office of the presidency demands. Consequentially, the imperial presidency became an exalted one. With the levels of worshipful praise that weve witnessed during the last two presidencies, the detrimental nationalization of our politics shouldnt shock us one bit.

Criticisms of Obama or his policies, no matter how justified, were reflexively cited as proof of ones conscious (or unconscious) racism, essentially shielding Obama from tangible condemnation.

Plainly, any broad-brush insults or attacks on large, heterogeneous segments of the American population should be denounced. Yet, similar to the reflexive racism defense lobbied at Obamas detractors, in Trumps late-presidency and now ex-presidency periods, criticism of Trumps actions or policies is routinely cited by Trumps die-hard defenders as evidence of ones supposed disdain for the 74 million Americans who voted for him.

Like the Obama racism! retort, this has the effect intended or not of heading off any condemnation of Trump at the pass. Truly, if criticizing president X means you hate all those who voted for X becomes a permanent, reoccurring defense, then engaging in serious political debates or holding Americas chief executive to account will be nearly impossible.

Both catch-all, cover-all rebuttals Youre just racist! and You just hate his voters! are antithetical to the discourse intended by our Founders to keep our republic functioning. We have no kings here. Presidents, like any other politician, should be applauded when they do good and decried when they err. Indeed, as Lord Acton reminds us, There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

No one is supposed to be above the law or above criticism and reproach presidents least of all. Because of the immense power and influence they wield, the president should be the most critiqued and prodded citizen in the country, if for no other reason than it will make them better at the gravely serious job before them.

Regrettably, however, while were only in the second full week of Joe Bidens tenure, it looks like the exalted presidencyis set to continue with the 46th president.

Of course, the legislative branch needs to get back to the business of legislating rather than delegating its powers to the other branches. Congresss decades-long dereliction of its Constitutional duties have added to the bloated largess of the administrative state and enabled them to dodge taking stances on difficult but pressing issues while posing for photo ops and fishing for viral social media clips.

The executive branch needs to get back to taking care that the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the nation are being faithfully executed rather than abusing executive orders as a way to bypass Congress from the legislative process entirely.

Yes, in the final analysis, what we need is for the separate branches of our republic to re-assert and re-assume their proper roles as envisioned by the Founders and articulated in Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution. The brilliant political machinery of the American republic isnt broken. Whats broken is our capacity for self-rule.

Little by little, weve come to expect less of ourselves while placing more of our purpose and hopes with whoever resides in the White House.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.(Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene III)

Even strong leg muscles will atrophy after decades of neglect, requiring crutches in order to walk. After surrendering the responsibility of self-government for so long, the presidency has become the crutch where we rest the burdens that used to be shouldered by our communities, our families, and our places of worship. The problem is, however, that the harder we lean on this crutch, the harder it is to get back up on our own two feet, and the more we sink into a posture that looks a whole lot like servitude.

As Schleisinger Jr. wrote back in 1973, When presidents begin to succumb to delusions of grandeur, when the checks and balances inside themselves stop operating, external checks and balances may well become necessary to save the republic. Realistically, however, as most such measures would require constitutional amendments, for the time being, it seems highly likely any sort of major reforms to the office of the presidency will continue to exist only in the realm of political what if fantasyland.

Instead, the solution must come from us.We the people must be the check on the presidency. We the people must demand Congress take back its role as the preeminent branch of government. We the people must starve presidents of the attention and absolute loyalty they now crave. We the people must roll back and curtail the unbridled reverence of the presidency that has warped the Oval Office.

Through the power of our collective voices and votes, we the people must begin to rescind the exalted presidency, and rediscover our quintessentially American antipathy towards monarchs no matter if their official title isnt king but president.

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It's Time To Stop Feeding The Exalted Presidency Federalist #2 - The Federalist

With President Biden signing a series of executive orders aimed at combating climate, he appears more than willing to sacrifice both the economy and good-paying American jobs to theoretically reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Bidens climate czar, John Kerry, seems to believe America must have Chinas cooperation to succeed in emissions reduction.

Yet, according to the latest United Nations Emissions Gap Report 2020, Biden and Kerry couldnt be more wrong. In truth, the United States has done more for reducing GHG emissions than China ever has, and China is neither a leader nor a reliable partner on this issue.

The United Nations Environment Programme releases the annual Emission Gap Report to assess the gap between projections of greenhouse emissions in 2030 and where they should be if countries implement their climate mitigation pledges. In a sense, the report yearly nags nations to move toward the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.

The objective of the accord is to reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius. Former President Obama committed the United States to the Paris Climate Accord in 2015, and regarded the Paris Climate Accord as one of his legacy projects, even refusing to issue a permit to the Keystone XL pipeline.

Obamas reasoning? That the pipeline would generate so many GHG emissions it would jeopardize Americas commitment to the Paris Accord, even though his own State Department found no evidence to support such a claim after conducting five studies in seven years.

The Heritage Foundation estimates the United States commitment to the Paris Accord would cost the average American family of four $20,000 and the national gross domestic product $2.5 trillion by 2035 while achieving an insignificant amount of reduction in global temperature.

In 2017, President Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Accord, an action he explained to be both in Americas economic interest and wont matter much to the climate. He also vowed that under his administration, the United States would continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on Earth.

Needless to say that his decision was widely condemned by environmental activists, progressive groups, celebrities, corporate America, and many of our allies. Kerry called Trumps action an abdication of leadership and self-destructive.

Now, the verdict is in not from any right-wing source, but the latest climate report released by the United Nations. In combating GHG emissions, theres nothing but good news to report about the United States.

The United States overall GHG emissions have been in decline (0.4 percent per year) over the last decade, while those of China continue to spike up, growing at an average of 2.4 percent per year. Although the GHG emissions on a per capita basis in the United States is still the highest in the world, the number is coming down sharply while those of other major economies such as China and India are trending up.

Whats especially noticeable is GHG emissions in the United States continued to go down even after the Trump administration withdrew from the Paris Accord. The continued reduction came when the United States was experiencing a booming economy and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline was underway.

The first lesson from the U.N. climate report is that the United States is on a good trajectory to address climate-related issues and has made consistent and meaningful progress. As a nation, the United States does not have to sacrifice its economy and the jobs of American workers to protect the environment. Unfortunately, however, President Biden has already ignored this lesson, with his Day One executive order directing the United States to rejoin the Paris Accord.

In contrast to the good news out of the United States, the U.N. report presented some glooming news for those who remain within the Paris Accord: global greenhouse gas emissions continued to grow for the third consecutive year in 2019. Although GHG emissions are expected to come down in 2020 mainly due to worldwide lockdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the EG report believes such a one-year reduction will have an insignificant impact on global temperature.

The main culprit of this worsening trend is China, a nation that emits more than one-quarter of global GHG emissions and has per capita emissions that are around 40 percent above the global average. Indeed, Chinas annual GHG emission is almost equivalent to the sum of those of the United States of America, EU27+UK, and India.

Despite all of the evidence indicating China is the biggest polluter of this planet, Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, knows how to talk the green talk to appeal to left-wingers in the west while doing nothing they actually want on this issue.

When the United States withdrew from the Paris Accord in 2017, Xi wasted no time in offering China as an alternative to the United States. He cast himself as the new leader on climate change. He said: The Paris agreement is a milestone in the history of climate governance. We must ensure this endeavor is not derailed China will continue to take steps to tackle climate change and fully honor its obligations.

The Global Energy Monitor estimates that China will need to reduce its coal power capacity by 40 percent over the next decade to meet its climate goal as stated in the Paris agreement. Yet the opposite happened. Since signing up for the Paris Accord, China has built more new coal plants inside China than any other country, just as its coal plant capacity is expected to increase 10 percent by 2025.

Additionally, the Chinese government made building coal-fired power plants abroad a top priority within its controversial global infrastructure program, Belt and Road. According to Edward Cunningham, a specialist on China at Harvard University, China is building or planning more than 300 coal plants in places as widely spread as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, and the Philippines.

Some accuse China of exporting pollution to boost its economy. Besides environmental concerns, the National Public Radio reported that more than 25 percent of coal plants outside China that are under construction by Chinese contractors are financed by Chinese state-owned financial institutions. Poorer nations that cant pay back their Chinese loans may have to trade their strategic assets to China to pay off their debt.

While the facts on the ground contradict Xis lofty rhetoric, they havent prevented Xi from making an even loftier promise at last years U.N. gathering, Xi pledged that China would be carbon neutral by 2060.

Although todays Chinese government has a long history of making promises it has no intention of keeping, it hasnt stopped some leftists in the west from taking Xis empty promise at face value once again. In exchange for Chinas cooperation on climate change, some on the left are willing to pretend they do not notice the gross human rights violations the CCP has committed, such as the genocide of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.

When defending the controversial European Union-China investment agreement, which some critics say compromised the EUs human rights credibility, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU-Commission, specifically mentioned one of the motivations behind signing on this deal is to protect our climate under #ParisAgreement. She never mentioned Uighurs or Hong Kongers in her Twitter thread.

Unfortunately, Kerry seems to share Ursulas faith in China. Kerry reportedly believes cooperation with China is the key to progress on climate change and that climate is by far the most important issue in the relationship between the United States and China. This is the same belief he held as secretary of state under President Obama. He couldnt be more wrong.

The worst part is that Beijing is fully aware of Kerrys eagerness to strike a deal on climate change and will take advantage of it. Beijing certainly hopes a negotiation on climate change will distract the United States from focusing on other strategic areas that are far more important to the Communist regime, such as Beijings long-desired reunification with Taiwan. According to The Atlantic, even some of Kerrys liberal colleagues are worried: Chinas diplomacy is a constant search for leverage, and Kerry will deliver a load of it in a wheelbarrow right to their front door every day.

Lets hope President Biden will at least learn from this U.N. report that China is neither a leader nor a reliable partner in addressing climate-related issues because its lofty rhetoric is not supported by its actions. Therefore, the Biden administrations China policy should reflect facts on the ground rather than wishful thinking, and never sacrifice national security nor the U.S. economy for Chinas empty climate promises.

Read more:

The Real Greenhouse-Gas Polluter Isn't The United States, It's China - The Federalist

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi denied House Democrats requests to include amnesty for illegal immigrants who served as essential workers during the pandemic in President Joe Bidens $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill.

President Biden proposed comprehensive immigration reform, which includes protections for frontline immigrant workers, separate from his Covid relief plan, and we expect that to therefore have separate consideration, a House Democratic leadership aide told Politico.

Pelosis brisk response follows a letter from 100 Democratic representatives urging the speaker and other House leaders to consider slipping in a faster path to citizenship for the more than 5 million Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status recipients, and undocumented immigrants who have helped keep Americans healthy and safe during the pandemic and are critical for our economic recovery.

As we continue to confront a public health and economic catastrophe that will soon have claimed the lives of more than 450,000 Americans [and] exacerbated deep racial, gender, and economic inequities, it is vital that we include protections for immigrant workers to secure the health of our nation and lay the foundation for a robust and dynamic economic recovery, the letter from the Hispanic Caucus read.

Just a month before the Hispanic Caucuss letter, hundreds of progressive immigration organizations issued a similar plea to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, asking the congressional leaders to offer permanent protection and a path to citizenship to all undocumented essential workers and delivering this provision to the presidents desk for his signature.

Last year, House Democrats recognized the important contributions and sacrifices of undocumented essential workers by including in both versions of the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act a provision offering temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to these individuals. The 117th Congress can and must do better, the letter stated.

Pelosis reluctance to include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrant essential workers, though, is not to be confused with a lack of eagerness to pass sweeping immigration reform. Since day one, the Biden administration, in conjunction with top congressional Democrats, has promised to reverse the Trump administrations actions and make it easier for undocumented migrants to take advantage of benefits reserved for U.S. citizens.

In addition to the new presidentssix executive orders concerning Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the addition of illegal immigrants in U.S. Census totals, immediate cessation of construction on the southern border wall, and the suggestion to replace the word alien with noncitizen in U.S. immigration laws, members in the blue chambers of Congress have begun to workshop legislation focused on carrying out Bidens goal to offer amnesty to approximately 11 million illegal immigrants.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Dems Tried To Use COVID Relief Bill To Pass Amnesty For Illegal Aliens - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, CEO-elect of the American Federation for Children Tommy Schultz joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss how teachers unions are hurting childrens academic and social development by pushing to keep schools closed and why their anti-scientific demands highlight the importance of school choice.

Its just devastating what this is doing. Parents are trying to manage this awful situation on top of their own tragedies and issues and going on with their own work, Schultz said. Its a terrible time, and much of it is being driven by the politics of our K-12 political bureaucracy and the unions who are only serving the interests of their members and not students.

Support for school choice, Schultz said, has grown since the beginning of the pandemic, as more and more public school families, especially those with lower-income parents are increasingly frustrated with how politicized their childrens learning has become.

This is clearly a result of the teachers unions,frankly, being the best advocates for school choice just by doing everything that theyre doing here, Schultz said. They are an entirely political beast that is only interested in serving themselves rather than actually putting our students first in this education discussion.

Read more of The Federalists coverage of school reopenings, teachers unions, and the Biden administrations stance on in-person learning here.

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How The Pandemic Raised The Stakes For School Choice - The Federalist

On Jan. 22, the Wall Street Journal published Princeton University professor of politics Keith E. Whittingtons defense of the disqualification-from-future-office purpose of the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump scheduled to begin on Feb. 8. The day before, more than 100 legal scholars, including Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi, released a statement making the same argument.

Whittingtonholds that for the Founders, a Senate trial merely to disqualify a former federal official was a traditionally understood principle imported to America from England. Likewise, thescholars argue that history, including English impeachment history as well as the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution, is the source of the alleged constitutional power to convict prior officeholders as well as current ones. What is more, a Constitution without an independent disqualification power would be a Constitution that could be easily undermined.

In support of their scholarship, neither the scholars nor the professor cites nor quotes the Federalist Papers. Yet the history and meaning of the American Constitution begins with and is dependent on those papers which, like the Constitution itself, are unique in all of human and political history. Impeachment is dealt with in eight of the 85 papers (numbers 39, 65, 66, 69, 77, 79, 81, 84). Nowhere in any of the Federalist Papers is there a discussion of or attempt to separate between the two impeachment punishments of removal and disqualification.

In Federalist No. 65, whose subject is the suitability of the Senate as the court of impeachment, disqualification is not separately considered. The subject of Federalist No. 66 is the argument that the impeachment provisions dangerously combine both legislative and judicial authority in the Congress.

Hamilton, the author, answers by pointing to the constitutional requirement that the House and Senate act separately and independently in the impeachment process. When Hamilton contends impeachment is properly assigned to the Congress, rather than the Supreme Court, disqualification is not mentioned at all. In neither paper is there a discussion distinguishing between removal from office and disqualification.

In Federalist No. 39, Madison says that the President of the United States is impeachable at any time during his continuance in office.In Federalist No. 66, Hamilton explains that the fundamental purpose of impeachment is to protect the Congress against encroachments of the executive. Obviously, there can be no such encroachments by a former executive.

It is inconceivable that the Federalist authors who were, of course, subject to the criticisms of and corrections by their fellow Founders would have left such a major constitutional power, the stand-alone power of disqualification, uncommented on. Both the assumption and the plain text of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers is that the two punishments, removal and disqualification, go together.

For Democrats intent on keeping their fierce pursuit of Trump in the public eye, the Constitution establishes more powerful means than simple removal and disqualification. Article I, 3 states that impeachment shall not extend further than than removal and disqualification, but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment, and Punishment, according to law. And he need not be convicted under impeachment.

In specifically discussing the presidency in Federalist No. 65 and Federalist No. 69, Hamilton points out that a former president would afterwards that is, after he is no longer president be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. Hamilton highlights this dramatic difference from English law concerning the person of the king, who is forever exempt from impeachment and prosecution.

During his term in office, a president may not be prosecuted in an outside court, only charged/impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Now that he is out of office, however, and for the rest of his life, Trump may be criminally indicted in any state or federal court for anything he ever did both during and outside his presidency.

InNixon v. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court ruled that a president is forever immune fromcivilliability for his official acts while in office. Not so, however, for non-official civil acts. InClinton v. Jones, the Supreme Court held that a sitting president may be sued for his private, non-official pre-presidency conduct. Furthermore, in the 2020 decision of Trump v. Vance, the Supreme Court ruled that Trumps tax records could be subpoenaed by New York state prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr. while he was still in office.

Both the scholars and the professor mention that a perfidious president or other officials could commit heinous acts against the country and the government and then avoid all consequences by resigning before an impeachment trial. As already pointed out and proven by the text of the Constitution and Hamiltons discussion of it, this contention is simply false.

Such a terminally criminal former president would continue to be liable to criminal prosecution for his in-office, terminally criminal acts. What is more, it is more than obvious that American popular and political opinion would never endure an attempt by such a person to regain public office. Finally, it is also refuted by American history insofar as no public figure has ever thought to commit such acts.

The scholars and Whittington bring up the impeachment and disqualification of resigned and no-longer-in-office Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876, who was acquitted in the Senate. But historical accounts are readily available with which to conclude that a significant number of those voting for acquittal had already decided that there was no impeachment jurisdiction over a former official. Also, of course, Belknap was an appointed official rather than an elected one, much less the president.

In a separatearticle in The New York Times, Calabresi along with Norman Eisen, one of the Democratss House 2020 impeachment counsels, have cited no authority for their unique claim that after the two-thirds impeachment vote, a disqualification vote only requires a simple majority vote in the Senate. Anyone is entitled to his or her opinion about the meaning of constitutional texts, of course. Scholarship, however, requires something more.

Since retiring as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Thomas R. Ascik has written about legal and constitutional issues on a variety of websites including The Federalist, The Imaginative Conservative, and Law & Liberty.

Excerpt from:

Why It's Unconstitutional To Impeach Someone After He Leaves Office - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Federalist Western Correspondent Tristan Justice joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss his dispatch from Rep. Matt Gaetzs anti-Liz Cheney rally and what it means for the future of the GOP.

He really branded Liz Cheney as emblematic of the old way of doing things and what the Republican Party had gotten away from under Donald Trump, and what the Republican Party needs to stay away from if theyre going to be successful in the future, and the crowd loved it, Justice said. Every single person I spoke to in the crowd, they complained about Liz Cheney, not necessarily because of her impeachment vote. A lot of them said that impeachment was just the last straw, they were already upset with Cheney. They really just attacked her for being a symbol of the past.

Cheneys battle, Justice said, is not an isolated one and signals the coming of more GOP splits after years of growing distrust in D.C. elites and politicians.

Liz Cheney is in trouble in her own state. Trumpism has gripped the party, and I dont think theres a lot of space for the Republican Party to go back to the old way of doing things, Justice concluded.

Read more of Justices work here.

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Liz Cheney's GOP Civil War Is Here, And She's Losing - The Federalist

Blue checkmarks and Democrats took to Twitter on Thursday to condemn a call for violence against Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the people in his administration.The quote in question, however, was actually a call to violence against former President Donald Trump and his supporters from U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., that a Twitter troll account called Cuomo Watch satirically modified to say Cuomo.

If you see anybody from the Cuomo Administration in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them theyre not welcome anymore, anywhere. -Maxine CuomoWatch, the tweet reads.

Soon after the tweet was shared, prominent New York politicians, blue checkmarks, and Democrats in other states took to Twitter to condemn the call to action.

This is appalling and dangerous. Encouraging violence must never be tolerated. Shame on whoever is behind this kind of garbage, the speaker of the New York State Assembly wrote.

This is beyond outrageous, a state senator added in her retweet. Two weeks ago we saw what happened when arsonists throw gas around. Twitter should ban this dude now!

This is dangerous, reprehensible and has no place in any public discussion. Oh, and spare me the someone else did it too excuse. Someone else saying a variation of this doesnt change the fact that this is seeking to incite violence against a public official and their staff, another assemblyman shared.

@CuomoWatch We will not tolerate threats against public officials by radical extremists in this city or state. There is no room for violence or targeting against anyone, especially public servants. Not after what happened in D.C. I will be alerting appropriate authorities, the borough president of Manhattan tweeted.

U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., even spoke out, saying he was appalled by the call to action after living through the insurrection against the US Congress.

We must all denounce in no uncertain terms any attempt at inciting political violence, he shared in a now-deleted tweet.

Cuomos senior adviser Rich Azzopardi also spread the misinformation, retweeting peoples condemnations and even accusing Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and her staff, without presenting evidence, of condoning violence against the governor.

When confronted about the legitimacy of the tweet and the true source of the quote, the legislators either deleted their tweets or attempted to defend their double-standard on political violence.

I see what they did, wrote state Sen. Diane Savino, but that was then and this is now, and 4 years of Trump has led to words becoming weapons. We cant just ignore them anymore, people take them as a call to violent actions.

Cuomos office did not respond to The Federalists request for clarification on whether they still condemn the comments now that they know who originally made them. Instead, in his press conference on Friday, Cuomo blamed the internet and the troll who created the post.

When you see the ugliness being fomented for selfish political reasons, everyone should condemn it. We all know who spreads the ugliness on the Internet, Cuomo says.

Many Democrats have a history of calling for violence against Trump and his supporters including Cuomo, who recently said that he wouldve decked Trump if he werent a governor.

The outrage over the modified quote also follows a report from the New York attorney generals office that found that Cuomo and his administration lied about the number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes following his policy that sent infected patients into care facilities during the pandemic.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Troll Replaced 'Trump' With 'Cuomo' In Maxine Waters' Call To Violence And Dems Lost It - The Federalist

With a major shakeup in Donald Trumps legal team this weekend, increasing attention is being paid to what defense the former president will mount in his upcoming Senate impeachment trial.

Conventional wisdom is that Republican senators would prefer Trump simply argue that it is unconstitutional to impeach a former president. Reportedly, they do not want him to argue he was not guilty of inciting a riot, and most certainly do not want him to argue that there was, in fact, widespread election fraud.

One can understand why these senators would rather rule only on the narrow issue of the constitutionality. It is far less contentious than the other two arguments, and why even bother with them if the first argument makes them moot?

But for Trump, who has already lost his largest platform on Twitter, the ability to lay out the case on why he didnt incite a riot and that there was widespread fraud may seem irresistible. It would be far riskier, but there is still a very good chance he would be acquitted, maybe by a closer margin possibly with some annoyed votes in his favor, but acquitted nonetheless.

On all three counts, Trump has very reasonable arguments to make. And given that so many in the media have already made up their mind that he is obviously guilty, he would have a very low bar to cast doubt on that guilt. So lets look at each defense on its own.

The constitutional question of whether you can convict a former president in the Senate appears to be a legal 50-50 ball. There are experts on each side of the question. Both make reasonable if contradictory arguments, and neither can really claim certainty. This makes it an easy out for Republican senators, and its why they dont want to look any further.

As far as the question of incitement, Ive made a longer argument in these pages, but it boils down to the idea that Trumps actions were way too broad and indirect to be considered an incitement. Now, those in favor of conviction point out that the legal standard, which almost everyone agrees Trump did not meet, doesnt matter here. Thats true. The Senate can define it anyway they want, but they still need a standard by which to do so, and more importantly they will setting that standard in an official capacity.

If Trumps speech was incitement to riot, then what is the limiting principle? Was Rep. Maxine Waters inciting people when she told them to get into Trump officials faces in 2018, all while she was pushing the big lie of Russian collusion?

American political discourse is replete with fighting metaphors and lying. We also now know that the rioting had started a mile away from Trumps speech before he finished speaking and that elements were pre-planned. The case for incitement is far weaker than the media would have you believe.

Finally comes the most controversial potential defense: that there really was massive voter fraud. To many this seems like a Kamikaze defense, but it might not be. Republican officials have been pressured since the riots to say that there was no widespread voter fraud. The idea seems to be that if they refuse they are also complicit. Its absurd, of course, as this past election was one of the sloppiest in recent memory. That happens when you change the rules on the fly.

There are plenty of important irregularities in the election that really do need investigation. That is why Sen. Josh Hawley and Sen. Ted Cruz launched a symbolic effort to refuse certification in order to shine a spotlight on these irregularities. The problems were real. They exist. Are they enough to overturn the results? It appears not, but that really isnt the point, the point is we need to fix them anyway.

Too many Republicans are being shamed now into not making a very important argument about election security. It would be the most Trump thing in the world to show up at the Senate and fight the fight they refuse to. And again, Trumps bar would be low. We have been assured there was no fraud, no major problems in mail-in voting. Just a handful of examples would put the lie to that.

Trump seems poised to get a win when the votes are cast in his trial. The question is how big the win will be. I dont think you answer that question based on how many votes he gets. I think you answer it based on how broad the scope of his acquittal is. Trump doesnt want to win on a technicality; he wants to win on the merits. A fighter doesnt hide behind constitutional controversy, he says, You tried me. I won.

There is every reason Trump should press all three arguments. Together they represent his best possible case, a three-pronged attack on every element of the charges against him. Even he wins with a smaller margin, by fighting the whole thing and winning, he will emerge much stronger than choosing otherwise.

David Marcus is the Federalist's New York Correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.

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Why Trump Should Press His Case On Voter Fraud - The Federalist

President Joe Bidens Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it hired Melissa Hodgman to lead the agency as its acting director of the Division of Enforcement last week.

Melissas dedication to investor protection, broad experience in the Division, and proven track record of collaboration and creative problem solving make her ideally suited to this role, SEC Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee celebrated in a statement. As Associate Director, Melissa has overseen a wide range of complex and programmatically important matters, and has been a leading voice in the Division on critical issues of diversity, hiring, and labor-management relations.

Hodgman, according to the agency press release, has been with the SEC since 2008 as a longtime bureaucrat engaging in a wide range of litigation. Hodgman is also married to another, better-known longtime Washington bureaucrat, Peter Strzok, made famous for his role in the FBIs deep-state Crossfire Hurricane operation, which featured a witch hunt investigation that sought to incriminate President Donald Trump.

Before being fired from the FBI, Strzok rose to prominence when it was revealed that Strzok had conspired with an FBI colleague-turned-mistress over the course of the investigation, as they tried to oust the elected president. Text messages that emerged in the summer of 2018 from an Office of Inspector Generals report revealed the two began conspiring the summer before Trump even won the November election. Page resigned from the FBI, only to later be hired by MSNBC, while Special Counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from the Russia investigation.

The pair had since become widely mocked by the president when railing against the Russia hoax and became the subject of the theatrical play FBI Lovebirds: UnderCovers, which was performed at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year.

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The Biden Administration Just Made Peter Strzok's Wife A Top SEC Official - The Federalist

Actor Dustin Diamond passed away this week at the age of 44, just weeks after being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. Diamond was best known for his role as Screech Powers on Saved by the Bell, a character he portrayed for 13 years.

Diamond died just three weeks after his initial diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer, according to his publicist. As tragic as any death is, particularly at such a young age, articles dedicated to his memory and in honor of his body of work may be few and far between. A look at Diamonds career, shaped by a single role on a teen TV show that aired more than 30 years ago, would not be an obvious inspiration for entertainment writers.

But Screech Powers was not just a forgotten TV side character; he was a cultural touchstone for almost everyone born in the late 70s and early 80s. Ever youthful, nave, and optimistic for whatever the world may have for him, Screech represented the spirit of 90s kids. He got pushed around, he got teased. But his tenacity and love for life always kept him in the winners circle.

Saved by the Bell, however one may feel about the overall quality of the show, was definitive programming for my age group. We all dreamed of being beautiful like Kelly, or effortlessly cool like Zach. It was one of the first shows specifically aimed at young teens and its success was achieved by striking a perfect balance between kid-dom early adulthood themes.

Screech was the foil of the show who was seldom the center of a story but was required to make other characters look either good or bad, depending on how they treated him. He represented all of our little brothers and sisters: an annoying drag, but the person we loved the most in the world. And it was those character traits and Diamonds goofy, hopeful grin that kept him on the show, in every iteration, far longer than any other character.

Diamonds curly brown hair, wide toothy grin, and child-like wonder remained with him throughout his run on the show. His youthfulness was not by accident, he was several years younger than any of the other cast members, more likely to be the age of the kids watching the show.

Like Screech, we watched the show and admired the older, more adult characters. Co-star Mario Lopez referred to Diamond as a fun, goofy little brother. We wanted to emulate them, to impress them, to be accepted by them. But perhaps it was Screech we were relating to. We were the wide-eyed pre-teens ready for new experiences and Screechs willingness to embarrass himself in search of answers and friendship was admirable.

Many of us grew out of Saved by the Bell before the final version of the show, The New Class, went off the air in 2000, 12 years after first meeting Screech. Diamond remained in the role from age 11 to 23, returning post-college years to portray an assistant at the high school.

After the end of Screech, Diamond infrequently worked as an actor, finding himself in the news for less savory reasons. Like many child actors before him, Diamond slid in and out of obscurity, reaching for a comeback through professional wrestling, publishing a tell-all book, and even releasing a sex tape.

He spent time in jail after a violent bar altercation. Rumors of drug addiction and depression swirled, and Diamonds career was further pocked after being snubbed from a Saved by the Bell reboot that began airing last year. Diamond was supposedly in discussions about joining the reboot in its second season when his illness was revealed in early January. And, in just a matter of weeks, he was gone.

His passing is a watershed moment for millennials, who are now forced to accept the fact that we are not in our immortal youth any longer. Death came for one of us just as we prepare for middle age. Every generation meets a moment when they realize they are mortals, that they cant outrun death, and that eventually, they run out of chances.

Its now time for acceptance that, never again, will we be able to watch a Saved by the Bell rerun without a sense of sadness and loss not only for Diamond, but for our own youths. And as time marches on, none of our nostalgic culture will remain untouched.

For millennials, our moment of mortality has arrived.

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Millennials Meet Mortality With The Death Of Dustin Diamond - The Federalist

(warning: spoilers ahead)

The big question so far on WandaVision has been, What exactly are we watching? Well, in episode four, we began to get some answers. Granted, it is a Marvel show so we also got more questions, but we did get some answers too, along with the appearance of two Marvel Cinematic Universe sidekicks, and a better idea of what S.W.O.R.D. is.

Todays WandaVision, amusingly titled, We Interrupt This Program, gives us some of the backstory on what exactly is going on. The episode begins with a chaotic scene. In a hospital room, we see Monica Rambeau re-materialize after The Avengers bring her back from The Blip, the MCUs name for the 50 percent of living beings that disappeared with the snap of Thanoss fingers in Infinity War.

She runs around in a panic looking for her mother who was apparently about to be discharged from cancer treatment. After finding a doctor who recognizes her, Monica is informed that her mother died three years ago when the cancer came back, which was two years after Monica up and vanished along with half of the universe.

This is the first time weve seen the immediate aftermath of the heroic sacrifices The Avengers made at the end of the Infinity Saga. Now we see just how traumatizing it must have been for people to vanish from existence for five years only to return to a world they didnt necessarily recognize.

After Monica leaves the hospital, she makes her way back to the headquarters of S.W.O.R.D., where she works, only to find her key card doesnt function anymore. She encounters the director of the organization, a role that used to be held by her mother. He sends her on a mission to aid the FBI in a missing persons case in rural New Jersey.

At this point, Monica finds agent Jimmy Woo, played by Randall Park, who we last saw in Ant-Man and the Wasp as the FBI guy in charge of keeping an eye on Ant-Man. Woo is now trying to track down a source he had in witness protection who was hidden in Westview, New Jersey. Monica learns that no one in the town seems to be reachable, and the sheriff, who is stationed outside the towns city limits sign, denies the town even exists.

Monica and Woo send a S.W.O.R.D. drone into the town only to watch it disappear. Monica then walks up to the towns border and sees an energy field that looks a lot like an old-fashioned television screen did if you got too close. She touches it and gets sucked into the town.

Twenty-four hours later we see the next MCU sidekick join the party, Darcy Lewis, played by Kat Dennings. The last time we saw Darcy was in the first two Thor movies. Here shes being called in by S.W.O.R.D. to investigate the town. Upon examining it, she finds that the town is broadcasting an old television signal.

Darcy proceeds to have the government goons set up an old TV so she can see the broadcast a broadcast that happens to be what weve been watching through the first three episodes of WandaVision, and we learn that its Darcy whom we saw at the end of some of these episodes watching them with us on an old television set.

We then see Woo, Darcy, and the S.W.O.R.D. team investigate the anomaly and try to figure out whats going on. They begin to identify the people cast in Wandas delusion, and it turns out many of them are just normal citizens who somehow got dragged into this sitcom fantasy. Darcy also asks the question weve all been wondering about Vision since the first minute this show started, Isnt he dead?

In an earlier episode, we heard what sounded like Woo trying to talk to Wanda through the radio. Now in this episode, we get to see how that moment came about. Darcy and Woo cobble together a plan to try and talk to Wanda through the radios they can see on screen. They also send a man dressed in a biohazard suit through the sewer to try to reach Monica. Hes the one who appeared as a random beekeeper in the first episode. Thats what her delusion changed him into.

We also get to see the rest of the scene from the last episode where Wanda figured out that Monica was not who she appeared to be and ejected her from the town. It turns out she did that quite violently by sending Monica through the walls of her house, the fence in her yard, and flying through the air at breakneck speed. The thing is, the S.W.O.R.D. observers dont see that scene; they just see Monica disappear as we did in the previous episode. That leads Darcy to posit that someone is censoring the broadcast from them and not letting everyone see what is happening.

Then were left with the most disturbing of images as we approach the end of this episode. Wanda, slightly shaken from her delusion by Monicas mention of Ultron, but not entirely, sees Vision enter their home. Instead of the Vision weve seen who is miraculously alive, well, and remarkably human, we see the dead Vision we last saw in the fields of Wakanda after Thanos ripped an Infinity Stone straight from the sythezoids head. Hes still talking to her, but hes clearly not alive, with vacant eyes, and a large hole in his head.

Its a jarring, unnerving, and very disturbing break from the happy-go-lucky sitcom world weve been immersed in through the first few episodes.

Then, its gone.

Wanda returns to her world where she and Vision are alive and well in a 1970s sitcom with two bouncing baby boys. Then we get perhaps the most interesting exchange between the title characters weve had yet. Vision, seeing the upset nature of Wanda, says, We dont have to stay here. We can go wherever we want.

Wanda, beginning to piece together what is going on, with tears in her eyes, says, No we cant. This is our home. Vision says, Are you sure? and Wanda answers, Dont worry darling, I have everything under control.

Then we cut to Monica, who is on the grass outside Westview, exactly where we left her at the end of the last episode. She is surrounded by government agents. Darcy and Woo run up to Monica, who is still dazed on the ground, and ask if shes okay. Monica says, Its Wanda. Its all Wanda. The episode closes with Wanda and Vision cradling their babies while watching TV on their couch as Jimmy Hendrix sings Voodoo Child.

My working theory has been that Mephisto is the villain behind all this nonsense weve been seeing in WandaVision and that he would be the central villain of the next few Marvel movies, but the way this episode ends raises interesting questions.

Will Wanda herself move from being a hero, a member of The Avengers who saved the universe from the evils of Thanos, to a villain herself? Could her immense grief at the loss of her lover, Vision, drive her to become a crazed supervillain?

Could Wanda be the next big baddy of the MCU? Maybe well find out more next week on WandaVision.

Brad Jackson is a writer and radio personality whose work has appeared at ABC, CBS, Fox News, and multiple radio programs. He was the longtime host and producer of Coffee & Markets, an award-winning podcast and radio show with more than 1,500 episodes. Brad covers all things edible and cultural for The Federalist. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram at @bradwjackson.

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On 'WandaVision,' We Begin to Get Some Answers - The Federalist