Alan Zendell, May 2, 2026

Americans grew up believing our Constitution was the bulwark of our democracy. It was supposed to assure that no autocrat would ever rule the United States, that the Separation of Powers among the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of our federal government meant that none of the three couldn’t dominate the other two, and that our basic rights as citizens were protected. However naïve that may have been, I believed it, and you probably did, too.

What we are witnessing in the MAGA Republicans’ attempt to replace our Constitution with what they call Christian Nationalism, an oxymoron if there ever was one, is the potential eradication of everything Americans have believed in, particularly since World War 2, when we accepted the mantle of the protectors of the free world. MAGA not only threatens our democracy, but it would isolate us from our allies and buy into Trump’s fantasy that the world should be divided among the three major powers, Russia, China, and the United States, with Emperors Trump, Putin and Xi running the world.

The Trump 2.0 administration adopted the strategy of attacking every precept of our democracy simultaneously, intentionally creating chaos and legal confusion, in the belief that that would paralyze the opposition and allow single-minded, obsessed MAGA politicians to win. Consequently, our nation faces a combination of crises that could destroy both our economy and our democracy, because elected officials who swore an oath to protect our Constitution care more about their personal political futures than the people they swore to serve.

The United States Constitution guarantees the right to vote to any American citizen over the age of eighteen. Even persons who would otherwise be considered legally incompetent have the right to vote. Many states allow convicted felons to vote. Our founders believed only white male property owners should vote, and some states had higher voting age requirements until the 26^th Amendment set the minimum voting age at eighteen. The 15^th Amendment gave the franchise to blacks, the 19^th to women. The 24^th Amendment outlawed poll taxes and the Voting Rights Act made literacy tests for voting illegal.

Given all of the above, I cannot understand how the Supreme Court concluded partisan gerrymandering that effectively denies the right to vote to millions of Americans based on partisanship was constitutional. I grew up on the cliché “one man one vote,” and I was taught that the right to vote was a sacred pillar of our democracy supported by the Constitution.

It makes no sense to me that the Court would rule that racially-based gerrymandering violates the 15^th Amendment, but that partisan gerrymandering doesn’t potentially infringe on every American’s right to vote. All the esoteric legal arguments in the world can’t change the fact that that’s illogical and makes a mockery of democratic voting.

Our Constitution clearly grants the power to declare war to the Congress, while recognizing that the Commander in Chief of our military, that is, the president, has the right and responsibility to direct military action when out country is attacked or under demonstrably imminent threat of attack. Even as a school child I asked my teachers how that made sense, especially in the age of nuclear weapons. Congress, after seeing us dragged into a decade of combat in Vietnam without any declaration of war being issued, realized the apparent contradiction, and passed the War Powers Act in 1973.

Theoretically, the War Powers Act attempts to bridge the logical gap in the Constitution summarized by a single question. How do we reconcile the fact that a president can involve us directly in a war on their own initiative while only Congress can authorize and financially support a war effort? Trump isn’t the only president that has taken us to war ignoring Congress’s role, nor is he the only one who believes that once hostilities begin, in practical terms, Congress has no choice but to support them, making the 60-day limit to unauthorized hostilities moot. Our twenty-year involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated that the War Powers Act by itself doesn’t resolve the conundrum.

There are many examples of situations in which our Constitution and Declaration of Independence from tyranny laid out idealistic principles of democracy and human rights, which in practice are violated whenever strong leaders who disagree with them simply ignore them. Trump is only the latest and most virulent example of such a leader, and as we’ve noted before, Trump isn’t the problem. He’s just a symptom of the dangers of flawed humans allowed to go unchecked.

We create laws and rules of behavior so we can live in a civilized society. Otherwise, survival of the fittest becomes everyone’s way of life. But human nature is fundamentally selfish, and under stress, humans mostly revert to form. It’s important that we recognize that in 2026 because we have a critical choice to make six months from now. We can’t rely on the Courts to do this for us. It’s up to every one of us to determine whether the current administration can be allowed to function as it has done for fifteen months, and whether our Congressional representatives deserve re-election. The buck stops in the ballot box.