Reform advocates are full of good intentions and worthy goals— from ending hunger to improving access to healthcare and limiting the impacts of climate change. But good intentions are not the same as good results.
The efficient delivery of services is important for all citizens. In this episode, How Do We Fix it looks at how to design technology that makes the government smarter, much more efficient, and even friendlier.
U.S. President Donald Trump on October 16, 2026 in Palm Beach, Florida.
A president can win an election and still fail the test of leadership. The presidency is a public trust, not a personal platform, family enterprise, or license to demean people and disregard the law. Donald Trump holds the office legally. Yet his conduct raises a fundamental question: is he fulfilling the constitutional duties that give the presidency its meaning? The answer, visible in his behavior, is no. He performs the role of president the way a showman performs a part — loudly, aggressively, and without the substance the office requires.
Leadership is not conferred by a title; it is demonstrated through conduct. Ethical leadership requires integrity, honesty, sound judgment, and accountability. Moral leadership demands empathy, fairness, humility, and the courage to do what is right even when doing so carries a personal or political cost. When a president repeatedly demeans people, disregards established norms, and places personal interests above public duty, citizens have every reason to question his leadership — or whether he is leading at all.
Millions of Americans now say, “He is not my president.” They are not denying his election. They are expressing a deeper concern: a president cannot fully discharge the office while rejecting the obligations that define it. The Constitution grants power, but it also imposes duty. When a president abandons those duties, he hollows out the meaning of the presidency and becomes president in law only — not in constitutional substance.
On January 20, 2025, Trump took the presidential oath. The Constitution does not require a Bible; it requires a commitment to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and faithfully execute the office. The oath is not ceremonial. It is a promise to the American people. The question is whether his conduct honors that promise.
No serious leader behaves the way Donald Trump behaves. He is unfocused, impulsive, and driven by personal grievance rather than public duty. His deeds are often cruel, his rhetoric divisive, and his priorities centered on power, praise, and money. He praises dictators, demands constant admiration, and treats public office as a stage for self‑promotion rather than a responsibility to the nation. FOX News awarded him a “Patriotic” honor, yet patriotism is measured by service, sacrifice, and fidelity to the Constitution — not by showmanship or self‑congratulation. In my view, he is not a leader, not a patriot, and not a president in the constitutional sense. He is a man who holds the title but rejects the substance.
Courts, Congress, and federal agencies exist to check presidential power, yet Trump has repeatedly treated those limits as optional. Federal judges have ruled against administration actions, and reporting has documented delays and defiance of court orders. After the 2020 election, he challenged lawful results and pressured state officials to change outcomes. Presidential power is substantial but not unlimited; the Constitution’s Take Care Clause requires faithful execution of the laws. A president cannot make personal certainty the final authority over elections, courts, or law. Constitutional government collapses when lawful constraints are dismissed as inconveniences.
Public trust erodes when the presidency appears to advance personal interests rather than national priorities. Attacks on the press deepen that distrust. The late Senator John McCain warned that suppressing the press is “how dictators get started.” A free press helps citizens evaluate government claims and hold officials accountable. Leaders who seek to restrict scrutiny weaken the public’s ability to judge their actions.
Many Americans fear that public service is becoming self‑service. When questions about conflicts of interest, personal financial gain, or the use of public resources arise, citizens deserve transparent answers. Public office must never become a means of private enrichment. A president cannot demand public trust while treating accountability as an attack.
Professionalism also requires humility and perspective. Trump has repeatedly insisted that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. A president may believe his diplomatic efforts deserve recognition, but ethical leadership does not demand honors or treat their absence as an insult to the nation. Leadership is measured not by awards a leader believes he deserves, but by responsibility accepted and consequences faced. Public service is not a personal competition for recognition.
Constitutional leadership requires evidence‑based decisions, sound judgment, and respect for lawful outcomes. Repeated litigation and judicial rebukes should prompt restraint and compliance, not attacks on the legitimacy of the courts. When citizens are expected to obey the law, the president must demonstrate that he is bound by it, too.
Effective leaders also demonstrate empathy, humility, resilience, and the ability to build shared purpose. Critics see the opposite in Trump’s governance: loyalty‑based appointments, attacks on journalists, disregard for established processes, and behavior they regard as retaliatory or cruel. The question is not whether another president would have faced identical circumstances. It is whether constitutional standards are applied consistently, regardless of party. Accountability that depends on political allegiance is not accountability.
Senator Lisa Murkowski warned in 2025 that “retaliation is real.” When elected representatives fear punishment for exercising independent judgment, the issue extends beyond one senator or dispute. Congress is supposed to check executive power, not accommodate it.
Congress has both the authority and the responsibility to restrain presidential overreach. It must investigate credible evidence of misconduct, protect inspectors general and whistleblowers from retaliation, and demand transparency about executive decisions and public spending. Its appropriations power is a constitutional safeguard. No administration should divert public money without lawful authority or evade meaningful oversight. Taxpayer funds must serve legitimate public purposes, not personal image‑making or partisan advantage.
Congress should also strengthen safeguards against conflicts of interest and require meaningful disclosure of presidential financial interests. These are practical protections for public trust. Oversight must be continuous, evidence‑based, and applied without regard to party.
Not every presidential action citizens dislike is unconstitutional. Presidents have legitimate authority to set policy, issue lawful orders, veto legislation, nominate officials, and conduct foreign policy. Constitutional government depends on evidence, legal process, and institutional checks — not partisan assumptions or personal allegiance. Allegations must be investigated fairly, and violations must be addressed through lawful remedies.
The responsibility does not rest with Congress alone. Americans can vote, petition, organize, support independent journalism, demand transparency, and examine how their representatives vote. Democratic accountability continues between elections.
The deeper danger is the erosion of institutional trust: constitutional limits become negotiable, loyalty replaces independent judgment, and accountability is dismissed as persecution. Confidence without competence is not leadership. Power without restraint is not strength.
The question is not whether Trump occupies the office. He remains president in law. Whether he fulfills its responsibilities must be judged by his conduct, the evidence, and constitutional standards. The title cannot substitute for duty.
No Fortune 500 board would tolerate the patterns of conduct we have seen — not because of politics, but because leadership requires judgment, accountability, and respect for institutional limits. A president may hold the office in law, but leadership is earned through duty.
A president may hold the office in law, but the Republic endures only when its leaders fulfill the constitutional duties that give that office meaning — and when its citizens insist that no president is exempt from those obligations.
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Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and former principal who spent her career advancing civic responsibility, equity, and public engagement. She writes about democracy, ethical leadership, and the values that strengthen American communities.
“A republic – if you can keep it,” was Benjamin Franklin’s reply in 1787 when asked what the Constitutional Convention had produced. For the first time since the Civil War, whether we can keep that republic is again in question. The answer will depend on the actions we take and also on the words we use, because political discourse is the soil and climate in which actions grow.
Like a lexical chick trying to hatch, the term “fascism” has cracked the surface of American political discourse but has not fully broken through. Whether it does has intellectual and moral consequences. So we must ask: What is fascism? Is it accurate to call Trumpism fascism? And if it isn’t fascism, what is it?
No one has written more trenchantly on this subject than Umberto Eco. In “Ur-Fascism” (New York Review of Books, 1995), Eco drew on his Italian childhood under Mussolini to identify fourteen features that cluster within the concept. They include (paraphrasing Eco):
Eco also borrows Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblance.” Games share no single essence. Some are competitive and some are not; some involve money and some don’t. Fascist regimes likewise share no single defining trait. As Eco writes, “one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist.” Resemblance, not identity, is what makes fascism a coherent rubric for a particular variety of misrule.
That leaves some unavoidable vagueness around the edges. As Orwell noted, even the major fascist states “differ from one another a good deal in structure and ideology.” But vagueness doesn’t strip a word of its validity or descriptive power. “Fascism” is in the lexicon because it is useful and sufficiently clear, and rigorous analysis of exactly the kind Eco performed makes it clearer.
The New York Times has editorialized persuasively on how the United States has accelerated toward autocracy in Donald Trump’s second term. Although it does not use the word “fascism”, the second Trump Administration has exhibited many of Eco’s features:
We should add kleptocracy to the list of frequent, if not universal, markers of fascism.
Additionally, we must not overlook the ways Trump departs from Eco’s model. His policies are not overtly antisemitic, even if he has not distanced himself from backers who are, and until attacking Iran he had shown little appetite for large-scale war. Courts and grand juries have often stymied his efforts to persecute opponents. Unlike Franco’s Spain, his movement is not formally tied to a church, though the Christian Right’s influence cannot be ignored. Thankfully, since the January 6th attack on the Capitol, he has not inspired violence along the lines of Mussolini’s blackshirts and Hitler’s brownshirts.
The largest difference is that Trump operates within a democratic system and erodes it, rather than replacing it. We are not living in a full-blown autocracy like the classic fascist regimes of 20th-century Europe. Trump has moved the United States toward “anocracy,“ a weakened democracy that allows fascistic policies. Our trajectory resembles Hungary, Turkey, or Poland, where authoritarians were elected and then eroded democracy without extinguishing it. The pattern also has American precedents: the Know-Nothings, Jim Crow, the Red Scare, McCarthyism. Ours is not a sudden seizure of power like Chile in 1973. It is a gradual kind of national electoral suicide.
One more dimension goes beyond Eco’s scheme: the movement is essentially non-ideological. All politics is emotive, and democracy is not designed for robots. But as Robert Paxton writes, fascism “does not rest explicitly upon an elaborated philosophical system, but rather upon popular feelings.”
Some figures in Trump’s orbit, such as Steve Bannon or Stephen Miller, could be called explicit, ideological fascists. Trump himself is an implicit fascist, as are many of his followers, most of whom would not recognize themselves as fascists. Among Trump’s supporters there is a genuine sense of threat and loss, and it is not baseless. What distinguishes fascism is not emotion as such but the emotional terrain that feeds it: racism, grievance, cruelty, openness to violence, and at times contempt for reason and expertise. MAGA isn’t a moral theory of how politics should work. It is a moral vacuum.
Like all general terms, “fascism” is imprecise and open to abuse. But we don’t banish words like racism, genocide, or terrorism because they can be misused or sound inflammatory. Fascism is both descriptive and implicitly prescriptive, and that is no reason to avoid it. To shrink from using it stunts discourse and amounts to unilateral rhetorical disarmament.
The same goes for how we talk about polarization. Yes, we are more polarized. But the casual use of the word implies that both sides are equally responsible for the chasm. It hides the fact that one side has drifted far further from democratic norms. Polarization is not like the weather, falling on everyone equally.
I am not suggesting we attach the fascist label to voters, as opposed to politicians and policies. People vote for all sorts of reasons, including the better and worse angels of our nature. Nor am I urging anyone to “understand” Trump’s movement as if it held a coherent worldview waiting to be fathomed. Reading Eco relieved me of that burden.
For the political class and the commentariat, the task is different. Focusing only on safer themes like corruption, incompetence, or affordability is a failure of moral nerve. Naming fascism plainly, and holding leaders and policies to account for it, is the first step toward the reckoning that must ultimately come.
The Faces of Fascism and Challenges to Democracy was first published by Expand Democracy and is republished with permission.
Jeffrey Scheuer is the author of The Sound Bite Society, The Big Picture, and most recently, Inside the LIberal Arts. The arguments and recommendations here are the authors’ own.
U.S. Deaf athletes celebrated at the Opening Ceremony of the 25th Summer Deaflympics on November 15, 2025, in Tokyo, Japan.
Last month was National Deaf Awareness Month.
It is a time to raise awareness of Deaf culture and language and to advocate for the rights and inclusion of Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals.
Since 1997, we have celebrated National Deaf Awareness Month every September.
Despite nearly thirty years of promoting Deaf Awareness Month, Deaf activists' unwavering dedication remains truly inspiring. We believe they still understand the frustration USA Deaflympians feel.
The most disappointing moment of 2025 for our Deaflympians was the lack of national news media coverage of the 2025 Summer Deaflympics in Tokyo, Japan, held November 15 to 26. Despite Team USA bringing home 36 medals and competing against 81 countries, major news outlets (outside of YouTube) ran no on-air reports or feature articles during or after the Games. By comparison, the Olympics and Paralympics consistently receive extensive daily coverage and athlete profiles across television and online media. This absence limits public awareness and recognition of the Deaflympics in the United States.
Therefore, Congress and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) ought to reassess the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act of 1998 (the “Ted Stevens Act”) to include the Deaflympics.
No. 1 - Consistency with the Olympic Movement: The IOC fully recognizes the Deaflympics; therefore, U.S. law must do the same.
Law: 36 U.S.C. § 220503(2) is a provision of the Ted Stevens Act that requires the USOPC to have the statutory mandate to “coordinate and develop amateur athletic activity in the United States, directly related to international amateur athletic competition.”
Fact: Since 1924, the Deaflympics have been the world’s second-oldest Olympic-style event, following the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has officially sanctioned the Deaflympics since 1955. However, the 1998 expansion of the Ted Stevens Act explicitly mandated USOPC governance over the Olympic and Paralympic Games but omitted the Deaflympics. In 2001, the IOC granted the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (ICSD) the right to use the term Deaflympics (formerly the World Games for the Deaf). The USOPC does not officially recognize the Deaflympics, primarily because of governance autonomy and the specific statutory language of the Ted Stevens Act.
Recommendation for Congress: The USA Deaf Sports Federation (USADSF) and the ICSD strongly support including the Deaflympics under the USOPC, viewing it as essential to equity and recognition. The USOPC has neither publicly opposed nor supported such inclusion but has cited legal and structural reasons for maintaining the status quo. Lawmakers should expect broad support from Deaf advocacy groups and some international bodies, though those focused on preserving existing governance distinctions may resist.
No. 2 - Equity for Disabled Athletes: Deaflympians are the only Olympic-style athletes not included in the Ted Stevens Act
Law: 36 U.S.C. § 220503(13) authorizes the USOPC to “encourage and assist amateur athletic programs and competitions for amateur athletes with disabilities”.
Fact: The USOPC does not officially include purely Deaf athletes in its primary Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) frameworks.
Recommendation for Congress: In the 277-page 2024 Final Report of the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics (CSUSOP), the Commission recommends that “Congress should also further study the challenges faced by deaf and hard-of-hearing athletes and proposals to integrate deaf sports into the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement.”
No. 3 - Congressional Intent of Inclusion: Congress intended to include all Olympic-style sports without exception.
Law: Under the Ted Stevens Act, Congress granted the USOPC exclusive jurisdiction over Olympic-style sports.
Fact: Excluding the Deaflympics from the Ted Stevens Act would not legally require the USOPC to track Deaf athletes or integrate them into its broader equity, resource allocation, and organizational compliance mandates.
Recommendation for Congress: Now is a pivotal moment for Congress to act to address these inequities and prevent another generation of Deaf athletes from being lost to systemic neglect.
No. 4 - Leadership and Legacy: Updating the Act honors Ted Stevens’s legacy of fairness and inclusion.
Law: The 1998 Amendment officially renamed the law the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act.
Fact: Senator Stevens introduced Senate Bill 2430 (1998) on the Senate floor on May 22, 1998, and stated:
“World Games for the Deaf--It has been suggested that both the bill and the Committee report which eventually accompanies the bill include language in support of the World Games for the Deaf and of deaf athletes. It is anticipated that this issue will be addressed by consensus before the bill becomes enacted.”
Yet that language never made it into the law.
Recommendation for Congress: The Ted Stevens Act could be amended as follows:
The final 1977 report of the President’s Commission on Olympic Sports (PCOS) recommended recognizing athletic events for individuals with disabilities as legitimate sports competitions for elite, highly trained athletes rather than dismissing them as mere therapy or rehabilitation.
The Amateur Sports Act of 1978 required the U.S. Olympic Committee to “...encourage and provide assistance to amateur athletic programs and competition for handicapped individuals, including, where feasible, the expansion of opportunities for meaningful participation by handicapped individuals in athletic competition programs for able-bodied individuals...”
Additionally, U.S. Deaflympic medalists are ineligible for the USOPC Operation Gold cash stipends awarded to medalists.
Therefore, Congress ought to amend the Ted Stevens Act to explicitly recognize the Deaflympics as an official part of the United States Olympic movement, ensure that Deaflympians receive the same support and representation as Olympians and Paralympians, and require the USOPC to fund and support Deaf athletes. The amended language ought to reference the “Deaflympics” and establish equal access to training, competition opportunities, and promotional activities.
It’s time for Congress and the USOPC to include the Deaflympics in the Act.
Howard Gorrell is an advocate for the deaf, a former Republican Party election statistician, and a longtime congressional aide. He has been advocating against partisan gerrymandering for four decades.
US President Donald Trump arrives onstage for a campaign rally in the Mitchell Center at the University of South Alabama on Oct. 2, 2026, in Mobile, Alabama.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins is facing one of the toughest reelection battles of her lifetime. And at Tuesday night’s debate, she was clearly on the defensive.
This race should not have been this competitive. Collins has held this seat for five terms. And while Maine has voted for the Democrat in every presidential election since 1992, it still has a fierce independent streak, and a healthy Republican base.
But this year is different. President Trump’s approval numbers are abysmal, his tariffs and his war in Iran have tanked our economy, and he seems focused on things that would actively turn voters off — like spending taxpayer dollars on propaganda ads, vanity construction projects, fighting with journalists, and punishing his enemies.
And all the while, he’s telling voters that their affordability concerns are a hoax. It’s hard to run on two more years of…this.
In Maine, Trump’s trade war with bordering Canada is a particular pain point, evidenced by how badly Collins tried to distance herself from the tariffs during the debate.
She boasted that she fought to keep a few important items off of Trump’s tariff list, including concrete, pulp, and road salt.
Her Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson, a longtime Maine legislator, delivered a response that should become a mantra for every Dem running this cycle:
It was a simple and straightforward acknowledgment that most Americans are struggling to pay their bills, put gas in their cars, put food on the table, and meanwhile Trump’s tariffs are making all of that harder. Collins saving the road salt doesn’t help with any of it.
But it’s more than road salt…
So much of what Trump and Republicans are offering in this 11th hour of desperation won’t solve Americans’ affordability crisis either.
Trump’s obsession with building monuments to himself won’t help a farmer in Iowa put diesel in his tractor. We can’t eat ballrooms.
Trump’s cheerleading for AI while the rest of the world panics about the power-hungry tech bros leading the charge won’t put money in the pocket of a single mom working three jobs in Trenton, New Jersey. We can’t eat data centers.
Trump’s endless war and its global economic destruction isn’t helping the North Carolina apple farmer who lost it all in Hurricane Helene. We can’t eat Iran strikes.
Trump’s fixation with punishing political enemies, and Republican lawmakers’ preening efforts to oblige him in Congress, won’t help the laid-off auto worker in Pontiac, Michigan. We can’t eat Jack Smith hearings.
Trump’s constant grifts, self-dealing, and his family’s efforts to line their own pockets through crypto and billion-dollar Pentagon contracts aren’t helping the family in Ames, Iowa struggling to pay their cancer treatment bills. We can’t eat corruption.
Trump’s attacks on journalists, threats to sue over coverage he doesn’t like, and attempts at turning the press into his personal Pravda won’t convince the soccer mom in Bakersfield, California that $5 a gallon gas is somehow affordable. We can’t eat censorship.
Trump’s obsession with baseless election fraud claims and threats to rig or militarize our elections won’t help the recent college grad who’s sent out 300 resumes but can’t get a job. We can’t eat paranoia.
Trump’s preoccupation with authoritarian strongmen like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is a slap in the face of a Cuban refugee trying to make a life for his family in Miami. We can’t eat jealousy.
Running the country in service of one guy’s megalomania hasn’t made America great again, and it hasn’t made life better for Americans.
We can’t eat Trump.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
