In this edition of #ListenFirstFriday, the 17-year-old founder of YAP Politics discusses efforts to bridge the polarizations between political affiliations.
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U.S. President Donald Trump on February 6, 2026.
(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
A Demagogue in the White House: Will the Guardrails Hold?
Nov 02, 2026
A demagogue does not seize all power at once. He takes it piece by piece.
In Trump’s second administration, those pieces accumulated in plain sight. The president generated so much disruption and noise that Americans struggled to keep pace. Each new controversy displaced the last, obscuring a more consequential story: the steady accumulation of presidential power.
A demagogue gains support by exploiting fear, grievance and prejudice, portraying himself as the people’s indispensable champion against threatening enemies and institutions. Trump offered perhaps his clearest expression of that idea when he declared, “I Alone Can Fix It.”
We should have paid closer attention to the word alone.
The warning signs were not hidden. Trump portrayed immigrants as dangerous, said they were “poisoning the blood of our country,” labeled political opponents the “enemy from within” and told supporters, “I am your retribution.” Together, these statements reveal the pattern of demagoguery: magnify fear, identify enemies, exploit grievance and present one leader as the people’s indispensable protector.
Yet Americans returned him to the White House.
The Framers did not know Trump. But they understood the archetype: the ambitious leader who exploits division, cultivates personal loyalty and seeks greater power. They did not write the Constitution assuming every president would be virtuous. They designed it for the possibility that one would not be.
Their answer was not trust in the president. Their answer was divided power.
James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10 that instability, injustice and confusion had been “mortal diseases” of popular governments. In Federalist No. 51, he warned against the “gradual concentration” of power and wrote that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
The Framers gave Congress legislative, spending, oversight and impeachment powers, established an independent judiciary and protected a free press capable of scrutinizing government. These guardrails were intended to prevent the concentration and abuse of presidential power, keep public office a public trust and ensure that no president could place himself above the law.
The genius of the system was not that it guaranteed a demagogue would never reach the White House. It was that the Republic might survive if one did.
Those guardrails have now been tested.
Impeachment was designed as an extraordinary remedy for serious abuses of public trust. Trump was impeached twice and acquitted twice by the Senate. The proceedings exposed a vulnerability: impeachment cannot restrain presidential power when partisan loyalty overwhelms independent constitutional judgment.
The Constitution’s emoluments provisions reflected concern that financial benefit and foreign influence could compromise public power. Trump’s continuing business interests raise a larger question: Can the presidency remain a public trust when governmental authority and private financial interests repeatedly occupy the same space?
The scale is extraordinary. A conservative accounting by The New Yorker journalist David Kirkpatrick estimated that Trump and his immediate family made nearly $4 billion by leveraging his presidency during roughly the first year of his second term. Presidential power intertwined with private enrichment on that scale demands scrutiny.
Here again, the guardrail question is unavoidable: Are constitutional guardrails adequately restraining the collision of public power and private gain?
Yet financial integrity is only one test. The constitutional guardrail under greatest strain may be the most fundamental of all: separation of powers.
Congress was never intended to become a president’s supporting cast. The Framers expected congressional ambition to counter presidential ambition. Yet when legislators fear presidential retaliation, surrender institutional authority or place partisan allegiance above constitutional responsibility, that counterweight weakens.
A check that refuses to check is little protection at all.
The judiciary is another essential guardrail, and here the answer is complicated. Courts have restrained some administration actions, but court orders have also faced serious compliance disputes. In April 2025, a federal district court found probable cause that the administration had willfully failed to comply with one of its orders.
The Supreme Court’s record is also mixed. In June 2026, it overturned roughly nine decades of precedent protecting Federal Trade Commission commissioners from at-will presidential removal, expanding presidential control over independent executive agencies while preserving separate protections for Federal Reserve governors.
The judiciary has not collapsed as a guardrail. But neither has it consistently restrained the concentration of executive power.
Taken together, the record offers an uncomfortable answer: constitutional guardrails do not hold simply because they exist. Some have worked. Others have bent, weakened or failed at consequential moments. All depend upon people willing to exercise constitutional power with independence, courage and fidelity.
Institutions alone cannot save a Republic. People operate them.
Representatives vote. Judges rule. Public officials decide whether their oath means fidelity to the Constitution or loyalty to a president. Journalists scrutinize power. Citizens decide whom to entrust with it.
Constitutional fidelity must become the standard.
The people possess a guardrail of their own: the power to replace leaders who refuse to defend the constitutional order.
Voting is more than a partisan exercise. Examine who defended constitutional authority and who surrendered it. Who demanded accountability and who excused misconduct. Who protected independent institutions and who placed personal loyalty above an oath.
Do not ask only what party a candidate represents. Ask what constitutional principles that candidate will defend when defending them becomes politically costly.
Americans are exhausted. But exhaustion cannot become surrender.
Do not follow the noise. Follow the power.
Read the legislation. Examine the votes. Follow the money. Question representatives. Speak out. Petition government. Demonstrate peacefully. Vote.
When those entrusted with constitutional power refuse to use it, the people must use theirs.
And when elected leaders will not defend the constitutional order?
Replace them.
So, will the guardrails hold?
Only if we make them hold.
The Constitution cannot supply courage, cast our votes or compel allegiance to constitutional principle over allegiance to a president.
That responsibility is ours.
The Framers gave us a Republic capable of surviving a demagogue. They left keeping it to us.
Now we must keep it.
_____________________________________________________________________
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.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and U.S. President Donald Trump followed by Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan and U.S. first lady Melania Trump arrive for a state dinner in the East Room of the White House on September 24, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
When Leaders Disagree, Ceremony Plays an Important Role
Oct 30, 2026
When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at the White House on 24 September, the U.S. welcomed him with an elaborate display of ceremony. The Army Herald Trumpets sounded a fanfare, the Chinese and American national anthems were played, and the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps performed. A military review was followed by a flyover involving a B-2 bomber and four F-22 fighter jets, according to the White House. It was an extraordinary production for two countries that still disagree on some of the most important issues in international politics.
Talks between President Donald Trump and Xi touched on trade, artificial intelligence and Taiwan. The visit was marked by warm words and some signs of cooperation, but it did not erase the fundamental competition between the United States and China. So why was all this ceremony staged? It is tempting to dismiss political pomp as mere window dressing: an expensive historical relic surrounding the serious business taking place behind closed doors. As a music historian, however, I think this misunderstands what ceremony does. Ceremony can become particularly valuable when words alone are not enough.
Long before governments could issue statements instantly, political authority communicated through sound and movement. Trumpets announced arrivals and bells marked public events. Processions established hierarchies, while anthems and military bands allowed states to demonstrate their relationships even before anyone issued a communiqué.
Today, a president can address millions of people in seconds, while citizens can follow diplomatic negotiations almost in real time. And yet, when another head of state arrives, we still raise flags, invite musicians and perform carefully rehearsed rituals. The purpose of ceremony is not necessarily to demonstrate agreement. Sometimes its purpose is to make disagreement manageable.
Music is especially useful here because it can express recognition without requiring ideological consensus. Performing another country's national anthem does not imply approval of its government or policies. It signifies recognition of the state and the people represented by its leader. The same is true of many diplomatic rituals. A handshake does not resolve a trade dispute, and a state dinner does not ease tensions over Taiwan. These gestures instead create a temporary framework within which disagreements can take place.
Much of our public political culture is designed to highlight differences. Diplomacy sometimes has to do something more complex: acknowledge deep disagreements while preserving a relationship capable of weathering them. Ceremony offers a language that makes this possible. Of course, there is another side to political spectacle. Ritual can glorify power. Military ceremony deliberately demonstrates strength, and the B-2 bomber that flew over the White House was hardly a neutral prop.
Nor should carefully orchestrated hospitality be confused with diplomatic success. Governments can stage grand ceremonies while achieving very little, and pomp can divert attention from difficult political realities. Ceremony cannot replace successful diplomacy. But it does not lose its meaning simply because it does not lead to the signing of a treaty.
Consider the mixture of signals contained in the White House welcome. The Chinese national anthem was played alongside the American one. Xi was received with the honours accorded to a visiting head of state. At the same time, the ceremony demonstrated U.S. military might with extraordinary clarity. Hospitality and power were not contradictory messages. They were conveyed simultaneously.
This is something ritual does exceptionally well. Music historians encounter this throughout history: music has accompanied coronations, funerals and diplomatic events because it can communicate meaning without requiring everyone present to interpret that meaning in precisely the same way.
Relations between states, like relations between people, depend on more than the transmission of information. They also depend on recognition. A ceremony says: you have arrived; we recognise the significance of this meeting; for the duration of this encounter, we have agreed to occupy the same political space. None of this requires friendship.
In fact, ceremony may be most revealing precisely when friendship is absent. If two governments already agree, ritual reinforces an existing relationship. When they are deeply divided, the ritual itself can become part of the mechanism that allows them to remain in the same room.
Outside the ceremonial framework of the Trump-Xi meeting lay unresolved questions about trade, artificial intelligence and Taiwan. Inside it were trumpets, flags and carefully rehearsed movements. One did not preclude the other. The ceremony created a temporary language through which two rival powers could acknowledge one another without pretending that their differences had disappeared.
In an era when compromise is often seen as weakness and disagreement as a reason to stop listening, there may be something worth noting in this old diplomatic tradition. Sometimes the first achievement isn't agreement. It’s the fact that dialogue remains possible.
Stacy Jarvis is a Manchester-based music historian, culture writer and violinist. She writes about classical music, cultural history and the intersections between music, politics and society, with work appearing in The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Conversation and other UK and international publications. She is also a radio contributor and is completing a PhD in Musicology at the University of Birmingham.
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A fire burns and destroys the city hall after a group of individuals forced entry into the building during ongoing protest action against the "high cost of living," in Limoges, central France on Oct. 17, 2026.
Pascal Lachenaud/AFP/Getty Images/Tribune
What Americans can learn from the French protests
Oct 24, 2026
On Monday, France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez admitted that police have “lost control” as some cities continue to see massive waves of looting and mayhem. Social media brims with images of stores being ransacked, cars burning, and mask-wearing goons running wild. In Limoges, the beautiful Hôtel de Ville was burnt to the ground.
But the chaos, as is so often the case, began peacefully. And many supporters and leaders of the protests have condemned the violence. I think that violence has more to do with France’s miserable record of assimilating immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East than with budget cuts. Call me cynical, but I don’t believe the goons pillaging Louis Vuitton stores are planning to resell the handbags to buy better school supplies or to bolster their teachers’ salaries.
The initial protests were about budget cuts, primarily in education. As allied groups joined in — socialist and communist parties, labor unions, etc. — the argument expanded to generalized complaints about France’s “austerity” policies. In short, they argued, as they have for generations, that the government should spend more on pensions and other entitlements.
The problem is that France can’t afford it. It’s borrowed money to pay for its lavish government sector for a very long time. It has run consecutive budget deficits — i.e., took in less than it spent — for more than half a century. In 1974, public debt was around 15% of GDP. Today it’s at 116%. Government spending now makes up 57% of the GDP (compared with 23% of GDP for the U.S.), and France spends three times as much on “social protection” — including pensions and family benefits — as does the United States, and more than any other country in Europe and the OECD.
Naturally, the blame for this sorry state of affairs, according to some supporters of the protests, falls on capitalism. Famous French economist Thomas Piketty says the country’s woes are the result of the state pursuing the “capitalist logic” of underinvesting in the public sector and undertaxing the wealthy. In terms of personal income taxes alone — France has massive payroll and consumption taxes as well — the top 10% of French taxpayers provide 74% of the revenue. The top 1% provide a third. France also has the highest corporate tax rates of any country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
I’m hard-pressed to see how just a bit more taxing and spending will solve France’s problems.
I have real sympathy for the nonviolent French youth. Their economy is moribund in large part because retirees have a stranglehold on the state’s finances, consuming 14% of GDP. (Social Security and Medicare account for 9.4% of U.S. GDP. One reason education spending is so tight: A third of the education budget goes toward Education Ministry pensions.
I don’t think retirees should be thrown to the wolves, but such a system is objectively unsustainable. Yet in 2023, when French President Emmanuel Macron introduced reforms to bump the retirement age from 62 to 64, the resulting protests paralyzed the country (that modest reform was suspended last month). France is now caught in what economists call the “dependency trap,” producing too few workers to pay for the lifestyles of its older generations.
When protesters talk about feeling “hopeless,” what they often mean is that the gravy train will run out before they get to partake in it. I don’t blame them for being resentful, but it’s difficult to see how this is a failure of capitalism or “neoliberalism.” As Margaret Thatcher famously said, socialist governments “always run out of other people’s money.”
The most obvious answer to France’s problems is economic growth — much easier said than done, of course. The reason that’s so hard for France isn’t because the government is “unresponsive” to the people and their concerns. It’s because it’s too responsive. For decades, the French have demanded the economic policies that got them into this mess, and the government appeased them.
France is an outlier in its poor economic performance and lavish social spending, but its problems are recognizable across the West, including in America. The U.S. economy has grown twice as fast as France’s over the last quarter-century, but the demands for less “capitalism” from young Americans echo those protesting in Paris.
France has the sort of universal health insurance many insist would solve everyone’s problems here. It hasn’t spared France from political turmoil. Our own Social Security and Medicare aren’t far from insolvency, but demands for higher benefits and “Medicare for All” only grow louder.
The French canary in the coal mine is a good reminder that the best solution to some crises is to avoid them in the first place.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast.
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America’s polarization has closed us off to each other’s humanity. The Golden Rule and the churches may be the way back to common ground.
Getty Images, PeopleImages
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave? How Trump Is Destroying America's Soul
Oct 22, 2026
The recent actions by both some Jewish leaders and pro-Palestinian activists against NY mayor Zohran Mamdani are an example of just how far our nation has come from our ideals under the presidency of Donald Trump.
Even with Mamdani's consistent pro-Palestinian statements, he was called a "coward" and a "sellout" because he stood with the Jewish community in remembering the October 7 Hamas attack. Jewish leaders condemned him for his criticism of Israel and Palestinian sympathies expressed in the same breath as remembrance of the attack. But Mamdani understands the connection between the treatment by Israel of Palestinians and Palestinian treatment of Israel.
The United States under Trump has become driven by hatred and distrust. There has of course always been much hatred and distrust in our country, as there is everywhere in the world.
But under Trump, those feelings have been heightened to the point that we have become so polarized that the two sides—any two sides, not just MAGA and liberals—cannot talk to each other. There is no commonality remaining and there is little hope of finding common ground, so closed off is one side to the other's humanity and its core desire for the same things that we all desire—respect and the ability to live our lives in peace.
We have no freedom if we are caught in this vortex of hate and distrust. There is no bravery if we don't have the courage to listen to the other side's valid sorrows and understand where they are coming from.
In this, as in so many other ways, we are far from the ideals of our founding principles as stated in the Declaration of Independence—equality and the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. Or as the Pledge of Allegiance puts it, "Liberty and justice for all."
Let's look at the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians as an object lesson. Both sides have the same dream: to live in a country that validates and protects their existence and their ability to pursue life after decades or centuries of being subject to the control of others, of being persecuted, of having to live their lives in fear.
And so both have tried to create a space—a state—where they can be free to live their lives as human beings. But to do that, they have not just been willing, but felt it necessary to subjugate another people just as they have been subjugated. It's in many ways the same story as the English Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay colony. They came to America to escape persecution. But once they got here and founded their own state, they persecuted all other Christians, let alone other religions, who did not agree with them.
So our current dynamic is not a new page in the story of human societies. Nor is it the worst example of how a majority treats a minority. But it is an example of how our founding principles remain, in so many ways, far from achievement even as we as a nation have made substantial progress towards implementing those principles.
Nor is this just a failure to live up to the founding principles of our country. Every religion has at the core of its teaching a version of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Yet this principle remains far from the hearts and actions of man; historically, even from that of many religious establishments. To live that rule requires great humility, a characteristic not very prevalent among humans; instead, we are ruled by ego, insecurity, anger, fear, self-righteousness, and a host of other negative emotions.
These are all examples of human nurture, as opposed to human nature. These negative emotions are all a result of how man is raised, the experiences he has—especially as a young child—and the culture in which he lives. These emotions reflect man as he develops, not man as he is born. He is born a child of the Universe (or the child of God, if you prefer) full of light and love, positive energy and joy, equanimity. See my book, Discover Your Power.
But those seeds are not watered by his life experiences, which are predominantly negative, and so his ego grows to be a dominating force, bowling over any effort by his true self to do what is right. You've all seen the cartoons of a person with an angel sitting on one shoulder whispering good thoughts in his ear, and the devil sitting on the other shoulder, whispering negative thoughts in the other ear—it is always the devil that wins out.
How do we as a nation, let alone the world, move towards a world filled with more equality and more understanding? During the civil rights movement, in addition to the civil disobedience of Blacks led by Martin Luther King, Jr., White churches and their leaders were important in making clear that this was not just a Black v White movement, it was a movement by those who fought for equality and respect against those who had no interest in those values, except for themselves.
Today, to move our country forward, the churches must step forward again and be part of a movement (see American Solidarity) to have people come to embrace the principles of equality and respect, to embrace the Golden Rule, treating others the way they want to be treated. To bring about MLK's dream, that one day, "all of God’s children — black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics — will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"
Ronald L. Hirsch is a teacher, legal aid lawyer, survey researcher, nonprofit executive, consultant, composer, author, and volunteer. He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School and the author of We Still Hold These Truths. Read more of his writing at www.PreservingAmericanValues.com
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