In this episode of the Politics in Question podcast, the team discusses thermostatic politics to explain what it means and how it works.
Podcast: What is thermostatic politics?


In this episode of the Politics in Question podcast, the team discusses thermostatic politics to explain what it means and how it works.

America is being damaged not by strong leaders abusing power, but by weak leaders avoiding responsibility. Their refusal to be accountable has become a threat to democracy itself. We are now governed by individuals who hold power but lack the character, courage, and integrity required to use it responsibly. And while everyday Americans are expected to follow rules, honor commitments, and face consequences, we have a Congress and a President who are shielded by privilege and immunity. We have leaders in Congress who lie, point fingers, and break ethics rules because they can get away with it. There is no accountability. Too many of our leaders operate as if ethics were optional.
Internal fighting among members of Congress has only deepened the dysfunction. Instead of holding one another accountable, lawmakers spend their energy attacking colleagues, blocking legislation, and protecting party leaders. Infighting reveals a failure to check themselves, leaving citizens with a government paralyzed by disputes rather than focused on solutions. When leaders cannot even enforce accountability within their own ranks, the entire system falters.
Transparency in Congress has become a forgotten word. Leaders not only spin and change the subject, but they spread conspiracies, cover up, and deny—traits they apparently learned from the President to evade the truth and protect and shield him when he abuses power. President Trump has wielded hundreds of executive orders that test constitutional boundaries, including attempts to restrict birthright citizenship and expand presidential authority beyond constitutional limits, which legal experts warn could undermine checks and balances (ABC News; Tennessean). He has also used government powers to target more than 100 perceived enemies—through ICE arrests, investigations, and firings—in what NPR described as a sweeping campaign of retribution (OPB/NPR). Who dares to check the President? Who dares to hold him accountable for his actions that diminish our Republic?
Speaker Mike Johnson has likewise evaded truth and accountability. During a protracted government shutdown, he refused to reconvene the House, effectively holding Congress hostage and preventing members from voting on critical legislation. Analysts described this as a dereliction of duty that undermined representative government (BentGent). Johnson also faced bipartisan pressure over the release of Jeffrey Epstein investigation files, publicly claiming transparency while simultaneously shutting down the Rules Committee and canceling votes, a move criticized as an effort to avoid scrutiny (Politico; Southwest Journal).
With no accountability, Americans can see the quid pro quos, pay‑for‑play arrangements, favors extended to political allies, and the deference shown to billionaires and special interests. This visibility should trigger reform. Instead, it exposes a deeper failure: a political culture so hollowed out by privilege and immunity that consequences simply no longer apply. Recent scandals illustrate this pattern, from Miami’s no‑bid concession deal benefiting a national party finance chair to multimillion‑dollar checks securing Cabinet appointments in what watchdogs describe as Trump’s pay‑to‑play administration.
The Supreme Court has not fared better. Justices have accepted luxury trips, gifts, and favors from wealthy benefactors, raising questions about impartiality and ethics. Investigations by ProPublica have detailed undisclosed travel and relationships that test the boundaries of judicial ethics, while rulings on presidential immunity reported by SCOTUSblog have reshaped checks and balances in ways that embolden abuses of power. Accountability has been replaced by privilege, and the Court itself has become entangled in pay‑for‑play politics.
Underlying all of this is the outsized influence of billionaires and money in politics. In the 2024 elections, 150 of the wealthiest families contributed nearly $2 billion to influence outcomes, including Elon Musk ($133 million to Republicans) and Michael Bloomberg ($45 million to Democrats), as reported by the Washington Post. Research by Princeton shows that economic elites and organized interests have far more influence on policy outcomes than average citizens, while Pew Research documents the resulting collapse of public trust in government. Leaders fear accountability because it would expose these transactions, strip away privileges, and return power to the people.
When accountability is absent, the damage extends beyond leaders to citizens themselves. Trust erodes, corruption weakens institutions, and the government loses the ability to pass laws, enact policies, or respond to crises. Public services are destroyed, voices go unheard, and votes are suppressed. Citizens disengage, stop caring, and withdraw from civic life. Inequality and injustice deepen, social unrest grows, and the rule of law collapses. Democracy cannot survive when accountability is ignored.
Yet accountability is not punishment—it is a tool. Leaders must view accountability as a way to improve their leadership, sharpen decision‑making, build trust, and even strengthen approval rates. As a leader, I held myself accountable—the buck stopped with me. It was never difficult to confront my flaws and weaknesses because strong self-esteem and a genuine desire to serve led me to accept responsibility for outcomes. Accountability enhanced my leadership skills, making me stronger, more effective, and better equipped to make sound decisions, solve problems, and achieve organizational goals. Ignoring accountability was never an option. But leaders should not only hold themselves accountable; they must also hold one another accountable, including the President and the Supreme Court. Accountability will only work when it exists across all three branches of government.
Americans cannot afford to look away. If we want to dismantle dysfunction, we must confront the money behind it and demand accountability at every level of government. Only then can we restore integrity, enforce checks and balances, and reclaim democracy as for the people, by the people.
Ethics codes and transparency rules must be enforced. Checks and balances must be restored and reinforced. Campaign finance reform and stricter lobbying rules must limit billionaire influence. Citizens must vote, speak out, attend town halls, write letters, sign petitions, and participate in peaceful protests. Accountability makes for a fully functioning Congress that passes laws, enacts policies, and does the work of the people without chaos, obstruction, and self‑interest. Leaders should be judged not by how fiercely they cling to power, but by how courageously they accept responsibility.
Leaders may fear accountability, but without it, democracy cannot survive. When accountability is present, corruption recedes, transparency expands, and trust is restored. Free and fair elections, independent media, and ethical leadership will no longer be ideals on paper but realities in practice. Only then will democracy endure — and only then will government truly be for the people, by the people.
C. Goode is a retired educational leader and advocate for ethical leadership and health care justice.

One of the two Palm Beach, Florida, homes that Donald Trump signed a mortgage for in the mid-1990s. The Mar-a-Lago tower appears behind the house.
For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence.
President Donald Trump branded one foe who did so “deceitful and potentially criminal.” He called another “CROOKED” on Truth Social and pushed the attorney general to take action.
But years earlier, Trump did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of, records show.
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.
In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent — exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud.
At the time of the purchases, Trump’s local real estate agent told the Miami Herald that the businessman had “hired an expensive New York design firm” to “dress them up to the nines and lease them out annually.” In an interview, Shirley Wyner, the late real estate agent’s wife and business partner who was herself later the rental agent for the two properties, told ProPublica: “They were rentals from the beginning.” Wyner, who has worked with the Trump family for years, added: “President Trump never lived there.”

Despite signing a mortgage that pledged he would live in each house, Trump listed both homes as rentals. Palm Beach Daily News via Newspapers.com. Redactions by ProPublica.Mortgage law experts who reviewed the records for ProPublica were struck by the irony of Trump’s dual mortgages. They said claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time, as Trump did, is often legal and rarely prosecuted. But Trump’s two loans, they said, exceed the low bar the Trump administration itself has set for mortgage fraud.
“Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” said Kathleen Engel, a Suffolk University law professor and leading expert on mortgage finance. “Trump has deemed that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to preclude someone from serving the country.”
Mortgages for a person’s main home tend to receive more favorable terms, like lower interest rates, than mortgages for a second home or an investment rental property. Legal experts said that having more than one primary-residence mortgage can sometimes be legitimate, like when someone has to move for a new job, and other times can be caused by clerical error. Determining ill intent on the part of the borrower is key to proving fraud, and the experts said lenders have significant discretion in what loans they offer clients. (In this case, Trump used the same lender to buy the two Florida homes.)
But in recent months, the Trump administration has asserted that merely having two primary-residence mortgages is evidence of criminality.
Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director who has led the charge, said earlier this year: “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation.”
Trump hung up on a ProPublica reporter after being asked whether his Florida mortgages were similar to those of others he had accused of fraud.
In response to questions, a White House spokesperson told ProPublica: “President Trump’s two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender. There was no defraudation. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself.”
The spokesperson added, “this is yet another desperate attempt by the Left wing media to disparage President Trump with false allegations,” and said, “President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law.”
The White House did not respond to questions about any other documents related to the transactions, such as loan applications, that could shed light on what Trump told the lender or if the lender made any exceptions for him.
At the time Trump bought the two Florida properties, he was dealing with the wreckage of high-profile failures at his casinos and hotels in the early 1990s. (He famously recounted seeing a panhandler on Fifth Avenue around this time and telling his companion: “You know, right now that man is worth $900 million more than I am.”) In December 1993, he married the model Marla Maples in an opulent ceremony at The Plaza Hotel. And in Florida, he was pushing local authorities to let him turn Mar-a-Lago, then a residence, into a private club.
Trump bought the two homes, which both sit on Woodbridge Road directly north of Mar-a-Lago, and got mortgages in quick succession in December 1993 and January 1994. The lender on both mortgages, one for $525,000 and one for $1,200,000, was Merrill Lynch.
Each of the mortgage documents signed by Trump contain the standard occupancy requirement — that he must make the property his principal residence within 60 days and live there for at least a year, unless the lender agreed otherwise or there were extenuating circumstances.
But ProPublica could not find evidence Trump ever lived in either of the properties. Legal documents and federal election records from the period give his address as Trump Tower in Manhattan. (Trump would officially change his permanent residence to Florida only decades later, in 2019.) A Vanity Fair profile published in March 1994 describes Trump spending time in Manhattan and at Mar-a-Lago itself.
Trump’s real estate agent, who told the local press that the plan from the beginning was to rent out the two satellite homes, was quoted as saying, “Mr. Trump, in effect, is in a position to approve who his neighbors are.”
In the ensuing years, listings popped up in local newspapers advertising each of the homes for rent. At one point in 1997, the larger of the two homes, a 7-bedroom, 7-bathroom Mediterranean Revival mansion, was listed for $3,000 per day.
Even if Trump did violate the law with his two primary-residence mortgages in Florida, the loans have since been paid off and the mid-1990s is well outside the statute of limitations for mortgage fraud.

In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property and attested that it too would be his principal residence. Obtained by ProPublicaA spokesperson for Bank of America, which now owns Merrill Lynch, did not answer questions about the Trump mortgages.
“It’s highly unlikely we would have original documents for a 32-year-old transaction, but generally in private client mortgages the terms of the transactions are based on the overall relationship,” the spokesperson said in a statement, “and the mortgages are not backed by or sold to any government sponsored entity.”
Trump’s two mortgages in Palm Beach bear similarities to the loans taken out by political rivals whom his administration has accused of fraud.
In October, federal prosecutors charged New York Attorney General Letitia James over her mortgage. James has been one of Trump’s top targets since she brought a fraud lawsuit against the president and his company in 2022.
A central claim in the case the Trump Justice Department brought against her is that she purchased a house in Virginia, pledging to her lender that it would serve as her second home, then proceeded to use it as an investment property and rent it out. “This misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties,” according to the indictment.
Trump’s Florida mortgage agreements appear to have made a more significant misrepresentation, as he claimed those homes would be his primary residence, not his secondary home as James did, before proceeding to rent them out.
James has denied the allegations against her, and the case was dismissed last month over procedural issues, though the Justice Department has been trying to reindict her.
The circumstances around Trump’s mortgages are also similar to the case his administration has made against Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Trump declared he was firing Cook earlier this year over her mortgages, as he has sought to bend the traditionally independent agency to his will and force it to lower interest rates. Cook, who denied wrongdoing, has sued to block the termination and continues to serve on the Fed board as that legal fight continues.
In a letter to Cook, Trump specifically noted that she signed two primary residence mortgages within weeks of each other — just as records show he did in Florida.
“You signed one document attesting that a property in Michigan would be your primary residence for the next year. Two weeks later, you signed another document for a property in Georgia stating that it would be your primary residence for the next year,” Trump wrote. “It is inconceivable that you were not aware of your first commitment when making the second.”
He called the loans potentially criminal and wrote, “at a minimum, the conduct at issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness.”
The Trump administration has made similar fraud allegations against other political enemies, including Democrats Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both of whom have denied wrongdoing.
In September, ProPublica reported that three of Trump’s Cabinet members have called multiple homes their primary residences in mortgage agreements. Bloomberg also reported that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent did something similar. (The Cabinet members have all denied wrongdoing.)
Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency head, has denied his investigations are politically motivated. “If it’s a Republican who’s committing mortgage fraud, we’re going to look at it,” he has said. “If it’s a Democrat, we’re going to look at it.”
Thus far, Pulte has not made any publicly known criminal referrals against Republicans. He did not respond to questions from ProPublica about Trump’s Florida mortgages.
Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal was first published on ProPublica and republished with permission.
Justin Elliott is a ProPublica reporter covering business and politics.
Robert Faturechi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at ProPublica.
Alex Mierjeski is a research reporter at ProPublica based in New York.

U.S. President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room of the White House on December 02, 2025 in Washington, DC. A bipartisan Congressional investigation has begun about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's role in ordering U.S. military strikes on small boats that have killed scores of people in the waters off Venezuela, which Hegseth said are intended "to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people.”
Since president Trump returned to office, Congress has seemed either irrelevant or impotent. Republican majorities in the Senate and the House have acquiesced in the president’s desire to radically expand executive power.
Examples are legion. The Congress sat idly by while the administration dismantled agencies that the Congress created. It sat idly by while the administration refused to spend money it had appropriated. Congress didn’t do a thing when the president ignored laws it passed.
Congress now faces a test of whether it can and will assert itself against a rogue president. It concerns the possible war crime committed on September 2 when the military fired on defenseless people who had survived a first strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs toward the United States.
If the Congress turns a blind eye to what has unfolded in the Caribbean it will further its complicity in the dismantling of the rule of law in this country. If it is unmoved by the possibility that the American military may have violated the laws of war and simple human decency it will send a chilling message that will further weaken America’s standing in the world.
Republicans must join with Democrats in investigating the September 2 incident and examining the larger context of the Trump Administration's belligerency in the Caribbean.
As the Council on Foreign Relations notes, the administration has assembled an armada of the coast of Venezuela. It includes “the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, destroyers, cruisers, amphibious assault ships, and a special forces support ship. A variety of aircraft have also been active in the region, including bombers, fighters, drones, patrol planes, and support aircraft.”
Almost ten thousand troops and six thousand sailors “have been deployed on U.S. ships active in the region.” The financial cost of this deployment is enormous and the diversion of resources to an unnecessary escapade is not in our country’s best interest.
The Trump Administration insisted that the show of force is necessary to keep safe from the threat of narco terrorism. But Venezuela is not the source of fentanyl or other deadly drugs.
On December 10, things escalated when the Coast Guard seized a Venezuelan oil tanker on the high seas.
That suggests that Trump’s Venezuelan fixation has more to do with the administration’s new big piers/spheres of influence approach to foreign policy than with America’s drug problem. In fact, the administration’s recently released National Security Strategy ranks the exercise of power in the Western Hemisphere as its number one priority.
But as the Council of Foreign Relations observes, “the end goal of the military deployments remains unclear. Experts have speculated that the wide array of military assets could be part of a broader plan to take direct action against the Venezuelan government, or it could be a show of force designed to pressure Maduro into stepping down without a fight.”
Congress has said nothing as we move toward war with Venezuela.
Meantime, the attacks on the boats in the Caribbean continue and lives continue to be taken. At least eighty seven people have died in almost two dozen attacks.
None had a trial. None were found guilty of drug trafficking.
As an article in Rolling Stone observes, “The administration is claiming without much evidence that they are only targeting ‘narco terrorists,’ a flimsy justification for the strikes that many believe are illegal regardless of who was on board the boats.”
In the September 2 attack, nine people were killed in the first strike. Two survived and were seen clinging to the wreckage of their boat.
The laws of war forbid killing survivors. But that didn’t prevent Trump’s military from launching a second strike that killed them.
When the video of the incident was shown in a secret session to senior leaders of the intelligence and foreign affairs committee of the House and Senate, members of the two political parties seemed to have seen different things. Democratic Congressman Jim Himes said that what he saw was “one of most disturbing things” he has ever seen.
On the other hand, Republican Senator Tom Cotton said what the video showed was “lawful and needful.”
There once was a time when such partisan divisions were muted when it came to matters of foreign policy. “Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg exemplified the bipartisan ethos of this era,” the political scientist Jeffrey Friedman observes, “declaring that ‘politics ends at the waters edge’ and shepherding Democratic President Harry Truman’s foreign policy agenda through Congress.”
Such bipartisanship enabled Congress to play a significant role in checking executive power. But no more.
It is time to revive it. Otherwise it is hard to imagine Congress pressing for the release of the September 2 video to the public and playing its constitutionally prescribed role in the unfolding military adventure in the Caribbean.
On December 3, President Trump seemed to agree that the video should be released. Responding to a question about the September 2 incident he said, “I don't know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release no problem."
Five days later, he changed his time and denied that he had said any such thing.
Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, has been doing the kind of bobbing and weaving about whether he will release the video that would have made the great boxer, Muhammad Ali, proud.
A few Senate Republicans have suggested that the video should be released, but they have not done much more than issue statements.
Some, however, think that what is happening in the Caribbean and what happened on September 2 “has awakened the Republican-controlled Congress to its oversight role after months of frustration about the trickle of information from the Pentagon.”
Other evidence of that awakening is found in “the annual defense authorization bill which was crafted by both Republicans and Democrats, Congress is demanding that the Pentagon turn over unedited video of the strikes, as well as the orders authorizing the attacks. The legislation threatens to withhold a quarter of Hegseth's travel budget if he refuses.”
This is all to the good, but we have seen such predictions before, only to be extinguished when Republicans in Congress lose their nerve after the president pushes back. Whether he will do so in this case is not clear.
Whatever Trump does, the Congress needs to assert itself quickly, lest incidents like what happened on September 2 proliferate and the United States finds itself in a war with Venezuela.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.

In my work as a homeowner advocate and civic voice, I’ve come to believe that honesty and integrity aren’t just personal virtues—they’re the foundation of every meaningful relationship, every credible institution, and every lasting peace. When those values are compromised, trust erodes—and with it, so does the social fabric that holds communities and nations together.
This isn’t just a local lesson. It’s a global one.
In 1994, Ukraine surrendered the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. It did so voluntarily, trusting that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia would honor their word. The Budapest Memorandum offered security assurances in return: a promise to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Ukraine kept its word. The world did not.
When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion in 2022, those assurances proved tragically insufficient. The signatories expressed concern, imposed sanctions, and offered aid—but none intervened militarily to uphold the sovereignty they had pledged to protect. The message was clear: political commitments and absent enforcement are fragile shields.
Now, as Ukraine faces the prospect of new negotiations, the question arises: Why would it trust another set of guarantees—especially from the same actors who failed to uphold the last?
This is not a call for cynicism. It is a call for clarity.
If the United States aspires to lead by example, it must reckon with the legacy of broken promises. It must offer more than rhetoric. It must craft agreements that are enforceable, transparent, and rooted in accountability. That’s not just good policy—it’s a moral imperative.
Because when nations fail to honor their word, they don’t just lose credibility; They weaken the very norms that underpin global cooperation. They teach smaller nations that survival depends not on diplomacy but on deterrence. And they risk a future where trust is replaced by fear.
The Fulcrum exists to elevate voices committed to strengthening democracy. That work begins with restoring faith in our institutions, our commitments, and our word. Honesty and integrity are not luxuries. They are the bedrock of a functioning democracy and a peaceful world.
The world is watching. Ukraine is watching. And history will remember not just what we said—but what we did.
Bruce Lowe is a homeowner advocate and community leader in Lubbock, Texas. He writes about civic integrity, public health, and principled reform. His book, "Honesty and Integrity: The Pillars of a Meaningful Life", explores how ethical leadership can strengthen families, uplift communities, and create a better life for all.