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U.S. President Donald Trump on October 16, 2026 in Palm Beach, Florida.
(Photo by Eric Lee/Getty Images)
Trump — President by Law, Not by Constitutional Duty
Oct 19, 2026
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.
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Holding the Lines That Protect Every Voter and Every Election
Oct 19, 2026
We are people of many traditions. We do not agree on candidates. We don't need to.
We agree on something older than any election: that every person carries a dignity that no government grants and no government may take away, and that a free people governs itself by counting every lawful vote and honoring the count.
Our nation was founded on the ideal that all humans are created equal, and yet we have, at times, lived as if some are not fully human. We have made real progress, but can and must do better. As a nation, we express this ideal through the Constitution, our laws and procedures, including the election of our representatives at every level of government: one person, one vote.
Elections are like a hinge that joins our values together. On one side is the dignity of every person: the conviction that each voice counts equally. On the other is the rule of law: the steady constitutional frame that lets millions of people who disagree govern themselves in peace.
A hinge allows a door to do two things. Open, it allows movement; closed, it gives the security of a boundary. A good election does both.
A good election, through a lawful process, opens the way for power to change hands or stay where it is, then closes on a result that all sides can accept. That is why we want this election to be fair in its rules, free in its participation, safe for every voter and election worker, and trustworthy and honored in its result.
Here are the lines that must not be crossed: not by any candidate, any party, any office, any agency, any official, or any citizen.
Counting. Every lawfully cast ballot is counted, and only lawfully cast ballots are counted. Counting is open to observers from all political parties who are entitled to by law.
Reconciliation. The number of ballots counted must reconcile with the number of voters credited with voting. If the numbers do not reconcile, the discrepancy is disclosed publicly, explained, and resolved before certification — not after, and not only when someone outside the office notices it.
Evidence. Credible evidence of an illegal vote, or of misconduct by anyone administering an election, is referred, investigated, and prosecuted. Allegations unsupported by evidence are not treated as evidence. The absence of an investigation is not proof that nothing happened, and an investigation is not proof that something did.
Rules. No official changes the rules of an election while it is being conducted or counted — not to admit ballots the law excludes, and not to exclude ballots the law admits. Where the rules are disputed, a court decides. Every official complies with that decision, including the officials who disagree.
Custody. Ballots, voting equipment, and election records remain in the custody of the officials designated by state and federal law to administer the election, from the casting of the first ballot through certification and the legal retention period.
Presence. No federal, state, or local personnel, armed or unarmed, enter an election office, counting facility, or polling place to direct, halt, or inspect its work, except as the law expressly provides, a court orders, or an emergency requires.
Certification. The officials the law names certify results on the schedule the law sets, and they may be altered only by lawful recount, lawful audit, or a court's judgment.
Seating. Those charged with convening the next Congress, and every state legislature, seat the members whose election has been lawfully certified.
Peace. No one is threatened, intimidated, or harmed for voting, administering an election, observing one, or the result of one.
These lines are not partisan; they are American. They protect the process: those elected and those not elected. They protect our nation from fear and violence, and they protect every person and the democratic republic we share.
If any of these lines is crossed, we call on all Americans, ourselves included, to say so plainly and to seek a lawful remedy. Let us do so in grief and humility rather than in anger and hostility. Whatever may be broken belongs to all of us. Yet, we must keep the door open to every neighbor, including those who voted for whoever crossed the line. Our bond as neighbors came before the election, and it will outlast it.
Finally, our traditions teach that no human and no human-created system is perfect. Imperfection is not a sign of failure nor that a system is so broken that it should be discarded. In elections, imperfection is an invitation to make the system one step better — for subsequent generations, as our nation always has.
So, we ask every person of faith and conscience to hold these lines with us, beginning with prayer for the officials and workers who administer the election, for every voter, and for our neighbors whose ballots differ from our own.
Co-Signers:
Cheryl Graeve, Director of National Programs, Engaging Differences, and Golden Rule 2020, National Institute for Civil Discourse.
Rabbi Michael G. Holzman, Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation and Founder of faith250, a national organization that rebuilds civic culture through multi-faith spiritual conversations over our nation’s foundational texts.
Scott Rasmussen, Director of Democracy Initiatives, Interfaith America, a national organization that activates leaders to build a country that embraces pluralism, where we cooperate across differences for the common good.
Rev. Terry Kyllo is a Lutheran pastor and director of Paths to Understanding, a Washington State organization working to gather neighbors and grow trust, and a leadership partner in Faith in America. Dr. Brenda Murphy is a Christian follower in an Evangelical tradition, co-chair of Braver Faith, a department of Braver Angels, former homeschool mom, and an educational psychologist for a faith-based K-12 private school organizationThe Rt. Rv. Mark Beckwith, is a retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark and co-chair Braver Faith.
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Efficient AI may not mean less energy. The Jevons paradox shows why demand can grow, and why no one can say yet where AI’s real limits will be.
Getty Images, J Studios
The People Selling You the Future Don’t Know It Either
Oct 19, 2026
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere and can no longer be avoided. Will there ever be a ceiling for the expansion of this technology? AI companies are not just selling software. The story about the inevitability that AI will have in transforming work, education, medicine, art, government, and daily life is much more profitable. People must accept the transformation or be left behind. They are selling behind a mask of certainty.
The court of public opinion on AI has concluded that this technology is too energy-consuming for the benefits it allegedly brings and the ways many people use it. Therefore, companies have shifted their agendas to presenting efficiency as a solution to the technology’s enormous need for power. Smaller, better models and chips, and more efficient data centers may reduce the energy required for a single text-based request or generated image. If those improvements make AI cheaper to use, it will be invited into more daily life right?
In the late 19th century, a British economist named William Stanley Jevons wrote The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines. This was a revolutionary book for that time that explored the limits to growth and sustainability within an industrialized society.
From it came his paradox, the Jevons paradox, which is a description of a somewhat counterintuitive thing that happens in the world. You would think that as technological advancements continue, efficiency eventually would become so great that innovation is no longer needed. Surprisingly, the opposite is true a decent amount of the time.
The paradox claims that as systems become more efficient, the needs to sustain said systems become larger; therefore, a constant striving towards efficiency often does not lead to less consumption, but to more use, more demand, and more pressure on the very resources we thought we were saving.
A test for this concept is something most of us have in our homes and take advantage of. About 200 years ago, hot water was expensive. It was in short supply, but also time. No tanks were in your basement. You had to boil it on a stove, or you would stoke a fire under a container. So, it was only used for things that absolutely required it and not much else. Cooking occasionally, maybe laundry sometimes, and that was about it.
When home water heaters were invented, hot water in homes got dramatically cheaper. And the paradox’s claim started to test itself. People didn't just use the same amount of hot water without having to work as hard for it. There were a bunch of new uses for hot water. They started taking showers, a taken for granted action by us hundreds of years later.
Eventually, somebody invented the home dishwasher, which, as a normal household appliance, is a post-water heater invention. It is an idea that doesn't make sense unless you have affordable hot water in your home. When you make hot water cheaper, then demand for it goes up.
Suddenly people need the tanks to be way bigger. There's a bunch of uses that we didn't anticipate. So far, this just looks like pure Jevons. But here's the thing. Infinite hot water usage never became a problem. There was a ceiling that represented the amount that we needed, and hot water tanks eventually stopped getting bigger. There turned out to be a finite list of things that hot water is uniquely good for. And we found them. The paradox went on for a while, but then it settled down. This is a reminder that this paradox is not guaranteed. That nothing is guaranteed. The future is still technically uncertain; no one who bought the Gutenberg press could imagine newspapers. This is why we shouldn’t let technological advancements command our agency.
After 2030, this decade will undoubtedly be known as the decade of AI technologies. 2022 and beyond have drastically altered our lives in an unforeseeable direction. However, large companies try to convince us that if we pay them enough for giving the data to develop their technology, our quality of life will improve beyond our wildest dreams. Critics argue that the true plan is to improve products and personalize services, while masking a deeper business model built on surveillance and monetization.
And this is what the advertisers don’t want you to realize: AI’s future is not inevitable, limitless, or fully knowable, despite what the companies selling it suggest. AI may have limits too, but nobody can reliably say where they are yet. They may be physical, such as power generation and waste disposal. They may be economic, as companies discover that not every task benefits from an expensive system. They can also be legal/political, as communities affected resist data centers, or they may be cultural, as people simply decide they do not want automated systems mediating parts of their lives.
Will AI have a ceiling? Here’s the no bs answer: nobody knows. That fact should make us as the target base, more cautious, not more passive. When companies claim to know the future by telling you what you need, what they often mean is that they want the power to create it on their own terms. We do not have to accept that bargain. It is our duty as responsible consumers to act on that free will and wake up.
Shon Eric Hernandez is a Fulcrum fellow and MDC contributor. He can be reached at shondesil06@gmail.com
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Brenda Núñez, voter registration supervisor for Nueces County, shows the home screen of the state's voter registration system in 2024. Election officials say they're still struggling to use the system, known as TEAM, to complete essential tasks.
(==Gabriel Cárdenas for Votebeat
Election Officials Are Scrambling To Process Voter Registration Backlog Using a System They Say Does Not Work
Oct 19, 2026
At 6 p.m. a few days after the state sent Randall County election administrator Shannon Lackey a backlog of 3,388 of voter registration records, she was still at her desk, processing them after a full day of work.
She planned to stay late and get as much done as she could, then keep working from home. Lackey, whose department has five employees, isn’t expecting overtime pay or compensatory time off to make up for the extra work caused by the state error.
The most frustrating part, she said, was that the state’s voter registration and management system, known as TEAM, was making it harder to get through the backlog.
“I just got a message saying ‘an error occurred’,” Lackey said while on the phone with a Votebeat reporter. “I cannot tell you how many times I get that message, ‘an error occurred,’ so I’m just clicking. Nothing’s happening. I can’t work right now.”
She said her only choice is to push through.
“I have to get this done” she said, but “how are we going to fix it? And if it’s not fixable, where do we go from here? Because this is unacceptable.”
Local election officials across the state have raised concerns about TEAM since the state rolled out a long-awaited upgrade more than a year ago. Now they must use the system to resolve a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registration records and updates state officials sent them due to a software error with the Texas Department of Public Safety web portal. Many say the issues with TEAM are making the backlog harder to resolve at a critical time.
State officials discovered the error just weeks before today’s deadline for Texans to register to vote in time for the critical midterm elections. Election officials are already contending with the typical high volume of voter registration applications delivered in person and by mail at the last minute in the coming days.
Some better-resourced and larger county election departments have been able to quickly resolve their backlogs with help from outside vendors, but they’re also still reporting problems interacting with TEAM.
Election officials said it is still difficult to verify voters’ eligibility when processing voter registration applications, and process mail-in ballots in TEAM, among other tasks.
“Based on the direct experiences of county election officials across the state, it has become evident that these problems are the result of fundamental system architecture failures by the state’s voter registration database vendor, Civix,” the Texas Association of County Election Officials said in a statement last week.
With the election just weeks away, the state should “ensure the delivery and maintenance of reliable voter registration database software” before any further payments are made to Civix, which is based in Louisiana, the statement said.
Civix did not respond to a request for comment.
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it’s offering counties grants to reimburse their costs to process the backlogged applications.
In an emailed statement, Alicia Pierce, the spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said the agency has communicated directly with counties about TEAM “on a continual basis.” Pierce said the agency conducted trainings throughout the state for the rollout and continues to offer webinars. “We send weekly emails with updates on production builds and development work, and we host monthly calls for counties to ask questions,” she wrote.
“Texas has had seven successful elections since the rollout of the newly developed TEAM,” she added. “Additional features addressing county concerns will be rolled out soon as we all prepare for the November election.”
The agency has resolved some functionality issues with TEAM and has improved it some since its July 2025 launch, election officials told Votebeat, but fixes often take months. In other cases, when one problem is resolved, another pops up.
Some voting rights advocates say local election officials have enough burdens without adding technological problems to the mix.
“If I had to log on to a system every day and have no idea if it was going to work today like it worked yesterday, I think I would lose my mind,” said Emily Eby French, policy director at Common Cause Texas. “But we are asking county officials to follow hundreds and hundreds of statutes in the Texas Election Code, keep ballots safe, protect the security of the elections, while not knowing how or if TEAM will work for them.”
Election officials say promises still unmet
In January 2024, at an annual gathering of election officials, the state showed an early video demonstration of new features the upgraded TEAM system would have. They said it would help election officials complete tasks more quickly and efficiently.
Hundreds of election officials clapped and cheered in excitement. They’d been waiting years for such upgrades.
But “those promises are still unmet,” Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and current president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said in an interview. “We’re not even at basic functionality, much less bells and whistles that had county election officials excited back then.”
Texas promised to pay Civix $17 million, and up to $36 million if the state renews the contract in October 2027, public records show. The secretary of state’s office said the cost is covered by a mix of state dollars and federal funds earmarked for improving election administration.
Officials in each of the state’s 254 counties interact with the TEAM system on a daily basis to conduct voter list maintenance and manage elections. Roughly 18 counties use state-approved outside vendors to manage their voter registration lists, but must still sync their data with TEAM daily and rely on TEAM for other essential functions.
Three local election officials told Votebeat they are struggling with verifying voters’ eligibility, a key step that must be done in TEAM.
That step confirms a voter’s name, date of birth, and partial Social Security number or driver’s license number matches state records, essentially ensuring that the registrant is who they say they are. It’s an automated process, and the majority of the time it works. But in some cases, election officials said they have waited weeks — up to 60 days — for that verification, and they aren’t sure why.
A long delay risks that the voter doesn’t show up on the rolls when they try to actually vote, said Michelle Allcon, the Smith County elections administrator.
“I can’t tell what that application is missing so we can fix it. It’s just stuck,” Allcon said. She said election administrators first flagged the problem in May. “Then those voters are calling me, asking ‘what’s going on? Why haven’t I gotten my voter registration certificate?’ And we look into it and see that there’s no action.”
Allcon, along with other election officials, said the secretary of state’s office typically confirms creation of an IT ticket to resolve the problem, but isn’t necessarily able to give a timeline for the fix.
Some election officials say they have come up with workarounds. Trudy Hancock, the Brazos County election administrator, said her staff has created a spreadsheet to track which mail ballots have been sent and received, as well as to sort them by voter ID number, name, and date, a feature that TEAM doesn’t have. In TEAM, her staff isn’t able to select a batch of mail-in ballot records at once to mark them as sent or received. Instead, they have to be updated one by one, which is time-consuming. The spreadsheet helps the elections team organize the ballots before marking them in the TEAM system. Her staff is keeping track of more than 1,800 mail ballots, Hancock said last week.
Although no technology rollout is ever perfect, other states have taken early steps to try and avoid problems later.
A 2024 report on four states that launched voter registration systems — Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Rhode Island — emphasized involving local election officials, who it described as the main users of such systems, from the start.
But in Texas, local election officials say they had little input. Miles, Lackey, Hancock and others say their testing of the system occurred only a couple of months before the TEAM upgrade went live.
Election officials say they’ll figure it out, but worry the public is losing trust
The counties that use outside vendors rely less heavily on TEAM, though they still must use it. But those vendors can be costly, while TEAM is free.
Dallas County’s election department uses an outside vendor. That’s how they were able to quickly get through a backlog of nearly 70,000 records sent to them after the DPS error, Elections Administrator Paul Adams said in an interview.
“There are other counties where either they don’t have that access to vendors or they have limited staff. So for some counties it’s going to be difficult, but everybody has contingency plans,” Adams said.
He said the main concern is what news of the backlog — and the state error that caused it — is doing to voters’ confidence.
“People are already concerned about the election; you start adding additional things onto it, and your voters are now concerned about the process,” he said.
Election Officials Are Scrambling To Process Voter Registration Backlog Using a System They Say Does Not Work was originally published by VoteBeat Texas and is republished with permission.
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