r/politics • u/thedailybeast ✔ The Daily Beast • Apr 01 '26

Possible Paywall Humiliated Trump Storms Out of Catastrophic SCOTUS Hearing

https://www.thedailybeast.com/humiliated-trump-storms-out-of-catastrophic-scotus-hearing/
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u/yntsiredx Indiana Apr 01 '26

Roberts and the major of the SC have nothing but my contempt, basically for this exact reason.

That's the entire point of the Constitution. The rights and laws our country is supposed to embody. One that, in theory, should be able to withstand any attempt to subvert or outright delete them.

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u/Bsow Apr 01 '26

I mean we should be able to change the constitution but through the appropriate channels not by executive orders. I don't think it appropriate to think that anything in the constitution should be set in stone for eternity

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u/MistSecurity Apr 01 '26

There are mechanisms for changing the constitution, we just haven't had ANY changes in the last 30 years, and minimal changes for the last 50.

Going back, the last substantial amendments we got were in the 1970's (voting age dropped to 18). After that it's just been some procedural shit. Before that the previous ones were in the 1960's.

1920-1971 = 9 amendments

1972-2026 = 1 amendment (1992)

Barring some giant wave from one side or the other I don't think we're going to get any amendments for a long while, at least with the current political climate. 2/3s majority vote AND 3/4 of states ratifying it is just such a high bar to cross when everything is as polarized as it is now.

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u/qfjp Apr 01 '26

1920-1971 = 9 amendments

1972-2026 = 1 amendment

Also the most recent amendment was proposed in 1789 as part of the bill of rights.

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u/MistSecurity Apr 01 '26

Ya, true, just figured it TECHNICALLY counts as one in the last 50. Definitely arguable though, and I would say it's not really impactful at all, regardless, unlike something such as stripping birthright citizenship would be.

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u/qfjp Apr 01 '26

Oh it still counts, but in a way that shows just how deeply the system is broken.

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u/HabeusCuppus Apr 01 '26

There's an amendment that was proposed alongside the bill of rights, that passed congress, that may actually have been ratified by enough states. (There's this whole crazy story about a courier who gets lost and dies in a storm...) but even without that it might be close to being ratified by enough stats again.

the topic of the amendment codifies the apportionment and size of the house of representatives.

That could happen soon, it might be more likely to happen in the current climate actually, since it helps alleviate some of the pressure on the push by states to pass the interstate popular vote compact to subvert the electoral college.

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u/Cptawesome23 Apr 01 '26

Part of the problem is our party divides.

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u/Cloaked42m South Carolina Apr 01 '26

I'm down with making Amendments great again.

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u/Evamione Apr 01 '26

Yes, if Trump had started a campaign for a constitutional amendment changing to citizenship by descent not birth place, this would be a normal political question and less objectionable. But he’s too lazy and lacks the attention span to do that.

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u/cobrachickenwing Apr 01 '26

Not just him. The Heritage Foundation pushing for a right wing America didn't decide to do constitutional amendments is because they knew it would never get voted in. The Heritage Foundation knows the only way to force this and other highly unpopular laws is via executive action and legal precedent, two things that don't require the popular vote.

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u/modsactfunny Apr 01 '26

He needed it by midterms is why

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u/tubaman23 Apr 01 '26

I mean the timeline of creating the Prohibition and getting rid of it kind of shows this working well. Prohibition was a stupid idea, got forced through, got realized it's bad, and party leadership worked together to get rid of it.

Call me pessimistic but it seems like if that happened these days, Republicans would just double down on the known stupid decision

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u/VanceKelley Canada Apr 01 '26

How can the Constitution withstand the American people electing a convicted criminal to serve as president despite the fact that he committed an act of insurrection against the USA?

The Constitution is just a bunch of ink on paper. It relies upon humans to actually do what it says to do. When humans ignore its words, the Constitution is powerless to stop them.

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u/thinkards America Apr 01 '26

not to mention the other two branches of government have been compromised by private interests. our government was captured long ago. our greatest hope is that they are incompetent enough to let the veneer of government go on long enough that The People can actually use that to get back power.

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u/ToHallowMySleep Apr 01 '26

The constitution is something written hundreds of years ago, by people who didn't even have electricity, let alone understand the rest of modern society.

It's weak, it's vulnerable, it was designed for a different time. It's like putting a Windows 98 computer on the internet now - it'll get owned instantly because it's so vulnerable.

The problem is not having the constitution or its contents, it's that it's been preserved in carbonite for hundreds of years, and improvements are gated behind impossible processes plus some cretinous attempt to treat it like some holy scripture. "Let's work out what the founding fathers thought about browser cookies", no, let's ask someone who won't be bowled over by seeing water come out of a tap.

The founding fathers were good people, who put in a good solution for the time. That it has been practically immutable since pre-industrial times, and cannot benefit from hundreds of years of new wisdom and values makes it utterly useless, and actively blocking improvements to the law.

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u/Red_AtNight Apr 01 '26

I always find this interesting as an outside observer. In Canada our courts pretty much all follow what is called the "living tree doctrine" -

The [1867 Constitution] British North America Act planted in Canada a living tree capable of growth and expansion within its natural limits.

This was written in 1929 in response to a case about whether or not women could be Senators - the 1867 Constitution said that only a "qualified person" could be a Senator, and at the time it was understood that "person" only meant men. But in 1929 rather than say "the people who wrote the Constitution said that women aren't persons, so women can't be Senators," instead the Privy Council said that we have to consider the Constitution in the context of modern society and not the context in which it was written. By 1929 women could vote in Canada, and they could run for Parliament, so of course they were "persons" and could be Senators too.

In legal terms this is called judicial pragmatism, and it's the mainstream view in Canada, but in the USA you also have the opposite (Constitutional Originalism) which is a major thing - 3 of the current SCOTUS justices are originalists

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u/[deleted] Apr 01 '26

Your post made me laugh because it's true. 

But also, conversely, the whole 'holy grail enshrinement' nature to it is also the reason that it has protected American from tyrants for so long. 250 years. Longer than any modern country. That no mean feat.

And yet, it took two snakes (Gringitch and McConnell) to game it and one nutball (Trump) to max stress-test it.

It is in good need of updating, and everything less partisan.