A weaker federal government was always our design though. Really until the last century, our federal government was extremely weak and limited in authority. It wasn't until around FDR that we started seeing a shift if power to the federal government, often specifically to the executive branch.

The large executive branch has been growing since steadily since FDR though, that isn't a recent reaction to gridlock. There's a good argument that gridlock is a feature of our system meant to slow it down intentionally. We're seeing now how jarring it can be to have the government completely change source every 4 years, gridlock and bureaucracy help smooth that out.

We could be making it worse by demanding gridlock be avoided through executive actions and similar.

The UK's Constitution is the result of a literal war between the legislative and executive branches. The legislative branch won, and cut the King's head off.

The legislative and judicial branches are both expected to hold the executive accountable if it breaks the law. If that doesn't happen our system is fundamentally broken, we might as well throw it out and start over.

The executive branch has blatantly violated numerous laws but so far they have still obeyed court orders which explicitly required them to follow those laws. The real Constitutional crisis will come if they decide to openly defy a federal court order.

I would also note that while the current Trump administration has broken federal laws at an accelerated rate, the previous Biden administration did much the same thing on a smaller scale. People here on HN frequently make excuses for Biden's illegal student loan forgiveness program because they liked the results but if we want to preserve the rule of law then it needs to apply to every program. In the long run allowing unchecked growth of executive branch power and the administrative state will be bad for everyone.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...

Didn't congress change the rules a few years ago on only needing a simple majority for more things?

I was living out if the country st the time and didn't keep up, I could be mistaken there.

Both parties have consolidated power to the executive branch for decades, this isn't a one party problem.

If the voting public of a democracy fairly elected so many people to office like that, I don't really know what we can complain about.

Democracy would have worked in that scenario, and society would just have bifurcated enough that the slight minority lost most power and very much disagrees with the direction.

Congress does have to act pike adults though and do their job of keeping the executive branch in check. If they don't the system is just fundamentally broken and the only reasonable choice is to throw it out and start fresh.

Nah, it's a by-product of giving people what they want to make money. This sort of issue has been building for a long time. It's based on abundance of resources and availability of choices. As we have more time and money to spend on things, we can make more independent choices and take positions on issues that we didnt even think about before. Essentially, the semi-homogeneous population slowly fragments into smaller and smaller factions that are not geographically constrained (thanks to tech).

We've known it is intentional since Cambridge Analytica at the latest.

We already have the tools. The problem is marketing, FOMO, etc. We can use stuff like Cloudflare restrictive DNS, a Pihole with additonal lists (like social media), a VPN, screen time or app usage timers, etc. Will and self-control are what's lacking.

I think you need the populace on your side first, though. Otherwise how can you change anything if you have neither government nor a majority?

Unfortunately, I don’t see any way to change the minds of the American populace. They’ll have to learn the hard lesson of where this stuff goes. The problem is that we all have to learn that lesson alongside them whether we need it or not.