THREAD -- let's do some real originalism, shall we?
The Guarantee Clause: Art. IV, Section IV of the Constitution.
Maybe the most important clause in the Constitution no one pays attention to.
But at this fraught time for our democracy, we must! Congress must!
Read on...
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To show how important it was, the Guarantee Clause comes directly AFTER a major commitment made in the Constitution: that the United States would "protect each [state] from invasion."
Now what could be more important than protecting states from invasion?!
Just wait...
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Here it is: "the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government"
"Shall"
"Guarantee"
No stronger words in law than that
And what did the Founders mean by "Republican Form" of Gvt?
(hint: it's not what the far right thinks)
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As scholars of the Founding have written at length, the revolutionary concept of "Republican" was that it established that the PEOPLE were sovereign.
As opposed to the system they were tossing out: where the Monarchy, the crown, was sovereign
Basically, what we casually ... 4/
...refer to as democratic governance today, where elected officials represent collectively the people of that state, is what they meant
And it's what they GUARANTEED state governments to be
Now why did they feel the need to guarantee this in the Constitution?
Ironically...
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...they did so for the very reason that we worry about statehouses today
In the Federalist Papers & elsewhere, Madison and others were explicit--they knew in the balancing act of the new Constitution, they were giving states a lot of power over the new nation's democracy...
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But they also worried that statehouses were easily susceptible to corruption, or capture by elite and "rich" interests, as they called them, or the monarchy itself
They worried that in the wrong hands, states unmoored from the people could be used to undermine..
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..the entire nation's democracy. And that interests hostile to the people could harness statehouses--using them as a backdoor to get their agenda accomplished against the interests of the people and the new Republic
And they were so worried about this that they included...
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...in the Founding document a "guarantee" that the United States would never let this happen. It was such a serious concern that they used language found nowhere else in the Constitution
And yes, they gave the power to the United States government to fulfill the guarantee.. 9/
So when you hear talk about the powers of state legislatures, and this whacko theory of the independent legislative theory, ALL of that was premised on an assumption that those states represented the people. That they exhibited the basics of a Republican Form of government.. 10/
Without that assumption in place, the entire system falls apart, as the Founders feared.
Giving statehouses unfettered power when they aren't tied back to the people is precisely the nightmare the Founders feared.
And here's the problem...it's exactly what's happening...
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All around the nation, extremely gerrymandered legislatures are rushing through toxic policies directly contravening the will of their states. Ohio & Texas are both pro-choice states, for example. But their rigged legislatures are pushing forward abortion bans w no exceptions...
Same w crazy gun laws, attacks on equality, banning books, insane vax policies. All completely disconnected from the will of the people of these states, but with districts so rigged, hardly a single member of these bodies face accountability for their votes. Even worse..
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...just as the Founders feared, through organizations such as ALEC and others, these statehouses have become corrupted by elite "rich" interests to do their bidding as opposed to that of the people.
Tax breaks. Anti-climate policies. Privatizing everything. You name it...
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...they do it, even when the public outcomes suffer as a result
Bottom line: too many states do not meet any definition of a "Republican Form" of gov't. The people simply aren't sovereign in far too many of them. They represent fringe and monied interests...not the people...
It's exactly what the Founders feared.
It's why things are so out of balance. It's also why the talk of the independent state legislature theory is so dangerous--because it'd remove even LEGAL accountability to non-democratic states that are already immune from the people..
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So what should we do? Many things, as I outline in my book and often tweet.
But with respect to this Clause itself, Congress must finally act, especially as the specter of the ISL emerges. They have a Constitutional obligation to protect democratic governance in states...
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It's part of the oath that they took when they were sworn in, and it's a duty that outweighs any allegiance to procedures such as the filibuster.
Under the auspices of that power, they can and must pass robust anti-gerrymandering & other pro-democracy protections to...
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...restore democratic governance in states. To make the people of these states sovereign again. And unlike other powers they have, this is a power that the Supreme Court has ruled for a century is a political one, beyond their review...
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And to the extent the Court props up these rigged statehouses through whackadoodle theories & rulings like the ISL, the MORE the federal government MUST respond with actions that ensure those statehouses are, in the end, democratically government. It's the strongest power...
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...available to do so.
Finally, the Guarantee Clause is also one of the strongest counter-arguments to the ISL theory itself. If the Founders guaranteed that states would be Republican Forms of gov't, would they really have meant to give those same statehouses lawless..
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...power, the power to immunize themselves from the people in their states, which essentially assures they will NOT be Republican Forms of government.
That simply makes no sense. Today, or on originalist terms.
Bottom line: the Constitution could not be more clear...
Central to the founding vision was a constitutional guarantee that every state is governed as a Republic--what we today think of as democratic governance.
The fact that we are falling short of that guarantee in dozens of states is the root cause of the downward...
spiral we are seeing today.
Through our policies, politics and the law, we must double down in fulfilling that guarantee in EVERY STATE now. For every American.
For some in politics, that may feel bold. But it's exactly what the oath they took commands them to do.
END
This is supposed to say BEFORE, but I can’t edit it now. :)
One other thing, of course….for far more on all this and what we can do, you can get my book here: amazon.com/Laboratories-A…
I write a newsletter about all these democracy matters. You can sign up here: davidpepper.substack.com
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Yesterday and today, Trump’s former personal lawyer is meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell.
No doubt trying to win her over and keeping her from further incriminating Trump
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But much worse than the fact that his former personal lawyer is having this conversation….is the fact that this man is having this conversation AS a DOJ lawyer.
And part of the conversation is clearly that he is a dangling a formal pardon as leverage in that conversation.
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That feels as inappropriate as it gets, doesn’t it?
Well, do you want to know the worst part?
It’s that this is exactly what Justice Roberts’ opinion on presidential immunity guided a lawless president to do if he wanted to get away with an illegal coverup.
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You may have heard that Republicans plan to gerrymander both Ohio and Texas in order to gain more seats in the House for the 2026 election.
But have you heard that the only reason they can even do this in Ohio is because the Ohio GOP…
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1) violated the Ohio Constitution seven times
2) defied Ohio Supreme Court orders seven times
3) held consecutive elections on maps that, at the time of those elections, violated the Ohio Constitution per the most recent opinion of the highest court in the state
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4) altered long-standing rules of judicial elections to convert an independent court into a partisan Court to uphold their illegal maps in future
5) manipulated the ballot for judicial races so that court races now appear at the top of the ballot
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It’s easy to see stories and headlines and lose sight of just what’s happening.
So here’s some detail from the ACLU complaint that shows just how bad the LA ICE raids are:
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“One of the clearest patterns that have emerged in the raids in Southern California over the past few weeks has been stops and interrogations based on nothing but broad profiles, including on the basis of apparent race and ethnicity”
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““The manner in which the foregoing raids have been conducted bears no hallmarks of reasonable suspicion: there are no indicia that agents had any specific articulable facts sufficient to justify a seizure.”
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As if the recent obsession with “Alligator Alcatraz”—and the images and memes popping up all over social media in celebration of it—isn’t grotesque enough as it is.
A 🧵
Just look at the images our own government is putting out:
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But this isn’t the first time in American history that images and themes of alligators have been conjured up by elements of our political culture.
And it’s this history that instructs us as to the danger of what’s playing out.
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As Jim Crow replaced Reconstruction late in the 19th century, images, postcards and stories depicted Black Americans, and children in particular, as bait for alligators.
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As much as I loathe all the damage Musk has inflicted on our government and our country, Trump’s latest response in their battle is as dark as it gets.
Let me tell you why:
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When I worked in Russia, and as it was growing in corruption in front of our eyes, one of the most clearcut tell-tales of its slide into lawless authoritarianism was that as most people began to behave corruptly—
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what determined if you were prosecuted or investigated for that corruption was simply whether you were in power or in good standing with those power.
Political power was essentially about which corrupt entity wielded the tools needed to punish others.
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