guardrails eroding – Misryoum argues that weakened checks and balances—Congress, the executive, and courts—are reshaping US policy and making instability more likely.
America doesn’t lack rules. Lately, it has lacked the willingness to use them.
The reason is rarely framed the right way.. We’re told instability is the natural result of a deeper split in values.. That’s partly true. but it misses something sharper: stability was built on guardrails—rules. norms. and institutional restraints—that slowed powerful actors down enough to force compromise and consequence-checking.. Over time. Misryoum sees those guardrails weaken not in one dramatic collapse. but through a series of incremental changes that alter how the system behaves.
Start with Congress, where polarization has made compromise politically hazardous.. When members are rewarded for conflict and primary elections punish cross-aisle cooperation. lawmaking becomes harder to sustain as a governing function.. The pattern shows up in how funding and budgets get handled—less like long-term planning and more like last-minute risk management.. Even when Congress has the constitutional “power of the purse. ” the practical use of it drifts from deliberate governance to crisis control. and that drift matters.. A legislature that can’t routinely assert itself doesn’t just slow the country down; it creates a vacuum that other branches rush to fill.
Into that vacuum has stepped the executive.. When Congress can’t move, presidents increasingly lean on executive orders, emergency authorities, and expansive readings of existing statutes.. Whether the issue is immigration. student loan relief. or pandemic-era measures. the logic is familiar: act first. let courts sort out the boundaries later.. Each decision may be defensible in the moment. but Misryoum argues that repeated reliance resets public expectations about what presidential power looks like.. Over time, tests of the limits become part of the operating system rather than exceptions that reaffirm restraint.
The courts have faced a similar credibility challenge. and it’s not only about outcomes—it’s about perception of independence.. Changes in confirmation dynamics have made it easier to staff the judiciary without anything like broad consensus.. At the same time. a willingness to revisit precedent has introduced more volatility into an institution that once offered continuity as part of its stabilizing role.. When the judiciary begins to look. in practice. like a continuation of political philosophy rather than a neutral arbiter. the guardrails may still exist in theory—but they lose force in the mind of the public and in the strategy of political actors.
Misryoum points to major rulings as symptoms of this broader shift.. Dobbs v.. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v.. Wade, signaling that long-standing precedent can be discarded.. Trump v.. United States recognized broad presidential immunity for official acts. raising hard questions about accountability and how far the executive can operate without meaningful legal constraints.. Together. these decisions suggest a judiciary that is not only applying the law. but also operating with fewer stabilizers—continuity and predictability—that once helped balance the system’s internal temperature.
The same dynamic can be seen outside the courts, in how the nation enters conflict.. The Constitution assigns Congress the authority to declare war, a deliberate brake meant to slow decisions and require broad accountability.. Yet presidents of both parties have increasingly relied on authorizations. emergency powers. and unilateral steps to sustain military operations without formal declarations of war.. That doesn’t automatically mean bad faith; it means the guardrail is weakening in practice.. When the country’s most consequential decisions proceed with fewer institutional hurdles. the political cost of escalation tends to shift away from the people and toward the bureaucracies and courts that must absorb the consequences.
When those guardrails weaken at the national level, the effects spread quickly, even to places far from Washington.. Misryoum sees that in Alabama.. In 2018, Alabama voters approved Alabama Amendment 2, putting a strong pro-life stance into the state constitution.. It was marketed at the time as a moral statement, a declaration of values.. But law doesn’t operate in abstraction, and the downstream policy reality can arrive faster than legislators expect.
After the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision in LePage v.. Center for Reproductive Medicine. the ruling relied in part on that constitutional language to treat frozen embryos as children under Alabama’s wrongful death statute.. The impact wasn’t theoretical: fertility clinics paused IVF treatments, and families were left navigating uncertainty.. The policy goal was framed around protecting life, but the operational outcome disrupted the very process used to create families.. Legislators moved to add protections for IVF, which may sound like resolution—but it also reveals the core problem.. The guardrails weren’t built on the front end.. Once the consequences hit, lawmakers were forced into reaction rather than governance.
This is not an isolated story.. Misryoum’s editorial concern is that the political system is increasingly trained to respond to problems after they occur rather than to prevent harm through durable design.. Reactive lawmaking can be fast, but speed isn’t the same as wisdom.. When convictions drive policy without adequate room for complexity. contradiction. and real-world sequencing. instability becomes more likely—and once it sets in. it’s difficult to contain.
If stability can be rebuilt, it won’t come from winning the next argument or passing the next law.. Misryoum’s view is that stability comes from choosing restraint as a political habit.. That means Congress willing to govern instead of posture. presidents respecting limits instead of testing them as routine. and courts applying law consistently instead of being perceived as selecting outcomes that track political alignment.. The country doesn’t need fewer ideas; it needs stronger guardrails to ensure those ideas translate into policy with foresight.. Stability is not automatic—it’s something self-government has to actively maintain.