The Founding Fathers created America with the hope that the three branches of government—legislative, judicial, and executive—would balance one another and restrict one lever from wielding too much power. As we enter our 250th year as a nation, it is clear that our system of checks and balances are failing to reign in an unrelenting Executive.
However, Nick Penniman, Founder and CEO of Issue One, reminds us that there are real, feasible steps backed by the Constitution we should enact. Penniman joins Jen to share the six core policy recommendations in Issue One’s We The People Playbook:
Control the Power of the Purse
Restore Authority over Trade
Reclaim War Powers
Limit Domestic Troop Deployment
Check Emergency Powers
Protect Our Elections
Tune in to hear how civil society across different sectors can work together to demand Congress reassert it’s rightful authority.
Nick Penniman is the Founder and CEO of Issue One. Prior to founding Issue One, Nick was the founder and executive director of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, director of the Schuman Center for Media and Democracy, publisher of the Washington Monthly Magazine, director of the Alliance for Democracy, and an editor at various publications, including the American Prospect and the Lincoln Journal. He serves on multiple nonprofit boards, including OpenSecrets, and is a trustee of St. Lawrence University.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. We’re delighted to have back Nick Penniman, who is the co-founder and CEO of Issue One. Welcome, Nick, good to see you.
Nick Penniman
Good to see you, Jen!
Jen Rubin
Issue One is at it again. You have come out with a playbook for checking abuse of power, and you have half a dozen recommendations, ideas. Let’s go through those. What’s number one on your list?
Nick Penniman
Yeah, so the big frame for us is what’s on most people’s mind, which is that we’ve got a president who’s out of control at this point, and is engaged every day in abuses of power. And the Constitution has two remedies for that. One is the courts. And one is Congress. The courts are actively in play, every single day. There have been literally hundreds of lawsuits filed against the Trump administration to try to block them, stop them, slow them down, reverse them on various things. I think that right now there’s something like 120 cases that are currently in the churn. So, there’s plenty of judicial activity going on. In fact, I would argue that 90% of the kind of Trump opposition energy has gone into judicial activity. I
n the meantime, Congress is the other lever, right? Like, that’s the other lever that the Constitution gives us to pull when you have an out-of-control executive. And in fact, it’s the first one that the founders expected to be polled, which is why Congress is Article 1 of the Constitution. They thought that 535 people should be governing the country, not one person. The president, you know, in the Constitution is set up more or less like an errand boy for Congress. Congress establishes the budget, establishes the laws. decides when wars can be declared and other things, and then the Congress follows those instructions to the best of his or her ability and gets stuff done. And then Congress is supposed to oversee, of course, the president and the executive branch as they do those things to make sure that they’re getting the instructions right. But that’s the… that’s the way the Constitution thinks of the President. And of course, in this case, we’ve got it flipped, where the president believes that he’s making all the decisions, and Congress is either irrelevant, or Congress just needs to catch up with him and support him. So, we’ve seen an… An absolute, like, you know, photo-negative of what the Constitution does.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And in fairness, Congress has been doing this for a while, ceding more and more power. What is different now is you have a president who isn’t even trying to abide by the law, trying to maintain the, separation of powers, so you see things like rescission being used willy-nilly. You see him going in to invade another country without so much as discussing it with, at least the Democrats in Congress. What can be done to wake the Republicans up? We go through this a lot here at the Controller. What kind of pressure? Is it pressure from their constituents on the ground? What’s going to get them to wake up?
Nick Penniman
Yeah, well, let me, let me, let me quickly rattle off, because you asked me what’s in the playbook, and then let’s talk about what it’s going to take to get Republicans to, adhere to the playbook. So, there are six provisions in the playbook, and anyone who’s, you know, watching this can play along. Go to check the exec… org slash playbook, check the exec.org slash playbook, and by the way, we worked with a bunch of conservative and independent and really interesting groups on developing this. So it’s not just our take, it’s an ecumenical, bipartisan take. So number one is to reassert that Congress has the power of the purse. Right? That’s Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution.
Number two, restore trade authority to Congress. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Number three, reassert that Congress has war powers and not the President. Article 1, Section 8, again, of the Constitution. Number four, limit domestic trip deployment, which basically gets to the question of the Insurrection Act. And that’s Article 1, also Section 8 of the Constitution. Remember, each one of these is Article 1, right? These, again, are powers that are supposed to be given to Congress, not to the President. Check, emergency powers, because Trump is always ready to try to declare some state of emergency, because once he does, he is handed a bunch of powers that he normally wouldn’t have. Article 1, Section 8 also.
And then, election protection, reasserting that the states have the right to run the elections, not Kristi Noem. And that’s Article 1. Section 4. So, you know, we’ve got fixes for each of these, and we can go through them about, you know, what we would want done to reassert these, but yes, the big question is, how do you get Republicans in play? And the answer is: We the people. I mean, I hate to be such a constitutionalist today, but we the people are the ones who’ve got to point our energy, our fears, our anxiety, our disgust with what’s going on at members of Congress and put pressure on them to act.
I know that sounds simple or simplistic, but that’s what we’ve got. And whether that comes in the form of protest. or letter writing, or doing a constituent visit to your member of Congress, or occupying their office, or giving them money to encourage them to do the right thing. Whatever you can do is what needs to be done right now, because unless Congress steps up to the plate, we’re not going to get out of this.
Jen Rubin
And unless they do it, we have a chance this year to kick them out. And it seems that, one of the primary arguments against these incumbents, whether it’s from somebody in their own party or from Democrats, is that they’re not doing their job. They’re lumps on the log, that they have allowed these, in some cases, atrocities, to… multiply, and to get completely out of hand. Let’s take a look sometime.
Nick Penniman
It’s all good and fine, Jen. For a lot of Americans, unfortunately, that’s all good and fine, as long as the economy’s fine. But if you have a crappy economy that’s now starting to get hobbled by the tariffs and mismanagement, and then you’ve got a Congress that’s not restraining an out-of-control president, it’s not a good look.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and I think making that connection between these abuses of power and people’s pocketbooks so they understand that there is a connection between the two is part of the challenge, I think, for people like you and I. One example of how it’s not supposed to work was Congress allocating an enormous amount of money to the Department of Homeland Security. with really very little control, with very little oversight, and allowing them to then run without much control at all. And now we see the reaction in Minneapolis. In the normal course of things, how would an appropriation system, and how would the ongoing checks and balances to make sure this doesn’t happen, how would that work?
Nick Penniman
Well, I mean, ideally, just rewinding the tapes a bit, and I can do this with you, because you were around, we would have actually passed an immigration law, the bipartisan immigration bill that Teddy Kennedy and John McCain pulled together what, 15 years ago? Or more? So, ideally, there would actually be sane immigration laws in this country, and then the executive branch would be enforcing those laws. That’s their job, is just to simply enforce the laws.
In this case, of course, Trump with lack of laws, and because, as you know, the immigration, courts are so totally overwhelmed. What they’re trying to do is scare the hell out of every illegal immigrant in America to try to get them out with these, you know, roughneck, militarized tactics. They actually want you to see 5-year-old children, you know, being thrown in the back of ICE vans, because they’re trying to scare everyone out of this country, because they know they can’t follow the legal procedures to get them out.
So, you know, what would it look like instead? It would look like decent, you know, decent enforcement of existing laws through the courts. And if the courts are jammed up, which they are, then that’s for Congress to solve. Okay, we need more immigration lawyers and immigration judges. We need to do an emergency surge, maybe pull some judges out of retirement and pay them double time, you know, or overtime to do… to work in the courts for 2 years, or 3 years, or something like that. Like, let’s create the appropriate judicial process for making this happen. But that’s not what’s going on, obviously.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And of course, there was a bipartisan immigration bill just before Trump won the election, and he put the kibosh on that because he didn’t want to solve the problem. So, even more recently than the Teddy Kennedy, John McCain days, we’ve had a subversion of the legislative process. One thing that we’re seeing in Minnesota is not just the role of the people who are staging these, really remarkable protests in 20 degree below weather. But also the operation of our federal system, that we don’t have just one level of government, that there’s state and local officials. Talk to us a little bit about whether you see that as another check, and whether you see Governors, mayors, local police, beginning to assert themselves in order to check, a runaway federal government.
Nick Penniman
Yeah, listen, you know, I work for a democracy organization. Ever since Trump got re-elected, there have been all these attempts to compare what’s gonna happen to us, or what’s happening to us, to places like Hungary. The factor that so many people keep forgetting is the federalist system. We have 50 states with 50 governors, 50 state Supreme Courts, and 50 state legislatures. Countries like Hungary, not only are they immature democracies, but they don’t have the complexity and the amount of state power that we have here in this country. And courts that have typically granted the states a good deal of power. So yeah, I think that what we’re seeing, you know, in Minnesota is incredibly important and sets a really good precedent moving forward, because we’ve got 3 more years of this president. And, you know, you gotta see these governors stand up, and eventually the state legislatures stand up and assert their power.
I mean, let’s just take the Insurrection Act, because that’s very much in the headlines these days. The Insurrection Act, written in, I believe it was 1807, Was written so that the president or the federal government could assist the states when something was going wrong. And in fact, the last time the Insurrection Act was invoked, it was the 1992 riots in LA after the Rodney King you know, beating. at the behest, of the then-Governor Pete Wilson. He called up George W. Bush and asked for troops to be deployed in the streets of LA because the LA police force was overwhelmed. When was it deployed before that? The Insurrection Act? by Lyndon Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower to enforce the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. In this case, it was invoked not at the behest of the governors, because they were going into the South, because they knew they had to provide support so that black kids could go to school. And… So, like, you know, it is profoundly ironic that the… the last really major invocation of the Insurrection Act was on behalf… was white presidents invoking it so that people of color could go to school and have access To education, and now we’ve got a president invoking it so that people of color can be rounded up in this country and thrown in vans and forcibly deported.
Jen Rubin
Exactly. And, the way to bolster, that, again, is contacting state and local governments, encouraging them to move forward. A really strong campaign encouraged, in this case, the Attorney General of Minnesota and the county attorney to take up an investigation when the federal government would not investigate the murder of Renee Good.
Nick Penniman
And our fix, Jen, on the Insurrection Act, just to get wonky for a second, is that we have a bill that we’ve put together, and what it says is that if the president invokes the Insurrection Act, that after 14 days. Congress reviews whether or not an insurrection is actually occurring, and if it doesn’t affirm that an insurrection is taking place in this country. then it automatically revokes the act, and revokes all the powers granted to the federal government under the, you know, and during time of insurrection. So it’s not getting rid of the Insurrection Act. It’s still giving, it’s still holding open the possibility that there could be a horrible situation in this country where you know, the National Guard needs to be deployed. What it’s saying is that you gotta go to Congress after 2 weeks and get their approval for this.
You know, so here’s our ideal scenario, is that at some point, you know, Congress wakes up, realizes that they need to constrain this president and his powers, and they pass—I would love to have the whole package of stuff passed, but let’s just say they start with the Insurrection Act. and say, we’re gonna pass this bill, and take this power back. Now, he would probably try to veto it in that case, right? Well, then you’ve got a really important profound national conversation around who is supposed to have power in this country and why. The President, who wakes up and governs based on his moods. or 535 people in the United States Congress.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and it’s something we have stressed here again and again. It’s important to have these fights. The point is the fight, because that’s when the national debate can percolate. That’s when the people can reassert themselves. And you force a politician who thinks Donald Trump should run everything To go on record as saying that, if he or she believes that. They should stand by it and face the voters. Before I turn to the last topic, I just want to make note of the War Powers Act. We have seen this week the connection between foreign policy and a runaway president and domestic policy, and it seems to be the same factor at work. although we give the President certain prerogatives in foreign policy, the desire to use force, to violate international norms, that does seem to be from the same, sort of psyche and the same place as the domestic, violations. How does your, view of the War Powers Act deal with that?
Nick Penniman
Yeah, I mean, it is utterly clear in the Constitution that Congress has that power, period. The President can trigger limited military strikes and interventions when he or she believes that there’s a crisis at hand. But otherwise, they’ve got to go to Congress. Now, the sad thing here, of course, is that, the last time the War Powers Act was invoked was after 9-11, and that was basically a bipartisan vote in Congress, an easy bipartisan vote in Congress, and before that was World War II. But Korea, Vietnam, you know, and everything since, there has been no inv… you know, the Congress has been sidestepped when it comes to deploying troops in countries. So, this is not just a Trump problem, this is a problem that’s been going on for way, way, way too long. And, again, the Constitution is actually incredibly clear about this. So, what we need to do at this point is to have a reassertion of that clarity.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. So, the last topic I want to address with you is the role of civil society. Many of us expected that business, or universities, or law firms, or other entities in civil society would be much stronger in checking the present, and it hasn’t turned out that way. The Constitution doesn’t speak about civil society, but everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Alexis de Tocqueville remarked upon these, ways in which the industry can interact. What’s gone wrong there, and how do you get civil society, businesses in particular, to see a stake in controlling an out-of-control president?
Nick Penniman
I’m gonna be optimistic here and suggest that it’s occurring, but it’s not getting covered. And what I mean by that is this, that if you look at the whole fight around Powell and the Fed Chair. What’s going on behind the scenes is an enormous push by the businesses of America and the banks of America and others to, you know, try to make sure that the president stops screwing with the Fed, and so the Fed stays independent. Now, are they gonna run, you know, a political campaign in the way that, you know, the Sierra Club would run a political campaign around climate change? No. But is there a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes? Yes. Are they afraid of sticking their necks out publicly? Yes, absolutely.
So I do think that there’s actually a decent amount of organizing behind the scenes. We’re pulling together an alliance right now at my organization, Issue One, you all can check it out, IssueOne.org, that is fascinating, and has a whole lot of incredible spectrum of players. I can’t tell you all about it right now, but I can tell you that it is not an all-of-society, but it’s a much-of-society effort represented in this alliance, of people saying that they want to talk, they want to collaborate and coordinate, and think about what pushback and noncompliance looks like. So, it’s happening, but yeah, I think right out of the box, when Trump came out of the box, and he smashed the law firms in the face, and then the universities. Way too many of them folded, really disappointing, but I think this, as this goes on we’re gonna see more people standing up and pushing back.
Jen Rubin
And legacy media outlets, of course, among the worst of the offenders. Well, I think, what we’re seeing, is perhaps, as you say, a slight rousing of the business community. The lawsuit that actually is at the Supreme Court was sponsored and is one of the major players, is the business community, because they realized something. Last little follow-up for you. In Minnesota, we’re seeing the local business community be much more connected. Labor, religious groups, which we haven’t talked about very much, and business communities joining arms together. Is that part of the solution, to go local, to look at communities where there is more stickiness, there is more connectivity, rather than looking at these as, you know, can we get AT&T to, you know, cooperate with the dreamsters, which may be a, you know, an uphill effort? Is that part of the solution, to go local?
Nick Penniman
Absolutely, absolutely, because that’s where you can establish trust. I mean, all of that organizing depends on trust. And you’re not gonna… as you just said, you’re not gonna build trust between the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and the head of a major union overnight, right? But you can do it with local businesses in Minneapolis, and with the business leaders, education leaders, and whatnot.
So, yeah, and I think that what we’re seeing in Minnesota right now, in a way, is kind of an amazing little model is being built that can be replicated throughout the country as we move forward, because, listen, it’s Minnesota today, it’s now maybe going to be Maine tomorrow with this, and then it’s gonna be Massachusetts, and then it’s gonna be somewhere else, right? I mean. This is a president who, gets bored quickly, unlimited in who he’s willing to trample and where he’s willing to trample them, and so the abuse of power is just going to continue to roll throughout the country. And communities need to be ready for it and prepared for it, and they can see a model in Minnesota, which is great and really heartening.
Jen Rubin
Nick, it is always interesting talking to you. I am very interested in your whole of society, project, so when you’re ready to talk about that, you’re gonna have to come back and share that with us. Because really, we are in an all-hands-on-deck moment in our constitutional, history. So, thanks for all you are doing. I’ll just repeat where people can find, the playbook again to, check, power.
Nick Penniman
Yep, you bet. So it’s, well, first of all, my organization is IssueOne, and that’s IssueOne.org, and then our playbook is CheckTheExec.org/playbook. CheckTheexec.org/playbook.
Jen Rubin
Wonderful. Thanks so much, Nick. We’ll look forward to having you back soon.
Nick Penniman
Thank you, Jen. Keep those campfires lit, you’re amazing.
Jen Rubin
Thanks so much.
