Many posts have discussed economic and educational inequality.
Individual incomes have increased exponentially but not evenly. But while 2026 shows the highest market inequality of the five eras, overall inequality is lower than most… taxes and government transfers today redistribute far more than in earlier centuries.
A new national survey from the Cato Institute, conducted in collaboration with Morning Consult of 2,253 Americans ahead of July 4th and America’s 250th anniversary, finds nearly half (46%) of Americans don’t know what America’s 250th anniversary commemorates. A little more than half (53%) correctly answered that it was the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
Despite civic ignorance, overwhelming majorities are grateful (86%) and proud (79%) to be Americans. Most also believe America is a land of opportunity (61%), and even more believe the American Dream (74%) is available to them personally. As the nation celebrates its birth, most Americans feel positive (76%) about the nation’s founding, and 70% believe its founding principles remain relevant today. In particular, overwhelming majorities believe the US Constitution is important for protecting our rights and freedoms (86%) and for enabling America’s prosperity (82%).
However, nearly 6 in 10 believe the country has moved away from the founding principles, and 56% worry the US could stop being a free country within the next 50 years. People believe corruption, concentrations and abuse of power, and ignoring founding principles could lead to the country’s demise. Americans support constitutional limits, dividing power, and checking the power of the president to maintain their freedoms. For instance, 58% say no political party should be trusted with too much power, 55% say the US Constitution should place firm limits on what the government is allowed to do, even if it makes it harder to solve problems, and 72% say the president should have to obey Supreme Court rulings even when he disagrees.
Yet, a significant minority is willing to bend the rules when it suits their advantage. Four in 10 Americans think it’s acceptable if a president they support stretched the Constitution to get what they want.
Another risk to the country is low substantive civic knowledge on basic governance questions. For instance, while 77% know George Washington was the first president, 58% don’t know what the main purpose of the US Constitution is, and 57% don’t know the reason we declared independence from Great Britain and created our government with limited powers.
Capitalism (52%) is viewed somewhat more favorably than socialism (37%). However, people are evenly divided on socialism, with equal shares who are favorable and unfavorable. Gen Z stands out with more who are supportive of socialism (53%) than capitalism (45%). The survey found the “Democratic Socialist” label can both help and harm a candidate about equally. While 39% said they’d be more likely to vote for a Democratic Socialist candidate, 40% said they’d be less likely, and 22% weren’t sure either way. Democrats (61%) and Gen Z (51%) reported they’d be likely to vote for a candidate with the Democratic Socialist label.
There has not been a constitutional convention since the original in Philadelphia. A 2016 report from the Congressional Research Service discusses the process of calling a convention, as well as the questions and uncertainties surrounding that process. There have been 27 amendments, but passing one is very hard.
In Pew Research Center surveys, Americans overwhelmingly favor several proposed changes to the U.S. political system, from term and age limits for government officials to campaign finance limitations. But many of those changes would require amending the Constitution, which is extremely difficult. The Constitution has been in effect for 237 years but has been formally amended just 27 times.
Using a classification scheme developed by the late political scientist Donald S. Lutz, we scored the amendment rules of 101 democratic constitutions. (The other five democracies have “uncodified” constitutions, meaning their governance rules are distributed across multiple statutes, legal precedents, customs and unwritten norms.) For constitutions that contain more than one amendment procedure, we used the “least difficult” path, which may or may not be the most frequently employed.
Of all 101 constitutions, the U.S. Constitution has the second-most onerous amendment process. Amendments must be approved by two-thirds votes in both the House and Senate – itself a tall order in these polarized times – and then be ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures, or 38 of 50.
The only democracy whose constitution is even harder to change is the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), a former U.S. trust territory in the South Pacific with about 76,000 inhabitants. The easiest path to changing the FSM’s constitution involves two separate two-thirds majority votes in the 14-person legislature, approval by the country’s president, and subsequent approval by three-quarters of voters in at least three of the FSM’s four states.
Other countries with constitutions that are nearly as hard to change are Palau, Switzerland and Australia. Like the U.S. and the FSM, these countries all require ratification at both the national and state levels.
At the other extreme, many countries with unicameral (single-chamber) legislatures can amend their constitutions much like how they pass regular laws, just requiring a larger majority in favor.
Many posts have discussed patriotism and American exceptionalism.
As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, 33% of U.S. adults say they are “extremely proud” to be an American, the lowest reading in Gallup's trend dating back to 2001. Another 20% say they are “very proud,” which means just over half of Americans express high levels of pride in their country.
The remaining shares say they are “moderately proud” (22%), “only a little proud” (15%) or “not at all proud” (9%).
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The current 56-point gap between Republicans’ and Democrats’ reported extreme pride is similar to last year’s 57-point difference, the highest on record.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to virtually everyone born in the United States. In a decision by Chief Justice John Roberts, in Trump v. Barbara, the justices agreed with the challengers, as well as all of the lower courts around the country that have considered the issue, that Trump’s order cannot be reconciled with the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which confers citizenship on anyone “born … in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Writing for the majority, Roberts emphasized that the “children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States” “satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause.” “Under the Constitution,” he concluded, “they are citizens at birth.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito called the ruling both “one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court” and “a serious mistake.” “Careful analysis of the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the process that led to its adoption,” Alito argued, “shows that it does not degrade the concept of United States citizenship in this way. Instead,” he contended, “the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country.”
Trump issued the executive order at the center of the case on Jan. 20, 2025, shortly after he was sworn into office for a second term. It provided that babies who are born in the United States to parents who are in this country either illegally or temporarily are not automatically entitled to citizenship.
The Supreme Court on Monday gave President Donald Trump sweeping new authority over approximately two dozen multi-member agencies that Congress intended to be independent. By a vote of 6-3, the justices struck down a federal law that bars the president from firing members of the Federal Trade Commission except in cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” That law, a majority of the justices ruled, violates the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of government. And in reaching that decision, the court overruled its 91-year-old decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had upheld the law at the center of the dispute.
More broadly, Monday’s decision was a major victory for proponents of the “unitary executive” theory – the idea that the president should have complete control over the executive branch. Under this theory, the president should be able to fire any member of the executive branch, and laws – like the one that the court struck down – that restrict his ability to do so violate the separation of powers.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts contended that “the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust. Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a 49-page dissent that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Today,” she wrote, “the Court discards” the “democratic regime” created by the Constitution “in favor of one that distorts the structure of Government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control. The result,” she concluded, “is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before.”
Many posts have discussed reapportionment and redistricting. There have long been proposals to enlarge the House, thereby creating less populous districts.
At the Constitutional Convention, George Washington spoke only once — to urge that representation remain close to the people, with a ratio of one representative for every 30,000. For more than a century, Congress followed that blueprint, with the House growing steadily from 65 members in 1789 to 435 by 1913. And then it stopped. Today, the actual ratio is roughly one representative for every 760,000 Americans. Is there any population at which a House district becomes too big to represent?
