Make Like Wallpaper

Write It Down, Part One: What the election didn’t fix, and what you can do about it

This is the short version of whats coming next. The evidence comes in Part Two and what you can do with it in Part Three. Both eventually linked at the bottom.

“Just tell them you need to follow the law next time.”

That’s Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in January 2025, after the administration fired about 17 independent inspectors general without the 30-day notice to Congress the law requires. He acknowledged the firings violated the law. Then he shrugged.

Right. A law was broken, a senator said so on the record and that was the end of it.

If you woke up this morning relieved, I get it. I really do. Two years is a long time for all of us to hold our breath. But an election decides who holds the power. What that power is allowed to do stays exactly where it was on Monday. Whoever comes next inherits all of it: 52 declared national emergencies still in effect, a congressional watchdog that found the administration illegally withheld appropriated money a dozen times and went to court over none of them, and a precedent that inspectors general can be fired by email on a Friday night while a senator shrugs again.

Some races won’t be called for days, and you may hear talk of counties refusing to certify. Every county that’s tried that since 2020 has ended up certifying.

What actually broke

I spent four decades inside the federal government, a good part of it at DOJ and DHS. The system I worked in ran on custom, tradition and character far more than most people realize. Past presidents didn’t fire the watchdogs. They didn’t lean on the people who count the numbers. They spent the money Congress told them to spend. Some of that was law, with no teeth in it. The rest wasn’t law at all. They just did it because heretofore thats how it was done.

A rule like that binds only the people who agree to be bound.

In 2020 I was USCIS’s representative to DHS’s intelligence office. Its chief, a man I’d spoken with several times, alleged he’d been told to soften threat assessments because they made the President look bad. I can tell you what that did, because I saw it. People learned to keep their heads down. Bad news got lipstick and fluff was the wardrobe. Nobody had to order it. Once analysts believe an honest assessment can cost them, honest assessments get scarce.

People still inside tell me it’s worse now. The unwritten rule is the one I’ve hated my entire career: don’t make waves. Make like wallpaper.

That should worry you more than any single firing. The warnings we all depend on, about threats, about attacks, about what’s coming next, are being written by people who’ve learned that the safest draft is the one with the happy face.

Lets compare that with Cochise County, Arizona, in 2022. Two county supervisors refused to certify their election by the state deadline. Certification is a mandatory duty written into state law, so the secretary of state took them to court and a judge ordered them to do their job. Then a state grand jury indicted them both on felony charges. The county certified. That’s what a rule looks like when someone is assigned to enforce it and breaking it costs dearly.

A guardrail with no one to enforce it and no penalty for breaking it is a suggestion. Our system turns out to be built on a lot of them. So here’s the standard I’m asking you to carry out of this piece. For every fix anyone proposes, ask two questions. Who can enforce it? What happens to the person who breaks it? If nobody has a good answer to both, it’s one more damn suggestion.

Reform or revenge

There’s a temptation coming, and I’d warrant it’s already here. People who were hurt want someone to pay. Some of that is justice, and it belongs in courtrooms where it gets decided on evidence. But a Congress that spends 2027 hauling enemies in front of cameras will teach the country the same lesson I watched DHS learn. Every witness keeps their head down, and nothing the committee finds gets believed afterward, even when it’s true.

Retribution punishes the last crowd. Reform binds the next one, including a president you like. The test is simple: would you still want this rule if the other side held the power? If you hesitate, you have your answer.

Where it reached you

Your money. Tariffs are a tax, and the Constitution gives the taxing power to Congress. Over the decades Congress handed pieces of it to the president through emergency laws, and the fix starts there: emergencies should expire unless Congress votes to keep them. Trump used one of those laws to put tariffs on nearly everything we import, and you paid them at the grocery store and the hardware store. In February the Supreme Court held that the tariff power belongs to Congress alone and struck those tariffs down. Within hours the administration moved to replace them with a new tariff under a different trade law. The court did its job. The power walked out a side door. The refunds go to the importers who paid the duties. The families who paid the higher prices get nothing in return.

Your referees. In August 2025 the president fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner after a weak jobs report, claiming she’d manipulated the data, though no evidence supports the allegation. That bureau also produces consumer and producer price data, the numbers that set your Social Security raise and the rate on your savings bonds. Then, days before this election, the Justice Department sued Alaska to block certification of its Senate race if the Republican incumbent lost. You won’t feel any of this in your wallet this week. You’ll feel it the day you realize the people who count the score, audit the books and decide who gets prosecuted all answer to one person.

Some of the fixes I’d have reached for a year ago are gone. In June the Supreme Court ruled that Congress can’t stop a president from firing most executive officials at will. That pushes the fix toward the tools Congress still owns outright: watchdogs housed in its own branch, where a president can’t reach them, its control of the money and its power to confirm.

The same disease reached due process, and “Abolish ICE” won’t cure it, since the agency did what it did because nobody could make it follow the rules. Part Two lays out the evidence for all of this in full.

What I’m asking you to do

I know you’re tired. I am too. So I’m asking for something small, and I’m asking you to keep doing it.

Once a month, call your two senators and your representative. Every bill pending now dies when this Congress ends in January, so the 2027 ask is to reintroduce and cosponsor. Start with emergency powers reform, the ARTICLE ONE Act, which Republican Senator Rand Paul and Representative Chip Roy have carried alongside Democrats for years. Then the Protecting Our Democracy Act and the Inspectors General Independence Act.

When the staffer tells you the member supports accountability, and they will, ask the two questions. Who enforces it? What happens to the person who breaks it? Write down the answer. Once a year, go to a town hall and ask the member the same thing in person.

The cost is about an hour a month, some awkwardness on the phone and the discipline to keep calling next summer when the news has moved on to 2028. That last part is the hard part.

Part Three has the scripts, the numbers and the bill details.

What you’ll actually get

A new House takes its seats January 3. The president is in office until January 2029, and he will veto any bill that limits his own power. The Senate filibuster will probably stop most of them before they reach his desk. So these reforms are very unlikely to become law before 2029. I’d rather tell you that now than have you find out in 2028 and quit. This is a marathon and our race to lose.

If the Senate turns too, and that’s a thinner hope but a real one, the picture changes even with the veto in place. Reforms that already have Republican support, emergency powers chief among them, could reach his desk and force him to veto limits on his own power in public. More important, the Senate confirms nominees by simple majority. A Senate that refuses to seat any judge, U.S. attorney or cabinet officer who won’t commit to the rules holds the strongest lever a Congress has against a president it can’t override.

So what does the pressure buy? Recorded votes, so you know exactly where every member stands when they come asking for yours. Narrow fixes attached to must-pass spending bills, the one place a Congress can make a president sign something he’d rather not. And a finished reform package, drafted, debated and passed in at least one chamber, ready to move in the first hundred days of 2029. A Congress that spends two years proving it can govern earns the authority to fix things when it gets the chance. The Congress that spends them on hearings for show arrives in 2029 with nothing ready and no credibility to spend.

The people who built this system trusted their successors to behave. We learned what that trust is worth. In Cochise County we also learned what a written rule is worth.

Write it down.

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Part Two: Write It Down: the evidence - out Nov 9th

Part Three: How to Make Them Write It Down - out Nov 17th

Further reading: