> It’s a cycle of checks and balances that is supposed to loop back into itself.

Except that the US doesn't have a functioning legislative branch, so the corrective feedback action never happens. The justices who are making these rulings, and their clients, are very well aware of this.

Then the voters should kick the bastards out. That's the biggest check on the legislative branch, it has pretty fast turnover.

Now, if you have a population that doesn't want to elect lawmakers who will actually pass laws...well, that sucks, but it's kind of working as designed.

It doesn't take a whole population to grind the process to a halt - just a legislator or two, and not passing legislation is just as important to some voters as passing legislation is to others.

It only takes a legislator or two because of the policies and procedures the other legislators agree to. They are free at any time to change their rules of procedure. A filibuster without requiring actual filibustering is a process congress agrees to have, not something prescribed for them from on high. Almost their entire process is something they have all agreed to, if congress is easily deadlocked by one or two legislators, it is because congress does not want that to change.

Except you can't actually vote out the Republicans in Congress that are committing stochastic terrorism, because of gerrymandering.

>> Now, if you have a population that doesn't want to elect lawmakers who will actually pass laws

The population as a whole _does_ want lawmakers who will pass laws, however that collides with the structural misrepresentation built into the US electoral system.

The fundamental problem with this statement is that it assumes both sides of the coin are the same. However, it's far easier to block legislation in the current system than it is to get it passed. Combine that with the hyper partisanship of recent years and you have a recipe for legislative paralysis.

Now, if we didn't have the filibuster or senators were assigned based on population, it would be a different matter. Suffice it to say that we already have a pretty big check on govt power via these mechanisms, so the conservative talking point of preventing 'overreach' by government rings hollow.

>>>that collides with the structural misrepresentation built into the US electoral system.

I never know quite how to respond to this, because (as an outsider) the US electoral system has been designed in a way that is misrepresentative but for very clear reasons.

Part of the 'pitch' for the smaller states to join the union was that they would retain some power, mostly via the electoral college and senate (yes, they still get over-represented in the house, but less so). If the pitch was "you get nothing and we can bulldoze your state" Wyoming would have just said "no thanks, we'll stick to ourselves/join another union". If you think of states as entities worth protecting, assigning senators per state is quite reasonable.

Fast forward two hundred years and we have a different view of states, care more for the individuals inside them, and it indeed seems unfair that Wyoming and California both get 2 senators. What's the fix?

The problem is that we have FPTP elections which mean the alternate candidates are non-viable. Anyone who can fundraise for a successful primary campaign has enough ties to moneyed interests to become part of the swamp.

To pseudo-quote an influential American Conservative via the All-in podcast:

~"That's right, I want Congress dead-locked, I don't want any new laws passed!"

- David O. Sacks

> Except that the US doesn't have a functioning legislative branch, so the corrective feedback action never happens.

That's neither the judiciary's problem nor purview. Its yours (and mine) as voters.

What sucks is that as a person in a populous area my vote counts less than someone who lives in a rural area.

It really doesn't, but I understand this is a very popular albeit destructive way of thinking.

There is much more to you as a member of society than your single vote. You get to vote for many people in many different elections. You also can get civically engaged in many different ways.

This is just blatantly wrong. Look at how many votes it takes to seat a Wyoming senator versus a New York senator. Look at the electoral college. Look at the frozen House of Representatives size and the further imbalances this creates in favor of low population states. The compromises made to appease slave holding states have had long lasting repercussions on this country.

> There is much more to you as a member of society than your single vote. You get to vote for many people in many different elections. You also can get civically engaged in many different ways.

Civic engagement requires more than filling out a ballot

The electoral college is the reason that several presidents over the last 40 years have lost the popular vote and won the election. George W. Bush was one of the first presidents to do this. If you combine electoral college votes by population with our system of winner takes all then a few very agitated rural areas in a state with few populous cities can completely dictate the outcome of the election.