Democrats won a sweeping victory in the midterm elections, a result that also settled a two-year tug-of-war between the country’s constitutional institutions and the claim of an individual leadership to set them aside — treating popular consent not as a mandate to govern but as a license to exercise power without constraints, quotidiano.net reported.
The outcome vindicates a system of checks that had already pushed back on President Donald Trump in the courts and statehouses. The Supreme Court, despite its Republican majority, blocked several of the president’s initiatives, and several states asserted the sovereignty guaranteed to them under the federal system, quotidiano.net reported.
Supreme Court Rejected Tariffs, Citizenship Order and California Ballot Challenge
In February, the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs Trump imposed under the emergency economic powers law, ruling that the president cannot turn those powers into a pass to act in an area the Constitution reserves to Congress, quotidiano.net reported.
In June, the Court declared unconstitutional the executive order aimed at limiting birthright citizenship, a right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, quotidiano.net reported.
On the eve of the elections, the Court also rejected the administration’s request to set aside in California the ballots of about 20,000 voters whom federal authorities suspected of not being U.S. citizens, quotidiano.net reported.
Oregon, Illinois and California Resisted Federal Control of the National Guard
States resisted as well. Last year in Oregon and Illinois, governors opposed Trump’s decision to take the National Guard out of their control and send it to Portland and the Chicago area; in both cases, federal judges put a limit on the president’s initiative, quotidiano.net reported.
In October, a federal appeals court confirmed the order returning to the governor of California control of the National Guard deployed in Los Angeles, quotidiano.net reported.
Institutions Tested Ahead of the Declaration’s 250th Anniversary
The clash played out against institutions rooted in the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, whose 250th anniversary falls this year — a democracy built in the fight against the mother country’s overreach, in the name of tradition, autonomy and self-government, and designed to guarantee citizens’ freedoms through an architecture that ensures the primacy of law and a balance of powers that limit one another, quotidiano.net reported.
In Italy, commentators and analysts had widely underestimated that outcome, convinced that the death knells had already sounded for this democracy and that the result of the tug-of-war was already decided, quotidiano.net reported.
The result leaves the balance of powers — tested for two years — intact as the country marks the quarter-millennium of its founding document.
Questions Readers Ask About the Midterm Result
What did the Supreme Court rule on tariffs? In February, the Court rejected the tariffs imposed under the emergency economic powers law, establishing that the president cannot use those powers to act where the Constitution reserves authority to Congress, quotidiano.net reported.
Which states resisted federal control of the National Guard? Oregon and Illinois last year, where governors opposed sending the Guard to Portland and the Chicago area, and California, where an October appeals court ruling returned control of the Los Angeles deployment to the governor, quotidiano.net reported.
Why does the 250th anniversary matter to this story? The Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, reaches its 250th anniversary this year, and quotidiano.net frames the election result against that founding architecture of checks and balances.
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