Welcome to Things You Forgot From Civics Class! / Checks and imbalances

Welcome to the very first Things You Forgot From Civics Class!

Every Monday, you’ll get a newsletter about how our government is supposed to work, how democracy was set up and most importantly, your place in it because American democracy doesn’t work without you.

This isn’t going to be the boring civics lessons you got in school. Nothing against your civics or social studies teachers, but those classes were pretty boring. Most of the time, it felt like nothing in those classes mattered or affected the lives of real people.

Turns out, they do now. Who knew?

How this is going to work is we’ll take what’s been happening in the news as our jumping-off point, and then hopefully answer the one question I get all the time.

Is this how this is supposed to work?

I also want this to be a place where you can come with your questions. Drop ‘em in the Make It Make Sense chat, and I’ll do my best to answer them in a future newsletter.

So, to kick things off, let’s start with some basics here.

Since the start of the second Trump Administration, it’s felt like our government has been totally out of whack. That’s because things aren’t working the way they’re supposed to.

The way we’re taught about the US government is that it’s set up as three coequal branches that have checks and balances on one another.

Except that’s not really true. They’re not equal.