On the eve of the 250th anniversary of a revolution launched to secure Americans’ right to democratic self-government, our representatives in Congress are so caught up in partisan gamesmanship that they are about to relinquish what little remains of their constitutional authority to an autocratic president and an unprincipled Supreme Court. 

On their watch, what we think of as the American form of government, with its shared power and checks and balances, will come to an inglorious end, not with a bang but a whimper.

Over the past year, members sat back and did nothing as a president abolished agencies and programs created by Congress, refused to spend appropriated funds, arrogated to himself the power to set tariffs, launched a war to take control of Venezuela, abrogated congressionally approved treaties, ordered departments and agencies to stop enforcing certain statutes, demolished government property, and fired without cause or due process hundreds of thousands of government employees protected by civil service laws and scores of Senate-confirmed agency heads and board members serving unexpired terms. 

Meanwhile, in all but a few cases, the Supreme Court refused to enjoin these encroachments on Congress’ constitutional authority, despite lower court rulings that the rationales for such actions lacked legal or factual basis.

In clearing a path for Donald Trump’s reelection, the nation’s highest court had already conjured from thin air the right of all future presidents to arbitrarily and corruptly use their powers to reward friends, punish enemies and line their own pockets without fear of criminal prosecution. And in the coming months, the court is set to overturn nearly a century of legislation and legal precedent designed to ensure the independence and nonpartisanship of federal agencies that regulate large swaths of the economy and protect the health, safety and economic interests of all Americans.

This trespass on congressional powers and prerogatives by a Republican president and an unabashedly Republican Supreme Court — along with the acquiescence of the Republican majorities in the House and Senate — amounts to nothing less than a Republican coup d’etat.

It is noteworthy that, in the face of this trashing of the constitutional order, Chief Justice John Roberts last week took the occasion of his annual report on the state of the judiciary to declare that the rule of law is alive and well and the bedrock principles of the constitution remain “firm and unshaken.” Methinks the chief justice doth protest too much. 

Democrats are hardly blameless in the disempowerment of the “first branch.” 

Not that they haven’t ranted and railed against the current monarchical president, the disingenuous judicial activism of the Supreme Court and the unconditional surrender of their Republican colleagues. 

But where was the pushback when Democratic presidents flouted the War Powers Act or pardoned political donors or asserted the power to forgive tens of billions of dollars in student loans? And where was the Democratic Congress when it could have reined in a runaway Court by reducing the terms of its justices, overriding its misguided statutory interpretations and exposing the ill effects of its most specious rulings?

Given Congress’ refusal to address and resolve the most pressing issues facing the country, you can hardly blame the other branches for poaching on its turf. 

The Supreme Court has on numerous occasions been forced to rule on issues involving regulation that it had previously urged Congress to address. And is it any wonder that presidents have resorted to executive orders in the face of Congress’ inability to deal with immigration, the internet, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency or runaway medical costs?

This dysfunction was not something forced on Congress. It was a deliberate choice made by leaders and members of both parties who have stubbornly refused to engage in the kind of compromise that governing requires. At this point, that choice is hard-wired into the expectations not only of the public and the other branches of government, but of the members of Congress themselves.

This is certainly not what the framers intended. 

They deliberately created a constitutional structure in which power was divided among three branches, each invested with powers to hold the others to account.

While Congress makes the laws, presidents can veto them or enforce them in any way they see fit, while the courts interpret them and can refuse to enforce them when they conflict with the Constitution. 

Presidents appoint the members of the Supreme Court and the Cabinet, but the Senate can refuse to confirm them for any reason, or no reason at all.  And if presidents or justices abuse their offices or stiff-arm Congress, Congress can cut off their funding or remove them from office.

It took decades of experience with these checks for a set of norms and customs to develop that kept the constitutional machinery in balance. 

At various times, extraordinary events upset that balance — think of the Jacksonian era, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the New Deal and President Richard Nixon’s resignation — from which new boundaries and norms emerged. 

We are now at another such extraordinary moment, with a president determined to exercise monarchical powers, a supine Congress unwilling to stop him and a Supreme Court eager to toss aside decades of precedent to accommodate him.

In the past, leaders with courage, wisdom and political ingenuity have emerged at such times to strike a new balance among the branches. What characterizes the current moment is the conspicuous absence of such “institutionalist” leaders in any branch willing to subordinate their own power and policy preferences to preserve a constitutional framework that has served the country well for more than two centuries.

But, hey, how about those Epstein files … 

Steven Pearlstein is the director of the Fixing Congress Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a longtime writer and columnist for The Washington Post. He is also Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. The views expressed here are his own.