It is up to the people to force these changes. Our elected officials must serve us, not kings who give them $400,000,000 jets or multi-billion-dollar crypto “investments.”

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Our current legislatures, executives, and courts will not restore them on their own. Instead, they will fire the investigators and hobble the auditors. 21/

Given the cycle we seem to go through with our laws (egregious violations, dramatic reforms, whittling the reforms into oblivion, rinse, repeat), it is time for new reforms. Our current laws, including the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, are not up to the tasks they were written for. 20/

And Congress? The last anti-corruption law was adopted over 40 years ago. 19/

The president “paused” enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and effectively abolished the Justice Department’s task forces on political and foreign corruption. He also pardons corrupt politicians. A lot. 18/

We cannot lay all blame at the feet of the court. The executive branch has also failed us. Prosecutions for corruption have been dropping for years. 17/

In 2021, it dismissed cases alleging Emoluments Clause violations during Trump’s first term because he was no longer in office. Last year, it ruled that the President, once understood to be subject to the law, cannot be convicted for his official acts as President. 16/

Similarly, in 2023, it overturned the conviction of a former aide to the New York governor who was working for his re-election campaign and using his influence in exchange for bribes. 15/

The Court imposed further limitations in the 2020 “Bridgegate” case, overturning convictions of Governor Chris Christie’s aides who manipulated traffic into a New Jersey town for political reasons. 14/

The court said he was not acting in his official capacity as governor. 13/

In 2016, the Supreme Court began weakening anti-corruption laws by overturning ex-governor Bob McDonnell’s conviction for taking bribes for pushing state universities to conduct studies showing that certain uses of tobacco were benign. 12/

Laws requiring equal access to the ballot eventually allow all kinds of underhanded actions to undermine voting rights. And laws prohibiting corruption have diminished dramatically over the last decade. 11/

However, our country has a pattern of passing laws, regulations, and even Constitutional provisions that are then whittled away over time. “No law” in the First Amendment’s protection of free speech eventually means “no law but….” with a long list of exceptions. 10/