John,
If you’ve been frustrated with members’ of Congress complicity in President Trump’s assaults on our democracy, or if your jaw has dropped at the latest headlines about Trump’s corruption—read on.
CREW
has a plan to fix what Trump has broken in our democracy, and it starts with rebuilding presidential accountability to the people and restoring checks and balances on presidential power. Those are lofty goals, but we’ve laid out a step-by-step roadmap for a better government. Read more here.
First and foremost, we need to ensure that all future presidents take the necessary steps to avoid corrupt and dangerous conflicts of interest. That starts with requiring presidential and vice presidential candidates to release their tax returns and to quickly divest from all of their conflicting assets. And as we’ve all learned, we need to make the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution more easily enforceable.
Congress needs to make clear that nepotism laws apply to the president, because family connections should not determine who serves in government roles, or who gets government contracts. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have shown us why it is so important to have experts rather than in-laws in power.
The Department of Justice cannot be allowed to remain a political tool of the White House, so we need to require law enforcement agencies to keep a log of enforcement-related communications with White House officials or members of Congress and have an inspector general review it, and we need strict rules about who in the White House can discuss cases with the DOJ. That should deter the kinds of tampering we saw in Roger Stone’s sentencing and Michael Flynn’s prosecution. And to ensure that the DOJ can’t again defend a president in personal cases like the defamation case related to a 90’s-era rape allegation against President Trump, there should be a special counsel who decides when the DOJ intervenes.
We need checks and balances that actually work. That starts with Congress creating real consequences for ignoring subpoenas and creating a fast-track court procedure to help Congress carry out investigations in a reasonable time frame. With those measures in place, we could have heard from many more impeachment witnesses and gotten real answers about Trump’s financial records.
Congress needs to limit the time an official can legally serve in an “acting” capacity. Trump abused this idea to avoid confirmation battles for controversial appointments from the Department of Homeland Security to the Bureau of Land Management, but that means the American people lose the benefit of Senate review, a key check on executive power, in determining who is in charge of federal agencies and their tax dollars. No future president should be allowed to get away with this.
CREW’s report is full of more than a hundred other suggestions, including ensuring presidents cannot run out the clock on potential criminal liability, banning self-pardons, limiting outside funding for inaugurations, strengthening the Federal Election Commission, and ending the legislative filibuster.
A better government is possible, and it’s time for us to make that happen. Share our report with your friends and family if you agree, and contact your member of Congress to advocate for the reforms that resonate with you.
Thank you for standing with us,
Noah Bookbinder
Executive Director, CREW
