## Notes from 08 December 2025 [[2025-12-07|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2025-12-09|Next note →]] Read an op-ed by [[Marc J. Dunkelman]] in the NYT: "[What the Left Could Learn From Trump's Brutal Efficiency](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/opinion/trump-liberals-government.html)" (Dec 3, 2025). The point is familiar to those who follow his work: American progressivism has two contradictory impulses — one wants a robust government to regulate and build, while the other fears centralized authority and works to constrain it to protect minorities. He argues that in the early 20th century the pro-government vision prevailed (New Deal, Great Society), but after episodes like Vietnam and Watergate, progressives turned anti-centralization, building procedural barriers against government overreach. The result: the same safeguards that prevent government from doing bad things now prevent it from doing good things. Meanwhile, Trump, for all his abuses, actually moves fast. This is a crucial point: it is not just that Trump might be acting illegally, but that court decisions are amplifying executive deference—power that will (or at least should) serve the interests of future Democratic administrations. But if this power is available to future Democrats, will they use it? The barrier isn't capacity, but the political will to pick winners and losers within their own fractured coalition. In any case, this is Dunkelman's prescription: enhanced [[executive decisiveness]]. There is a need to enhance government capacity to act once there has been enough consultation. Involved parties must have a say, but someone must be empowered to decide — "some elected official, some appointed bureaucrat, some answerable commission" — without endless recourse. --- This made me think about Brazil, but from a different angle. In the US, the problem is legislative and regulatory gridlock preventing executive action. In Brazil, political gridlock has pushed final decision-making to the judiciary. Some argue this is the fault of the Legislative and Executive branches: they avoid hard decisions, delegate ambiguously, or actively try to shift political costs to the courts. The judiciary then fills the vacuum. However, this generates second- and third-order problems. Courts end up making policy decisions with no accountability, often disconnected from legal doctrine, scientific evidence, or administrative capacity. The Brazilian Supreme Court routinely defines public policy on health, the environment, federalism, and social rights — acting as a kind of super-legislature that answers to no one. Dunkelman's piece helps frame why this matters: his "Robert Moses problem" is about finding a middle ground between unchecked authority and paralysis. Brazil has stumbled into a worst-of-both-worlds scenario — political paralysis _and_ unchecked authority, only displaced to the wrong branch. The judiciary has become the entity that "points the way forward without endless recourse", yet it lacks the legitimacy, expertise, and accountability that should accompany that role. If American progressives need to develop a new theory of power, Brazilian reformers need one too. But ours has to grapple with a judiciary that has absorbed political functions it was never designed to perform, and that now resists any constraint on its expanded role.