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To My Fellow Americans,

Most of us today judge government by asking some simple, practical questions: Is it effective? Can it solve problems quickly? Can it respond efficiently? Can it get things done?

But the founders? Well, they asked a different question. Before asking what government could accomplish, they wanted to know what government could become. They spent decades living under kings, parliaments, and distant bureaucracies and they learned a hard truth that still holds today: power rarely stays where it begins.

It grows, it expands, and it always wants more.

Our Constitution wasn’t written by men who believed power would stay limited on its own. They assumed just the opposite. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

The Founders knew human nature doesn’t change when someone wins an election or takes an oath. Ambition, self-interest, pride, and the desire for control are permanent features of political life. They weren’t looking for perfect leaders. They were building a system that could survive imperfect ones.

That’s why they divided power.

One Government, Three Powers

When we think of the Constitution, we think of three branches: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. We’re taught what they do, but rarely was it discussed why they exist.

The division wasn’t arbitrary. The legislature writes the laws, the executive enforces them and the courts interpret what those laws mean. Those functions were separated because combining them creates a dangerous concentration of authority. The French philosopher Montesquieu warned the founders: “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates.”

If one group can make rules, enforce rules, and decide what those rules mean, citizens lose any real protection from government. The Founders had seen this play out throughout history: Kings issued decrees. Courts served rulers. Legislatures became rubber stamps.

The Constitution was built to prevent those outcomes by ensuring no single institution could control all of government’s power.

Ambition Counteracting Ambition

Our Founders weren’t perfect men, they were flawed like everyone, but they knew that dividing power on paper wasn’t enough. They expected every branch to try to expand its influence so, instead of trying to eliminate that tendency, they used it. Madison famously noted in Federalist No. 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

This is one of the most important ideas in our entire constitutional system. The branches were designed to compete.

• Congress passes legislation.

• The President can veto it.

• Congress can override the veto.

• The Senate confirms appointments.

• The courts can strike down unconstitutional actions.

• Congress can impeach federal officials.

Each branch has tools to resist encroachments by the others. This arrangement frustrates modern observers because government looks slow, decisions take time, and disagreements create stalemates; yet this was largely intentional.

The Constitution was not designed to maximize efficiency. It was designed to prevent domination.

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Why Gridlock Is a Feature, Not a Bug

While many Americans often call political deadlock proof the system is broken, but I suspect the Founders would likely disagree. They believed major changes should require broad agreement so passing laws was intentionally made difficult. A bill must pass the House and Senate, survive presidential review, and withstand constitutional scrutiny

That process was not an accident – it was a safeguard.

The Founders worried that temporary passions could become permanent laws. They feared moments of public anger, fear, or enthusiasm leading to government actions that future generations would regret. In Federalist No. 62, Madison argued: “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”

The constitutional system was designed to slow decisions down – so a bad idea today doesn’t become permanent law tomorrow. The question was never how quickly government could act.

The question was whether government should act at all.

The Modern Drift Toward Consolidated Power

The Founders understood that power naturally accumulates and assumed that tendency wouldn’t disappear after ratification. If anything, it has accelerated. Today, Congress delegates authority to executive agencies, Presidents rely on on executive orders, and federal bureaucracies routinely create regulations carrying the force of law. Often, these agencies write the rules, enforce them, and judge disputes regarding those same rules.

The Founders would likely look on today’s arrangement with tremendous scorn because it mirrors the very concentration of power they sought to avoid. They created barriers against it and when those barriers weaken, the risk isn’t just inefficiency or political disagreement.

The risk is the gradual erosion of self-government itself.

As noted in previous papers, this reflects a broader trend toward the administrative state, the rise of the expert class, and the transformation of governance into management.

Preserving Freedom

At its core, the separation of powers isn’t about organization charts; it’s about liberty. The system assumes that mistakes will happen and bad leaders will emerge. The answer isn’t “better people” – it’s structural restraint. Liberty doesn’t depend on finding the right saints to lead us; it depends on limiting what any person can do once they hold the reins of power.

The friction we feel today – the slow-moving legislation and endless debates – is the safeguard standing between us and an unchecked, concentrated authority.

The Founders didn’t just divide power horizontally through checks and balances; they also divided it vertically through federalism. Power was divided once to restrain government and divided again to protect the people.

That is where the next Restoration Paper takes us. The Architecture of Federalism.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

Sources

• The United States Constitution

• The Federalist Papers No. 51 (James Madison)

• The Federalist Papers No. 62 (James Madison)

• Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748)

• The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

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Graduates,

Before anything else, a quick warning:

Be careful taking life advice from people whom you’d never ask their opinion in the first place. And be cautious about advice from people with whom you have nothing in common, which includes celebrities, social media influencers, and anyone whose life looks nothing like yours.

They don’t deal with your problems, they don’t have your choices, and they don’t live with your consequences.

So, filter honestly, aggressively, and intentionally.

Yes, you’ve graduated and now you are entering the next major phase of your lives… maybe that’s college, or trade school, or straight into the job market if you’ve graduated from high school.

Or maybe, it’s graduate school or medical school if you’ve just received your bachelor’s degree.

Or maybe, it’s something else entirely.

The point is, that you’re taking the next step in your life and there is something you should be paying close attention to, because it’s going to impact your lives more than just about anything else.

And it’s something that generations before you mostly ignored and took for granted…but now, it must be addressed because we’re at a critical phase of our country’s history. Will we continue as we have before, or will we do something different.

And at this point, you’re probably wondering what I’m talking about, so I’ll tell you.

It’s our American republic. You’re stepping out into the world in a rare situation, globally speaking.

Most people in history didn’t get a say in how they were governed.
But we do and you do.

But there’s a catch:

It only works if you act like it matters.

What does that mean?

It means getting involved. Get involved locally, regionally, federally – it doesn’t matter – just get involved. Volunteer, get elected to the local school board, city council, or a local community organization – where an “average person” has the most immediate impact.

Our American system was built on a risky idea – that regular people, like us, can govern ourselves.

Not professional experts.
Not professional politicians.
And certainly not celebrities, professional athletes, or the loudest influencer voices on the internet.

But you and I and every other average American citizen.

As Benjamin Franklin supposedly replied when asked what kind of government had been created: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

And I have some difficult news for you: that responsibility doesn’t start when you’re ‘ready.’ It doesn’t start when you’re older or established. It started the moment you received your diploma. Because, right now, there is an entire ecosystem of influencers, algorithms, and talking heads – all fighting to think for you.

They all want the same thing:

Your agreement without your scrutiny.

They’ll tell you what to believe.
Who to blame.
What side you’re on.

And if you’re not careful, you’ll hand over your judgment without realizing it.

That’s how it happens.

Not through force.

Through convenience.

It’s easier to pick a side than to think.
Easier to repeat than to question.
Easier to belong than to stand alone.

But the moment you stop questioning - you’re not thinking anymore.

You’re following.

And a country full of followers can’t stay free very long.

So, draw a line now and hold it forever.

You don’t belong to a party.
You don’t belong to a tribe.
You don’t outsource your thinking.

Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson who once wrote, “He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”

You can have opinions. Strong ones.

But hold them like an adult – meaning you’re willing to question them.

Because parties will change.

They always do.

Principles don’t.

Free speech isn’t partisan.
Due process isn’t partisan.
Equal treatment under the law isn’t partisan.

These are not “talking points.”

They are the rules that keep power in check.

And they only work if you defend them, even when it’s inconvenient, even when the folks you typically agree with are the ones violating them.

Especially then.

If you want to take this seriously, do more than vote and tune out.

Know how things work.

As Jeffferson once said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

So, what does that mean?

It means know who represents you, what they’re doing, and what’s being done in your name.

And when something’s off - say something.

Not just when it’s easy.
Not just when it’s popular.

The biggest threat to this system isn’t disagreement.

It’s blind loyalty.

The danger isn’t government necessarily; it’s the citizens who will excuse anything - as long as their “team” is doing it.

Don’t be that person.

Be the one who can say:

“That’s right,” when the other side gets it right.
“That’s wrong,” when your side gets it wrong.

That’s extremely rare, but it shouldn’t be.

And it matters more than you think.

Because the future of this country isn’t decided by perfect people.

It’s decided by ordinary people who either pay attention – or they don’t.

Who either think for themselves – or they don’t.

Who either take responsibility for their own lives and actions – or they don’t.

Thomas Paine once wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

So, remember that and know that at some point in the future, you’re going to hand this country off to the next group.

And they’re going to live with what you tolerated.

What you ignored.
What you defended.
What you allowed to slide.

That’s going to be your legacy.

Not your job title.
Not your income.
Not your follower count.

Your legacy will be what you leave behind.

My generation has spent years arguing about who broke things.

You have a better option: Fix what you can.

Not with outrage.
Not with slogans.
Not by picking a side and shutting your brain off.

But by being harder to manipulate.

Read more than headlines.
Ask better questions.
Challenge what you hear.

Even when it’s uncomfortable.
Even when it costs you socially.

Especially then.

Don’t ask, “What am I supposed to think?”

Ask, “Is it true?”

Don’t ask, “Will this make me fit in?”

Ask, “Is it right?”

That’s how you stay free.

That’s how this works.

Congratulations.

You have inherited something extremely rare and precious.

A republic.

As Franklin warned, it can only survive if it’s citizens can keep it.

So, keep it.

And when your time comes to hand it to the next generation, leave it stronger than you received it.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

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Most of us only hear about Congress through screaming cable news segments or social media clips designed to make us angry. The People’s Ledger is different. It’s a quick, clear look at what lawmakers are actually debating, funding, and changing – minus the political theater.

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1. Biggest Bill of the Week

Senate Passes $70 Billion Immigration Enforcement Package

After weeks of delays and internal fights, the Senate passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement package that will provide more money for ICE, Border Patrol, detention operations, and other Department of Homeland Security activities. The bill passed mostly along party lines and now heads to the House.

Just two weeks ago, this package was stuck because of Republican disagreements over a controversial $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. Many expected that provision to be stripped out. Instead, Senate leadership kept the broader package together, and efforts to remove the fund failed.

This is one of the biggest immigration enforcement funding packages Congress has considered in years. Supporters say the border situation calls for more manpower, detention space, and enforcement resources. Critics say Congress is still pouring money into enforcement without dealing with the deeper immigration problems behind it.

Whatever side you’re on, $70 billion is real money. It means a major expansion of federal enforcement capacity.

Who benefits or loses

• Federal enforcement agencies would get a major funding boost if the House approves the bill.

• Communities affected by illegal immigration could see more enforcement activity.

• Taxpayers ultimately pay for the expansion.

• Civil liberties and immigration advocacy groups are still worried about oversight and accountability as enforcement grows.

The House is now the main battleground. Watch for lawmakers to challenge the settlement fund and debate whether enforcement money should be tied to broader immigration reforms.

2. Quietly Moving Bills

Housing Affordability

Congress is still discussing housing legislation aimed at boosting construction and reducing barriers to new development. Lawmakers are also debating limits on large institutional investors buying single-family homes.

Housing is one of the biggest financial pressures facing working Americans. But restricting corporate ownership isn’t a magic fix. If fewer investors buy rentals and housing supply does not increase, renters could end up paying more.

Who benefits or loses

• Potential homebuyers could benefit if more homes become available.

• Renters could lose if supply stays tight and rental inventory shrinks.

Watch whether lawmakers focus more on limiting buyers or increasing housing supply. The second approach may matter more in the long run.

Artificial Intelligence Regulation

Congress is still working on guardrails for AI-generated content, deepfakes, election interference, and consumer protections.

Lawmakers are trying to solve a tough problem: how do you protect people from fraud and manipulation without slowing innovation?

Who benefits or loses

• Technology companies generally want lighter regulation.

• Consumers and privacy advocates want stronger safeguards.

Expect AI legislation to become more closely tied to election integrity and online misinformation concerns.

The Farm Bill

The Farm Bill remains in Senate negotiations as lawmakers continue debating SNAP rules, agricultural subsidies, conservation programs, and rural development funding.

The Farm Bill affects food prices, food assistance, conservation, farming operations, and rural communities.

Who benefits or loses

Farmers, ranchers, SNAP recipients, and taxpayers all have something at stake.

Watch for Senate revisions involving SNAP eligibility, conservation land use, and agricultural support programs.

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3. Money & Spending

Spending Fights Continue Beneath the Headlines

While most of the attention went to immigration funding, broader budget negotiations kept moving behind the scenes as lawmakers prepared for summer spending fights and appropriations battles.

The conversation is increasingly about where Congress wants to spend money, not just whether it wants to spend more. Border security, housing, agriculture, and national security remain major priorities.

Every spending bill is a statement of priorities. The federal budget tells you more about what government intends to do than most political speeches ever will.

Who benefits or loses

• Agencies that get new money benefit.

• Taxpayers carry the long-term cost.

• Future Congresses inherit the obligations created today.

Watch for bigger budget fights heading into summer, especially around appropriations, DHS funding, and any effort to cut spending somewhere else.

4. Civil Liberties & Constitutional Issues

FISA Renewal Suddenly in Doubt

Just when it looked like Congress was moving toward another extension of Section 702 surveillance powers, the process hit a major snag. A procedural vote to advance a FISA renewal bill failed in the Senate after bipartisan concerns emerged over President Trump’s appointment of Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence.

A week ago, the expectation was that Congress would probably approve another extension. Now the process is politically tangled, and the path forward is unclear. Some lawmakers who support surveillance authorities are questioning leadership decisions, while civil liberties advocates see an opening to push for stronger reforms and warrant requirements.

The basic question is still the same: how much surveillance power should the federal government have? Supporters say Section 702 is essential for tracking foreign threats, terrorism, cyberattacks, and espionage. Critics say Americans’ communications can still end up swept into government databases without traditional warrant protections.

Who benefits or loses

• Intelligence agencies benefit if Section 702 is renewed.

• Privacy advocates benefit if Congress uses this moment to add stronger limits and oversight.

• Ordinary Americans are stuck in the middle of the security-versus-liberty debate.

The deadline is closing in fast. Watch for emergency negotiations, temporary extensions, or last-minute reform proposals as lawmakers try to avoid letting the authority lapse.

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5. What Moved This Week

House

• Continued committee work on housing and AI legislation.

• Continued oversight hearings involving federal agencies.

• Prepared to take up the Senate’s immigration funding package.

Senate

• Passed the $70 billion immigration enforcement funding package.

• Failed to advance a long-term FISA renewal proposal.

• Continued Farm Bill negotiations.

Committees

• Continued AI regulation hearings.

• Continued housing affordability discussions.

• Continued agricultural and conservation policy debates.

6. What to Watch Next Week

Here’s what is likely to dominate Washington next week:

• House consideration of the Senate immigration package.

• FISA renewal deadline negotiations.

• Farm Bill revisions in the Senate.

• Housing affordability legislation.

• AI regulation proposals.

• Summer budget and appropriations fights.

A lot of the biggest changes in Congress happen during negotiations, amendments, and committee meetings long before final votes happen.

Washington moves fast, but many of the most important shifts happen quietly first. That’s why paying attention matters. Our job here is simple: follow the bills, follow the money, and understand what’s changing in our name.

Sources and Further Reading

Legislative summaries are compiled from congressional records, bill text, committee reports, floor proceedings, and reporting from multiple news organizations across the political spectrum. Whenever possible, readers are encouraged to review the underlying legislation and official congressional documents directly.

Immigration Funding Package

• Reuters: Senate passes $70 billion immigration enforcement funding package and debate over the anti-weaponization fund.

• The Guardian: Senate approval of the $70 billion immigration enforcement bill and internal Republican disagreements.

FISA / Section 702 Surveillance

• Reuters: Lawmakers warn Bill Pulte appointment could jeopardize Section 702 renewal.

• New York Post: Senate vote fails to advance Section 702 renewal.

• The Guardian: Impact of the acting DNI appointment on FISA negotiations.

Housing Policy

• Congressional agenda and housing legislation coverage from Spectrum News.

Farm Bill

Ongoing Senate negotiations and House-passed Farm Bill coverage from agricultural and congressional reporting sources.

Budget and Spending

Congressional budget and appropriations outlook reporting

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Every political movement in America plays the same tired, dishonest game.

They dig up the Founders, slap a partisan bumper sticker on their corpses, and scream, “If they were here today, they’d be on our side!” Progressives do it. Conservatives do it. Even the independents do it when it’s convenient.

It’s all noise. It’s all ego. And it’s all missing the point.

We are currently obsessed with weaponizing the sins of the past while ignoring the genius of the architecture. Everyone wants to argue about what the Founders wrote, but nobody wants to talk about why they wrote it.

They didn’t build this Republic because they were utopians dreaming of a perfect world. They were realists, men who spent their lives studying history’s greatest disasters: the tyrants, the mobs, the collapsed empires, and the inevitable rot of unchecked power.

They knew one cold, hard truth: Power is a vacuum. It doesn’t sit still; it expands.

They built the Constitution not because they believed we were inherently good, but because they knew exactly how dangerous we are to ourselves. They built a system of friction, not efficiency, because they knew that “fast” government is almost always a precursor to tyranny.

In this episode of The Defiant Citizen, we’re stripping away the myths. We’re moving past the “hero vs. villain” dichotomy that has paralyzed our political culture. We’re going to look at the Founders for what they actually were: deeply flawed men who birthed a flawless ideal, a blueprint designed to survive our worst impulses.

If you can’t hold those two truths in your head at once, you aren’t really interested in the Republic. You’re just looking for a new master to worship or a new person to tear down.

If you’re ready to stop being a spectator and start understanding the machine we’re actually living in, this episode is for you.

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A republic only survives when its citizens refuse to become subjects.

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Most of us only hear about Congress through screaming cable news segments or social media clips designed to make us angry. The People’s Ledger is different. It’s a quick, clear look at what lawmakers are actually debating, funding, and changing – minus the political theater.

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1. Biggest Bill of the Week

Immigration Funding Hits a Wall

A major immigration and border funding package stalled in the Senate this week after Republicans broke over one of President Trump’s priorities: a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.

What happened
Senate Republicans were trying to move a roughly $72 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement, including ICE, Border Patrol, detention space, and other enforcement operations.

Instead, leadership pulled back after the fight over the “anti-weaponization” fund got too big to ignore.

Where it broke down
Supporters said the fund was meant to compensate people who believe they were unfairly targeted by government agencies.

Critics, including some Republicans, said the program was vague, poorly guarded, and too easy to turn into a political slush fund.

That disagreement was enough to slow the whole package down.

Why it matters
This is bigger than an immigration fight.

It’s really about who gets money, who gets oversight, and how much power Congress is willing to hand to federal agencies. Once programs get bigger and get staffed, they are hard to shrink later.

Who benefits or loses

• Immigration enforcement agencies could get a major boost if the bill comes back in a new form.

• Fiscal conservatives are pushing back on adding billions more to the tab.

• Taxpayers end up paying for the long-term cost either way.

What happens next
Leadership will likely try again in June, either with a narrower bill or by splitting the package into pieces.

The bigger story to watch is the Republican split over spending and federal power.

2. Quietly Moving Bills

Housing, AI, and the Farm Bill

Not every important fight makes cable news.

A few big issues kept moving through committees and negotiations this week.

Housing
Lawmakers kept talking about housing bills aimed at boosting construction and limiting large investors from buying up single-family homes in some markets.

The argument is pretty simple:

One side says corporate buyers are making it harder for regular people to buy homes. The other says limiting those buyers could squeeze rental supply and make rent even worse.

Why it matters
Housing costs are already crushing a lot of families.

If lawmakers only focus on ownership restrictions and not supply, they may end up making the problem worse instead of better.

What to watch next
Watch for more pressure to increase housing supply instead of just targeting who can buy.

Artificial intelligence
Congress also kept talking about AI rules, especially deepfakes, election interference, and AI-generated content.

Lawmakers are trying to stop fraud and impersonation without choking off a technology that is changing fast.

Why it matters
The basic problem is familiar: people want protection, but they do not want a bunch of clumsy rules written by people who barely understand the technology.

What to watch next
AI is likely to become a much bigger issue as election season gets closer.

The Farm Bill
The House passed its version of the Farm Bill on April 30, but the Senate is still working through the details, including SNAP, conservation, and agricultural policy.

The House version kept the overall structure of the bill but dropped language that would have shielded pesticide manufacturers from some lawsuits.

Why it matters
The Farm Bill touches food prices, farming, food aid, conservation, and rural economies.

It matters to farmers, ranchers, taxpayers, and families who rely on food assistance.

What to watch next
Expect more Senate bargaining over SNAP rules, conservation land use, and farm subsidies.

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3. Money and Spending

The Spending Fight Is Still On

Congress spent another week arguing over spending levels, agency budgets, and what the federal government should prioritize.

What happened
The big fights kept circling back to immigration funding, Homeland Security spending, and broader budget issues.

What changed
The debate is no longer just about whether spending goes up.

It’s about where the money goes, who gets it, and how much of it gets locked in for the long haul.

Some lawmakers want more for border enforcement and federal agencies.

Others are pushing back hard over debt and deficit growth.

Why it matters
Every spending bill is really a priorities bill.

Budgets tell you what Washington values far more clearly than speeches do.

Who benefits or loses

• Federal agencies usually benefit when funding grows.

• Taxpayers carry the long-term burden when spending keeps rising.

• Future budget fights get harder when Congress adds new programs without cutting anything else.

What to watch next
Expect more budget fights heading into the summer, especially from fiscal conservatives who want spending cuts before approving new money.

4. Civil Liberties and Constitutional Issues

FISA Still Isn’t Settled

The fight over federal surveillance powers remains one of the biggest civil-liberties issues in Washington.

What happened
Congress passed a 45-day extension of Section 702 on April 30, which means lawmakers bought themselves more time instead of settling the issue.

What changed
Instead of reaching a long-term deal, Congress kicked the can down the road again.

Lawmakers are still split over how much power intelligence agencies should have when Americans’ communications get caught up in surveillance databases.

Why it matters
The real question is simple:

How much surveillance power should the federal government have, and what protections should Americans expect?

National security matters.

So do privacy and constitutional rights.

The fight is over where the line should be.

Who benefits or loses

• Intelligence agencies keep broad investigative powers while the extension stays in place.

• Privacy advocates argue Americans lose protections every time Congress delays real reform.

What to watch next
Watch for more fights over warrant requirements, oversight, and transparency before the next deadline hits.

Congress still does not seem close to a permanent fix.

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5. What Moved This Week

House

• Continued oversight hearings involving federal agencies.

• Continued committee work on housing and AI.

• Continued negotiations on immigration funding.

Senate

• Delayed votes on the immigration funding package.

• Continued Farm Bill negotiations.

• Continued surveillance and FISA reform discussions.

Committees

• Continued AI regulation hearings.

• Continued housing affordability discussions.

• Continued agricultural and conservation policy debates.

6. What to Watch Next Week

Here’s what is likely to dominate Washington next week:

• Immigration funding negotiations.

• Internal Republican fights over spending.

• Farm Bill revisions in the Senate.

• Housing affordability legislation.

• AI regulation proposals.

• FISA reform discussions.

• Broader summer budget negotiations.

A lot of the biggest changes in Congress happen during negotiations, amendments, and committee meetings long before final votes happen.

That’s why paying attention to the process matters just as much as paying attention to the headlines.

Washington moves fast, but the biggest shifts usually happen quietly first. Our job here is simple: follow the bills, follow the money, and see what’s changing in our name.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

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I figured since I’m going to be talking a lot about our founders in the coming weeks, I should address something right up front.

We’ve all seen this growing trend in our modern society; putting the past on trial.

We go digging through history searching for villains or heroes, and when we find that most people were neither, we get frustrated. Some people get genuinely angry and others get cynical.

A lot of that energy has landed squarely on the American founders.

To some, they were simply wealthy white slaveowners who talked about freedom while denying it to others. To others, they are treated almost like untouchable legends that shouldn’t be questioned at all.

But both sides miss what actually matters.

America’s founders were not gods. They were only men.

Ambitious men. Smart men. Prideful men. Courageous men. Men who argued, competed, compromised, and contradicted themselves. Like nearly every generation of leaders throughout human history, the founders carried both wisdom and weakness at the same time.

As a nation, who wants to be considered great again, we must be capable of acknowledging both.

Because here’s the reality: human beings have always been complicated. That’s not a modern discovery. That’s the entire story of civilization. Everything we’ve built – every system, every country, every idea – has come from imperfect people trying to figure things out as they went.

Take slavery. It wasn’t something invented by America. It existed all over the world for thousands of years. Ancient Rome ran on it. Greece practiced it. Parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia all had their own versions of it. Even religious texts from the time talk about it like it was just part of life.

None of that makes it right. Not even close.

But understanding that context isn’t the same as defending it. And that’s where people get tripped up. Explaining history is not the same thing as excusing it.

If we can’t do both – if we can’t say “this was wrong” while also understanding the world people were living in – then we’re not really studying history. We’re just judging it from a distance.

And slavery wasn’t the only issue. For most of human history, women had almost no legal rights. Class systems were rigid. Religious tolerance was rare. Punishments were harsh. Violence in politics wasn’t unusual, it was expected. The idea that regular people could govern themselves without a king? That sounded insane to most of the world.

The past wasn’t better. It was just different.

And our founders came out of that world.

Jefferson, Washington, Madison – these weren’t clean, polished figures. Some owned slaves. Many held views we would reject today without hesitation. They fought with each other constantly. They protected their own interests. They played politics like politicians always have.

But at the same time, they built something that hadn’t really been done before.

That’s the part people struggle with.

Because we like our heroes simple. We want them either fully good or fully bad. But history doesn’t work like that. Most progress doesn’t come from perfect people showing up and fixing everything. It comes from flawed people pushing things forward, even if they don’t fully live up to the ideas they’re putting into the world.

The founders are a perfect example of that.

The same men who failed to end slavery also wrote down principles that made ending slavery possible. Ideas like natural rights, individual liberty, and the belief that all men are created equal didn’t stay on paper. Later generations picked them up and used them as arguments against the very system the founders failed to dismantle.

That’s not a clean story. It’s a messy one.

But it’s real.

The American experiment wasn’t finished in 1776. It wasn’t even close. It started as an unfinished project, and in a lot of ways, it still is.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone. No country just “gets it right” all at once. Rights expand over time. Ideas evolve. People push, resist, argue, and fight over what a nation is supposed to be.

The founders planted something, but they weren’t around for the harvest.

And here’s where things get tricky today.

We’ve inherited a lot of progress that we didn’t personally have to fight for. That can make it really easy to look backward and judge people who lived in a completely different world. It creates this quiet sense of moral superiority - like we would’ve obviously done better.

Maybe. Maybe not.

It’s worth remembering that the people we’re judging built the system we’re standing in. The freedoms, the structure, the framework – we didn’t create those from scratch.

That doesn’t mean we excuse their failures. Slavery was wrong. Denying women rights was wrong. Plenty of things in the past deserve clear, direct criticism.

But if we turn history into a simple story of good guys and bad guys, we lose something important. We stop learning from it.

History turns into a tool for outrage instead of understanding.

And it’s not just the founders. Look anywhere.

Marcus Aurelius is remembered as a philosopher-king, but he still ruled an empire built on conquest. Churchill helped defeat Nazi Germany, but also held views shaped by imperialism that people rightly criticize today. Lincoln, Roosevelt, Caesar, Napoleon – pick a name. You’ll find the same pattern.

Strengths and flaws. Side by side.

That’s not a glitch in history. That is history.

If we decide that only perfect people are allowed to have contributed something valuable, then we’re left with nothing. No one qualifies.

The real danger today isn’t that people criticize the founders. Criticism is fine. It’s necessary. The danger is the idea that because someone was flawed, everything they did becomes worthless.

Once we go down that road, we don’t just lose the founders – we lose our ability to learn from anyone.

Every generation inherits imperfect leaders.
Every country inherits unfinished work.
Every society struggles to live up to its own ideals.

That hasn’t changed.

So, the real question isn’t whether the founders were perfect. They weren’t.

The question is whether the ideas they left behind still matter.

Because a free society doesn’t need blind admiration. It needs clear-eyed honesty. It needs people who can say, “This was wrong,” without throwing out everything that was right. It needs people who can hold two thoughts at once without collapsing into cynicism or denial.

The founders were flawed men.

But flawed men can still leave behind ideas strong enough to outlive them.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

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To My Fellow Americans,

Most of us are taught to view the Constitution like a machine. It’s a legal framework that automatically protects our freedom as long as we follow the instructions. Elections happen. Laws get passed. Courts settle fights. Checks and balances keep everyone in their lanes. If we just keep the machinery oiled, the republic survives.

The Founders saw things completely differently.

To them, the Constitution wasn’t a self-sustaining machine. It was just the frame of a house. The actual foundation was a deep, shared understanding about human nature, morality, citizenship, and power. The document didn’t create those ideas; it depended on them.

In modern terms, the Constitution was software designed to run on a very specific operating system.

That operating system was built on a few basic rules: power always tries to expand, true liberty requires self-restraint, citizens have to be capable of managing their own lives, and centralized authority is always dangerous. The Constitution reflected these rules in its structure, its limits, and even its intentional slowdowns.

The Founders didn’t believe government could preserve freedom for a people unwilling or unable to look after it themselves.

But over time, our operating system changed.

Today, many Americans view the government not as something to be kept in check, but as the ultimate tool to fix every social, economic, and cultural problem. We often mistake dependency for security. We’ve swapped local responsibility for federal control, and we’ve traded active citizenship for compliance with experts. We talk constantly about our rights, but rarely about our obligations.

Because our underlying assumptions have shifted, the whole system is straining under pressures it was never built to handle.

The text of the Constitution didn’t fundamentally change. The operating system beneath it did.

If we want to restore constitutional government, we have to understand the assumptions that made the whole thing work in the first place.

The Constitution Was Never Meant to Stand Alone

One of the most overlooked facts about the American founding is how much the Constitution leaves unsaid.

The document sets up the rules, powers, and branches of government, but it doesn’t try to micro-manage daily life. It assumes that our communities, families, and culture are strong enough to keep society running smoothly without D.C. looking over our shoulders.

The Founders knew that laws alone couldn’t keep a country free. No piece of paper, no matter how brilliantly written, can save a society that has abandoned self-restraint and personal responsibility.

John Adams famously warned in 1798:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Today, people often argue over the religious side of that statement, but Adams’ practical concern was civic virtue. To the Founders, virtue wasn’t just about personal faith; it was the willingness to put the common good ahead of our own immediate self-interest.

They understood a basic rule of human history: every society is governed somehow. The only question is whether that restraint comes from the citizens themselves or from a massive police state imposed from above. The Constitution was built strictly for the former.

In The Federalist No. 55, James Madison admitted that human beings have a dark side, but insisted that a republic relies on our better nature:

“As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.”

He then added a crucial point:

“Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.”

That word – presupposes – is everything.

The Constitution assumed certain qualities were already there. It depended on them. It didn’t try to manufacture them through federal laws or endless regulations. The Founders believed that people had to be capable of governing themselves as individuals before they could ever attempt to govern themselves as a nation.

Today, we expect the Constitution to solve cultural problems it was never designed to touch. Institutions can slow down corruption and scatter power, but they cannot manufacture national character.

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Human Nature Does Not Change

The Constitution was built on a belief that is incredibly unpopular today: human nature is fixed.

The Founders didn’t believe that politics, new laws, or government programs could perfect humanity. They believed that ambition, greed, self-interest, and the hunger for power were permanent features of human behavior. The goal of the government wasn’t to eliminate these flaws, but to contain them.

This realism shaped the entire system. As Madison famously wrote in The Federalist No. 51:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

The Founders didn’t assume politicians would become saints just because they won an election. They didn’t trust concentrated power, no matter who was in charge. Their system was built on deep skepticism.

That’s why they chopped power into pieces – horizontally between the branches in D.C., and vertically between the states and the federal government. It’s why the lawmaking process is intentionally slow and repetitive.

Today, critics call government gridlock “dysfunction.” The Founders called it protection. Speed and efficiency weren’t their goals; keeping people free was.

In The Federalist No. 10, Madison warned that conflict is baked into human nature. Therefore, political disagreement isn’t a glitch to be managed by a centralized authority; it’s a natural condition of liberty.

The Founders would have deeply distrusted modern promises to solve permanent human problems through top-down policy or unelected “expert” management. You can’t eliminate selfishness or ambition. The best a free society can do is spread power out so widely that no single group can bully the rest.

The Constitution was built on realism, not utopia.

Liberty Requires Responsibility

The Founders believed that freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin.

Today, we often treat freedom as the right to do whatever we want without consequences, or as a list of things we are entitled to receive. The Founders saw it differently. To them, freedom required discipline, self-restraint, and a heavy dose of personal responsibility.

Simply put, self-government starts with the self.

George Washington drove this home in his Farewell Address, calling morality and civic virtue the “indispensable supports” of political prosperity. Free societies require citizens who maintain order voluntarily. When individuals stop managing their own behavior, the state will always step in to do it for them.

The Founders terrified themselves with the prospect of citizen dependency, because dependency always trades away power.

When people look to a central government for their economic security, moral guidance, and daily stability, they hand over the very independence required to be a self-governing citizen. A republic cannot survive if the people view the government as a provider rather than a protector.

This is why they stressed education and civic literacy. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816:

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Liberty requires competence. A republic fails if its citizens don’t know enough to spot an abuse of power, evaluate a policy, or understand how their own government works. Freedom isn’t a spectator sport.

Government Is Dangerous by Nature

The biggest divide between the founding generation and modern America is how we view the state.

The Founders saw government as a necessary evil – useful, but incredibly dangerous. Today, we treat government as society’s primary problem-solver. We expect it to manage the economy, fix social conflicts, steer the culture, and provide a safety net for every part of life.

The Founders would have viewed this concentration of authority as a massive gamble. Jefferson noted the natural gravity of politics in 1787:

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

He didn’t see government growth as an accident; he saw it as an inevitable law of nature. The Federalist No. 48 agreed, warning that “power is of an encroaching nature.”

This distrust explains the architecture of our system. The separation of powers wasn’t made to make things run smoothly; it was made to prevent consolidation. Federalism wasn’t a quirk; it was meant to keep power local.

Today, we get frustrated when government moves slowly or when institutions block big changes. But that frustration comes from misunderstanding the system. The Constitution was designed to make large-scale federal action difficult unless there is massive consensus.

The Founders preferred slow government over unlimited government.

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Communities Matter More Than Washington

The constitutional system assumed that strong, local institutions would handle 90% of daily life.

The Founders never intended for Washington, D.C., to be the economic, cultural, and emotional center of American life. Most governance, charity, education, character-building, and community support happened locally – through families, churches, towns, civic clubs, and local governments.

This wasn’t just a practical choice; it was a philosophical one. Free societies need a buffer between the individual and the state. When local institutions crumble, the federal government naturally rushes in to fill the void.

Alexis de Tocqueville noticed this unique American strength in the 1830s. He wrote that the health of our democracy could be measured by the quality of things everyday citizens did for themselves through voluntary associations, without asking the state for help.

Every time a community hands a local problem over to federal bureaucracies and unelected technocrats, it trades away both its duty and its power. We trade active citizenship for the passivity of being managed by “experts.”

When local institutions wither, national politics becomes an all-consuming war. We stop looking to our neighbors for community and start looking to federal institutions for our identity, meaning, and direction. Elections become incredibly toxic because the stakes of who controls Washington are suddenly terrifyingly high.

When everything is nationalized, every election feels like life or death.

What Happens When the Operating System Changes

The structural framework of the Constitution is still standing, but the software running beneath it has been swapped out:

• The Founders assumed government should be strictly limited because power always corrupts. We now expect government to manage everything from healthcare and retirement to education and disaster response.

• The Founders assumed liberty required responsibility. Our culture now demands rights while rejecting obligations.

• The Founders emphasized local control. Modern politics nationalizes every single issue.

• The Founders believed civic virtue was essential for self-government. Our culture often treats any kind of moral restraint as a form of oppression.

When the cultural assumptions flip, the legal structures inevitably begin to crack. The Constitution can only restrain power if the citizens still want restraint. Federalism only works if Americans actually value local authority.

A republic always rots culturally long before it collapses legally.

Rebuilding the Foundation

Most Americans know the system is broken. We argue over executive overreach, runaway bureaucracies, judicial activism, and federal meddling. These are all real problems.

But passing a new law or electing a new president won’t fix a philosophical crisis.

The Constitution cannot save freedom for a people who no longer believe in the principles that created it. We cannot restore constitutional government without restoring the culture that makes self-government possible.

And politics cannot manufacture a culture. Washington cannot pass a bill to make people responsible, virtuous, or self-reliant.

True restoration doesn’t drop down from the top; it grows up from the bottom. It happens when we stop looking to Washington to fix our lives and start rebuilding our own families, schools, churches, and neighborhoods. It happens when we reclaim the permanent principles of the original operating system:

• That power naturally tries to grow,

• That freedom requires personal responsibility,

• That centralized authority must be kept small,

• And that a society must be capable of governing itself at home before it asks the government to govern everything else.

The Constitution was never the whole machine. It was just the frame.

If we want to save the republic, we have to rebuild the foundation.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

Most of us only hear about Congress through screaming cable news segments or social media clips designed to make us angry. The People’s Ledger is different. It’s a quick, clear look at what lawmakers are actually debating, funding, and changing – minus the political theater.

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1. The Biggest Deal of the Week: The Farm Bill Hits the Senate

The Farm Bill remained one of the biggest stories in Washington this week as Senate negotiations intensified and new fights emerged over food assistance, conservation land, and agriculture funding.

• What happened: The Senate continued reviewing the House-passed Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, with lawmakers focusing heavily on SNAP reforms, crop insurance funding, and agricultural subsidies.
  
  At the same time, farm groups began lobbying for additional grazing access on federal conservation land as cattle inventories remain historically low and beef prices stay elevated.
  

• What changed: The conversation around the bill is now shifting beyond just SNAP cuts and food assistance.
  
  Lawmakers from agricultural states are increasingly focused on beef supply, conservation restrictions, and rising operating costs for farmers and ranchers. Some groups are pushing Congress to loosen certain conservation land restrictions to help stabilize cattle production.
  
  Meanwhile, Senate resistance to parts of the House bill continues growing, especially around spending levels and eligibility changes tied to food assistance programs.
  

• Why it matters to you: This bill affects a lot more than farms.
  
  It touches grocery prices, food assistance, fuel policy, conservation programs, and billions in federal spending. The newer cattle and grazing debates also connect directly to food supply and meat prices consumers are already feeling at the grocery store.
  

• Who wins and who loses: Farmers and ranchers could benefit from expanded grazing access and additional agricultural support programs.
  
  Families receiving SNAP benefits could still face tighter requirements or reduced support depending on what survives Senate negotiations.
  
  Conservation groups worry loosening federal land protections could weaken long-term environmental goals.

• What to watch next: Watch for Senate revisions involving SNAP eligibility, grazing rules, conservation funding, and overall spending levels.
  
  The final version of this bill could look very different from what originally passed the House.

2. Moving Under the Radar: Housing, AI, and Your Privacy

Several major issues continued moving quietly through Congress this week without generating much national attention.

Housing affordability

Congress continued discussions around housing legislation aimed at increasing construction and limiting large institutional investors from buying single-family homes in certain markets.

• Why it matters: Housing affordability continues to be one of the biggest financial pressures facing working Americans, especially younger families trying to buy their first home.
  
  At the same time, critics of investor restrictions argue fewer corporate-owned homes could tighten rental supply and make renting more expensive in some areas.
  

• Who benefits or loses: Potential homebuyers could benefit if housing inventory increases and competition from large investment firms decreases.
  
  Renters could face tighter rental markets if housing supply overall does not improve.
  

• What to watch next: Watch for growing debate over zoning reform, investor restrictions, and whether Congress focuses more on restricting buyers or increasing housing supply itself.

AI regulation

Congress also continued early discussions around artificial intelligence regulation, especially involving deepfakes, election interference, impersonation technology, and disclosure rules for AI-generated content.

• Why it matters: Lawmakers are trying to balance innovation with growing concerns about fraud, misinformation, and digital manipulation.
  

• Who benefits or loses: Technology companies generally want lighter regulation and national standards instead of a patchwork of state laws.
  
  Consumers and privacy advocates are pushing for stronger protections and transparency requirements.
  

• What to watch next: Expect AI regulation to become a much larger issue heading into the 2026 elections as concerns grow around political deepfakes and online manipulation.

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3. Money & Spending

Border Funding Fight Hits Internal Resistance

One of the biggest developments this week was the collapse of planned Senate votes tied to immigration enforcement and ICE funding after internal Republican disagreements erupted over a controversial Justice Department funding provision.

• What happened: Senate Republicans were forced to delay parts of a major immigration and border enforcement funding package after disagreements broke out over a proposed $1.776 billion Department of Justice fund critics labeled a potential “weaponization” or political enforcement fund.
  
  The broader package still includes large increases for ICE, Customs and Border Protection, detention operations, and border enforcement infrastructure.
  

• What changed: The story this week wasn’t Democrats versus Republicans. It was Republicans fighting Republicans.
  
  Some lawmakers want aggressive immigration enforcement funding immediately. Others are increasingly concerned about growing federal spending, oversight, and how much power certain federal agencies should receive.
  
  That internal split is becoming harder for leadership to manage.
  

• Why it matters: This is about more than immigration.
  
  These funding fights shape the size and authority of the federal government for years to come. Large enforcement packages don’t just fund operations temporarily - they often expand agencies permanently.
  

• Who benefits or loses: Federal enforcement agencies would gain expanded budgets, staffing, and operational authority if the package ultimately passes.
  
  Taxpayers absorb the long-term costs tied to expanded federal operations.
  
  Fiscal conservatives are increasingly worried about approving massive new spending while the national debt continues growing.
  

• What to watch next: Watch for leadership to either scale back controversial provisions or try to split immigration funding into smaller pieces to keep negotiations moving.
  
  The internal Republican divide on spending is becoming one of the biggest stories in Washington right now.

4. Civil Liberties & Constitutional Issues

Congress Extends FISA Again

Congress once again avoided a long-term decision on federal surveillance powers this week by passing another temporary extension of Section 702 authorities under FISA.

• What happened: Lawmakers approved a short-term extension of Section 702 while continuing negotiations over surveillance reforms and warrant requirements.
  
  The program allows intelligence agencies to collect foreign communications, but critics argue Americans’ communications can still be swept into those databases and searched without traditional warrants.
  

• What changed: Instead of resolving the larger constitutional debate, Congress effectively kicked the issue down the road again.
  
  Pressure for reforms continues growing on both the left and right, especially after years of criticism involving warrantless searches and weak oversight protections.
  
  Some lawmakers continue pushing for stronger warrant requirements before agencies can search Americans’ communications collected under Section 702 authorities.
  

• Why it matters: At its core, this debate comes down to a basic question:
  
  How much surveillance power should the federal government have, and what protections should ordinary citizens expect?
  
  National security concerns are real. But so are concerns about privacy, oversight, and constitutional limits on government power.
  

• Who benefits or loses: Intelligence agencies retain broad investigative tools while the extension remains active.
  
  Privacy advocates and civil liberties groups argue Americans continue losing protections every time Congress extends surveillance authorities without major reforms.
  

• What to watch next: Watch for continued fights over warrant requirements, transparency reforms, and oversight restrictions before the next extension deadline arrives.
  
  Congress clearly still does not have consensus on where the balance between security and liberty should be.

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5. What Moved This Week

In the House:

• Continued work tied to immigration and border funding packages

• Continued committee work on housing legislation and AI regulation

• Continued oversight hearings involving federal agencies

In the Senate:

• Delayed votes tied to major immigration funding proposals

• Extended Section 702 FISA surveillance authorities “temporarily”

• Continued negotiations surrounding the Farm Bill

6. What to Watch Next Week

Here’s what’s likely to dominate next week’s conversations in Washington:

• Senate revisions to the Farm Bill

• Internal Republican fights over immigration funding

• Additional FISA reform proposals

• Housing affordability legislation

• AI regulation hearings and election-related proposals

• Summer budget negotiations and spending fights

A lot of the biggest changes in Congress happen quietly during negotiations, amendments, and committee revisions long before final votes ever happen.

That’s why paying attention to the process matters just as much as paying attention to the headlines.

Washington moves fast, and many of the most important changes happen quietly long before most Americans ever hear about them. That’s why paying attention matters. Our job here is simple: follow the bills, follow the money, and understand what’s changing in our name.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

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Military service doesn’t end when the uniform comes off. At least, not in the ways that matter most.

There is a distinct finality to those last days in. The final turn-in of gear. The last time signing the logbook. The definitive click of the trunk closing on a sea bag or a duffel that traveled across continents. Then comes the morning after – the first day of a quiet civilian routine where the schedule is entirely your own, the structure is gone, and the silence can feel deafening.

A veteran doesn’t simply return to civilian life unchanged. They bring something back with them across that threshold.

What remains is something less visible than a uniform, but far more enduring.

Legacy.

Not legacy in the conventional sense of recognition, plaques, or accolades, but in the quiet transmission of foundational values: discipline, responsibility, commitment, and a distinct clarity of purpose.

These traits are not confined to a period of service. They carry forward – out of the barracks and into the rhythm of everyday life. You see it when a veteran wakes up before the rest of the house to prepare for the day. You see it in the intentional way they look people in the eye, the standard of excellence they bring to a civilian workplace, and the steady hand they offer when a crisis hits a neighborhood.

The true impact of military service is not only what is accomplished during it, but what continues because of it. When those values are lived out consistently, they quietly reshape the environment around them.

This is how legacy works. Quietly. Over time. Without the need for an audience.

It is built through example, through consistency, and through the daily reinforcement of principles that were once tested under pressure.

But this goes beyond the individual; it forms the bedrock of a national legacy. A self-governing nation is not defined solely by its systems or its policies, but by the character of the people who sustain it. Military service contributes directly to that collective character. It reinforces the enduring truth that there are things worth defending, things worth preserving, and things worth passing on.

The ultimate question is whether we intentionally carry that weight forward. Do we allow those hard-won values to dissipate over time, or do we integrate them into the fabric of our daily lives?

Legacy is not automatic. It is a choice. A continuation.

It is the daily decision to ensure that what was built – and what was defended – doesn’t fade with time.

The uniform comes off, but the responsibility doesn’t.

Legacy is what we choose to carry forward, and it is the standard we leave behind.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

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When we talk about military service, we tend to focus on the person in uniform.

The rank.

The job.

The deployment.
The medals.
The image of service itself.

But behind every service member is something less visible, but just as essential.

A family.

Military families do not take an oath.

They do not go through basic training.

They do not deploy in the traditional sense.

They do not get orders.

And yet, they serve.

They serve in ways that are easily overlooked because they never demand an audience.

They endure the long absences.

They carry the uncertainty like a second job.

They keep life moving while someone they love operates in a world defined by risk, distance, and unpredictability.

This is not a temporary inconvenience.

It’s their way of life.

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It’s the child asking when Mom or Dad is coming home and hearing, once again, “soon.”

It’s the spouse handling the bills, the schedule, the repairs, the school pickups, and the lonely silence that settles in after dark.

It’s the birthdays missed, holidays delayed, first steps watched through a screen, and moments that can never be replayed once they pass.

And still, they hold the line at home.

There is a quiet strength in this the civilian world rarely sees, and even more, rarely understands.

It’s not loud, it’s not performative, and it doesn’t ask for attention.

It’s steady… it’s reliable… and it’s unwavering.

Because family sacrifice rarely looks dramatic from the outside, it is easy to underestimate. But a sacrifice doesn’t become smaller just because it’s quiet.

It’s simply duty in a different form.

In many ways, military families embody a vital principle of a functioning society: the shared burden.

No one carries everything alone.

Responsibility is distributed.

Support is constant.

And the mission extends beyond the individual.

This is a truth our broader culture has forgotten.

We have become more isolated, more self-focused, more likely to treat independence as the highest virtue and interdependence as weakness. But military families remind us that real strength is not found in isolation.

It’s found in commitment. In endurance. In loyalty.
In the willingness to carry part of the weight for someone else.

They may not wear the uniform, but they live with the permanent consequences of it.

They feel the distance.
They absorb the pressure.
They make service possible.

Their contribution isn’t separate from military service; it is inseparable from it.

If you know a military family, look past the uniform.

Recognize the spouse.
The children.
The parents.
Acknowledge the entire ecosystem that holds the perimeter together while the member is away.

Because service never ends with the individual.

And neither does sacrifice.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

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There is a tendency in modern life to treat freedom like a natural resource – as if it’s just always been there, like the air we breathe or the ground beneath our feet. We act as if it is self-sustaining, a permanent fixture of the landscape that requires zero maintenance.

But those of us who have spent years in uniform know a different truth: Freedom isn’t a given; it’s a lease. And the rent is due every single day, paid in a currency that most people aren’t willing to spend. It is a cost paid upfront, often by people whose names you will never know, in places you will never go.

Now, I’ll be the first to tell you: I don’t always support how our military is used around the world. You don’t have to agree with every foreign policy or every conflict to honor the person standing on the watch. My respect isn’t for the politics or the high-level strategy; it’s for the individual who stepped into the recruiter’s office, raised their right hand, and said, “I will go.” Whether the mission is perfect or flawed, the sacrifice of the individual remains absolute.

When we talk about “sacrifice,” the civilian mind usually goes straight to the ultimate one – the flag-draped coffin, the lone trumpet playing Taps, the finality of death. That is a sacrifice that deserves our highest silence and deepest reverence. But if we only focus on the end of a life, we miss the “living sacrifice” that thousands of veterans carry in their bodies and minds every single day.

Sacrifice is a slow burn.

It starts long before a deployment. It begins in the thousands of hours of training designed to strip away your civilian “softness” and replace it with something harder, colder, and more precise. It’s the mechanical repetition of loading a weapon until your fingers bleed in the cold, because that weapon has to feel like an extension of your own bones. It’s the chilling, quiet necessity of learning how to take a human life – not as a movie trope, but as a professional requirement.

Think about that mental shift for a second. Most people spend their lives avoiding conflict; a service member spends years inviting it into their mind, rehearsing it, and mastering it so that when the time comes, they don’t hesitate.

Then there is the mental tax of the “Target Mindset.” When you’re deployed, you don’t just “work” in a dangerous place. You live in a state of hyper-vigilance where your brain is constantly scanning for what’s wrong. Is that trash on the side of the road an IED? Is that person watching me from the balcony a scout? That level of awareness – the feeling of being a target every second you are “outside the wire” – is an exhausting, soul-crushing weight. You don’t just “turn that off” when the plane touches down back on U.S. soil. You don’t just stop being a target because you’re at a grocery store in the suburbs.

The Cost is Sensory.

True sacrifice is what stays with you after the uniform is folded and put in a box. It’s the smell of burning trash and jet fuel that triggers a spike in your heart rate ten years later. It’s the sound of a car backfiring that sends you into a crouch before you even realize you’re at home. It’s the PTSD that sits in the room with you like a ghost – the quiet, invisible weight of seeing things, hearing things, and smelling things that most people will never understand.

We hope they never have to grasp it. That is the irony of service: we sacrifice our own peace of mind so that the rest of the country can stay “soft.” We take on the nightmares so you can have the dreams.

To sacrifice is to decide, consciously, that something else matters more than your own comfort, your own safety, or your own sanity. It is a decision to carry a burden so that your neighbor doesn’t have to. In a world that is constantly telling us to “optimize” our lives and put ourselves first, the act of serving runs completely counter to the grain.

A society that forgets what real sacrifice looks like – the missed birthdays, the shredded nerves, the mechanical reality of war – will eventually lose the very things it is trying to preserve. Because eventually, it will no longer understand the price of the ticket.

Military service shows us, without any abstraction, that freedom is funded by the willingness of others to give up their peace so that the rest may live in theirs. The question isn’t whether sacrifice exists. It always will. The question is whether we are willing to look at the people bearing it and truly recognize the check they’ve already cashed on your behalf.

The next time you enjoy the simple peace of a quiet weekend, don’t just think about what that freedom gives you. Consider the training, the missed years, and the mental weight carried by those who paid for it upfront. Take a second to realize that while you’re enjoying the day, someone else is still settling the tab.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

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Ronald Reagan once said that some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they’ve made a difference in the world, but a service member doesn’t have that problem.

There’s a reason for that certainty… because when someone joins the military, they sign a blank check payable to the United States of America for an amount up to and including their life.

That is the reality of the uniform. It is a quiet, heavy commitment to take risks so others don’t have to.

Most Americans will never sign that specific check, but the principle behind it is what keeps our country standing. I do not always agree with how our military is used, but I will never waver in my support for the men and women who serve and the sacrifices they make every day.

I might have been born and raised in Virginia, but I grew up in the Air Force. My service shaped me, and the people I served with shaped me even more. That kind of experience never really leaves us. It stays with us in how we think, how we lead, and how we understand what it means to serve something bigger than ourselves.

What Service Looks Like

It is easy to say we understand service in broad terms. As a military veteran, I have seen it firsthand, but many people do not fully grasp what it actually requires.

It means signing up to be corrected, pushed, and challenged for weeks at a time while being held to exacting standards in even the smallest parts of daily life.

It means learning technical manuals, operating procedures, and an entirely new way of thinking and talking in a matter of months.

It means long stretches away from home… missing birthdays, anniversaries, first steps, and last moments.

It means training for months or years to do very hard tasks under pressure, where mistakes are paid in blood.

It means being ready at any moment to go where you are ordered, when you are told, with little or no certainty about what comes next.

It means seeing, hearing and experiencing things most people can’t begin to imagine.

It means serving alongside people who may look, think, believe, or vote differently than you, and still choosing to sacrifice everything for them without hesitation.

It means carrying responsibility that does not end when the day is over.

And it means doing all of this inside a system that demands discipline, accountability, and consistency… every day, whether you feel like it or not.

That is service as it exists today.

It’s quiet… till it isn’t.
It’s rigid in structure and flexible in execution.
And it’s relentless from beginning to end.

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The Through Line

Every generation has had its version of that burden.

Men and boys leaving farms and workshops to take up muskets against the most powerful empire in the world for the promise of a nation that did not yet fully exist.

Teenage sailors trading cannon fire with the British Navy in 1812 as their ships splintered around them.

Soldiers marching into mud, blood, and machine gun fire in World War I.

Young men stepping onto the beaches at Normandy with no promise they would make it home.

Marines fighting through dense Pacific jungles and unbearable conditions, taking one island at a time where every inch had to be earned.

Troops trudging through frozen mountains in Korea, where the cold was just as deadly as the enemy.

Soldiers fighting through the jungles of Vietnam, where danger was constant and often unseen.

Convoys rolling across open desert during the Gulf War, surrounded by fire-lit skies, and war that moved faster than anything before it.

Service members deploying again and again after 9/11 into mountains, deserts, and cities for a war with no clear front line and no defined end.

Different conflicts.
Different environments.
Same principle.

A willingness to go where others would not… and do what others could not.

Not because they were unaware of the risk… but because they accepted it.

Knowing and Understanding

Most Americans know the military exists. They respect it. They support it.

But there is a difference between knowing and understanding.

Understanding means pausing long enough to consider what is being carried on your behalf: the missed time, the sustained pressure, the constant readiness, and the reality that while most people are living ordinary lives, others are making those lives possible.

Not in theory.

In practice.

Every single day.

Why It Matters

What the military represents is not just defense. It is responsibility in its clearest form.

It is the understanding that freedom is not self-sustaining and stability is not automatic.

What we have continues because someone is willing to carry the burden of protecting it.

That principle does not stop at the edge of a base or deployment zone. It applies in how we lead, how we work, and how we show up in our communities.

A Standard To Keep

There is a reason “Service Before Self” is more than a slogan.

It is a standard.

A standard tested under pressure, over time, and across generations.

The military does not function without it. The question is whether the rest of society can sustain anything close to it.

Because when responsibility becomes optional and contribution becomes conditional, the load falls on fewer and fewer people.

And that never ends well.

Beyond Words

Appreciation is often expressed in simple ways: a handshake, a thank-you, a post once a year.

Those things matter.

But real appreciation goes deeper.

It means recognizing what service costs, what discipline requires, and what consistency demands over time.

It also means refusing to let those values exist only in uniform.

What It Means For Us

Not everyone will wear the uniform. That is not the expectation.

But everyone does have a choice.

To contribute or to defer.
To take responsibility or to avoid it.
To step forward or assume someone else will.

Right now, there are people who have already made that choice.

They are serving.

The question is whether we understand what that means — and whether we are willing to carry even a fraction of that standard into our own lives.

Closing

A free society is not built on assumption.

It is built on service.

And every day that remains true is a direct result of men and women who chose to stand where others did not.

That deserves more than recognition.

It deserves understanding.

It deserves to be carried forward.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

Originally I was just intent on publishing my ideas about how to restore our republic through essays known as the Restoration Papers, in honor of the Federalist Papers, but now the Publius Project is becoming a public conversation centered on restoring the principles that make self-government possible:

• Individual liberty

• Constitutional limits

• Civic responsibility

• Localism

• That government exists to protect liberty, not manage every aspect of society.

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Since launching, the project has expanded into several ongoing initiatives:

• The Restoration Papers: long-form essays exploring the philosophical and structural problems facing the modern republic.

• The Publius Core Principles: concise statements designed to reintroduce foundational constitutional ideas into everyday political discussion.

• The People’s Ledger: a citizen-focused breakdown of legislation, spending, and policy impacts often ignored in partisan media.

• Public Civic Discourse: across social media platforms focused on encouraging principle over party loyalty and thoughtful constitutional discussion.

• The Defiant Citizen: podcast and related discussions examining liberty, political incentives, government growth, and civic culture.

• Active Civic Engagement: starting with the Virginia Fair Ballot Initiative and growing to address fairness in elections in my home state of Virginia and beyond

At its core, The Publius Project is not about building another partisan tribe.

It is about helping Americans rediscover the responsibilities that come with freedom and the principles necessary to sustain a free republic.

The Founders understood something many modern societies have forgotten:
self-government only works when citizens are willing to govern themselves first.

That remains the mission.

Not outrage.
Not faction.
Not blind loyalty to political personalities.

Restoration.

One principle at a time.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

I traced the growth of the administrative state, the erosion of local control, the collapse of institutional trust, and the expansion of a bureaucracy that feels increasingly unresponsive to the people it serves.

But diagnosis only revealed what is broken. It doesn’t explain the original design.

That is the purpose of Phase II: The Founders’ Framework.

This is not an exercise in blind nostalgia or an attempt to “recreate 1787.” It’s about recovering the architecture of the American system before it’s buried for good under generations of centralization and political drift.

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The Design Logic

Most Americans are taught what the Constitution says; far fewer are taught why is says it. The Founders didn’t accidentally divide power or limit government. Those choices were intentional responses to a specific understanding of human nature and the inherent dangers of authority.

The Central Question of Phase II

What kind of system is necessary to preserve liberty over time?

The Constitution was never just a legal document. It was a framework built on a set of core assumptions:

· Human nature is flawed: Power must be checked, not just entrusted.

• Power naturally expands: It will fill every available vacuum unless resisted.

• Centralization is self-protecting: Distance from people breeds detachment.

• Liberty requires responsibility: Self-government is a muscle, not a given.

Whether someone agrees with every aspect of the founding era or not, these assumptions matter. Modern America has drifted far from many of them.

And you cannot restore balance to a system you do not understand.

The Roadmap: Phase II Restoration Papers

No. 10 | The Founders’ Operating System

The Philosophy Behind the Institutions

We’ll start with the foundation: the Founders’ views on human nature, virtue, and the deep-seeded distrust of centralized authority.

No. 11 | Separation of Powers

Efficiency is Not the Goal.

We’ll cover why the system was intentionally designed to slow itself down to prevent the concentration of power.

No. 12 | The Architecture of Federalism

The Division of Authority.

We’ll examine the original balance between federal and state power and how “management from a distance” changed our relationship with government.

No. 13 | The Citizen Legislature

Public Service vs. Political Class.

We’ll explore the evolution of Congress from a temporary duty into a permanent, professionalized institution.

No. 14 | The Limited Executive

Executor, Not Architect.

This will be a look at how the modern presidency has expanded far beyond its intended role as an administrator of law.

No. 15 | The Role of the Courts

Interpretation vs. Legislation.

We’ll cover why the judiciary was never meant to function as a “continuing constitutional convention.”

No. 16 | Civil Society

The Backbone of the Republic.

This will address why healthy societies depend on families, churches, and local associations – and what happens when government attempts to fill the vacuum they leave behind.

No. 17 | Local Governance

The Scale of Self-Government.

This paper will highlight why liberty is most fragile when decision-making is moved far away from the communities it affects.

Why This Matters Now

Many Americans sense that the system is fundamentally “off” – not just because of who is in power, but because of how the power itself is structured. People feel managed rather than represented.

Phase II is an attempt to revisit the original framework – not as a museum piece, but as a manual. Before we can reform our institutions, we must remember what they were built to do.

The Restoration Papers are not about left versus right. They are about a singular, urgent question:

Do free people still possess the will to govern themselves?

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

Most of us only hear about Congress through screaming cable news segments or social media clips designed to make us angry. The People’s Ledger is different. It’s a quick, clear look at what lawmakers are actually debating, funding, and changing – minus the political theater.

The heavy hitters this week are a massive tug-of-war over the Farm Bill, ongoing fights over border spending, government spying powers, and a bipartisan push to fix the housing market.

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1. The Biggest Deal of the Week: The Farm Bill Hits the Senate

The House recently passed its version of the multi-billion-dollar Farm Bill. Now, according to reporting from Spectrum Local News, the real political wrestling match has moved to the Senate, where lawmakers are fighting over what stays, what goes, and how big the final price tag will be.

• What happened: The Senate started digging into the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026. Don’t let the name fool you – this bill isn’t just for tractor owners. It covers everything from crop insurance for farmers to grocery money for low-income families, rural internet, and conservation programs.

• The sticking points: Right now, lawmakers are arguing over SNAP (food stamp) benefits, fuel policies, and how much financial help to give farmers who are getting crushed by the rising costs of fuel, fertilizer, and equipment.

• What changed: If you’re tracking the drama, a massive fight wrapped up right before the House passed the bill. Big chemical companies wanted a rule included that would shield them from lawsuits over health claims related to glyphosate-based weedkillers. According to The Wall Street Journal, after a massive backlash from everyday citizens and activists, that legal shield was stripped out. Meanwhile, Axios reports that some lawmakers are threatening to block the whole bill unless it’s tied to stricter southern border funding.

• Why it matters to you: If you eat food, pay taxes, or live anywhere outside a major city, this bill hits your wallet. It directly impacts grocery prices, the local economies of small towns, and billions of dollars in taxpayer money.

• Who wins and who loses: Farmers score better safety nets for bad crop years. On the flip side, some low-income families might see tighter rules or less funding for food assistance depending on what the Senate decides. Meanwhile, chemical companies lost the legal safety blanket they spent millions lobbying for.

• What to watch next: Watch how the Senate handles the food stamp rules. Expect fiscal conservatives to demand deeper spending cuts before they agree to sign off on the final package.

2. Moving Under the Radar: Housing, AI, and Your Privacy

While the nightly news focuses on the loudest arguments, a few massive bills are grinding through the gears of Congress without much fanfare.

The Battle Over Corporate Home Buyers

Congress is trying to finalize a massive, rare piece of bipartisan legislation called the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. It has already cleared the House and Senate, but now lawmakers are haggling over the final details.

• Why it matters: Housing costs have become a nightmare for working families and young people. In too many neighborhoods, buying a home feels flat-out impossible.

• The big fix: The bill aims to jumpstart new construction, cut red tape, and, more importantly, ban giant Wall Street investment firms (corporations owning 350+ homes) from buying up single-family houses.

• The hold up: According to real estate and housing trade reports, the big fight right now is over a rule that forces these giant corporate landlords to sell off their rental houses within seven years. Critics say it’ll destroy the rental supply; supporters say it’s the only way to give regular families a fighting chance to buy a home.

Trying to Catch Up to Artificial Intelligence

Lawmakers are holding early-stage hearings on how to handle AI – specifically deepfakes, fake videos meant to mess with elections, and rules requiring tech companies to label AI-made content.

• Why it matters: Washington is terrified of AI being used to trick voters or ruin reputations, but they’re also terrified of accidentally censoring regular internet users or killing American tech innovation.

• The divide: Big tech companies want a single, light-touch federal law so they don’t have to deal with 50 different state laws. Privacy groups want strict guardrails on how these companies scrape our personal data to train their tech.

3. The Money Trail: Border Funding & Budget Brawls

Congress spent a huge chunk of the week fighting over the Department of Homeland Security’s budget, specifically when it comes to immigration.

• What happened: A chunk of lawmakers wants to pump tens of billions of dollars over the next few years directly into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection. They are pushing for more border walls, more detention beds, and thousands of new agents.

• The holdup: Even within the same party, lawmakers are split. Some want the border money approved immediately, no questions asked. Others say, “We aren’t spending an extra dime on the border until we cut spending somewhere else in the federal budget.”

• Why it matters to you: This isn’t just a debate about immigration policy; it’s a debate about our national checkbook. Pumping tens of billions into federal agencies means a permanently larger government and a bill that taxpayers ultimately have to foot.

4. Your Rights: The Warrantless Surveillance Fight

Congress is still deadlocked over the future of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It’s a mouthful of an acronym, but it boils down to how much the government can look at your digital life.

• What happened: Lawmakers have been relying on temporary extensions to keep this spy program alive while they argue over reforms.

• The two sides:

  • The Security Crowd: National security agencies argue this program is the number one tool we have to stop foreign cyberattacks, terrorists, and international spies.

  • The Privacy Crowd: Civil liberties groups (and lawmakers on both the far-left and far-right) point out that even though the law is supposed to target foreigners, it accidentally sweeps up millions of Americans’ emails, texts, and search histories. Government databases show the FBI has used it to look up American citizens – ranging from political donors to protesters – without a warrant.

• The big fight right now: A growing group of lawmakers is demanding a strict rule: If a federal agency wants to search through an American’s collected data, they must get a warrant from a judge first. The White House and intelligence officials are fighting hard against that requirement.

• Why it matters to you: It’s a fundamental constitutional question. How much privacy are you willing to give up in exchange for a feeling of security?

5. The Cheat Sheet: What Moved This Week

In the House:

• Pushed forward on bills to pour cash into border enforcement.

• Kept haggling behind closed doors on broader government spending packages.

• Advanced committee discussions on AI guardrails.

In the Senate:

• Began rewriting the House’s version of the Farm Bill.

• Continued the standoff over whether the FBI needs a warrant to look at your digital data.

• Tried to iron out the final wrinkles on the bipartisan housing bill.

6. What to Watch Next Week

Keep your eyes on these three main fronts as Washington heads into late May:

1. Whether the Senate makes major cuts to food stamps (SNAP) in the Farm Bill.

2. The looming June deadlines for the government’s immigration and border spending bills.

3. Whether privacy advocates can successfully force a warrant requirement into the government’s spying laws.

Most of the biggest changes in Washington happen quietly in backrooms, written into the fine print of amendments long before a final vote ever makes the evening news. That’s why paying attention to the process matters. Our job here is simple: follow the bills, follow your money, and make sure we know exactly what they’re changing in our name.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

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Most Americans think the cost of government is measured in taxes.

But there’s another cost that never appears on a bill.

The cost of delays.
The cost of endless approvals.
The cost of systems so complex that ordinary people begin abandoning ideas before they even start.

Episode 10 of The Defiant Citizen explores the hidden psychological and cultural cost of the modern Managed State and the way bureaucratic friction slowly transforms citizens into applicants.

Not through force.
Through exhaustion.

This episode builds on Restoration Paper No. 9, The Cost of the Managed State, and the companion essay From Citizen to Applicant.

We talk about:

• the “tax on initiative”

• compliance culture

• why process becomes the punishment

• how systems condition hesitation

• and why free societies depend on people who still believe they can act without constant permission

One of the central questions of this episode is simple:

Have Americans been trained to ask permission for things previous generations would have simply built?

If that question hits something in you, I think this episode will resonate.

Listen, share, and join the conversation.

Listen Here

Most people only hear about Congress through headlines, cable news, or political spin. This weekly report is for the rest of us, average Americans who just want a straightforward look at what lawmakers are actually debating, funding, and changing.

No political party cheerleading.
No outrage machine.
Just the bills, the money, the tradeoffs, and what they may mean in real life.

This week’s biggest story was the Farm Bill, but there were also major developments involving housing, border funding, artificial intelligence regulation, and government surveillance powers.

1. Biggest Bill of the Week: The Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026 Bill

The House passed its version of the new Farm Bill this week by a vote of 224–200. Despite the headlines, the bill is not law yet. The Senate still must pass its own version, and there will almost certainly be changes, which will require another vote in the House to resolve differences between the two bills before anything reaches the President’s desk.

What happened

The Farm Bill is one of the largest pieces of legislation Congress handles. Even though it sounds like an agriculture bill, it now covers far more than farming. It includes food assistance programs, crop insurance, disaster relief, conservation funding, fuel policy, and rural infrastructure spending.

This year’s version became a political fight mainly because of proposed SNAP (think Food Stamps) changes, which affect food assistance benefits roughly 42 million Americans rely on.

What changed

One of the more controversial provisions was quietly removed before the final House vote. Earlier versions included language critics said would protect pesticide manufacturers (think Roundup) from some lawsuits tied to health claims involving glyphosate-based weed killers.

After public backlash from consumer groups and activists, lawmakers stripped that language out before the bill passed.

Another proposal involving year-round E15 (ethanol) gasoline sales also failed to make the final House version and may be debated separately later.

Why it matters

This bill affects a lot more than farms.

If you buy groceries, pay taxes, own farmland, rely on food assistance, or live in a rural community, parts of this bill affect you directly or indirectly.

Supporters of the SNAP reforms say federal spending has become unsustainable and that the program needs tighter controls. Opponents argue families are already struggling with food prices and that reducing benefits now could make things worse.

At the same time, farmers across the country are dealing with rising fuel costs, fertilizer prices, labor shortages, and expensive equipment costs. Many lawmakers from agricultural states say family farms are under real financial pressure right now.

Who benefits or loses

Farmers and agricultural businesses would likely benefit from expanded crop insurance and disaster assistance programs.

Families receiving SNAP benefits could face tighter eligibility requirements or reduced support depending on what survives the Senate process.

Pesticide manufacturers lost a liability protection provision they had pushed for earlier in negotiations.

What to watch next

The Senate now takes center stage. Lawmakers there are expected to push for revisions, especially around food assistance and energy provisions.

This bill is far from finished.

2. Quietly Moving Bills: Housing, AI, and Online Privacy

Several bills moved quietly through committees this week without attracting much national attention.

Housing affordability

A bipartisan housing proposal continued advancing through Congress this week. The bill would encourage new housing construction while also limiting large institutional investors buying up single-family homes in some markets.

Why it matters

For younger Americans and working families, housing costs have become one of the biggest financial pressures in the country. Lawmakers from both parties are increasingly acknowledging that home ownership is drifting out of reach in many areas.

Who benefits or loses

Developers and local governments could benefit from incentives tied to new construction.

Large investment firms buying residential properties may face additional restrictions if portions of the legislation survive.

AI regulation

Congress also continued early discussions around artificial intelligence regulation. Lawmakers are debating rules involving deepfakes, election interference, impersonation technology, and disclosure requirements for AI-generated content.

What to watch next

Expect AI legislation to grow quickly over the next year. Right now, Congress is still trying to figure out how much regulation is necessary without choking off emerging technology.

Online privacy

Lawmakers also continued discussions about online privacy and personal data collection. Several proposals focus on limiting how technology companies collect, store, and sell user data.

This is one of the few issues creating strange political alliances right now. Civil liberties concerns are pulling support from both conservatives and progressives.

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3. Money & Spending

Border Security and Immigration Funding

Congress spent much of the week debating additional immigration and border enforcement funding.

What happened

Senate Republicans pushed for expanded funding for ICE, Customs and Border Protection, detention capacity, and border infrastructure.

Supporters argue the current immigration system is overwhelmed and that additional enforcement resources are necessary.

Critics argue Washington continues spending billions addressing symptoms without seriously reforming the broader immigration system itself.

Why it matters

This debate is really about federal priorities.

Every spending package answers the same basic question:
What is the federal government willing to spend money on right now?

Border enforcement funding has become one of the largest and most politically charged spending fights in Washington.

Who benefits or loses

Federal enforcement agencies would receive expanded funding and operational capacity.

Taxpayers ultimately absorb the long-term cost of expanded federal operations.

Immigration advocates worry additional enforcement resources could increase detention operations without addressing underlying immigration backlogs.

What to watch next

Expect this fight to continue through the summer budget negotiations. Immigration and border security will likely remain one of the central spending battles heading deeper into election season.

4. Civil Liberties & Constitutional Issues

FISA Reauthorization

One of the most important constitutional debates this week involved the ongoing fight over FISA surveillance powers.

What happened

Congress continued debating whether to extend key surveillance authorities used by intelligence agencies to monitor foreign threats and communications tied to national security investigations.

Why it matters

This debate always comes down to the same tension:
How much surveillance power should the federal government have, and where should the limits be?

Supporters say these tools are necessary to prevent terrorism, cyberattacks, espionage, and foreign threats.

Critics argue surveillance powers have repeatedly expanded beyond their original purpose and created opportunities for abuse and warrantless data collection involving Americans.

Who benefits or loses

Intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies retain broader investigative tools if reauthorization passes.

Privacy advocates and civil liberties groups worry Americans lose protections against government overreach when surveillance powers continue expanding.

What to watch next

Expect continued debate over warrant requirements, oversight reforms, and limitations on how Americans’ communications can be collected or searched.

This issue rarely gets massive media coverage, but the long-term constitutional implications are significant.

5. What Passed This Week

House

• Passed the 2026 Farm Bill

• Advanced additional border funding discussions

• Continued committee work on housing legislation

Senate

• Continued negotiations on immigration enforcement funding

• Advanced discussions surrounding FISA reauthorization

• Continued bipartisan housing negotiations

Committees

• Continued hearings on AI regulation

• Continued online privacy and data collection discussions

• Debated agricultural and energy amendments tied to the Farm Bill

6. What to Watch Next Week

Here’s what’s likely to dominate next week’s conversations in Washington:

• Senate revisions to the Farm Bill

• Continued border funding negotiations

• FISA reauthorization deadlines and amendments

• Housing affordability legislation

• Additional AI regulation proposals

• Early summer budget negotiations

A lot of the biggest changes in Congress happen quietly during amendments and negotiations long before final votes happen.

That’s why paying attention to the process matters just as much as paying attention to the headlines.

Washington moves fast, and many of the most important changes happen quietly long before most Americans ever hear about them. That’s why paying attention matters. Our job here is simple: follow the bills, follow the money, and understand what’s changing in our name.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

Restoration Paper No. 9 makes the structural case. It explains how the American system drifted - legally, constitutionally, and politically - from a government of laws to a government of processes. If you want to understand the architecture of the problem, that is the place to start.

This essay goes somewhere different. It looks at what that drift actually feels like from the inside. Not the theory, but the experience. The exhaustion of filling out a form for the third time because of a technicality. The small business that never opened. The community that stopped trying to fix its own problems and started waiting for the right agency to show up.

These are the costs that never show up in a budget. They do not have line items. But they are real, they compound over time, and in the long run they may be the most important costs of all. This essay tries to put them into plain view.

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I. The Costs That Don’t Show Up on Paper

When most people think about what government costs them, they think about taxes. That makes sense - taxes are visible, measurable, and argued over constantly. But there is another category of cost that is just as real and far harder to see.

Think about the entrepreneur who sat down to figure out how to get a business license and gave up after three hours of reading requirements that seemed to contradict each other. Think about the family that spent an entire Saturday on hold trying to get a simple answer from a government agency, got transferred four times, and still did not have a clear answer by the end of it. Think about the contractor who decided it was not worth expanding because the paperwork alone would take months.

None of those situations shows up anywhere in the federal budget. The hours lost, the decisions reversed, the ambitions quietly shelved - they are invisible to the standard measures. But they are not invisible to the people who lived them.

Over time, these invisible costs do something more serious than slow things down. They change how people think about themselves and what they are capable of. When people run into enough walls, they stop running. They stop asking. They start assuming the system is not really for them and that the bold move is probably not worth it. That shift in attitude - from active to cautious, from building to waiting - is the deepest cost of all.

II. When Following the Rules Replaced Understanding Them

There was a time when the basic structure of American law was something an ordinary person could reasonably follow. The rules were supposed to be clear enough that a regular citizen could know whether they were inside or outside the law without hiring a specialist. That was not just a nice idea, it was a design principle.

That world is largely gone. Today, when a citizen or a small business owner encounters a government requirement, the pressing question is almost never “Is this rule legitimate?” or “Did my elected representatives actually vote for this?” The question is almost always more practical and more anxious: “What exactly do I have to do, and what happens if I get it wrong?”

That shift - from asking whether a rule is right to asking how to survive it - is more than a change in attitude. It is a change in the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the state. In the original design, the citizen held inherent rights, and the government had to justify any restriction on those rights. In the managed system, the citizen’s main job is to stay compliant with a process they did not create, do not fully understand, and cannot meaningfully change.

When people stop asking whether rules are legitimate and start focusing only on how to satisfy them, something essential has been surrendered.

III. The Mental Tax: The Psychological Burden of Compliance

There is a kind of exhaustion that comes not from hard work, but from managing complexity. It is the feeling of keeping too many plates spinning at once. For millions of Americans, a significant part of that exhaustion comes directly from navigating administrative systems.

Think about what it actually takes to run a small business today. You are not just running the business. You are tracking compliance deadlines, maintaining documentation for potential audits, interpreting guidance that changes without warning, and paying someone - a lawyer, an accountant, a consultant - to explain what all of it means. That is before you have sold a single product or served a single customer.

This mental load does not fall evenly. A large corporation has entire departments to handle it. The small business owner handles it alone, at night, after the kids are in bed. The working family navigating a complex benefits system handles it on their lunch break. The independent contractor handles it on weekends.

Every hour spent managing administrative complexity is an hour not spent building something, teaching something, or caring for someone. The managed state does not just take your money. It takes your attention, your energy, and your time - the things you cannot get back.

IV. The Procedural Burden: When the Process Becomes the Punishment

Any single government requirement, taken on its own, can usually be defended. A health inspection serves a real purpose. A building permit protects real safety. An environmental review can catch real problems. Taken individually, these things make sense.

But the experience of an actual person trying to get something done is not individual requirements one at a time. It is all of them at once, layered on top of each other, each with its own timeline, its own office, its own documentation requirements, and its own definition of what counts as a completed application.

There used to be a human element in this process. A clerk who had seen your situation before. An official who could tell you that you were close, explain what you were missing, and give you a chance to fix it before things escalated. That flexibility, the ability to use judgment in individual cases, was not a loophole. It was a safeguard. It kept the spirit of the law from getting crushed by the letter of the procedure.

Modern systems are increasingly designed to eliminate that flexibility in the name of consistency and efficiency. The result is an environment where a single missed checkbox can trigger a cascade of consequences. Where the system cannot distinguish between an honest mistake and a deliberate violation. Where the process itself becomes the punishment, regardless of whether you actually did anything wrong.

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V. Algorithmic Governance: The “Black Box” Problem

The newest and fastest-growing layer of the managed state is automated. More and more decisions that directly affect people’s lives - loan approvals, benefit eligibility, licensing reviews, risk assessments - are now made by algorithms rather than human beings.

These systems can process enormous amounts of information very quickly. From an administrative standpoint, that efficiency is genuinely useful. But from a citizen’s standpoint, automation creates a problem that is harder to name and harder to fight than anything that came before it.

When a human official makes a decision you disagree with, you can ask why. You can present new information. You can make an argument to someone capable of changing their mind. But when an automated system tells you that you have been denied, the question “Why?” often hits a wall. The answer is that the system determined the outcome. The specific reasons, the data inputs, the weighting of factors, all of it is often locked inside what researchers call a “black box”: a process that produces results but cannot be meaningfully examined or challenged from the outside.

This is not a minor legal technicality. One of the oldest principles of fair treatment under the law is that a person has the right to understand the case against them and respond to it. Automated systems, as currently designed and deployed, often make that impossible.

There is also a scale problem. When a human clerk makes an error, it affects one person. When an automated system has a flaw in its logic or a bias in its data, that error is replicated across every decision the system makes, potentially thousands or millions of cases before anyone notices. The same efficiency that makes these systems attractive is what makes them dangerous when they go wrong.

VI. The Cultural Shift: From Builders to Navigators

The effects described so far do not stay in the policy world. Over time, they seep into the culture. They change what people value, what they attempt, and what kind of country we become.

In a society built on a presumption of liberty, where the starting assumption is that you are free to act unless a specific law says otherwise, the cultural orientation is toward action. You have an idea, you try it. You see a problem, you solve it. The burden of justification falls on anyone who wants to stop you.

In a society built on a presumption of permission, where the starting assumption is that you need approval before you act, the cultural orientation shifts toward caution. You have an idea, but first you check whether it is allowed. You see a problem, but first you find out whose jurisdiction it falls under.

These are not just different legal frameworks. They are different ways of being. The first produces builders, risk-takers, and people who believe their initiative matters. The second produces navigators - people skilled at working within the system but with little practice working outside it.

A republic does not run on navigators. It runs on citizens who believe they have the standing, the ability, and the right to shape the world around them. When administrative complexity gradually shifts the culture from one to the other, the republic loses something it cannot easily get back.

VII. The Erosion of Local Agency: The Atrophy of Self-Governance

There is a principle in political philosophy called subsidiarity: the idea that problems should be solved at the most local level capable of handling them. Communities handle what communities can handle. States handle what states can handle. The federal government handles what genuinely requires a national response.

This is not just an abstract principle. It reflects something true about how self-governance actually develops. When people solve problems in their own communities, they learn how to do it. They build relationships, develop judgment, and accumulate the experience of working together. They become better at governing themselves because they are actually doing it.

The managed state tends to work in the opposite direction. When every local initiative requires a federal permit, a state certification, or compliance with a distant agency’s guidelines, the community’s instinct to solve its own problems is gradually replaced by the habit of looking upward. Instead of asking “How do we fix this?”, the question becomes “Which program covers this?” Instead of organizing a solution, people wait for the right authority to show up.

Over time, communities do not just lose the legal authority to handle their own affairs. They lose the confidence. They forget they ever had it. The atrophy of local problem-solving is not just a loss of efficiency. It is a loss of the civic habits that keep a republic alive.

This is not just a loss of authority – it is a loss of habit.

VIII. The Innovation Cost: The Ideas We’ll Never See

Economists have a name for costs that are real but invisible: “the unseen.” It refers to what does not happen because of a policy - the businesses never started, the inventions never built, the transactions that never took place. These losses are genuine, but because the thing never existed, there is nothing to point to.

The managed state produces an enormous amount of “the unseen.” When someone abandons a business idea because the licensing process is too daunting, we never get to know what that business might have been. When a community innovation gets blocked by a zoning rule, we never see what it could have become. When a talented person decides the path to their goal requires too much navigation and chooses a safer, easier route instead, we lose whatever they would have created.

People sometimes defend the current system by pointing to the companies that do succeed and the industries that do grow. But that argument misses the point because it only counts the survivors. It does not count the food truck that never opened because the permitting requirements were too complicated. The community daycare that could not get approved because of a square-footage rule that had nothing to do with child safety. The contractor who decided not to expand because growth would mean more regulatory exposure than it was worth.

Individually, each of these is a small story. Added up, year after year, across the entire economy, they represent something large: the gap between the country we are and the country we could have been. That gap is the true innovation cost of the managed state.

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IX. The Global Stake: National Agility in a Competitive World

These costs do not stay inside our borders. They play out on a world stage, in competition with countries making different choices about how to structure their governments.

Capital moves to where it can work. Talent moves to where it can grow. Innovation happens where people are free to try things quickly, fail, adjust, and try again. A country whose regulatory environment requires years of review for projects that a competitor nation approves in months is not just inconvenienced. It is losing ground - real, compounding ground - in the race for the industries and technologies that will define the next generation.

This is what an “agility gap” looks like in practice. One country’s system moves fast. Another country’s system processes. Over time, the fast-moving system attracts investment, talent, and momentum. The processing system ends up managing its own decline, very efficiently, one form at a time.

A nation’s standing in the world is rarely lost all at once. It erodes through the compounding effect of opportunities missed, talent lost to other countries, and innovations built somewhere else. When a country becomes so procedurally burdened that it cannot move at the pace of the problems it faces, that is not just an administrative inconvenience. It is a strategic vulnerability.

But this is not only a competitive issue. It is a philosophical one. A nation that values liberty should not need an external threat to motivate it to restore freedom at home.

X. The Expert Problem: Who Decides, and Who Do They Answer To?

Behind the managed state is an idea that sounds reasonable on the surface: modern society is too complex to be governed by ordinary elected representatives, so we need a permanent class of trained specialists to manage it. This idea has a name: technocracy.

The case for technocracy is easy to understand. Financial markets are complicated. Public health requires specialized knowledge. Environmental science involves data that takes years to learn how to read. The argument is that Congress simply cannot keep up, and that running a modern government through the slow, messy process of democratic debate is inefficient at best and dangerous at worst.

But here is the problem with that argument: the question of how to manage a complex technical system is genuinely a technical question. The question of who decides how it is managed is not. It is a political question. It is a question about power and accountability, and it belongs in the public square, not in an agency memo that nobody voted on.

When technical expertise is used to remove political questions from democratic debate, something important gets hidden. Critics call it “accountability laundering.” A decision that is fundamentally about values, about tradeoffs between economic growth and safety, or between security and liberty, gets dressed up as a neutral, technical determination. Because it looks technical, it seems exempt from challenge. Because it seems exempt from challenge, nobody challenges it. And the choice gets made by people who were never elected and never have to face voters for the consequences.

The answer is not to get rid of expertise. It is to keep expertise in its proper place: advising the people and their elected representatives, not replacing them.

XI. The Psychological Shift: From Active Citizens to Passive Subjects

A free republic depends on a certain kind of person. Not a perfect person. Not an especially educated or wealthy person. Just a person who is in the habit of thinking for themselves, making their own decisions, participating in their community, and believing that their judgment matters.

That habit is not automatic. It has to be practiced. And it can be lost.

The managed state does not require the active, self-directed kind of citizen. It requires the compliant kind. It needs people who fill out forms correctly, meet deadlines, follow procedures, and stay within the defined boundaries of whatever system they are interacting with. In the managed state, compliance is the currency. Initiative is, at best, irrelevant. At worst, it is a liability.

Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, warned about exactly this kind of drift. He described a government that does not openly oppress its citizens but instead wraps them in a dense network of small, complicated rules that degrade them without tormenting them… until it has reduced a free nation to something like a flock of timid animals, with the government as their shepherd. He was not describing a dictatorship. He was describing something that could happen gradually, quietly, inside a democracy.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” — C.S. Lewis

The danger Tocqueville described was not dramatic. It was quiet. Quiet dangers are the hardest to fight because it is hard to know when they have arrived. The shift from active citizen to passive subject did not happen in a single moment. It happened one form, one permission, one “the system will notify you” at a time.

XII. The Human Cost: The Transformation of Our Civic Character

Everything discussed in this essay ultimately comes to rest on one person… a real individual, living a real life, trying to build something, raise a family, run a business, or just stay on the right side of rules they cannot fully understand.

The managed state does not typically harm that person in a single dramatic way. It works through accumulation. Each individual requirement is manageable. Each delay is survivable. Each form is fillable. But the sum of all of it, over years and decades, reshapes how that person sees themselves and what they believe they are capable of.

People raised inside a permission culture tend to think first about what they are allowed to do, rather than what they want to do. They have learned, through repeated experience, that initiative requires clearance. That creativity requires approval. That the bold move is probably going to hit a wall somewhere, so it is worth asking permission before you start rather than getting stopped after you have invested everything in it.

This is not weakness. It is a rational adaptation to the environment. But it is also a loss. A person who has internalized the permission culture is less free, in a meaningful way, than a person who has not… regardless of what the law technically guarantees them.

The ultimate cost of the managed state is not measured in dollars or in hours of paperwork. It is measured in the distance between the person someone could have become and the person the system trained them to be instead.

XIII. Conclusion: The Habit of Liberty

This essay has not argued that government is the enemy. Some level of administration is genuinely necessary. Rules protect people. Standards ensure safety. Coordination makes complex societies function. None of that is the problem.

The problem is proportion and direction. It is what happens when the administrative apparatus grows dense enough that it stops being a tool the people use to govern themselves and starts being the environment they must survive. When the system is no longer something you work with but something you work around - or stop trying to engage with at all - the relationship has inverted.

A free society is not a machine. It is a community of people who are capable, responsible, and trusted to run their own lives. The qualities that make such a society work - initiative, judgment, self-reliance, civic participation - are not automatic. They are habits, cultivated through practice and sustained by a political environment that treats citizens as capable adults rather than problems to be managed.

Those habits can atrophy. And when they do, they do not disappear with a bang. They disappear quietly, form by form, permission by permission, until one day a person sits down to try something and realizes, somewhere in the back of their mind, that they should probably check first. So, they check. And they wait. And the thing they were going to build just doesn’t happen.

The most important thing a republic can protect is not its institutions. It is the kind of citizen those institutions are supposed to serve - independent, responsible, and free. When the system begins producing a different kind of person - cautious, dependent, waiting for permission - that is when the real cost has been paid.

The good news is that habits can be rebuilt. The habit of liberty is not gone. But recovering it requires first naming what has been lost… which is exactly what this paper has tried to do.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)

For years, political frustration in America has produced two very common responses.

The first is outrage.
The second is withdrawal.

Some people are consumed by constant anger at institutions they no longer trust.
Others simply stop participating altogether, convinced the process no longer matters.

Neither response improves anything.

One of the core beliefs behind The Publius Project is that citizenship requires more than commentary. If we believe systems are flawed, unbalanced, or structurally unfair, then participation becomes a responsibility rather than a hobby.

That is the purpose behind the Virginia Fair Ballot Initiative.

This is not a revolutionary movement.
It is not an attempt to “burn down the system.”
It is not an effort to advantage one political party over another.

It is a narrowly focused effort to address a specific structural issue within Virginia’s ballot access process.

And perhaps more importantly, it is an attempt to demonstrate that ordinary citizens can still engage constructively with government rather than merely complain about it.

The Problem

Under current Virginia law, independent and third-party candidates are required to complete petition requirements and qualify for the ballot months before major party nominees are finalized through primary elections.

In practice, this creates a timing imbalance.

Candidates who are outside the two-party structure are often forced to:

• Gather signatures early

• Build campaign infrastructure early

• Spend money early

• Commit to races early

…all before they even know who the final major party candidates will be.

Meanwhile, Democratic and Republican nominees are often determined later through state-run primary processes.

This proposal does not argue that independent candidates should avoid standards.
Standards matter.

Ballot integrity matters.
Orderly elections matter.

The issue is not whether there should be requirements.
The issue is whether the timeline itself is unnecessarily uneven.

A fair process should not require some candidates to qualify before the full field is known.

The Proposal

The Virginia Fair Ballot Initiative proposes a narrowly tailored reform:

Move the filing and petition deadline for independent and third-party candidates to a date after major party primaries are completed.

That is it.

The proposal:

• Does not eliminate signature requirements

• Does not lower qualification standards

• Does not remove verification requirements

• Does not fundamentally alter Virginia’s election system

It simply aligns the timeline more fairly.

The purpose is not to make it easier to run.
The purpose is to make it fair to run.

Why This Matters

Many Americans feel politically trapped.

Some believe the two-party system has become too rigid.

Others feel representation has become increasingly disconnected from ordinary voters.

Still others simply want more competition, more debate, and more choices.

Regardless of political affiliation, fair competition should be viewed as healthy within a functioning republic.

Competition improves institutions.
Competition forces responsiveness.
Competition discourages complacency.

And yet in many states across the country, ballot access laws create substantial barriers for candidates outside the major party structure.

Virginia is not unique in this regard.

This initiative does not attempt to solve every structural issue within American politics.

It addresses one specific issue within one state.

That is intentional.

Too many reform efforts fail because they attempt to change everything at once.
Meaningful change often begins with a single reasonable adjustment.

The Process So Far

One of the goals of this initiative is transparency.

Rather than simply publishing opinions online, the Virginia Fair Ballot Initiative is actively engaging with the legislative process itself.

Initial outreach has included:

• Communication with members of Virginia’s Privileges and Elections process

• Discussions regarding administrative feasibility

• Requests for feedback from election officials and registrars

• Outreach to organizations familiar with ballot access challenges

The responses so far have been encouraging.

Importantly, several conversations have reinforced a consistent theme:

This proposal is being viewed primarily as a process and fairness issue rather than a partisan one.

That distinction matters.

The objective is not to create political advantage.

The objective is to improve structural fairness while preserving election integrity.

Why Participation Matters

It is easy to criticize institutions.
It is much harder to engage with them seriously.

Real civic participation requires:

• Research

• Patience

• Respect for process

• Willingness to listen

• Willingness to revise ideas when confronted with practical concerns

That process is often slow.
Sometimes frustrating.
Frequently imperfect.

But self-government only functions if citizens remain willing to participate constructively rather than retreat entirely into cynicism.

The Virginia Fair Ballot Initiative may ultimately succeed.
It may fail.

But participation itself still matters.

A republic cannot survive indefinitely if citizens become spectators instead of participants.

The Larger Purpose

The Virginia Fair Ballot Initiative is the first active civic action initiative launched through The Publius Project.

It will not be the last.

The broader goal of this section of The Publius Project is to move beyond political theory and toward applied citizenship.

Not every proposal will become law.
Not every effort will gain traction.

But criticism without participation eventually becomes performance.

If citizens believe institutions can improve, then citizens should be willing to engage with the difficult work of improving them.

That work begins here.

Virginia Fair Ballot Initiative

Fair rules. Real choices.

A Civic Action Initiative from The Publius Project

To My Fellow Americans,

The eight papers before this one all circled the same question: does the American government still work the way it was designed to? I looked at representation, how incentives get twisted, the role of expertise, and why the average citizen feels so far removed from the people and institutions that are supposed to serve them.

This final paper in Phase I pulls all of that together. When we look at the problems one at a time; a permit that takes six months, a form only a lawyer can fill out, a rule buried in a memo nobody voted on, they each seem like minor annoyances. But when we step back and look at the whole picture, a pattern shows up.

What has been built around our republic is not the republic itself. It is a thick layer of administrative machinery; rules, agencies, processes, and paperwork, that has grown so large it now hides the actual government underneath.

This paper names that pattern, explains what it costs us, and points toward what we can do about it.

I. Introduction: The Price We Rarely Count

Every government cost money. We all know about taxes. But there is another kind of cost that never shows up on our tax returns… one that is harder to see and, in some ways, harder to bear.

Think about the last time you dealt with a government form, a permit, a license, or a regulatory requirement. Think about how long it took, how confusing it was, and how much it cost you in time, money, or sheer frustration. Now imagine that same experience playing out for every small business owner, every farmer, every contractor, every parent trying to start a daycare. That friction, multiplied millions of times across the country, is what I’m calling the cost of the managed state.

Some level of administration is necessary. A modern country of 330 million people needs rules. The problem is not that rules exist. The problem is what happens when the rules take over, when navigating the system becomes more important than the work itself, and when the people who make the rules are not the people you elected.

When government stops being about following clear laws and starts being about managing your way through a maze of agencies and approvals, something important changes. This paper argues that what changes is the very idea of citizenship. And the cost of that change is economic, legal, and deeply personal.

II. The Big Shift: From Laws to Management

The Founders had a straightforward design. Citizens elect representatives. Representatives write laws. The executive branch carries out those laws. The courts settle disputes. Everyone can see who is responsible for what. If we do not like a law, we vote out the people who passed it.

“The accumulation of all powers… in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 47

Over the past century, that clean design has gotten blurry. Congress still passes laws, but those laws are often written in broad strokes, frameworks that leave all the real details to be filled in by federal agencies. This is where the shift happened.

Those agencies do not just carry out the law. In many cases, they write the specific rules, investigate whether you broke them, and then hold the hearings to decide your punishment. In other words, they act as the lawmaker, the police officer, and the judge… all at once. Madison called that arrangement tyranny. We have just grown so used to it that we stopped noticing.

It gets more complicated. A lot of what actually governs our daily lives is not in any official law. It lives in memos, guidance documents, agency FAQs, and policy letters. Technically, these are not laws. But if we ignore them, we risk fines, audits, and enforcement actions. So, they function as laws, they just were never voted on by anyone.

The result is a system of government that is very hard to challenge, very expensive to navigate, and nearly impossible to understand without hiring a professional. That is the foundation on which every other cost we are about to discuss is built.

III. The Three Costs We Are All Paying

1. The Economic Cost: A Tax on Getting Started
Imagine you want to open a small restaurant. Before you serve a single meal, you need a business license, a health permit, a fire inspection, a zoning approval, and possibly a liquor license. Each one involves paperwork, fees, waiting periods, and inspections. By the time you get through all of it, you have spent thousands of dollars and months of your life… and you have not sold a single plate of food yet.

That is the economic cost of the managed state. It is not just a tax on what you earn; it is a tax on the act of trying. And it does not fall equally on everyone. A large corporation has an entire legal and compliance department to handle all of this. A person starting a small business out of their garage does not. The rules end up protecting big, established companies from new competition, because the cost of entry is too high for the little guy to climb over.

Federal estimates suggest Americans spend over nine billion hours a year on government paperwork. Think about what that number means. Nine billion hours is not just time wasted. It represents engineers who could have been inventing, teachers who could have been teaching, and small business owners who could have been growing. The biggest cost is not what we pay… it is what we never get to build because the barrier was too high.

2. The Legal Cost: Nobody Can Read the Rulebook
In a fair legal system, a regular person should be able to understand the rules they are expected to follow. That used to be the standard. It is not anymore.

Today, the actual rules that govern our businesses, our property, our professions, or our families are often buried in agency guidance documents, interpretive memos, and pages of administrative code that experts spend careers trying to understand. This is not an accident… it is what happens when you hand broad authority to agencies and let them fill in the details forever.

The burden of proof has also shifted in a troubling way. In our legal tradition, the government is supposed to prove that we did something wrong. Under the managed state, we are increasingly expected to prove, constantly, with documentation and certification, that we are doing everything right. We are guilty until proven compliant.

When the law becomes so complicated that we need to hire a specialist just to stay out of trouble, the law is no longer protecting us. It is managing us. The citizen is no longer standing on clear legal ground, we are walking on a shifting surface of administrative rules that can change without a vote.

3. The Civil Cost: From Sovereign Citizen to Applicant
This is the cost that matters most, because it changes who we are as a people.

In a free country, the starting assumption is simple: we can do what we want unless a law says otherwise. That is the presumption of liberty. Under the managed state, that presumption has quietly flipped. Now the starting assumption is: we may not act until a system has approved us. We need a license to work. A permit to build. A certification to practice. An application to participate.

The difference between a citizen and an applicant is not just a word choice. A citizen asserts a right. An applicant requests a privilege. Over time, being treated as an applicant changes how people think and act. We hesitate before starting something new. We look to the government for permission before exercising our own judgment. We stop trusting that our instincts and initiative are enough.

It also creates a quiet divide. Some people have the money, the connections, and the know-how to “work the system.” Everyone else gets worked by it. That divide is not fair, and it is not accidental.

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” - Thomas Jefferson

IV. The Pattern Underneath: Permission Has Replaced Liberty

When we look at these three costs together, we start to see the same thread running through all of them: somewhere along the way, America shifted from a culture built on liberty to a culture built on permission.

The old American idea was that we are free to act, build, and take risks on our own judgment unless a specific law tells us otherwise. The new operating assumption is the reverse: we wait for approval before we do anything significant. We file, we wait, we comply, we certify, and then… maybe… we are allowed to proceed.

This shift has changed the national character in a way that is hard to put your finger on but easy to feel. It has made us a nation of navigators instead of builders. People spend their energy learning how to get through the system instead of learning how to create something new. The most important question is no longer “What can I build?” It is “What am I allowed to do?”

That inversion, the individual asking permission from the state rather than the state asking justification from the individual, is the invisible cost running through every single administrative burden we have discussed. It is not just a policy problem. It is a problem of national identity.

V. What Can We Do About It

If the primary cost of the managed state is the loss of clarity and citizenship, then the solution must focus on restoring the “burden of proof” to the government. This requires a three-part approach focused on legal reform, structural simplification, and a renewal of civic habits.

1. Legal Accountability: Make Elected Officials Own the Rules
The most direct fix is also the most obvious: if a rule is going to have the force of law, it should be voted on by the people we elected. Right now, Congress passes broad laws and agencies fill in the details however they choose, with very little public input or accountability.

The solution is to require Congress to actually vote on major agency rules before they take effect. This is not a radical idea. It just means that if a regulation is important enough to enforce, it is important enough for your representative to take a public stand on it. That restores the chain of accountability the Founders designed.

Courts should also stop automatically siding with government agencies when a law is unclear. If the rules are confusing, the benefit of the doubt should go to the citizen, not the bureaucracy.

2. Structural Simplification: Clearing Out the Overgrowth
Regulations accumulate. Once a rule is written, it almost never goes away, even when it has outlived its purpose or when new rules have made it redundant or obsolete. The result is a massive tangle of overlapping requirements that even experts cannot keep straight.

Two simple tools can help fix this. First, sunset clauses: regulations automatically expire after a set period unless they are specifically reviewed and renewed. This forces the government to regularly ask whether a rule is still actually needed. Second, a regulatory budget: for every new rule an agency creates, it has to remove an old one. This creates a real incentive to prioritize what matters instead of just piling on more.

3. Civic Restoration: Rebuild the Habit of Self-Government
The deepest change has to happen in how we see ourselves. For decades, the managed state has trained Americans to look upward to institutions for answers, permission, and solutions. That habit is hard to break, but it can be broken.

Communities, families, churches, local businesses, and civic organizations have always been the real engines of American life. The goal is not to get a better manager. It is to need fewer managers. That means solving problems at the local level when possible, relying on community and voluntary cooperation, and reclaiming the confidence that ordinary people are capable of running their own lives.

The republic was not built on experts managing a passive population. It was built on citizens who believed they were capable of governing themselves and acted accordingly.

VI. Addressing the Counter-Argument: “But We Need Experts”

The most common pushback to everything in this paper goes something like this: “Sure, the Founders’ system was fine for a small farming country in 1787. But modern life is complicated. We have global financial markets, new diseases, advanced technology, and threats the Founders could not have imagined. We need professional experts running these agencies, because senators and representatives simply do not have the technical knowledge to manage all of it.”

That argument sounds reasonable. But it gets the question wrong.

Nothing in this paper argues that we do not need experts. Of course we do. The question is whether those experts should be unaccountable. There is a big difference between an expert who advises elected representatives and an expert who replaces them. We can absolutely benefit from specialized knowledge without giving that knowledge the power to write and enforce its own laws without a vote.

There is also something worth noting about where a lot of the complexity actually comes from. Much of the difficulty in modern American life is not created by the world being complicated… it is created by the administrative state itself. Thousands of pages of conflicting rules, overlapping jurisdictions, and changing guidance documents generate confusion that then requires more experts to manage. In other words, the system creates the problem it claims to be solving.

The goal is not to kick out all expertise. The goal is to make sure that expertise serves the public rather than rules over it.

VIII. Conclusion: The Price of Being Managed

The cost of the managed state is not a line item you can find in any budget. It is something more fundamental: a gradual shift in the American civic condition.

We pay it in economic stagnation – nine billion hours of paperwork, barriers that protect big incumbents and shut out new competitors, and a nation that innovates less than it should because the cost of trying is too high.

We pay it in legal uncertainty – a world where the rules change without votes, where compliance is assumed guilty until proven innocent, and where only professionals can navigate what used to be common-sense law.

But the price that matters most is the one paid by the individual citizen. The managed state asks us to trade the mindset of authors, people who take initiative and build something, for the mindset of applicants, people who wait for the system to approve them. That is not just a policy failure. It is a failure of national character.

The good news is that none of this is permanent. These are not forces of nature. They are choices… choices made by people over generations, and choices that can be reversed by people in future generations. By reclaiming the lawmaking power for elected officials, by clearing out the regulatory overgrowth, and by rediscovering the habits of local self-government, we can start to lower the price of being managed.

The most tragic entries in the ledger of modern government are the invisible ones: the businesses never started, the inventions never built, the risks never taken. The blank pages are the ones that matter most. And we get to decide whether those pages stay blank, or whether we finally start writing on them again.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.”
— Thomas Jefferson

Epilogue: From Diagnosis to Design

Everything in the first nine papers has been a diagnosis. I have tried to name the problem clearly: a government that drifted from a republic of laws into a system of managed processes, and a citizenry that drifted along with it… trading the identity of self-governing people for the identity of compliance-managing applicants.

But a diagnosis, on its own, does not cure anything. It just tells us what is wrong. The harder and more important work is figuring out what to build in its place.

The Limitations of Reform
It is tempting, when faced with problems this large, to look for quick patches. Simplify a form. Replace the officials in charge. Make the process a little more efficient. But if the diagnosis is right, those patches miss the point entirely. You cannot restore a republic by making the machinery that replaced it run a little smoother. The managed state is not a broken version of the Founders’ design. It is a different design.

That means the solution cannot just be reform. It must be restoration… a return to the first principles that made self-government work in the first place.

Phase II: The Founders’ Framework
The next phase of the Restoration Papers shifts from diagnosing the problem to understanding the original design. Before we can rebuild, we need to understand what was actually built, not just as a set of historical documents, but as a working system of ideas about human nature, power, and liberty.

I begin that work in Paper No. 10: The Founders’ Operating System. This paper will look at why the Founders chose to limit power rather than concentrate it, and why they trusted the responsibility of the citizen over the management of the expert. The managed state did not happen because the original design failed. It happened because we gradually stopped believing in the ideas that made the design work.

Phase II begins by recovering those ideas.

In Liberty,
Gary Mullins (Libertas)