OPINION

The United States of America – The framers of our Constitution weren’t building a pure democracy; they were building a balancing act. And they knew exactly what they were doing.

The original Constitution divided political power among different interests. The People elected the House of Representatives. State legislatures selected Senators. The Executive branch was headed by a President chosen through the Electoral College. Everybody had skin in the game. Everybody had a seat at the table. And nobody got all the power.

That arrangement wasn’t some accident buried in old parchment. It was deliberate.

Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution plainly stated that senators would be “chosen by the Legislature” of each state. According to James Madison in Federalist No. 62, appointment by state legislatures was designed to create a direct connection between the states and the federal government. He wrote that this method would “form a convenient link between the two systems.” The Senate was never intended to represent the passions of the public. The House already did that. The Senate represented the states themselves.

And that’s because the United States was formed by sovereign states entering into a union, not by Washington handing power down from on high.

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, delegates spent weeks fighting over representation. Large states wanted population-based representation. Smaller states feared being steamrolled. The eventual Connecticut Compromise created two chambers, one representing the People and one representing the States. It was a compromise that helped save the convention from collapse. Benjamin Franklin himself urged concessions to preserve the union.

Madison argued repeatedly that the Senate’s structure would act as a stabilizing force. The upper chamber would provide experience and continuity while insulating the country from sudden swings in public opinion. The U.S. Senate’s own historical records note that senators were intentionally made older and selected by state legislatures to provide stability and restraint.

Then came 1913.

The Seventeenth Amendment fundamentally changed the arrangement by transferring the election of senators from state legislatures to popular vote. Supporters argued it would reduce corruption and legislative deadlocks. It certainly changed things, but it also removed the states themselves from direct representation in Washington. The National Constitution Center describes the amendment as the only major constitutional change affecting the structure of Congress since the Bill of Rights.

Since then, senators have become national politicians rather than ambassadors of their state governments. Their incentives changed. Governors and legislatures may protest federal mandates, but their senators often answer first to national donors, party leadership and television cameras.

That’s a very different system than the one the founders designed.

State governments today have no institutional voice inside Congress. They sue Washington. They lobby Washington. They beg Washington. But they no longer possess representation within Washington itself, which is exactly what the original Senate provided.

Supporters of the Seventeenth Amendment point to corruption scandals that occurred before 1913. Those problems were real. But replacing one flaw with another doesn’t necessarily count as progress, history is full of reforms that created new problems while solving old ones.

The Constitution was built on competing interests checking one another. The House represented the people. The Senate represented the states. The president represented the nation as a whole. It wasn’t complicated.

We’ve drifted far from that arrangement.

Today Washington treats states less like partners and more like administrative districts. Federal agencies dictate policy, Congress spends borrowed money with abandon, and senators spend more time chasing campaign cash than defending state sovereignty.

Maybe the old system wasn’t perfect. Nothing designed by human beings ever is. But the framers understood something modern politicians often forget… Power needs rivals.

Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment wouldn’t weaken democracy. It would restore federalism. It would give state governments a genuine stake in the game again and force Washington to remember that the states created the federal government, not the other way around.

We shouldn’t expect the people who benefit from the current arrangement to voluntarily surrender power. Congress is not likely to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, and senators certainly aren’t inclined to vote themselves out of their present status. The framers anticipated moments like this.

That’s why Article V of the Constitution gives the states another path, a convention for proposing amendments called by two-thirds of the state legislatures. If Americans truly want to restore federalism and return the states to their rightful place in the constitutional order, the answer probably won’t come from Washington. It’ll have to come from the states themselves, from the People. The people created the states, the states created the federal government, and sometimes it’s necessary to remind Washington who’s really supposed to be in charge.

For those who believe the time has come to restore the constitutional balance our founders envisioned, organizations like Convention of States Action are already leading the fight. Visit https://conventionofstates.com/, get informed, and get involved, because Washington isn’t going to limit itself unless the states and the people demand it.

Sources: Article I of the Constitution, James Madison’s Federalist No. 62, Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention, and historical material from the U.S. Senate and Library of Congress.

OPINION

California – Don’t expect a dramatic press conference from the Trump administration declaring California’s elections clean. More likely, the investigations will quietly fade into the background and eventually disappear from the headlines without any grand conclusion.

In my view, that outcome is almost inevitable. The reason is simple. California’s election laws have been written in such a way that many practices critics consider vulnerable to abuse are perfectly legal. If the conduct itself is authorized by law, federal investigators are unlikely to ever establish the kind of “widespread fraud” that many Americans are expecting them to uncover.

President Donald Trump recently accused Democrats of cheating in California’s primary election, prompting First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli to announce that his office and the FBI have multiple election fraud investigations underway in Los Angeles. Essayli’s office also confirmed that Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Renner visited a Los Angeles County ballot processing center to observe the vote counting process. Reports described the visit as routine and similar to those available to members of the public.

Those comments may sound encouraging to voters concerned about election integrity. But they are likely to produce exactly what previous investigations have produced … years of unanswered questions … followed by silence.

California Elections Code Section 3017 allows a voter who is unable to return a ballot to designate another person to do so. The designated person may hand deliver the ballot or place it in the mail. Criminal penalties exist for bribery, intimidation, tampering, and fraud, but the collection and delivery of ballots by third parties is itself legal.

Supporters argue the practice improves access for elderly and disabled voters. Critics call it legalized ballot harvesting.

Under California law, political organizations, activists, churches, unions, or nonprofit groups may legally collect ballots from voters. If investigators discovered nonprofit groups organizing ballot collection efforts among homeless populations, it would not automatically constitute criminal conduct. Unless prosecutors could prove bribery, coercion, or tampering, much of the activity critics complain about would be perfectly lawful.

Fox 11 recently reported that Essayli referenced a case involving a Marina del Rey woman accused of paying individuals, including homeless people on Skid Row, to register to vote. Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, also known as “Anika,” pleaded guilty to one federal count of paying another person to register to vote. She faces up to five years in prison when she is sentenced Aug. 31.

Authorities have not alleged that the conduct affected statewide races. Nevertheless, the case highlights concerns long raised by election integrity advocates.

Even if investigators were to uncover isolated examples involving ballots cast in the names of deceased individuals or by noncitizens, history suggests such cases would be treated as individual violations rather than evidence of a larger conspiracy. Officials and media outlets would almost certainly characterize them as statistically insignificant and insufficient to alter election outcomes.

Likewise, even if prosecutors managed to bring a handful of cases involving illegal voting, supporters of the system would likely point to those prosecutions as evidence that the safeguards are working. Critics, meanwhile, would argue that the cases merely expose vulnerabilities that are impossible to quantify.

That is because proving widespread election fraud requires more than finding isolated violations. Prosecutors would have to establish a coordinated effort on a massive scale. Such a burden is extraordinarily difficult to satisfy, especially after ballots have been separated from identifying information and mixed with millions of legitimate votes.

Critics need look no further than the Los Angeles mayoral race to understand why public confidence has eroded. Councilmember Nithya Raman climbed into second place on June 7, overtaking Spencer Pratt as post Election Day ballots continued to be counted. To skeptics, the distribution of those later ballots appeared anomalous, with Raman benefiting disproportionately while neither Karen Bass nor Pratt experienced comparable gains.

Some election integrity advocates view such swings as evidence that California’s system invites speculation that ballots collected through organized harvesting operations could be strategically submitted over time. There is no publicly available evidence demonstrating that such conduct occurred in this race… but the inability to either prove or definitively disprove those suspicions is itself part of the criticism leveled against California’s election laws.

The real debate, in my view, is not whether California elections are run according to the law. They are. The debate is whether the law itself creates conditions that make abuses difficult to detect and nearly impossible to prove after the fact.

That is why Bill Essayli’s statements strike me as little more than empty words. Announcing investigations sounds impressive, but prosecutors cannot prosecute conduct that lawmakers have already legalized. They cannot declare ballot harvesting fraudulent when California law expressly permits third party ballot collection.

Reuters and other news organizations have noted that election officials insist there is no evidence supporting claims of widespread fraud in the governor’s race or the Los Angeles mayor’s race. They may very well be correct according to the legal standards that currently exist. But that misses the point entirely.

Critics are not necessarily claiming that large numbers of people are breaking California law. They are arguing that California lawmakers have constructed a system that places convenience ahead of transparency and verification.

And if the rules themselves permit the conduct, federal investigators should not expect to uncover some giant criminal enterprise hiding in plain sight.

The most likely outcome is not a bombshell report. It is a slow fade. The investigations will drift out of public view, the headlines will move on, and Californians will continue voting under the same rules that produced the controversy in the first place.

Whether those rules deserve the public’s trust is another matter altogether.

Sources: California Elections Code §3017; Los Angeles Times; ABC7 Los Angeles; Fox 11 Los Angeles; Reuters.

OPINION

Rockwall, TX – For years, Katrina Pierson carefully cultivated an image as a fiery grassroots conservative willing to battle the Republican establishment. From cable news appearances to campaign stages, Pierson positioned herself as a voice for the forgotten conservative voter — the kind of activist who would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary Texans against the Austin political machine. That is precisely why many grassroots conservatives are now stunned to see her openly embracing one of the most controversial establishment figures in the Texas House: Speaker Dustin Burrows.

Burrows has become a lightning rod inside Republican politics, criticized by conservatives for his role in the Dennis Bonnen scandal, his alliance with the House establishment wing, his reliance on Democrat support in the Speaker’s race, and his ongoing battles with the grassroots movement. To many activists, Burrows represents the very culture of insider deal-making and power preservation that the MAGA movement was built to oppose. Yet despite that record, Pierson has welcomed his support and appears increasingly comfortable standing alongside the Austin insider crowd many conservatives believed she once opposed.

Politics often changes people. Some enter public life promising reform, only to discover that proximity to power can be intoxicating. Critics now argue that Pierson’s alliance with Burrows signals more than simple political strategy — they see it as a symbol of a broader surrender by figures who once claimed to fight for the grassroots. Whether voters view her partnership with Burrows as pragmatic coalition-building or outright political betrayal may ultimately define how conservatives remember Katrina Pierson’s next chapter.

1. The Dennis Bonnen “Target List” Scandal (2019)

This remains the defining controversy of Burrows’ career.

Burrows attended a secretly recorded meeting with then-House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans. According to the recording, Bonnen and Burrows discussed providing House media credentials and identifying Republican lawmakers for possible primary challenges.

The fallout was explosive:

• Bonnen eventually announced he would not seek another term as speaker.
• Burrows resigned as chairman of the House Republican Caucus.
• Conservatives accused Burrows of participating in an insider political purge operation.

Although investigators later concluded no criminal laws were broken, the episode permanently damaged Burrows’ reputation among many grassroots conservatives.

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2. Allegations of Targeting Conservative Republicans

The same 2019 recording fueled accusations that Burrows helped create a “hit list” of Republicans deemed insufficiently loyal to House leadership.

Critics argued the effort was designed to protect establishment Republicans and punish insurgent conservatives aligned with groups like Empower Texans and the Texas Freedom Caucus.

For many on the right, this controversy established Burrows as part of the House power structure that routinely fought conservative activists.

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3. Winning the Speakership With Democratic Support

Burrows’ election as Speaker in January 2025 became another major flashpoint.

He defeated Republican caucus-backed candidate David Cook largely because 49 Democrats joined 36 Republicans to elect him speaker.

Conservative Republicans and activists accused Burrows of:

• Violating the spirit of Republican caucus unity,
• Empowering Democrats,
• Continuing the “coalition House” model long criticized by the grassroots.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick publicly blasted the effort, calling it effectively a “coup d’état” against the GOP caucus process.

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4. Association With the “Establishment Wing” of the GOP

Burrows became closely associated with former Speaker Dade Phelan and the institutional leadership faction of the House.

After the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, tensions inside the Republican Party intensified dramatically. Burrows was viewed by many conservatives as aligned with the anti-Paxton House leadership faction.

Though Burrows was not the central architect of the impeachment proceedings, his close alliance with Phelan politically tied him to that conflict.

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5. The “Death Star Bill” (HB 2127)

Burrows authored House Bill 2127, nicknamed by critics the “Death Star Bill.”

The legislation sharply restricted the ability of Texas cities and counties to create local regulations exceeding state law in areas such as:

• labor rules,
• environmental regulations,
• agriculture,
• business operations.

Supporters called it necessary to stop a patchwork of local regulations harming businesses.

Opponents argued:

• it stripped local control,
• undermined home-rule cities,
• centralized power in Austin.

The bill triggered multiple lawsuits and became one of the most litigated Texas laws in recent years.

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6. Accusations of Working Too Closely With Democrats

Even after becoming speaker, Burrows faced persistent criticism from the Republican right for preserving Democratic influence in the House.

Although committee chairmanships eventually remained Republican-only, Democrats retained vice-chair roles and influence in committee operations.

Conservative critics argued:

• Republicans should fully control the chamber,
• Democrats should not hold institutional leverage,
• Burrows was perpetuating bipartisan governance models that diluted conservative priorities.

This issue became central to Republican grassroots anger against House leadership generally.

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7. Republican Censure Threats

Following the speaker race, some Republicans pushed to censure Burrows and allied lawmakers under Texas GOP Rule 44.

The rule theoretically allows censured Republicans to be denied ballot access in GOP primaries.

Burrows and his allies argued the rule violated free association rights and punished lawmakers for independent votes.

The controversy exposed a widening civil war within the Texas Republican Party between:

• institutional conservatives,
• populist conservatives,
• activist grassroots factions.

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8. Allegations of Political Surveillance During Speaker Race

During the heated 2024 speaker contest, reports surfaced alleging allies connected to Burrows engaged in monitoring Democratic caucus activity.

Texas Scorecard published allegations involving political intelligence gathering tied to former Speaker Bonnen on Burrows’ behalf. The accusations intensified distrust during the already bitter speaker fight.

No criminal findings emerged publicly from those allegations, but they further fueled perceptions of insider political maneuvering around Burrows.

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9. Handling of Attempts to Remove Him as Speaker

In 2025, Rep. Brian Harrison attempted to initiate proceedings to remove Burrows as speaker.

Harrison accused Burrows of:

• empowering Democrats,
• blocking conservative priorities,
• manipulating House procedures.

Burrows refused to recognize the initial motion on procedural grounds, which critics described as protecting leadership through parliamentary control.

The House later overwhelmingly shut down the removal effort.

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10. Enforcement Actions During Democrat Quorum Break

During the 2025 special session over congressional redistricting, House Democrats fled Texas to deny quorum. Burrows authorized “call of the House” enforcement measures and arrest warrants compelling absent lawmakers to return.

Supporters argued:

• he was enforcing constitutional legislative duties,
• Democrats were obstructing lawful governance.

Critics said:

• the enforcement measures were excessive,
• legislators were effectively treated like fugitives,
• the House atmosphere became increasingly authoritarian.

The incident drew national attention and deepened partisan tensions.

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Broader Political Significance

Burrows’ controversies are not merely personal scandals; they reflect the larger ideological war inside Texas Republican politics.

He sits at the intersection of:

• establishment conservatism,
• business-oriented Republican governance,
• institutional House traditions,
• and insurgent populist conservatism aligned with grassroots activists and figures like Paxton.

To supporters, Burrows is an effective operator who can actually pass legislation.

To critics, he symbolizes the Austin political machine conservatives have spent years trying to dismantle.

True MAGA representatives should run far away from establishment RINOs like Dustin Burrows. Katrina Pierson should know better … unless, she is not the person we thought she was.