The Reform Era Is Beginning

With all the focus on the roller coaster of headlines we consume hourly, it’s easy to miss the start of something bigger.

The news cycle rewards spectacle. It rewards outrage. It rewards the latest twist.

But sometimes, history turns quietly.

Earlier this week, a corner may have been turned.

It didn’t dominate cable coverage. It didn’t trend for days. But it gave me something I haven’t felt in a while watching Congress: the beginnings of a reform instinct.

And yes, those who have been reading and listening to me over this last year know I’m looking for this moment, so if you think I have confirmation bias when searching for reform movements, guilty as charged! But this is why it’s important to elevate these incremental moments.

Because reform eras don’t announce themselves with fireworks.

They begin when enough people — quietly, across factions — decide the structure itself needs repair.

Some of you will say this is naïve.

Some will say we don’t have time for constitutional theory — that the threats are too immediate.

Others will argue we’re too divided, too distracted, too algorithmically exhausted to take on structural change.

Maybe.

But when Americans conclude the system itself has corroded — not just a president, not just a party, but the structure — reform follows.

And I believe we are entering one of those moments.

Not a one-cycle reaction.

A reform era.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the American experiment, it’s worth remembering: constitutional repair has always followed constitutional strain.

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We’ve Been Here Before

At the turn of the 20th century, democracy felt rigged.

Industrial fortunes were exploding. Tariffs — the federal government’s primary revenue source — fell hardest on working families. The wealthiest industrialists accumulated enormous fortunes while paying comparatively little in federal taxes.

State legislatures openly traded Senate seats.

And let’s not forget: half the population wasn’t allowed to vote simply because of their gender.

Democracy wasn’t just polarized.

It was structurally incomplete.

Before 1913, state legislatures chose U.S. senators.

And in some states, that meant corruption in plain sight.

In 1909, Illinois legislators elected William Lorimer to the U.S. Senate.

Soon after, a state representative confessed he had been paid $1,000 — about $35,000 in today’s dollars — to vote for Lorimer. The money came from what investigators called a “jackpot” slush fund. According to testimony, cash was distributed in the bathroom of a Chicago hotel to secure just enough votes.

The Senate investigated. Cleared him once. Public outrage intensified. New evidence surfaced of a $100,000 bribery pool.

In 1912, the Senate voted that his election had been procured through corruption and declared his seat vacant.

Technically, he wasn’t expelled. The Senate ruled he had never been legitimately elected in the first place.

But the public saw what mattered:

A Senate seat could be bought.

I know some of you will be shocked to learn that it was corruption in Illinois that finally broke the grip state legislatures had on the U.S. Senate.

And we thought Rod Blagojevich describing Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat as “golden” was a modern innovation.

It turns out Senate seats were always worth cash to some people.

The response was structural.

In 1913, the country ratified the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, transferring the power to choose senators from statehouse insiders directly to voters.

Corruption had become undeniable.

So the Constitution changed.

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The Wealth Question Was Structural, Too

At the same time, reformers confronted economic imbalance.

The Supreme Court had struck down a federal income tax in 1895. That left tariffs — taxes on consumption — as the primary revenue source.

Working families paid. The wealthiest industrialists largely did not. So, reformers passed the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.

It did one thing: made a federal income tax constitutional.

Its purpose was blunt. Shift the burden upward. Make the wealthy pay their share. The public believed the elite were gaming the system. So the system was amended.

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And Then Democracy Expanded

Seven years later, the country ratified the 19th Amendment.

No incremental reform. No symbolic nod. Women gained the right to vote. Half the population gained political power overnight.

That era wasn’t about policy refinement. It was about democratic legitimacy. When trust eroded, Americans amended the structure.

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Obama. Trump. Same Demand.

Fast forward a century.

One day, historians may look at the elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump and see something similar.

Different candidates. Different coalitions.

Same demand.

Disruption.

A shake-up.

A belief that a president could fix what felt broken. It turns out no single president can repair structural corrosion. Because the corrosion isn’t personal.

It’s systemic.

And systemic problems require structural repair. Which brings us back to this week.

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The First Crack: The Pardon Power

Which brings us to today — and the beginnings of a Congressional awakening on reform.

When Americans saw Senate seats bought in statehouses, they didn’t merely punish politicians.

They changed the Constitution.

Now, when Americans see presidential pardon authority exercised in ways that feel self-protective or transactional, the instinct is similar:

Is this power too unconstrained?

A proposed constitutional amendment now circulating in Congress would allow lawmakers to nullify a presidential pardon.

Under the proposal, 20 House members and five senators could force a vote. It would require a two-thirds majority in both chambers to overturn the pardon — modeled on the veto override process.

That conversation would have been unthinkable not long ago.

For most of our history, the pardon power has been restrained by norms.

The Founders assumed character would constrain abuse.

That assumption now feels fragile.

I’m not sure this amendment goes far enough. I would consider a constitutional pardon board — removing unilateral authority altogether.

But the point is larger than the specific language.

We are beginning to question whether certain executive powers require modern guardrails.

That’s how reform eras begin.

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What Comes Next

If this is the opening chapter of a reform cycle, three structural conversations are inevitable:

1. Guardrails on the Pardon Power

Oversight. Constitutional clarity. A check when abuse is evident.

2. Money and Transparency

In a digital age, there is no legitimate reason that election-influencing money cannot be publicly disclosed within 24 hours. If courts have constitutionalized spending, reform may require constitutional language.

Secrecy is now a choice.

3. Representation Reform

The House of Representatives has been capped at 435 members since 1911. The population has more than tripled.

That distortion fuels polarization and weakens representation.

Expanding the House.

Setting maximum district population sizes.

Mitigating extreme gerrymandering through structural rules.

If government feels distant, it may be because mathematically it is.

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Reform Is Hard. So Is Decay.

Constitutional amendments require two-thirds of Congress and ratification by 38 states.

That’s daunting.

But so was stripping state legislatures of Senate selection power.

So was imposing a federal income tax on industrial magnates.

So was doubling the electorate by granting women the vote.

Reform does not begin with consensus.

It begins with exhaustion.

And exhaustion right now is bipartisan.

As we approach America’s 250th birthday, the question isn’t whether the Constitution is sacred.

It’s whether we are willing to maintain it.

The public has twice in two decades voted for disruption.

The system hasn’t changed enough.

So the conversation is shifting from personalities to structure.

That shift is the story.

And if history is any guide, this won’t be a one-cycle debate.

It will be a decade.

Because if we don’t modernize the guardrails for the 21st century —

You think the country feels unfamiliar now?

You haven’t seen anything yet.

One sidebar this week:

On February 11, 2026, Gallup announced it would stop publishing presidential approval ratings and favorability ratings for individual political figures.

That ends an 88-year run.

Gallup began tracking presidential approval during the administration of FDR. By the time of Truman, it had become the industry’s gold standard — the baseline against which every other poll was measured.

The final Gallup approval rating, released in December 2025, showed President Trump at 36%. As of January 2026, the tracking stopped.

Gallup calls it a “strategic shift.”

Leadership ratings, they argue, are now “widely produced, aggregated, and interpreted” by other firms. They say they want to focus on long-term research into “issues and conditions that shape people’s lives.”

They will continue the Gallup Poll Social Series, the World Poll, and the Quarterly Business Review.

They’re not leaving research.

They’re leaving presidential temperature-taking.

Here’s why this is a big deal.

Presidential approval isn’t horse-race trivia.

It’s the most consistent diagnostic in modern American politics.

It tells you:

• Whether governing legitimacy is rising or falling

• Whether partisanship is hardening or softening

• Whether an outlier poll is signaling a trend — or a bad sample

Because Gallup relied heavily on live-interviewer phone surveys — increasingly rare and expensive — it provided a methodological anchor in a fragmented polling world.

If another poll looked odd, you checked Gallup.

If Gallup moved, it mattered.

That anchor is now gone.

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The Hard Question

Here’s what’s difficult to understand:

What serious public opinion institution voluntarily walks away from one of the most valuable longitudinal datasets in American political life?

Presidential approval is not a novelty metric.

It’s a temperature check.

It is also a discipline check. It forces consistency across time. It exposes drift. It provides accountability.

If Gallup believed the metric was overproduced, it could have reduced frequency. It could have reframed the reporting.

Instead, it exited the space entirely.

Gallup insists the decision is strategic, not political. There is no evidence otherwise.

But the timing — and the stakes — make clarification essential.

Are they no longer asking the question?

Or are they asking for it but no longer releasing it publicly?

Those are very different choices.

One is a research shift.

The other is an opacity decision.

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The Broader Impact

“Gallup poll” isn’t quite Kleenex — but it’s close.

For nearly a century, it served as the country’s political thermometer.

In an era when institutional trust is already strained, removing one of the longest-running public benchmarks of presidential standing is not minor.

Transparency is not just something we demand from elected officials.

It’s something we expect from the institutions that measure them.

Ending an 88-year temperature check deserves more than a press release.

It deserves clarity.