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Los Angeles Times
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
America's long history of checks and balances is being tested by Trump like rarely before
ATLANTA — It's what one historian calls an 'elaborate, clunky machine,' one that's been fundamental to American democracy for more than two centuries. The principle of checks and balances is rooted in the Constitution's design of a national government with three distinct, coequal branches. President Trump in his first 100 days tested that system like rarely before, signing dozens of executive orders, closing or sharply reducing government agencies funded by Congress, and denigrating judges who have issued dozens of rulings against him. 'The framers were acutely aware of competing interests, and they had great distrust of concentrated authority,' said Dartmouth College professor John Carey, an expert on American democracy. 'That's where the idea came from.' Their road map has mostly prevented control from falling into 'one person's hands,' Carey said. But he warned that the system depends on 'people operating in good faith ... and not necessarily exercising power to the fullest extent imaginable.' Here's a look at checks and balances and previous tests across U.S. history. The foundational checks-and-balances fight: President John Adams made last-minute appointments before he left office in 1801. His successor, Thomas Jefferson, and Secretary of State James Madison ignored them. William Marbury, an Adams justice of the peace appointee, asked the Supreme Court to compel Jefferson and Madison to honor Adams' decisions. Chief Justice John Marshall concluded in 1803 that the commissions became legitimate with Adams' signature and, thus, Madison acted illegally by shelving them. Marshall, however, stopped short of ordering anything. Marbury had sued under a 1789 law that made the Supreme Court the trial court in the dispute. Marshall's opinion voided that law because it gave justices — who almost exclusively hear appeals — more power than the Constitution afforded them. The split decision asserted the court's role in interpreting congressional acts — and striking them down — while also adjudicating executive branch actions. Congress and President George Washington chartered the First Bank of the United States in 1791. Federalists, led by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, favored a strong central government and wanted a national bank that could lend the government money. Anti-Federalists, led by Jefferson and Madison, wanted less centralized power and argued Congress had no authority to charter a bank. But they did not ask the courts to step in. Andrew Jackson, the first populist president, loathed the bank, believing it to be a sop to the rich. Congress voted in 1832 to extend the charter, with provisions to mollify Jackson. The president vetoed the measure anyway, and Congress failed to muster the two-thirds majorities required by the Constitution to override him. In 1836, the Philadelphia-based bank became a private state bank. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus — a legal process that allows individuals to challenge their detention. That allowed federal authorities to arrest and hold people without granting due process. Lincoln said his maneuver might not be 'strictly legal' but was a 'public necessity' to protect the Union. The Supreme Court's Roger Taney, sitting as a circuit judge, declared the suspension illegal but noted he did not have the power to enforce the opinion. Congress ultimately sided with Lincoln through retroactive statutes. And the Supreme Court, in a separate 1862 case challenging other Lincoln actions, endorsed the president's argument that the office comes with inherent wartime powers not expressly allowed via the Constitution or congressional act. After the Civil War and Lincoln's assassination, 'Radical Republicans' in Congress wanted penalties on states that had seceded and on the Confederacy's leaders and combatants. They also advocated Reconstruction programs that enfranchised and elevated formerly enslaved people (the men, at least). President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean, was more lenient on Confederates and harsher to formerly enslaved people. Congress, with appropriations power, established the Freedmen's Bureau to assist newly freed Black Americans. Johnson, with pardon power, repatriated former Confederates. He also limited Freedmen's Bureau authority to seize Confederates' assets. For a century, nearly all federal jobs were executive branch political appointments: revolving doors after every presidential transition. In 1883, Congress stepped in with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Changes started with some posts being filled through examinations rather than political favor. Congress added to the law over generations, developing the civil service system that Trump is now seeking to dismantle by reclassifying tens of thousands of government employees. His aim is to turn civil servants into political appointees or other at-will workers who are more easily dismissed from their jobs. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles called for an international body to bring countries together to discuss global affairs and prevent war. President Woodrow Wilson advocated for the League of Nations. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, brought the treaty to the Senate in 1919 with amendments to limit the League of Nations' influence. Wilson opposed the caveats, and the Senate fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify the treaty and join the League. After World War II, the U.S. took a lead role, with Senate support, in establishing the United Nations and the NATO alliance. Franklin D. Roosevelt met the Great Depression with large federal programs and aggressive regulatory actions, much of it approved by Democratic majorities in Congress. A conservative Supreme Court struck down some of the New Deal legislation as beyond the scope of congressional power. Roosevelt answered by proposing to expand the nine-seat court and pressuring aging justices to retire. The president's critics dubbed it 'a court-packing scheme.' He disputed the allegation. But not even the Democratic Congress seriously entertained his idea. Roosevelt ignored the unwritten rule, established by Washington, that a president serves no more than two terms. He won third and fourth terms during World War II, rankling even some of his allies. Soon after his death, a bipartisan coalition pushed the 22nd Amendment that limits presidents to being elected twice. Trump has talked about seeking a third term despite this constitutional prohibition. The Washington Post and other media exposed ties between President Richard Nixon's associates and a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel during the 1972 campaign. By summer 1974, the story ballooned into congressional hearings, court fights and plans for impeachment proceedings. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nixon in his assertion that executive privilege allowed him not to turn over potential evidence of his and top aides' roles in the cover-up — including recordings of private Oval Office conversations. Nixon resigned after a delegation of his fellow Republicans told him that Congress was poised to remove him from office. Presidents from John F. Kennedy through Nixon ratcheted up U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. But Congress never declared war in Vietnam. A 1973 deal, under Nixon, ended official American military involvement. But complete U.S. withdrawal didn't occur until more than two years later — a period during which Congress reduced funding for South Vietnam's democratic government. Congress did not cut off all money for Saigon, as some conservatives later claimed. But lawmakers refused to rubber-stamp larger administration requests, asserting a congressional check on the president's military and foreign policy agenda. A Democratic-controlled Congress overhauled the nation's health insurance system in 2010. The Affordable Care Act, in part, tried to require states to expand the Medicaid program that covers millions of children, disabled people and some low-income adults. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Congress and President Obama could not compel states to expand the program by threatening to withhold other federal money already obligated to the states under previous federal law. The court on multiple occasions has upheld other portions of the law. Republicans, even when they have controlled the White House and Capitol Hill, have been unable to repeal the act. Barrow writes for the Associated Press.
04-05-2025
- Politics
America's long history of ‘checks and balances' is being tested by Trump like rarely before
ATLANTA -- It's what one historian calls an 'elaborate, clunky machine,' one that's been fundamental to American democracy for more than two centuries. The principle of 'checks and balances' is rooted in the Constitution's design of a national government with three distinct, coequal branches. President Donald Trump in his first 100 days tested that system like rarely before, signing dozens of executive orders, closing or sharply reducing government agencies funded by Congress, and denigrating judges who have issued dozens of rulings against him. 'The framers were acutely aware of competing interests, and they had great distrust of concentrated authority,' said Dartmouth College professor John Carey, an expert on American democracy. 'That's where the idea came from.' Their road map has mostly prevented control from falling into 'one person's hands,' Carey said. But he warned that the system depends on 'people operating in good faith ... and not necessarily exercising power to the fullest extent imaginable.' Here's a look at checks and balances and previous tests across U.S. history. The foundational checks-and-balances fight: President John Adams' made last-minute appointments before he left office in 1801. His successor, Thomas Jefferson, and Secretary of State James Madison ignored them. William Marbury, an Adams justice of the peace appointee, asked the Supreme Court to compel Jefferson and Madison to honor Adams' decisions. Chief Justice John Marshall concluded in 1803 that the commissions became legitimate with Adams' signature and, thus, Madison acted illegally by shelving them. Marshall, however, stopped short of ordering anything. Marbury had sued under a 1789 law that made the Supreme Court the trial court in the dispute. Marshall's opinion voided that law because it gave justices – who almost exclusively hear appeals – more power than the Constitution afforded them. The split decision asserted the court's role in interpreting congressional acts -– and striking them down –- while also adjudicating executive branch actions. Congress and President George Washington chartered the First Bank of the United States in 1791. Federalists, led by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, favored a strong central government and wanted a national bank that could lend the government money. Anti-Federalists, led by Jefferson and Madison, wanted less centralized power and argued Congress had no authority to charter a bank. But they did not ask the courts to step in. Andrew Jackson, the first populist president, loathed the bank, believing it to be a sop to the rich. Congress voted in 1832 to extend the charter, with provisions to mollify Jackson. The president vetoed the measure anyway, and Congress failed to muster the two-thirds majorities required by the Constitution to override him. In 1836, the Philadelphia-based bank became a private state bank. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus — a legal process that allows individuals to challenge their detention. That allowed federal authorities to arrest and hold people without granting due process. Lincoln said his maneuver might not be 'strictly legal' but was a 'public necessity' to protect the Union. The Supreme Court's Roger Taney, sitting as a circuit judge, declared the suspension illegal but noted he did not have the power to enforce the opinion. Congress ultimately sided with Lincoln through retroactive statutes. And the Supreme Court, in a separate 1862 case challenging other Lincoln actions, endorsed the president's argument that the office comes with inherent wartime powers not expressly allowed via the Constitution or congressional act. After the Civil War and Lincoln's assassination, 'Radical Republicans' in Congress wanted penalties on states that had seceded and on the Confederacy's leaders and combatants. They also advocated Reconstruction programs that enfranchised and elevated formerly enslaved people (the men, at least). Johnson, a Tennessean, was more lenient on Confederates and harsher to formerly enslaved people. Congress, with appropriations power, established the Freedmen's Bureau to assist newly freed Black Americans. Johnson, with pardon power, repatriated former Confederates. He also limited Freedmen's Bureau authority to seize Confederates' assets. For a century, nearly all federal jobs were executive branch political appointments: revolving doors after every presidential transition. In 1883, Congress stepped in with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Changes started with some posts being filled through examinations rather than political favor. Congress added to the law over generations, developing the civil service system that Trump is now seeking to dismantle by reclassifying tens of thousands of government employees. His aim is to turn civil servants into political appointees or other at-will workers who are more easily dismissed from their jobs. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles called for an international body to bring countries together to discuss global affairs and prevent war. President Woodrow Wilson advocated for the League of Nations. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, brought the treaty to the Senate in 1919 with amendments to limit the League of Nation's influence. Wilson opposed the caveats, and the Senate fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify the treaty and join the League. After World War II, the U.S. took a lead role, with Senate support, in establishing the United Nations and the NATO alliance. Franklin D. Roosevelt met the Great Depression with large federal programs and aggressive regulatory actions, much of it approved by Democratic majorities in Congress. A conservative Supreme Court struck down some of the New Deal legislation as beyond the scope of congressional power. Roosevelt answered by proposing to expand the nine-seat court and pressuring aging justices to retire. The president's critics dubbed it 'a court-packing scheme.' He disputed the charge. But not even the Democratic Congress seriously entertained his idea. Roosevelt ignored the unwritten rule, established by Washington, that a president serves no more than two terms. He won third and fourth terms during World War II, rankling even some of his allies. Soon after his death, a bipartisan coalition pushed the 22nd Amendment that limits presidents to being elected twice. Trump has talked about seeking a third term despite this constitutional prohibition. The Washington Post and other media exposed ties between President Richard Nixon's associates and a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel during the 1972 campaign. By summer 1974, the story ballooned into congressional hearings, court fights and plans for impeachment proceedings. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nixon in his assertion that executive privilege allowed him not to turn over potential evidence of his and top aides' roles in the cover-up — including recordings of private Oval Office conversations. Nixon resigned after a delegation of his fellow Republicans told him that Congress was poised to remove him from office. Presidents from John F. Kennedy through Nixon ratcheted up U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. But Congress never declared war in Vietnam. A 1973 deal, under Nixon, ended official American military involvement. But complete U.S. withdrawal didn't occur until more than two years later – a period during which Congress reduced funding for South Vietnam's democratic government. Congress did not cut off all money for Saigon, as some conservatives later claimed. But lawmakers refused to rubber-stamp larger administration requests, asserting a congressional check on the president's military and foreign policy agenda. A Democratic-controlled Congress overhauled the nation's health insurance system in 2010. The Affordable Care Act, in part, tried to require states to expand the Medicaid program that covers millions of children, disabled people and some low-income adults. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Congress and President Barack Obama could not compel states to expand the program by threatening to withhold other federal money already obligated to the states under previous federal law. The court on multiple occasions has upheld other portions of the law. Republicans, even when they have controlled the White House and Capitol Hill, have been unable to repeal the act.
Associated Press
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
America's long history of ‘checks and balances' is being tested by Trump like rarely before
ATLANTA (AP) — It's what one historian calls an 'elaborate, clunky machine,' one that's been fundamental to American democracy for more than two centuries. The principle of 'checks and balances' is rooted in the Constitution's design of a national government with three distinct, coequal branches. President Donald Trump in his first 100 days tested that system like rarely before, signing dozens of executive orders, closing or sharply reducing government agencies funded by Congress, and denigrating judges who have issued dozens of rulings against him. 'The framers were acutely aware of competing interests, and they had great distrust of concentrated authority,' said Dartmouth College professor John Carey, an expert on American democracy. 'That's where the idea came from.' Their road map has mostly prevented control from falling into 'one person's hands,' Carey said. But he warned that the system depends on 'people operating in good faith ... and not necessarily exercising power to the fullest extent imaginable.' Here's a look at checks and balances and previous tests across U.S. history. A fight over Jefferson ignoring Adams' appointments The foundational checks-and-balances fight: President John Adams' made last-minute appointments before he left office in 1801. His successor, Thomas Jefferson, and Secretary of State James Madison ignored them. William Marbury, an Adams justice of the peace appointee, asked the Supreme Court to compel Jefferson and Madison to honor Adams' decisions. Chief Justice John Marshall concluded in 1803 that the commissions became legitimate with Adams' signature and, thus, Madison acted illegally by shelving them. Marshall, however, stopped short of ordering anything. Marbury had sued under a 1789 law that made the Supreme Court the trial court in the dispute. Marshall's opinion voided that law because it gave justices – who almost exclusively hear appeals – more power than the Constitution afforded them. The split decision asserted the court's role in interpreting congressional acts -– and striking them down –- while also adjudicating executive branch actions. Hamilton, Jackson and national banks Congress and President George Washington chartered the First Bank of the United States in 1791. Federalists, led by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, favored a strong central government and wanted a national bank that could lend the government money. Anti-Federalists, led by Jefferson and Madison, wanted less centralized power and argued Congress had no authority to charter a bank. But they did not ask the courts to step in. Andrew Jackson, the first populist president, loathed the bank, believing it to be a sop to the rich. Congress voted in 1832 to extend the charter, with provisions to mollify Jackson. The president vetoed the measure anyway, and Congress failed to muster the two-thirds majorities required by the Constitution to override him. In 1836, the Philadelphia-based bank became a private state bank. Lincoln and due process During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus — a legal process that allows individuals to challenge their detention. That allowed federal authorities to arrest and hold people without granting due process. Lincoln said his maneuver might not be 'strictly legal' but was a 'public necessity' to protect the Union. The Supreme Court's Roger Taney, sitting as a circuit judge, declared the suspension illegal but noted he did not have the power to enforce the opinion. Congress ultimately sided with Lincoln through retroactive statutes. And the Supreme Court, in a separate 1862 case challenging other Lincoln actions, endorsed the president's argument that the office comes with inherent wartime powers not expressly allowed via the Constitution or congressional act. Reconstruction: Johnson vs. Congress After the Civil War and Lincoln's assassination, 'Radical Republicans' in Congress wanted penalties on states that had seceded and on the Confederacy's leaders and combatants. They also advocated Reconstruction programs that enfranchised and elevated formerly enslaved people (the men, at least). Johnson, a Tennessean, was more lenient on Confederates and harsher to formerly enslaved people. Congress, with appropriations power, established the Freedmen's Bureau to assist newly freed Black Americans. Johnson, with pardon power, repatriated former Confederates. He also limited Freedmen's Bureau authority to seize Confederates' assets. Spoils system vs. civil service For a century, nearly all federal jobs were executive branch political appointments: revolving doors after every presidential transition. In 1883, Congress stepped in with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Changes started with some posts being filled through examinations rather than political favor. Congress added to the law over generations, developing the civil service system that Trump is now seeking to dismantle by reclassifying tens of thousands of government employees. His aim is to turn civil servants into political appointees or other at-will workers who are more easily dismissed from their jobs. Wilson's League of Nations After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles called for an international body to bring countries together to discuss global affairs and prevent war. President Woodrow Wilson advocated for the League of Nations. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, brought the treaty to the Senate in 1919 with amendments to limit the League of Nation's influence. Wilson opposed the caveats, and the Senate fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify the treaty and join the League. After World War II, the U.S. took a lead role, with Senate support, in establishing the United Nations and the NATO alliance. FDR and court packing Franklin D. Roosevelt met the Great Depression with large federal programs and aggressive regulatory actions, much of it approved by Democratic majorities in Congress. A conservative Supreme Court struck down some of the New Deal legislation as beyond the scope of congressional power. Roosevelt answered by proposing to expand the nine-seat court and pressuring aging justices to retire. The president's critics dubbed it 'a court-packing scheme.' He disputed the charge. But not even the Democratic Congress seriously entertained his idea. Presidential term limits Roosevelt ignored the unwritten rule, established by Washington, that a president serves no more than two terms. He won third and fourth terms during World War II, rankling even some of his allies. Soon after his death, a bipartisan coalition pushed the 22nd Amendment that limits presidents to being elected twice. Trump has talked about seeking a third term despite this constitutional prohibition. Nixon and Watergate The Washington Post and other media exposed ties between President Richard Nixon's associates and a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel during the 1972 campaign. By summer 1974, the story ballooned into congressional hearings, court fights and plans for impeachment proceedings. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nixon in his assertion that executive privilege allowed him not to turn over potential evidence of his and top aides' roles in the cover-up — including recordings of private Oval Office conversations. Nixon resigned after a delegation of his fellow Republicans told him that Congress was poised to remove him from office. Leaving Vietnam Presidents from John F. Kennedy through Nixon ratcheted up U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. But Congress never declared war in Vietnam. A 1973 deal, under Nixon, ended official American military involvement. But complete U.S. withdrawal didn't occur until more than two years later – a period during which Congress reduced funding for South Vietnam's democratic government. Congress did not cut off all money for Saigon, as some conservatives later claimed. But lawmakers refused to rubber-stamp larger administration requests, asserting a congressional check on the president's military and foreign policy agenda. The Affordable Care Act A Democratic-controlled Congress overhauled the nation's health insurance system in 2010. The Affordable Care Act, in part, tried to require states to expand the Medicaid program that covers millions of children, disabled people and some low-income adults. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Congress and President Barack Obama could not compel states to expand the program by threatening to withhold other federal money already obligated to the states under previous federal law. The court on multiple occasions has upheld other portions of the law. Republicans, even when they have controlled the White House and Capitol Hill, have been unable to repeal the act.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What Trump Should Learn From the Impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase
The first federal official of any kind to be impeached and removed from office was a federal judge from New Hampshire named John Pickering. He was an appointee of President George Washington and was generally aligned politically with the Federalists. After Thomas Jefferson was elected president in 1800, the Jeffersonians went on the attack against what they saw as untoward Federalist influence over the federal courts. Pickering was vulnerable. He had faced credible past accusations of both mental instability and drunkenness. Did they count as "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," which is what Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution requires for a judge to be "removed from Office"? Or perhaps he had run afoul of Article III, Section 1, which states that "the Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior." Either way, a majority of Congress wanted him out and the requisite two-thirds majority was present in the Senate to do it. Pickering got the boot in 1803. That set the stage for the real showdown over the power to impeach judges. Emboldened by the successful removal of Pickering, the Jeffersonians turned their glare on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. An outspoken Federalist, Chase especially drew the ire of the Jeffersonians because of his role as the presiding trial judge in several Sedition Act prosecutions carried out by the Federalist administration of President John Adams. Among those prosecutions was the 1800 trial of a bombastic political writer named James Callender. An ally of the Jeffersonians (in fact, Callender was partially bankrolled by Jefferson himself), Callender had published a scathing attack on both the Federalists in general and Adams in particular, describing Adams as "mentally deranged" and a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." That bit of election-year mudslinging landed Callender behind bars under the censorial terms of the Sedition Act, which the Adams administration happily enforced against him. Later, after Jefferson had defeated Adams to become president, Callender was pardoned by Jefferson. The articles of impeachment filed against Chase in 1804 mixed legal complaints with political ones. One of them described Chase's conduct as the presiding judge in Callender's trial as being motivated by a "spirit of persecution and injustice," as well as an "intent to oppress, and procure the conviction of, the said Callender." Another article of impeachment charged Chase with conduct "highly indecent, extra-judicial, and tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan." But two-thirds of the Senate did not buy it. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that enough senators, including a sufficient number of Jeffersonians, recognized the dangerous precedent that they would be setting if they removed a sitting member of the Supreme Court over what appeared to be mostly political disagreements. So Chase kept his job. He has remained the only Supreme Court justice ever to be impeached. The Chase affair offers certain lessons for our own politically fraught times. Much like Jefferson, for example, President Donald Trump clearly likes the idea of purging the federal bench of judges who disagree with him. But Trump may find out, just as Jefferson did, that even some of his own allies lack the stomach for waging such an unsavory attack on the independence of the judiciary. After all, if the Republicans under Trump actually succeeded in impeaching and removing a federal judge for political reasons, the Democrats will undoubtedly repay them in kind at the first opportunity. It will be a race to the bottom that does lasting—and perhaps even irreparable—damage to the judicial branch. In a way, this is all quite similar to the fate of Franklin Roosevelt's notorious court-packing plan of 1937. Roosevelt's scheme for undermining the independence of the judiciary failed in large part because members of Roosevelt's own party worked against it. Will any members of Trump's party do the same if the impeachment threats ever go beyond the talking point stage? Currently, that question is moot because the Republicans lack the requisite two-thirds majority of votes in the Senate needed to remove anybody via impeachment. Time will tell if that unforgiving math alone is enough to prevent Trump from following any further in Jefferson's missteps. The post What Trump Should Learn From the Impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase appeared first on
National Geographic
27-03-2025
- Politics
- National Geographic
What is the Alien Enemies Act? Here's how the 1798 law was invoked in the past.
The history behind the Alien Enemies Act The Alien Enemies Act was one of four 1798 laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts—a set of controversial statutes that emerged during a tenuous moment in the fledgling nation's history. In the wake of the Revolutionary War, the U.S. attempted to claim neutrality on the world stage. Yet it still faced a military threat from Great Britain, which was seizing American ships to use in its ongoing war with France. In 1794, the U.S. signed a treaty with Britain to stop the seizures and improve Anglo-American relations, but the treaty strained the American alliance with revolutionary France. Back at home, American lawmakers were split on which nation to support. Members of the emerging Democratic-Republican party, led by Thomas Jefferson, wanted the U.S. to ally with France, while Federalists, led by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, thought the U.S. should align itself with Great Britain. Meanwhile, French privateers began seizing American merchant vessels in retaliation. An attempt to resolve the dispute through diplomatic means backfired when French diplomats demanded bribes. News of failed negotiations, corrupt diplomats, and ongoing French seizures of American merchant ships pushed the nation to the brink of war against France. The Federalists, who controlled Congress, feared Democratic-Republicans' French sympathies—and looked with suspicion on non-citizen residents they thought of as 'aliens.' Unlike those who arrived before them, these new immigrants were largely poor and had not been in America during the Revolution or at the time of the country's founding, leading to debates on their ability to self-govern and their potential political leanings. Federalists worried that these immigrants would join the opposition party once they became citizens—and that they would lend their support to France if the nations went to war. Those fears spurred the Federalist Congress to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts, slow down the citizenship process, and give the president authority to exert control over non-citizen residents during wartime. The Sedition Act criminalized anti-government speech, while the Naturalization Act increased the residency requirement for potential citizens from five to 14 years. The Alien Friends Act allowed the president to deport any non-citizen considered dangerous, and the Alien Enemies Act gave the president special authority to deem entire swaths of non-citizens dangerous and restrict their civil liberties during wartime.
