Who Has the Power?
Democracy rarely dies with tanks in the streets. It changes quietly — through small, procedural shifts that feel ordinary. Authority inches away from the public. Oversight softens. Decisions once rooted in consent are reframed as efficiency or necessity. Nothing sounds alarming. Yet the balance of power slowly tilts.
Across the United States, the question is no longer academic. Who controls elections? Who defines the limits of protest? Who decides which...Click to read in English or Spanish
Crisis, Fear & Executive Power
A president stood before Congress ready to draft American workers into the U.S. military. Not enemy soldiers, not foreign threats — railroad engineers.
In May 1946, with World War II barely behind the country, Harry S. Truman asked lawmakers for emergency authority that could have forced striking railroad workers into Army uniforms and ordered them back to their jobs under threat of court-martial. The nation was already strained. Wartime price controls had been lifted and inflation surged almost overnight. Factories were shifting from tanks to consumer goods. Millions of returning soldiers were searching for work. That year, nearly five million workers across multiple industries went on strike, demanding wage increases after years of sacrifice under a no-strike pledge during the war. When 400,000 railroad workers walked out, the consequences were immediate. Trains stopped moving freight. Coal shipments stalled. Food deliveries backed up. In a country still almost entirely dependent on rail transport, the strike threatened to choke off vital supplies within days. Truman had already seized control of the railroads in an effort to force a settlement. It didn’t work. So he escalated, going to Congress to request the power to draft strikers into military service if necessary.