I’m here to give you a glimpse of a future that I think none of us expected. It’s a future where AIs are governed by laws, not by programs that try to contain and control them.

First, my secret: I see the future by living in it. I am spending the equivalent of $122k/month of API token spend, or about $4,000 per day, using 21 Claude Max accounts, a number that has been growing steadily at 2 per week. I’m using them to build my video game, Wyvern, which I’ve worked on for 30 years, and now it’s ready to fly.

For ten weeks, I’ve used Claude Fable 5 exclusively for all my design and planning, and also for agents that interface with humans. I have built a team of 18 “officer” seats, all Heads of This and That, all long-lived Fable instances. I also have mostly-headless Sol and Opus fleets, for implementation, reviews, and monitoring. Fable runs them.

I am running an organization of around 50–60 agents, five of whom are interfacing with around 10 humans in the outside world: myself, my 5-person core game design team, my accountant, my chief of staff, and a few others. Only Fable is allowed to talk to humans, via Slack and email.

This essay continues on my own site — the whole thing, with the illustrations, is here:
https://yegge.ai/essays/fences-not-sandboxes/

New essays land at yegge.ai first from now on, along with the archive of everything back to 2004 and the weekly Wheelhouse comics.

This article was previously published as part of The Reconstruction Papers. The entire book is available in print and as a PDF.

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Democrats have controlled the House, Senate, and White House twice this century, and both times focused on policy. In Obama’s first two years (2009–10), they quickly moved to address the financial crisis, then turned to healthcare. In Biden’s first two years (2021–22), they passed COVID relief, then concentrated on infrastructure and climate. If Democrats manage a trifecta in 2029—a live possibility given Trump’s and the Republicans’ unpopularity—they need to prioritize democracy and power, not policy.

Power makes policy possible, and it is necessary to make policy last. Cynically grabbing power for its own sake or breaking the law to get it is undemocratic, but using the power granted by laws and elections is necessary to make democracy work. The 2010 Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (which focused on climate and green energy) were impactful, but the second Trump presidency has undermined both, in some cases illegally. Yet Democrats can’t do much about that because they lack institutional control.

Whenever Democrats do gain control of government, ideally in 2029, they should first set policy aside—and the protracted debates that come with it—and instead make a few emergency measures their top concern. In particular, they should pass a new Voting Rights Act, tackle the corruption within the Supreme Court, and prosecute Trump administration lawbreakers.

Everything must be within constitutional bounds and enacted by legal means. A rule-of-law society cannot be (re)built with lawbreaking. As Gandhi argued, the nature of the seed shapes the nature of the tree.

Follow constitutional processes, but don’t get hamstrung by adhering to norms that are already shattered. The priority is liberal democracy, not being “fair” to Republicans, especially not when “fairness” is defined as granting Republicans special advantages.

Use the power the Constitution bestows on the congressional majority. That will likely require reforming the filibuster in the Senate, but this is a perfect example of a shattered norm Democrats shouldn’t feel obligated to honor. It’s not a law; it’s a Senate-invented rule that takes a simple majority to change and only became a de facto sixty-vote threshold in the late 20th century. Even then, the sixty-vote supermajority is only for passing things, and it takes fifty votes to stop things via defunding, so the standard benefits the party that wants to destroy at the expense of the party that wants to build. And Republicans have changed the rule to fifty votes whenever they really want to do something, such as confirm Supreme Court Justices. One Senate-invented rule says you need sixty votes; another Senate-invented rule says a simple majority can get around that. There’s no reason to treat the former as sacrosanct. Prioritizing an outdated proceduralism has undermined efforts to correct democratic backsliding in other countries.¹

This is about the institutions of government and national power, not the “permanent campaign” or “winning the news cycle.” Dismiss complaints from Republicans, who forfeited all benefit of the doubt by facilitating Trump’s lawbreaking. Ignore pearl-clutching by media figures who treat pro-democracy reforms as equivalent to authoritarian attacks. Move quickly and do multiple things at once, getting these reforms in place to leave time in the first two years to enact policy, and to ensure there’s enough time for states to implement them for the next election.

All of the following can be done with control of the presidency and simple majorities in the House and Senate.

DC and Puerto Rico statehood

Washington, DC, has a higher population than Vermont and Wyoming. Puerto Rico has a higher population than eighteen U.S. states. Both are full of American citizens subject to federal taxation but denied representation in Congress. Of the thirty-six U.S. senators from the eighteen states smaller than Puerto Rico, twenty-three are Republicans, giving the party a disproportionate advantage.

The main argument against statehood, especially for DC, is that voters there would likely elect Democrats, which would be unfair to Republicans since there’s no potential state likely to vote GOP. It makes sense why Republicans want to keep these citizens disenfranchised, but why would Democrats go against basic principles of democracy and give Republicans unwarranted power at the same time?

Hold a statehood referendum in Puerto Rico and honor the people’s choice. Change the size of the federal district to encompass the area immediately around the National Mall and make the rest of DC an independent state. That would also give the DC governor, not the president, control of the DC National Guard, insulating it from Trumpist exploitation.

If Democrats had passed DC and Puerto Rico statehood in 2021, America could have had four additional Democratic senators and up to five more Democratic representatives (though it’s always possible Republicans would win some of the four House seats from Puerto Rico). Democrats would control the Senate, and Republicans’ margin in the House would be just two, leading to at least some check on Trump’s second-term abuses.

Voting rights

The U.S. needs a new Voting Rights Act, in part because the Supreme Court gutted the existing one (more on that below). It should honor basic principles of democracy, guaranteeing citizens an inalienable right to vote for their representatives in government with minimal burdens.

Guarantee access

Require all states to allow at least two weeks of early voting, provide mail-in ballots, and use other methods to make voting easily accessible. Ensure a sufficient number of polling locations, based on both population and distance.

Also, require states to begin processing ballots as soon as they receive them, which speeds up reporting. That’s modeled after Florida’s successful reforms following the Bush-Gore problems in 2000. Early processing also counteracts the “red mirage” trick Trump tried to pull in 2020, wherein less densely populated areas reported vote counts first and cities took a while, creating the illusion that the Republican was winning before the Democrat “somehow” came from behind, which Trumpists used to make up false accusations of fraud.

Outlaw gerrymandering

The process of partisan state legislatures redrawing voting districts to give themselves a disproportionate number of seats is corrosive to democracy, and Trump is openly trying to use it to rig the 2026 midterms. Racial gerrymandering is illegal under the Voting Rights Act, but Republicans in Texas and other states have gotten around that by calling their schemes partisan gerrymandering, even though they have an evident racial component. Update the law to outlaw partisan gerrymandering as well. And reinstall preclearance for states with a history of discrimination, which the Supreme Court ended in Shelby County v. Holder (2013). If any state violates the new Voting Rights Act, hand its districting process over to a nonpartisan commission that emphasizes geography rather than expected electoral outcome.

For example, in 2022, Republicans in Tennessee divvied up Nashville—which has a much higher percentage of nonwhite voters and Democrats than rural parts of the state—into parts of other districts with enough Republican-heavy areas to effectively leave hundreds of thousands of Nashville voters without anyone representing their interests in Congress.²

Expand the House of Representatives

The number has been set at 435 for more than a hundred years, though it changed multiple times before then to account for population adjustments. It was 30,000 per representative at the start and is now up to 760,000 each. The House is supposed to be closer to the people. Splitting every current congressional district into multiple parts would make each representative more responsive and would be easier than trying to reverse gerrymandering while keeping the same number.

These Voting Rights reforms may not inherently benefit Democrats—Republicans won the 2024 House popular vote by more than 3.8 million—but they unquestionably benefit democracy and representation. And that undermines the Republican Party’s current effort to lock in authoritarian rule supported by a numerical minority.

Districts drawn to be “safe seats” leave Republicans in blue states and Democrats in red states insufficiently represented, and strengthen the inaccurate impression that various states are uniform. An expanded House will make Congress look more like the mostly purple country it’s supposed to represent. Since each state’s Electoral College votes come from the total House and Senate seats, which gives low-population states disproportionate advantage, expanding the House will make presidential elections more representative too, and better representation will make various types of voters less likely to become disillusioned with democracy.

Judicial reform

None of those reforms are possible with a Supreme Court dominated by hyperpartisan ideologues who put Republican Party power above the plain text of the law.

We need a new Voting Rights Act because the Roberts Court gutted the last one without a constitutional basis. Congress renewed the Voting Rights Act multiple times, including in 2006, but the Supreme Court undid parts of it on the grounds that a majority of Justices thought the provisions against racist restrictions on voting weren’t needed anymore.

That’s the legislature’s job, not the judiciary’s, but the Court made up something with no basis in law called the “major questions doctrine.” Formalized in West Virginia v. EPA (2022), the doctrine says that an issue of “vast economic and political significance” requires more explicit language from Congress and restricts Congress’s ability to delegate power to executive-branch agencies. Except there’s no legal or objective basis to determine “vast economic and political significance”; it’s entirely up to the Justices. The result has been more racist restrictions on voting, but that hasn’t caused the Roberts Court to revisit its stance, presumably because the majority likes racist restrictions on voting that benefit the Republican Party.

In December 2025, the Supreme Court majority relied on the “shadow docket”—through which they issue a ruling pending further litigation—to let Texas use a gerrymandered congressional map that a district court struck down as racially motivated. The unsigned decision said the lower court erred by not assuming Texas enacted this unusual off-year redistricting in good faith, pretending that court’s extensive fact-finding otherwise did not count.

A big reason America needs a new reconstruction is that the Roberts Court changed the Constitution to allow Trump to become president again. The Fourteenth Amendment states that anyone who “engaged in insurrection” is barred from federal office “but Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” The Supreme Court decided that an insurrectionist can hold office unless Congress directly votes to bar them. It also ruled that a majority of the House impeaching Trump for “incitement to insurrection,” with a fifty-seven-senator majority in agreement, doesn’t count as Congress identifying him as someone who engaged in insurrection. (It takes sixty-seven senators to convict for impeachment, but the Fourteenth Amendment says nothing about impeachment or conviction.)

Then when Trump faced criminal prosecutions for crimes relating to his 2020-21 coup attempt, and for mishandling classified documents afterward, the Supreme Court made up a concept of “official acts” and said the president cannot be prosecuted for them, upending more than 200 years of legal text, precedent, and common sense.

The Roberts Court majority has violated every reasonable legal philosophy, liberal or conservative. The institution must be brought back into the constitutional fold or it will undo pro-democracy reforms, along with any policy the majority personally dislikes.

Congress should expand the court and require Supreme Court Justices to accept a judicial code of ethics. Currently, the standard is that ethics apply only to lower courts, and public evidence³ that Justices accepted expensive gifts⁴ from rich people with business before the Court doesn’t count.⁵ Conflicts of interest should legally require judges to recuse themselves from a given case, and the laws should state that impeachment is called for if they don’t.

To ensure this isn’t blocked by corrupt Justices, expand the Supreme Court from nine seats to thirteen. Thirteen Justices would match the current number of Courts of Appeals, realigning those totals as they were from 1869 to 1911 (when the Supreme Court was first set at nine Justices). Underlining that this is a pro-democracy reform, not a primarily partisan plan, reform could include staggered eighteen-year term limits, so that control of the Court is less a contest of who lives the longest.⁶

Republicans and pearl-clutchers will denounce this as court packing, but that’s another good example of an already shattered norm it would be a mistake to follow. Under the law, the size of the Supreme Court is determined by Congress, and Congress has changed it multiple times in U.S. history. Republicans artificially changed its size to eight seats in 2016 after Antonin Scalia died, with the GOP-controlled Senate refusing to consider any nominee from Democratic president Barack Obama, claiming in bad faith that the Senate doesn’t take up nominations in a presidential-election year. (The Senate unanimously confirmed Anthony Kennedy in 1988, a presidential-election year.) Then in October 2020, much closer to a presidential election, Senate Republicans quickly confirmed Amy Coney Barrett after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, setting the current 6-3 majority.

Republicans have also executed court-packing schemes in various states,⁷ changing state supreme court sizes in Arizona, Georgia, and, in 2026, Utah.⁸ It is stupidly self-defeating and harmful to the country for Democrats to accept a standard that Republicans can change the size of courts but they cannot, especially when they have a stronger argument to do so based on democratic and rule-of-law principles.

Accountability

Special Counsel Jack Smith was appointed to investigate Trump at the end of 2022, which gave him less than two years to do his job. If Democrats win a trifecta in 2029, they should not wait to seek accountability for what the second Trump administration has done. They should quickly create panels dedicated to these investigations, with the dual mandate of bringing the full truth to light and making referrals to a reformed Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.

They should not even wait until 2029. Any chamber that the Democrats control in 2027 should start building the case against Trump officials, and Trump himself, using the subpoena and investigative powers of Congress.

If Democrats hold the House, they should seek impeachment for both Trump and most of his Cabinet. MAGA loyalists will likely block removal—which takes only thirty-four senators—no matter how egregiously Trump officials violated the Constitution and law, but impeachment is still worth it to facilitate more information gathering and provide a public process for making accusations.

If Democrats hold the Senate, they should set the trial rules as a secret ballot. Though they cannot stop a future Senate majority from publicizing the votes, voting by secret ballot may get some Republicans to act out of patriotism and principle rather than party loyalty.

Perhaps the most legally difficult impediment to accountability is the pardon power, which Trump has demonstrated willingness to use corruptly. And one potential risk to early investigative action by Congress would be telegraphing prosecutorial intent, effectively creating a public list of potential targets for accountability, some of whom Trump may have otherwise overlooked when issuing pardons at the end of this term.

The DOJ should take a narrow interpretation of the presidential pardon power and rely on the reconstituted Court to support this view. At minimum, it should declare that presidents cannot pardon themselves and that perjury in subpoenaed testimony about pardoned crimes is a separate crime not covered by the pardon.

Conclusion

Functioning democratic institutions are necessary for everything else. A corrupt, hyperpartisan Supreme Court can undo any policy achievement. An unrepresentative Congress can defund anything, or enable rather than check an authoritarian executive egregiously breaking the law. An executive branch that can commit crimes with impunity without facing accountability afterward is unlikely to remain lawful for very long.

Do these reforms first, do them fast, in the most straightforward way possible. It’s good for the country, in both the short and longer term. And it’ll be good for the Democratic Party against the Republican Party, yes. But that’s only because Democrats stand for liberal democracy and Republicans currently oppose it.

1. Sławomir Sierakowski, “Democracy After Illiberalism: A Warning From Poland,” Journal of Democracy, July 2024.
2. Andrew Witherspoon and Sam Levine, “A Masterclass in Election-Rigging: How Republicans ‘Dismembered’ a Democratic Stronghold,” The Guardian, January 26, 2022.
3. Gabriel Cortés and Kevin Breuninger, “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Accepted Gifts Worth Millions of Dollars Over 20 Years, Analysis Finds,” CNBC, June 6, 2024.
4. Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski, “Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court,” ProPublica, June 20, 2023.
5. Zach Schonfeld, “Thomas, Alito Go on the Attack Over Supreme Court Ethics,” The Hill, August 31, 2023.
6. “Term Limits,” Fix the Court, February 6, 2025.
7. Andrew Witherspoon and Sam Levine, “A Masterclass in Election-Rigging: How Republicans ‘Dismembered’ a Democratic Stronghold,” The Guardian, January 26, 2022.
8. Ryan Bittan, Abigail Jones, and Lindsay Aerts, “Gov. Cox Signs First Bills of 2026 Legislative Session, Including a Bill That Expands Utah’s Supreme Court,” ABC4 Utah, January 31, 2026.

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July 31st, 2026: If you're interested in how a ladder is, famously, a degenerate case of stairs - may i refer you to the title text on this documentary comic strip starring dinosaurs. – Ryan

Here is a more honest landscape of how prices have changed year-over-year in the U.S., based on the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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On May 14, Hawaii’s state legislature recorded an unexpected victory for opponents of corporate power: when Hawaii’s State Senate Bill 2471 goes into effect in 2027, it will be illegal for corporations to spend money to influence elections in Hawaii. This will be the first test of a legal strategy focused on state corporate charters and the powers they grant to “artificial persons.” 

Along with proposed ballot initiatives in other states like Montana, Hawaii’s new law removes political spending from the set of powers granted to corporations under state law. This novel strategy represents a creative effort to limit corporate power, and could be a model for pro-democracy advocates who should be looking for opportunities to expand the legal field of play and put the forces of reaction and oligarchy on the defensive.

Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, opponents of corporate election influence have looked for ways to stem the relentless growth of corporate donations to Political Action Committees (PACs) and “dark money”—money raised by anonymous donors and purportedly spent independently of candidates. These funds are typically donated to 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations, which can accept anonymous donations, and that then funnel the funds to PACs, avoiding any transparency rules which apply to PACs and candidates. Hawaii’s law is aimed at curbing this spending by amending the law which defines the powers of for-profit corporations as well as 501(c)(4)s, and any other “artificial person” created by legal fiat—including unions and non-profits. State law generally defines the powers granted to these institutions quite broadly, but with this law Hawaii’s legislature has simply carved out political spending and explicitly removed it from the list of granted powers.

Many believed it would take a Constitutional amendment to limit corporate campaign spending given the sweeping nature of the Citizens United decision. But legal scholar Vincent Buccola argued otherwise in a 2016 paper. Buccola’s argument is that states grant powers to corporations via their corporate charters. Early in American legal history, corporate charters were granted case-by-case to specific businesses by the state legislature. Then in the nineteenth century states competed for business by adopting uniform corporate charters which granted expansive powers. But states never gave up the right to define the powers given to corporations. Hence they have the right to remove political spending from these powers. 

Buccola’s legal theory was picked up by Tom Moore of the Center for American Progress, who called it the “Corporate Power Reset.” “The Court has held that states may define, limit, or revoke corporate powers for any reason, or for no reason at all,” wrote Moore, drawing on a decision in Greenwood v. Freight Co. from 1882 which held “That body [the state legislature] need give no reason for its action in the matter.” In other words, there are essentially no Constitutional limits on a state’s ability to regulate the powers given to corporations. And this power extends to not-for-profit entities such as 501(c)(4)s, and even to corporations chartered in other states. According to Moore, the Supreme Court’s decision in Paul v. Virginia in 1869 held that states can decline to grant powers even to entities founded outside their borders.

The corporate power reset was first proposed in a state ballot initiative in Montana by a bipartisan group called the Transparent Election Initiative led by former state Commissioner of Political Practices Jeff Mangan. Mangan dubbed the ballot measure “The Montana Plan,” grounding the plan in Montana’s history of anti-corruption measures. For a full century before Citizens United, corporations were banned from spending money in Montana elections thanks to the state’s Corrupt Practices Act. 

Montana’s Corrupt Practices Act was passed in 1912 against the backdrop of a wave of Progressive Era reforms, and a series of scandals linked to Montana’s infamous “copper kings”—mining magnates such as William A. Clark, who bought himself a US Senate seat in 1899 by bribing state legislators. At the turn of the century, a group called the Montana People’s Power League formed to advocate for primary elections, the direct election of senators, and limitations on political spending. Rather than trust the compromised state legislature, the League spearheaded a direct ballot initiative to pass the Corrupt Practices Act, which, among other reforms, capped total spending on political campaigns and made corporate donations to candidates illegal.

One hundred years later, the Supreme Court ruled that Montana’s Corrupt Practices Act was inconsistent with the precedent set by the Citizens United decision—Montana law violated the free speech rights of corporations. In his dissent Justice Stephen Breyer noted the unique history of corporate consolidation and corruption in Montana. Breyer argued, drawing on the plain facts of history which should have informed the court’s decision in Citizens United, “that independent expenditures by corporations did in fact lead to corruption and the appearance of corruption in Montana.” Nevertheless, the majority ruled in an unsigned decision that the Corrupt Practices Act was unconstitutional, paving the way for a sharp expansion in corporate spending in Montana’s politics.

Independent expenditures on elections totaled more than $4 billion in 2024, and in Montana outside groups spent nearly $140 million on the US Senate race between incumbent Democrat Jon Tester and successful Republican challenger Tim Sheehy. Shock at the amounts in play in a largely rural state has driven interest in the Transparent Election Initiative and the Montana Plan. As of June the initiative has collected enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, raising hopes that this November Montana may join Hawaii as the second state to attempt to limit corporate election spending since Citizens United.

With the passage of Hawaii’s state bill, and active legislation in 14 other states, it now appears that the Montana Plan is going national. It remains to be seen how the conservative-dominated Supreme Court will view this apparent end-run around the Citizens United decision. But even if it is struck down, the initiative promises to force corporate lobbyists and their allies to defend ground previously considered safe. And the terms of this particular fight favor pro-democracy advocates, since limiting election spending polls extremely well across partisan lines. It was in the interest of politicians who benefitted from corporate spending to throw up their hands and say Citizens United was the law of the land. That may be true, but if Hawaii’s legal strategy holds up, it may no longer matter.

More broadly, the corporate power reset in Hawaii and Montana should encourage liberals and pro-democracy advocates to seek out and pursue creative legal strategies drawn from our country’s long history of disputation and reform—such as the treasure trove of proposals found in Liberal Currents’ own Reconstruction Papers. If we are to reclaim some of the victories of the Reconstruction and Progressive eras we will need to choose multiple lines of attack—to “flood the zone,” if you will—so we should be agile and entrepreneurial, looking for avenues in corporate law, tax law, election law, or whatever sources are available. When a strategy appears successful, we should replicate it relentlessly in every state. The reforms of the first Progressive Era should remind us that democracy is popular, corruption is scandalous, and structural reform is possible with persistence and creativity. Hawaii and Montana are now showing the way toward a resurgence of pro-democracy, anti-corporate, populist reform. It’s up to the rest of the country to follow.

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Featured image is "Protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol on March 12, 2011," CC BY-SA 2.0 Lena 2011.

Explanation: What's connecting these two volcanoes? In ancient folklore, the two volcanoes, Parinacota (left) and Pomerape (right), are connected by representing a mythical prince and princess who engaged in a forbidden romance. Beneath the ground, the two peaks are not known to be connected by a common pool of hot magma, and neither volcano has erupted in the past 1000 years. Above the ground, there is usually nothing in the sky that connects them -- except if you use careful timing and look from a specific location. The featured well-planned image was captured from Bolivia in mid-April with a series of camera exposures taken on the same day and from the same location. Then, Barnard's Loop appeared to connect the volcanic peaks. Also visible in the image is the Orion Nebula in the center, the star Betelgeuse on the right, and the Rosette Nebula on the upper right.