American Thinker published an essay on September 17, 2026, by Jay Davidson arguing that the balance between the three branches of the federal government has tilted decisively toward the executive β and that voters, not courts or legislators, hold the remedy. The piece, titled “Which branch of government should have the most power?”, is less a neutral inquiry than a sustained argument that the answer should be none of them, or more precisely, that no branch should dominate, and that today’s arrangement violates that principle.
Davidson opens with a quotation from Thomas Jefferson about the “safe depository of the ultimate powers of society” resting with the people themselves. He treats that line as a framing device for a broader claim: that the country was designed as a constitutional republic rather than a pure democracy, and that the distinction matters because majority rule, taken too far, becomes “the tyranny of the majority over the minority.”
A hundred-year drift, in his telling
The author describes what he calls a century-long “war of ideas, principles, and philosophy” over the shape of American governance. His specific target is the administrative state β the regulators and bureaucrats who, in his account, have empowered the Executive Branch “to far outstrip the other two branches, Judicial and Legislative.”
The constitutional case he makes is straightforward. Only Congress, he writes, holds the power to tax and to enact law. That matters, in his framing, because every law, rule, regulation, fine, and tax ultimately takes something from the individual citizen. The Founders lodged that power in Congress, he argues, precisely because representatives must face voters every two or six years and be held accountable for what they impose. That accountability, not majority rule for its own sake, is what he calls “the true meaning of democracy.”
Where the system breaks down, per Davidson, is that the administrative state now issues what he characterizes as non-legislative edicts β fines and regulations β that land on citizens with the same practical effect as laws passed by elected officials. The individual, he writes, “suffers at the power of a non-elected government agent.” It is a familiar argument in conservative commentary, but Davidson presses it toward a specific conclusion about which branch should be checked first: the Executive.
The spending argument
Davidson ties the structural critique to fiscal policy. He notes that the federal government now spends well beyond its income, and cites a national debt burden of $40 trillion borne by citizens. From there, he draws an electoral rule of thumb. Voters, he suggests, should not elect anyone who campaigns on passing another law or spending another dime “to help.” Instead they should back candidates who promise to cut laws, cut taxes, and rein in bureaucrats and their regulations β a description that maps onto limiting executive-branch authority.
He adds a character test for office-seekers: any politician who lacks faith in citizens to do what is right, and who believes more laws and regulations are needed, should not be entrusted with the power an election confers.
The essay is careful to assign responsibility to citizens rather than to any institution. Davidson writes that the duty of free citizens is to decide whom to send to Congress and whom to remove, and that this decision is easier when made on principle rather than on personality or party. He returns to Jefferson at the close β “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves” β and states plainly that the ability to speak one’s mind is now more crucial to the republic than ever.
What makes the piece notable is not the diagnosis, which echoes decades of conservative and libertarian writing on the administrative state, but the way it frames the question in its title. Davidson never seriously entertains the idea that one branch should be supreme. His answer is that the original design β three equal, separate powers β was correct, that the balance has been lost, and that restoring it requires voters to prefer candidates who promise to subtract from government rather than add to it.
Whether that prescription is realistic is another matter. The essay offers no mechanism beyond the ballot box for clawing back authority that Congress has, over many decades, delegated to agencies, or that presidents of both parties have exercised through executive action. It also does not address how a citizenry he describes as insufficiently informed β he calls for being “enlightened to the gift our nation’s founding bestowed” β would reliably identify and elect the restraint-minded politicians he envisions. But as a statement of first principles, the piece is unambiguous: the branch that should have the most power is the one closest to the people, and in Davidson’s view, that means the legislative branch, answerable every two years.
American Thinker frames the essay as part of its opinion and commentary output, and closes with a fundraising appeal to readers who find its arguments persuasive. The core of Davidson’s argument, stripped of its framing, is a restatement of a durable American suspicion: that power exercised far from the voter is power exercised without consent, and that the ballot remains the only reliable check on it.
Source: www.americanthinker.com β https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/which-branch-of-government-should-have-the-most-power/