Philip Blumel: Term limits equals no kings. Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the Term Limits Movement published on June 16, 2025. This is episode number 265. Over the weekend, there were protests scheduled around the country under the banner of No Kings. The idea, of course, is that President Trump is abusing his presidential powers, particularly in the realm of immigration law enforcement. As you can imagine, abstracting from the partisan aspects of this, U.S. Term Limits is all about limiting the abuse of political power. No Kings. Absolutely. Now, what is a king? According to Merriam Webster, it is the, quote, “Male monarch of a major territorial unit, especially one whose position is hereditary and rules for life.” And what provision, more than any other in the U.S. Constitution, guarantees that the United States will never have a king? You know it, it’s the 22nd Amendment. Presidential term limits. Ratified in 1951, the 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two terms in office, whether consecutive or non consecutive. This ensures that no individual can hold the nation’s highest office indefinitely accumulating power and influence to the point of resembling a monarch.
Philip Blumel: The amendment was a direct response to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s unprecedented and very king-like four-term presidency. By setting a clear limit, the 22nd Amendment guarantees that the presidency will not become a throne. No Kings. Next, the cell door has slammed shut on someone who once resembled a king, Michael Madigan, the longest serving State House Speaker in U.S. history. The former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, age 83, was sentenced to 90 months, over seven years, on Friday for his February conviction on 10 corruption related counts. He’s also on the hook for a $2.5 million fine and three years supervised release after he serves his prison term, at which time Madigan will be over 90 years old. So what lessons can we glean from the fall of Illinois’s most powerful politician after his 50 years in office? Let’s hearken back to an episode of the No Uncertain Terms podcast in 2022 when the indictment was announced and I discussed it with Nick Tomboulides, the Executive Director of USTL.
Philip Blumel: Hey, Nick.
Nick Tomboulides: Hello. Hail to the king, King Madigan.
Philip Blumel: Oh, yes, indeed.
Nick Tomboulides: Well, not so much anymore.
Philip Blumel: No. After 25 terms in office in the House of Representatives of the State of Illinois, it looks like his next term is going to be spent in prison. You’ve heard the news.
Nick Tomboulides: That’s right. Yeah. He is joining the Orange Jumpsuit Caucus along with many of his career politician peers.
Philip Blumel: It was long incoming.
Nick Tomboulides: I can’t believe it only took 50 years to figure out that Michael Madigan, the Speaker of the Illinois House, the guy who serves the great city of Chicago, it only took 50 years to figure out that he was corrupt. Can’t believe that.
Philip Blumel: Well, he might not have been corrupt the whole 50 years, you know? I mean, usually you don’t go to office being corrupt. It takes a while. You have to get ingrained. You have to see the opportunity, you have to get filled of arrogance and hubris. And at some point over that 50-year period, probably within the first decade, he reached that point and, you know, he spent 36 years as Speaker where he had the opportunity to push people around. And of course this is what he’s going to jail for. Well, you know, he pled not guilty.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, it’s a 106-page 22-count federal indictment. It includes bribery, racketeering, the whole nine. And what the prosecutors say is this actually covers the last 10 years of Madigan’s career. They say he was using his office to lead a criminal enterprise for political benefit, using his elected position to further the goals of the criminal enterprise. That’s just the last 10 years. We don’t even know what he was doing in the 40 years before that. There could have been all kinds of criminal activity the FBI didn’t know about. But yeah, this investigation, this indictment focuses on just the last 10 years.
Philip Blumel: Right. Well, his regime has been characterized by using the power of his office to steer work to his firm and to get cronies of his hired. And not all of these things might have been illegal. But even outside of the illegal counts, there’s no question that this has been a old fashioned political machine of the type that you don’t see anymore in this precise fashion. But somehow Chicago never grew out of it until now.
Nick Tomboulides: Well, I watched the press conference that the U.S. Attorney had about this and the U.S. Attorney was very clear that this alleged scheme, Madigan could not have pulled it off if not for the power that he had accrued over many decades in office. It was essential that he was a 50-year state representative. It was essential that he was the Speaker of the house for 36 years. And it was also mentioned that he’s been the longtime Chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party. That was a huge part of it too. Madigan controlled everything. He was the puppet master. He was using this position basically as a license to print money for his law firm. You know, he would get people elected and appointed to all sorts of different positions across the state of Illinois. Some of those were property appraisers, and if you wanted to do a property tax appeal, you know, if you had a skyscraper or something and you wanted to reduce your tax liability, you would have to hire Madigan and his firm to handle that appeal for you if you wanted to be successful. It was just so corrupt. And, you know, he was putting these people in positions, and he was bending the rules to confer benefits on them. One thing that was in here that was very interesting, Madigan had his loyalists in all of these different positions, and he had these big donors who wanted favors from him, and he was actually getting the children of these people internships with the state utility companies, even though they didn’t meet the requirements. Like, they had terrible GPAs. These kids were failing out of school. But Madigan had the connections, and he was pulling the strings to help get these kids internships that they didn’t deserve. So it was just the most corrupt, incestuous scheme that you’ve seen, and Madigan was the centerpiece of all of it.
Philip Blumel: Yeah. You know, I take away three main lessons from the story of Michael Madigan. One of them is just reiterates the fact that there is no industry that is more corrupt than being a legislator in the United States. This is not…
Nick Tomboulides: I think you’re being generous by calling it an industry. It’s more like a monopoly.
Philip Blumel: Well, the court… I mean, these prosecutors are calling it a criminal enterprise, but I guess not all legislators take it to that extreme. But the point is that we talk about these corruption cases on this podcast all the time. We follow them. And there’s no industry like this where every week there’s someone new going to prison or being indicted or being caught bribing and embezzling and using undue influence illegally. It is an industry that is so rife with this kind of corruption that there has to be special protections for the public against this type of power. Two, that tenure is no guarantee of success in legislating and in government. That tenure often has its own very negative characteristics to it, and that we’re seeing that manifestly here, that there’s benefits to experience, and there are, in politics, absolute negatives to experience. This guy has had all the experience in the world, and he’s run the state in the ground, and he’s used his power as a criminal enterprise. And then third, that people in this type of position that use power in this way are always and everywhere opponents of term limits, which is a reform that is aimed directly at them.
Nick Tomboulides: I like to refer to Illinois as the great experiment, okay? Illinois is a great scientific experiment, political science experiment, in what happens when you allow entrenched career politicians to rule over you unfettered, unrestrained, for a very, very long time. The result you get is, it’s a dumpster fire. They are billions of dollars in debt. They are engulfed by corruption. They have had their bond rating downgraded to the lowest rating in the history of any state in America. Those are the results of career politicians who have only looked out for themselves, who have only looked out for their power and getting reelected as opposed to serving the people and doing what’s in the best interest of the state. So I always laugh when people who oppose term limits say, oh, you know, we need all this institutional knowledge. We need politicians who have experience. I say, look at Illinois. How’s that working out for you? How is all that political experience working out for you? It’s a testament to what Ronald Reagan said, the only experience you get in politics is how to be political. And it seemed like in the Illinois State House for a very long time, the only experience you got was how to be corrupt under the tree of Michael Madigan.
Philip Blumel: Next. Happy birthday, U.S. Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who turned 86 over the weekend. Representative Hoyer is apparently running for his 24th two-year term in the US Congress. Last Friday, the Congressman attended the 44th annual bull roast, a popular campaign event he holds in Mitchellville, Maryland. No word on bowing out. Well, not surprisingly then, the veteran Democrat is facing a primary challenge from a young man, Harry Jarin, who is explicitly calling out Representative Hoyer on his age. More importantly than that, last week Jarin signed the U.S. Term Limits pledge to co-sponsor and vote for the U.S. Term Limits Congressional amendment that is introduced in the House each year. Previously, Republican candidate Jordan Eversley also signed the pledge, demonstrating the bipartisan support for the reform in this race. Harry Jarin, 35, is a volunteer firefighter and emergency services consultant who issued a campaign video this year asking the question, do you really think that Steny Hoyer, at 89 years old, is the best person to represent us? Representative Hoyer would be nearly 89 at the end of his next term. He won his first seat in Congress back in 1981 in a special election, and from 2003 to 2023 was the second ranking House Democrat behind Representative Nancy Pelosi. He served as House Majority Leader from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023. Just like Pelosi, he stepped down from leadership, but not from Congress. Well, permit me to close this episode of No Uncertain Terms with a message to Representative Steny Hoyer and all career politicians everywhere. No kings.
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Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. The Term Limits Convention bills are moving through the state legislatures. This could be a breakthrough year for the Term Limits movement. To check on the status of the Term Limits Convention Resolution in your state, go to termlimits.com/takeaction. There, you will see if it has been introduced and where it stands in the committee process on its way to the floor vote. If there’s action to take, you’ll see a Take Action button by your state. Click it. This will give you the opportunity to send a message to the most relevant legislators urging them to support the legislation. They have to know you are watching. That’s termlimits.com/takeaction. If your state has already passed the Term Limits Convention Resolution or the bill’s not been introduced in your state, you can still help. Please consider making a contribution to U.S. Term Limits. It is our aim to hit the reset button on the U.S. Congress, and you can help. Go to term limits.com/donate, termlimits.com/donate. Thanks. We’ll be back next week.
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Speaker 4: USTL.