Alexander Hamilton was no opponent of a strong executive. During the constitutional convention, he actually favored crowning an American king, a misguided proposal he dubbed the “English model.” Yet Hamilton understood that even the monarchical executive he preferred needed limits to his power. In Federalist 84, he listed some of the abuses of an out-of-control executive, singling out “arbitrary imprisonments.” He called them the “favorite and most formidable instruments” of tyrants.

The Constitution includes safeguards against this form of tyranny, including the right of habeas corpus and the guarantee that American citizens will not be “deprived of life, liberty, or property” by the government “without due process of law.”

Our commitment to these rights is tested in times of crisis. We have not always passed these tests. During the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt unilaterally authorized the internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans for fear they would spy against the United States. Most of them were native-born citizens. Many had never been to Japan before in their lives.

The internment of Japanese-Americans is a dark chapter in the nation’s history—the Supreme Court decision that enabled it, Korematsu v. United States, belongs to the “anti-canon” of worst Supreme Court decisions of all time, along with Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott v. Sandford. The episode is a warning of how dangerous it is when we permit the executive branch to slip its constitutional restraints.

With this warning in mind, in 1971 Congress curbed the executive branch’s power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens by passing the Non-Detention Act, which states that “[n]o citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.”

On Wednesday, I introduced the Due Process Guarantee Act, along with Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and several other colleagues, to further protect Americans from indefinite detention by the government.

Since the 9/11 attacks and the emergence of terrorist groups like ISIS, there has been renewed pressure to diminish our constitutional protections while growing government. Lawmakers from both parties have rushed to grant the executive branch the power to detain Americans without charge, without trial, and without meeting the evidentiary standard required for every other crime—potentially for life.

The Due Process Guarantee Act would raise the bar the government has to clear in order to indefinitely detain American citizens and lawful permanent residents apprehended on U.S. soil. It would forbid the government from justifying such detentions using general authorizations of military force, such as the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force against the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Instead, the government would be required to obtain explicit, written approval from Congress.

Our bill is based on a simple premise: If the president wants to go outside the ordinary law enforcement system to apprehend an American on U.S. soil without charge or trial, he needs extraordinary permission from Congress. And if elected representatives want to give the president this awesome power over their constituents, they need to be honest about it by granting an explicit authorization. They shouldn’t hide behind vague laws.

The bill is based also on my faith in our law enforcement officers and judges, who have successfully apprehended and prosecuted hundreds of homegrown terrorists. Their example proves that our security is not dependent on a supercharged president and weakened Constitution. We can secure the homeland without using the “formidable instruments” of tyrants.

Over the past 20 years, the price of wireless service has fallen 46 percent, the price of software has fallen 68 percent, the price of televisions has fallen 96 percent, and the quality of these services and technologies has improved markedly. But over that same time, the price of college tuition has risen 199 percent, and most parents would agree that the quality has not greatly improved.

But if prices typically fall as competition spurs quality advancement, as seen by the technological achievement of the last two decades, how has that not happened in education?

There is no one simple answer to this question, but the different regulatory environment facing higher education is a significant factor.

One-hundred years ago, there were six regional, voluntary, non-governmental institutions that helped universities and secondary schools coordinate curricula, degrees, and transfer credits. These institutions had no power to prevent the creation of higher education institutions.

This changed with the 1952 GI Bill. After congressional investigators found thousands of sham colleges were created overnight to take advantage of the benefits provided in the first 1944 GI Bill, the federal government turned these voluntary institutions into accreditors.

As the federal government steadily ramped up its financial support for higher education benefits, it continued outsourcing the vetting of higher education institutions to these regional accreditors.

This make-shift system worked well for decades, but in recent years these regional accreditors have come under heavy criticism for both lax oversight over some online institutions and a heavy hand in killing some promising innovations.

No regulator is ever going to be perfect, but if they are going to be gatekeepers for a sector of the economy as important as higher education they must be transparent and accountable to the American people. Unfortunately, our nation’s regional accreditors are neither. They do not share how they make their accrediting decisions with anyone and their board members do not face accountability at the ballot box.

This needs to change.

That is why I have introduced the Higher Education Reform and Opportunity Act. This bill would allow states to create their own accreditation system for institutions that want to be eligible for federal financial aid dollars.

Each state could then be as open or closed to higher education innovation as they saw fit. They could even stick with their current regional accreditors if they chose to do so. But they could also enable innovators like Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, who recently signed a deal with the online provider Kaplan University, to go even further in their mission to expand higher education access to those who had limited access before.

Our higher education system should not be held captive to 100 year-old institutions that were never intended to be regulatory gatekeepers in the first place. Instead we should allow those communities that want to experiment with higher education policy the freedom and accountability to do so.

Two years ago, a small California company called Hampton Creek, who had been selling a vegan mayonnaise called “Just Mayo” in stores nationwide, was attacked by a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) program called the “American Egg Board.”

You may be asking why on earth the federal government was involved in a pressure campaign to thwart a startup vegan brand of mayonnaise.

Simply put, it’s because the American Egg Board did not appreciate the small Hampton Creek vegan mayo company competing with the large, egg producing companies that it represented, so they took affirmative action to cut out their competition. While this behavior may be common in the private sector, the American Egg Board is a federally sanctioned commodity checkoff program, and that behavior has no place in a federal program.

Commodity checkoff programs were originally intended to support research and promote certain agricultural products. Industry representatives asked Congress for the USDA to pool funds by imposing a tax on producers of certain commodities and then put those taxes into a program, known as a checkoff program, that would financially support research and promotion.

In spite of this original intent and limited purpose, the USDA has been lax in its oversight of checkoff boards. As a result, many checkoff programs have acted beyond the scope of their statutory mandate, even including illegal lobbying and anti-competitive behavior, placing their government-sanctioned thumb on the scale of the free market.

Such was the case with the American Egg Board and Hampton Creek.

Now you may be asking: Is this really something the federal government should be doing in the first place?

Of course not. But until we eliminate checkoff programs or make them truly voluntary, we can, at the very least, ensure that they are not harming competition or stifling innovation in the agriculture industry.

If farmers and ranchers want to get together and pool their resources to better promote their products, then that is the free market at its best. But as soon as the power of the federal government is used to force people into a program they do not want to participate in, then that is crony capitalism at its worst.

Checkoff programs were intended to promote certain commodities, not disparage others. They are certainly not intended to prevent any new products from having a fair chance in the marketplace.

These programs are in need of reform and oversight. Senator Booker (D-NJ) and I believe our legislation, the “Opportunities for Fairness in Farming Act of 2017,” or the “OFF” Act (S. 741), can help provide that.

Not only would this bill clarify and fortify the prohibition of checkoff programs from contracting with organizations that lobby specifically on agriculture policy, but it also establishes program standards that prohibit anti-competitive behavior and other activities that may pose a conflict of interest.

To help enforce those rules, it requires transparency regarding a checkoff program’s budget and expenditures, ensuring money collected by the government isn’t used in illegal lobbying or in anti-competitive ways.

Should this pass into law, it will be a win for the free market and for small ranchers, farmers, and startups. And hopefully, it will ensure the USDA is not left standing with egg on its face again.

The federal government employs well over 2 million people. One man cannot lead an organization that large by himself. Not only do you need a full cabinet, but you need hundreds of undersecretaries and deputies as well. Being president without the aid of your cabinet and agency leaders makes the job almost impossible. But this is exactly the position Senate Democrats have chosen for the new Trump administration.

Of the last seven administrations, three had a full cabinet confirmed and in place within three weeks of the president’s inauguration. President Obama had all but two nominees confirmed within two weeks of his inauguration. And President Clinton had all but one nominee confirmed within one week after he took the oath of office. So, what about President Trump?

At four weeks into his presidency, a mere six of his fifteen nominees had not yet been voted on. And at the end of week seven, two of those nominees haven’t even had a single committee hearing.

How did this happen? Simple: Senate Democrats decided, as a conference, to block and obstruct President Trump’s cabinet nominees, carelessly smashing Senate norms of procedure and etiquette in the process. Senate Democrats have gone to such extraordinary lengths to sabotage the normal process of a new president staffing his administration that even The Washington Post called their obstruction “unprecedented.”

President Trump’s cabinet remains unfilled nearly three months into his presidency. And the rate of confirmation for his other nominees has been just as slow. With more than 1,000 additional positions still needing to be confirmed by the Senate, the bureaucracy will keep humming along without reforms and critical areas of the government will be compromised. Meanwhile, Democrats fill their election war chests and cause a political media frenzy.

This is not what the American people voted for in last year’s drain-the-swamp election. This is business as usual in Washington. And that’s just how the Democrats like it.