Many European nations, and I believe the EU itself, has a parliament. A legislative body made up of representatives of a group of people. In the EU parliament, maybe each nation sends a representative.

For reasons that I think have to do with getting rid of royalty/nobility, the US legislative body is called the Congress. Much like the British parliament has a House of Commons and a House of Lords, which have different functions, serve different interests and serve as a check on each other, the US has a House of Representative and a Senate.

The House of Representatives is the lower house, it has more members, over 400. Each state gets a number of representatives based on population; small states like Rhode Island or states where nobody lives like Montana may have as few as one, big states with lots of people like California, Texas and New York might have 30 or 40. The idea here is equal representation of the POPULATION, though a cap on the number of members has kind of ruined that.

The Senate is the upper house. Each state sends exactly two senators. With 50 states in the union, there are 100 senators. Early on, senators were appointed by the governments of each state, but by amendment to the constitution senators are now elected directly by the people. Both senators are supposed to represent the state as a whole. Weird thing about our senate: The Vice President is nominally a member of the Executive branch, but the only job the constitution lays out for the VP is to preside over the senate and cast a tie breaking vote (because each state gets 2 senators, no matter what we do there’s an even number of senators, so ties aren’t uncommon). Otherwise the VP has no powers other than to be the hot spare for the president.

For a bill to become law, it must be deliberated and voted on in both houses. If both houses pass the bill, it goes to the President’s desk to be signed into law.

There are details like which house what kind of legislation is to come from, etc. There are some powers that ONLY the House of Representatives have, and some that ONLY the Senate has.

There are certain appointed positions, such as cabinet members, supreme court justices etc. that the President appoints, but the Senate must approve. If I understand it right, the President/executive branch makes treaties but the Senate must ratify it for the treaty to go into effect. The House of Representatives has the power to impeach federal officials (impeachment is kind of like indictment) but the trial takes place in the Senate.

Being a senator is seen as more prestigious than being a representative; senators are considered senior and there are fewer of them. It’s a position of significant political influence and massive corruption. Your friend’s father is definitely in the position to have protestors killed if a big business asks him to.