In the years in which Americans choose a president, that race usually monopolizes the nation’s attention. There are, however, 469 other races this year to choose the people who represent us in Washington, D.C.
Those elections are, collectively, as essential to the governance of the United States as the campaign for the White House. In addition to sculpting the nation’s laws, Congress allocates the federal budget, approves the country’s borrowing and regulates its commerce. It holds the authority to wage wars, ratify treaties, confirm appointees and hold federal officials accountable through investigations and the impeachment process.
In other words, Congress is the body that enables or restrains the ambitions and agenda of the White House. And while these core responsibilities won’t change no matter who wins on Tuesday, if Donald Trump is re-elected president, the House of Representatives and the Senate will be vital checks on what he could do in office.
Mr. Trump has demonstrated that he lacks the character, temperament and commitment to the Constitution necessary to be trusted with the power and responsibility of the presidency. He was impeached twice in his first term for actions in flagrant defiance of his duties. He was criminally indicted on felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the election. Yet many of the former president’s worst instincts never came to pass in his previous administration. That’s not because he moderated those instincts once in power, as some of his reluctant supporters now suggest. The most important factor limiting the damage done by Mr. Trump’s urges has always been others stepping in to stop him, from his own appointees to members of the House and the Senate.
The first major duty of this new Congress will be to ensure the peaceful transfer of power. Its members will be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025, three days before the Jan. 6 certification process to make official the winner of the presidential election. Republicans in 2021 proved themselves unworthy of this basic responsibility. Mr. Trump’s allies were complicit in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. A majority of House Republicans declined to certify the election — the current speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was one of the architects of the schemes to overturn it — and a majority of Senate Republicans refused to convict Mr. Trump for his role in that attempted coup, including the storming of the Capitol.
Thankfully, the Electoral Count Reform Act, passed by a bipartisan majority in 2022, goes a long way toward reducing or eliminating opportunities for subterfuge, regardless of who controls the two chambers. Election interference, if it happens, is more likely to occur on the state level this time around. But the continued indulgence of Mr. Trump’s false charges that the last election was stolen or the next one will be provide ample reason not to want a Republican leader wielding the gavel in either chamber.
Soon after, the Senate will begin to consider and approve the president’s appointments. Already, according to reporting by The Times’s newsroom, Mr. Trump’s aides are suggesting that they will try to push through nominees for such positions without the requisite vetting by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If re-elected, Mr. Trump has suggested he will prioritize base loyalty, rather than experience or character, from his closest advisers and lieutenants. Senators will need to prevent the most extreme or unqualified candidates from taking cabinet positions like defense secretary and attorney general, as well as seats on the high court and the federal bench. They can act to keep clearly unfit candidates from holding any powerful position. That’s what the Senate did in 2020, when it blocked Mr. Trump’s multiple attempts to appoint wildly unqualified people to serve as members of the board of the Federal Reserve.
Congress would then provide an essential backstop on abuses of presidential power. Mr. Trump has said that he will wield the power of government against his political rivals and curtail rights that Americans hold sacred. He has described plans to prosecute “the enemy from within,” including members of Congress, judges and journalists; to send troops into the streets of American cities against lawful protesters; and to withhold money from state and local governments that do not conform their policies to his preferences. He pledges a cruel policy of mass deportations and threatens to shatter longstanding global alliances.
Members of Congress can block some of those plans — a president needs the House to approve spending for any substantial deportation plan, for example — and they play a crucial oversight role for federal agencies and the executive branch. The House also wields significant power to block or enable the Trump agenda through the annual spending bills that must be passed to keep the government functioning. This will be crucial should Mr. Trump try to carry out proposals to dismantle the Department of Education or end Title IX’s protections against sex discrimination or hobble the work of vital agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
There are other reasons to worry about the damage a Republican-controlled Congress could do. Trump loyalists repeatedly blocked a series of Republican candidates — both moderate and conservative — for speaker of the House, paralyzing Congress and leaving it without leadership for the longest period since 1962. Since then, the caucus has become better known for what it has tried to block, often under Mr. Trump’s explicit orders, such as funding to keep the government open, much-needed support for Ukraine’s defense against a Russian invasion and, most hypocritically, border security legislation designed by conservative members of their own party. Indeed, it is hard to think of a single piece of serious legislation offered up by Mr. Johnson — despite his being an ally of Mr. Trump — and his House. On the other hand, his record of supporting Mr. Trump’s antidemocratic agenda is well documented.
Many of the most competitive races for the House are in states that vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, including seven in California and five in New York, along with important races in Connecticut, Colorado, Michigan and Maryland. There are also extremely close races in Arizona, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Maine, Nebraska and New Mexico. Of the 43 most competitive races for the House this year, 22 of them are considered tossups; every single vote in those races will be needed to prevent Mr. Trump’s enablers from taking office.
There are close Senate races in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan and competitive races for Senate seats in Montana, Nebraska and Texas. We urge voters to make certain to give their attention to those contests.
In survey after survey, Americans said that they want more from their public servants. Tuesday’s election offers them the chance to demand better.
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