WASHINGTON — Will President Donald Trump be more empowered now that Speaker Mike Johnson gaveled the U.S. House of Representatives out of session until after November’s elections? Not necessarily, according to congressional Democrats who are bracing for what they expect to be the most corrupt election of their lifetimes.
“Do you worry, with the House out of session, that Trump might feel emboldened?” Raw Story asked Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM).
“That man wakes up every day emboldened,” she said while walking across the U.S. Capitol grounds. “I don’t think he cares about the Constitution or the law, regardless of whether people are here or not.”
While more than 100 House Democrats called on the speaker to cancel Congress’ scheduled October recess so members could focus on drawing up an oversight plan for artificial intelligence, Johnson instead added more time off — scrapping the last two scheduled legislative work weeks at the end of September before pulling the plug altogether Wednesday, after a mere three-day work week.
The move effectively leaves Trump free of a legislative branch that could reign him in — though it could, in theory, be called back to D.C. in an emergency.
But, with the Republican Party in charge, few checks had been put on the president throughout his second Trump.
Trump has all but spray-painted Washington gold, slapping his own name on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts after demolishing the historic East Wing of the White House over the protests of the White House Historical Association that Jackie Kennedy established in 1961.
Outrage over the deployment of ICE and the National Guard, as well as other controversial policy moves, has also resulted in little action from Congress.
Most Democrats have grown to expect the worst from Trump as their party remains locked in the minority in both the Senate and the House.
“Is there anything Democrats could do more if Congress stayed in session?” Raw Story asked the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. “Could you be more of a check on Trump?”
“We’ve had the same tools we’ve had for the last two years, right? They’re pretty weak,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) told Raw Story.
While they’ve amassed and trained an army of lawyers nationwide ahead of November, Democratic Party leaders agree their hands are largely tied while in the nation’s capital.
“With Congress gone, do you feel like Trump might feel a little emboldened?” Raw Story asked Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus Ted Lieu (D-CA).
“No,” Lieu said without hesitation. “Speaker Johnson’s not going to lift a finger. He’s going to just continue to do whatever the White House says. So it’s not like we’re going to pass any laws.”
“Do you think it could actually be better to have your candidates closer to local officials?” Raw Story pressed. “So that they can coordinate on potential local election interference?”
“That would be helpful. That’s a good point,” Lieu said. “Look, he’s gonna try. He’s essentially failed. So I also know there were a lot of elections last year and even this year where Democrats won and no one yelled and screamed that somehow it was rigged, because they weren’t.”
Whether naive or not, Democrats are feeling emboldened after this week’s Supreme Court ruling blocking Trump’s attempt to have the U.S. Postal Service be the arbiter of which Americans can and can’t vote by mail.
“The American people have had it with Trump’s false attacks on our democracy and our voting,” Lieu said. “Judges who have been appointed by Trump himself have written very strong opinions slapping down the president.”
“It’s always, especially with Donald Trump, it’s always good to expect what no one else would ever have done before,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) told Raw Story. “But, yeah, physically, Congress’ absence for the whole month of October doesn’t really matter.”
Then the former ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein caught himself.
“Well, it probably matters to getting things done,” Beyer said. “Everyone’s still going to be working, so our ability to file lawsuits and join in lawsuits [remains].”
While congressional Republicans roll over for most all of Trump’s whims and power grabs these days, for the time being, Democrats remain resigned to the new Trumpian ways of Washington.
That’s a trend they’re set on ending on Election Day, which Democrats acknowledge can only happen if they win this fall.
That’s why most say the party’s get-out-the-vote effort is the strongest antidote they have to any Trump-orchestrated election interference schemes that may be ahead.
“At the end of the day, election integrity is going to be about people voting,” New Mexico Congresswoman Stansbury said. “You know, massive numbers of poll watchers and volunteers who are going to make sure that polling stations are fair and free and open and basically using the tools of the law to stop Trump if anything bad happens.”
Before winning a special election in 2021, Stansbury was a staffer at the White House Office of Management and Budget under former President Barack Obama.
She now serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where she’s had a front-row seat to study Trump.
“He’s a bigger danger when he’s unsupervised by his own staff,” Stansbury told Raw Story, “because that’s when he goes on social media just like any sad, lonely person.”
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