We don’t know yet who will win what elections in the midterms. But we can already predict this much: the biggest loser is likely to be Congress.
Instead of a lawmaking body, Congress is now the world’s largest green room. All anybody seems to do is wait for their next television appearance or viral social-media moment. Even then, they often seem like the studio audience for the Donald Trump Show, there to cheer the president or boo him.
Expect Congress to become even more ineffectual and dysfunctional for the next two years. That’s bad for the country and bad for democracy. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
The Founding Fathers designed Congress to be the first branch of government. Congress would make the laws we live under, whereas the president and the courts were merely charged with carrying out and interpreting those laws. If the president got too big for his britches, Congress had the ultimate weapon: It controls the budget, and nothing could happen if Congress didn’t provide the money.
Sure, the president had a veto and a lot of power in foreign policy, and the courts could stop Congress from passing unconstitutional laws. But the legislature would be first among equals.
If you’re over 40, you probably remember when Congress still wielded a lot of power in Washington. Democratic committee chairs were almost as powerful as their party’s leader — more powerful than Jimmy Carter when he was president. Newt Gingrich got Bill Clinton to sign a bunch of laws he didn’t like. Republican leaders in Congress got Richard Nixon to resign. Hearings over Watergate, Iran-Contra and Monica Lewinsky gripped the nation. Even ObamaCare and the 2017 Trump tax cuts were largely written the way Capitol Hill bigwigs wanted them.
But that power has been in decline for the past two decades. As Congress passed fewer laws, presidents started making their own with executive orders — Barack Obama’s “pen and a phone.” Presidents stopped asking Congress for permission to go to war. Cabinet confirmations became party-line votes, even for outrageous picks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. More federal programs were designed to keep running whether or not Congress voted to keep funding them.
At least Congress used to control taxes. But with his tariffs, Trump seized the power to raise and lower new taxes on his own whim based on vague laws passed decades ago. The Supreme Court struck down the biggest tariffs — while Congress sat on the sidelines watching it all happen.
Impeachments have become a routine joke. When the House impeached Joe Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, Chuck Schumer didn’t even bother holding a trial. Biden and Trump hand out pardons like Halloween candy. All anybody really votes on is gigantic budget bills so large nobody reads them, and nobody but party leaders has a say on what goes into them. Everyone else just show up on the floor right before a holiday so they can get something done before they leave town.
The old masters of Congress died off, like Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy, or are fading fast, like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. Paul Ryan, who spent two decades learning the ropes, is still only 56 but retired eight years ago. And who would want the Speaker’s job, anyway?
If Democrats take over the House, as they are likely to do, Congress will do even less lawmaking. There’s little common ground between them and Trump. For that matter, Republicans have spent the past year letting Trump do whatever he wants — and they are likely to continue if they keep any power. With Congress frozen in place, Trump will just keep doing things by executive order.
At least Senate Republicans can confirm Trump’s judges. But if Democrats win the Senate, they are pledging to put a stop to that. Schumer has floated refusing to fill even a Supreme Court vacancy if one arises.
Instead, Democrats will launch a blizzard of investigations. There’s plenty for them to investigate. But Trump won’t do much to cooperate. For the past two years, Democrats have tied up Trump’s orders in court, hoping to run out the clock before his policies can go into effect. But two can play that game. Democrats will need to run to court to get subpoenas enforced, and Trump can refuse to prosecute people held in contempt and dangle pardons to keep them from talking voluntarily.
The big showdowns will be over the budget, the debt ceiling and government shutdowns. Democrats have a long list of things they want to defund, from the Iran War to ICE. But shutdowns are unpopular, especially if they threaten to cut off troops at war or law enforcement on the streets. They are also really hard to sustain unless you have big majorities in both houses — which Democrats likely won’t have. Trump has also gotten craftier about finding ways to keep things running without new money from Capitol Hill — on top of all the things that Congress already designed to stay open. The fact that he’s bending the law in doing so just shows how much we’ve lost of how the system is supposed to work.
Trump has a window of time to go hard at Iran before the new Congress is sworn in, and then wrap things up enough that all Democrats can do is sputter about something that’s over. If Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel stays in office while Israel holds a new election in 90 days to resolve a deadlock in his own legislature, Trump’s main ally in Iran will have his own incentive to get things done quickly. Trump also has a model for more military actions: Venezuela, where he got in and out in one night.
But never fear, Democrats in Congress will still have one thing many of them will do in 2027-28 to pursue real power: run for president.
Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review. X: @BaseballCrank
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