Congress Has Failed
Political analysis by Ben Everidge for Thomas
Image credit: Adobe Stock by StockSavvy
An Unbound Congress Has Weakened American Democracy …
As America enters 2026, a glaring truth confronts citizens across the ideological spectrum: Congress is failing to perform its constitutional responsibilities.
It pains me as an American who worked on professional and campaign staff in the United States Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, and who earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in American government and international studies, and ran for the U.S. Senate myself, to write this of an institution I love and admire and still have high hopes can recover from those who ignore or purposely undermine its constitutional role.
In the Past
Once the engine of representation, oversight, budgeting, and legislative action, the U.S. Congress has instead drifted into prolonged recesses. At the same time, critical national issues, ranging from federal overreach to threats to democratic norms, go unresolved.
This isn’t a partisan complaint. I have been a registered political independent for well more than a decade. It’s a constitutional one.
Recesses Without Results
Despite pressing national concerns, lawmakers were on an extended recess through much of December and now January, leaving critical business unfinished. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics, particularly in Minnesota’s ongoing Operation Metro Surge, have escalated without proper legislative oversight. Thousands of armed ICE and CBP agents have been deployed to American cities, resulting in multiple tragic deaths and unnecessary federal-local conflict. Local officials and state officials have had to resort to suing the federal government to have their alleged constitutional violations heard.
Congress was slow to assert oversight, and when it finally moved on Department of Homeland Security funding, it did so without reasonable accountability measures for ICE, despite bipartisan concerns and calls from Republicans and Democrats alike to examine its most questionable actions.
Oversight Has Withered: Immigration and Beyond
Oversight – one of Congress’s most important constitutional functions – is woefully weak.
Lawmakers have struggled for far too long to secure meaningful access to federal immigration facilities, with DHS imposing notice requirements that inhibited surprise oversight inspections – a tactic a federal judge called likely unlawful.
Committee hearings on ICE actions have materialized only after public outcry, and even then, they remain sparse and unfocused. A few members have called for hearings, but a comprehensive legislative inquiry is missing.
Budget Failure and Executive Expansion
Congress must pass federal budgets and exercise the power of the purse. Instead, it has shuffled incomplete spending bills to keep government agencies afloat while avoiding tough debates about priorities. Despite approving a FY 2026 DHS budget, it did so without meaningful conditions on controversial enforcement operations that do not reflect American constitutional norms.
This abdication allows the executive branch to expand operations with minimal legislative constraint – a shift that undermines the bipartisan fiscal accountability the Constitution and our Founding Fathers envisioned.
Threats to Elections and Democratic Norms
While Congress debates adjournment dates, the executive branch toys with ideas that clearly strain democratic norms. President Trump has publicly floated canceling the mid-term elections – a notion with no constitutional basis – as political rhetoric and perhaps as a planned action.
Observers increasingly warn that such comments, even if framed as jokes, signal a troubling willingness to test the boundaries of the electoral process and public faith in democracy and our institutions of government. Independent analysts and watchdogs argue that U.S. democratic norms have eroded significantly, with the United States now closer to hybrid regimes than stable democracies in international indices.
Despite this, Congress has offered precious little direct response or explicit legislative action to protect election integrity, leaving such matters largely unaddressed until crisis moments.
Gerrymandering and Destabilizing Power Plays
Congressional responsibility over federal elections and fair representation also extends to how districts are drawn. Yet efforts to redraw maps mid-decade – especially in states like Texas and Indiana – have been motivated by raw partisan advantage rather than once treasured democratic fairness, with limited congressional pushback.
Instead of defending representative equality, national political actors have tacitly encouraged state redistricting that favors one party’s hold on power in the House, further skewing representation.
Justice Department and the Weaponization of Prosecutions
The Trump Justice Department’s role should be impartial and grounded in law. But in the past year, the department has increasingly pursued investigations against perceived political opponents or critics – a trend critics describe as weaponization. This shift is institutionalized in groups like the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group, which has reviewed cases involving prominent figures such as former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, raising alarms about the misuse of federal power.
Congress should oversee such actions to ensure the rule of law remains bipartisan and just – but again, the response has been muted.
Foreign Policy and Congressional Silence
From threats to allies like Canada, Denmark, and the European Union over tariffs and Greenland to rhetorical escalations in global hotspots, American foreign policy has become unpredictable and untrustworthy to our allies. Congress has the authority to regulate aspects of trade and war powers, yet it has remained mainly on the sidelines as executive branch power expands.
Whether it’s economic coercion of friendly nations or military posturing without a clear legislative mandate, Congress has failed to assert its constitutional voice.
Why It Matters
The framers of the American Constitution entrusted Congress with a unique set of powers:
The power of oversight.
The power of the purse.
The power to legislate.
The power to protect and structure elections.
When Congress abdicates those duties – through prolonged recesses, partisan gridlock, or timid oversight – executive authority expanded unreasonably and unchecked, and democratic accountability wanes.
This is not about political ideology. It is about institutional balance, as outlined in our Constitution, not political party platforms.
A Republic at Risk
Americans are witnessing an erosion of the constitutional guardrails that have long protected democratic governance. Congress’s current posture – marked by extended recesses, weakened oversight, and reluctance to confront apparent executive overreach – fails the republic.
If Congress will not act as a coequal branch, who will defend the balance of power, the integrity of elections, and the rule of law?
That question should compel every citizen to pay attention, to engage, and to demand better.
This is not merely a failure of Congress. It is a failure of American self-government.
Beyond complaining, you can read specific solutions I have detailed
in our free Substack newsletter, The Independent Quill. Link to it here.
