Congress in a liminal state
Good morning and welcome back, Congress, to what forecasters anticipate will be a very snowy joint session of Congress to certify the presidential election. Would it be premature to speculate on who Congress declares the winner? (No, no it would not.)
A bit of business for those going to Capitol Hill today: here are the security measures and road closures announced by the Capitol Police on January 3rd. There may be additional updates with the snow.
January 6
Four years ago, a violent and well-armed cadre of election deniers stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of Biden’s win as president, incited by Donald Trump and his allies. Among them were white nationalist militia members, police officers, and current and former members of the military. The Trump insurrectionists erected a gallows for Vice President Mike Pence on the Capitol Grounds and howled for his death as thousands broke into the Capitol building and hunted for public servants.
Members and staff cowered in their offices, on the House and Senate floors, and in designated shelters as the poorly trained and badly led U.S. Capitol Police crumbled under the assault. Notable acts of individual courage by individual officers made a difference between death and mere defilement—but mostly we were just lucky that it wasn’t even worse. Rank-and-file Capitol Police officers, joined by Metropolitan DC and other local police departments, suffered grievous injuries while awaiting reinforcement from the national guard.
In the end, Vice President Pence stood up to some members of his party and fulfilled his Constitutional duty to preside over the certification of the election results, inspired by events he had witnessed as a freshmen twenty years earlier. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who insisted the certification go forward immediately, held off instantaneous efforts to impeach Trump and delayed the inevitable impeachment vote a week until January 13th and did not deliver the impeachment charges to the Senate until January 25th, thus providing Republican leaders, most notably Mitch McConnell, an opening to play for time, regroup and ultimately stifle efforts to hold Trump politically accountable through a series of bad-faith arguments.
To this day Trump says he won the election. Many prominent in Trump’s orbit falsely assert the Trump insurrection was a nonviolent protest. A plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol, ordered erected by an act of Congress, is 18 months past due.
Trump will take office in two weeks and is widely expected to pardon the insurrectionists. He himself has been granted immunity from most prosecutions by a Supreme Court whose membership and Republican majority were largely engineered by Sen. McConnell; three members of that court were appointed by Trump. He will never be held criminally accountable in any meaningful way.
Trump has used his political appeal and brass knuckle tactics to drive overt political opponents out of the Republican party and cow many others into submission. He is aided by true believers, people who believe in him even as his policies are amorphous. He is joined by allies who think they can control him to get what they want, although recent history has shown the opposite is true. As of the 119th Congress, the traditional Republicans who led that party for decades are in the wilderness.
We may be on the verge of the great deconstruction of Congress. Congress is where lawmaking should happen, but combined efforts of presidentialists in both parties have weakened Congress by successfully asserting presidential authority, receiving support from the courts, and receiving succor from those in Congress who should know better. Trump, with a unified party behind him, may deliver the knock-out blow.
I restate all this not because you are unaware, but because this is our politics now. This newsletter talks about power — who has it, who wishes to wield it, the mechanisms by which it is exercised — with a focus of how we should collectively wield power in our democracy through our political institutions. It is natural for politicians and the press to talk about the new normal as if it were normal.
For most people, life will go on mostly as before. Washington, D.C. will continue to be a place far away that makes inexplicable decisions for unintelligible reasons. Democrats will complain about Republicans, and vice versa.
I will continue to do my best to make sense of it all and to explain what is happening as plainly and clearly as I can. The rest of this week’s newsletter does exactly that. My spotlight will remain on Congress, which once again can become the lion of our democracy. Let me know how I’m doing.
House Rules
The House adopted its standing rules and separate orders on Friday after barely installing Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House. Johnson was put over the top only after Trump spoke with two hold outs. Even so, Eleven Republican members of the House, led by Chip Roy, sent this letter demanding changes in House operations. Some of the demands include:
Modify the House calendar to work five days a week for the first 10 weeks. (Congressional modernizers also have recommend that the House work more full weeks, although this is a bit much)
“Guarantee” members can offer amendments to bills on the floor
Stop putting bills on the floor that violate the 72-hour rule, rely heavily on Democrat[ic] support for passage, or that are not supported by a majority of Republicans
End stock trading by members of Congress
I previewed the importance of the House Rules package and wrote about the House Rules and separate orders last week, so you can catch up there if you missed it. It is notable that the Republicans released a second rules package and section-by-section just prior to the vote. It was amended to include “family-centric language” — replacing “sibling” with “brother” and “sister,” which is just weird.
You can read the debate over the House rules in the Congressional Record, starting on page 14. The Democratic alternative to the Republican Rules Package was not a rules package of their own, but a suggestion instead to take up legislation, “The American Family Act,” to provide a refundable tax credit.
I think that decision was a missed opportunity to offer changes to the House Rules that some Republicans would have found irresistible — and would improve operations of the House and provide Democrats more leverage. What if, for example, Democrats had offered a stock trading ban as part of their rules package? Or a strengthened ethics office? Or guaranteeing each committee member a vote on at least one bill in committee?
Rep. McGovern did make a good point in his press release on the Republican Rules Package, pointing out that “for the first time in American history, [the rules] shield the Speaker from accountability to the entire chamber by making it so that only Republicans can move to oust the speaker.” The Speaker should be removable by a majority of the chamber and any member should be able to make the motion. Now, should any Republican make such a motion, the party could expel that member by a 2/3s vote and the motion would (might?) lose its privileged status.
Finally, we saw in the Congressional Record how Republicans in the House have become the bathroom police. On page 26, we see the Speaker using his authority under the rules to control access to office space to try to control who can use which bathroom (and the gym, and more).
On a different note, let me take a moment and recognize the newly elected House officers: Clerk Kevin McCumber, Sergeant at Arms McFarland, and Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor. Congratulations in particular to McCumber, who is newly official in that role. (Democrats had proposed Jamie Harrison, Becky Cornell, and Brooke Scannell in their places.)
The Senate, which considers itself a continuing body, does not adopt a Rules Package at the start of each Congress. It did adopt a series of resolutions, including:
We should expect to see additional resolutions naming members of the committees and updating who will serve as committee chair(s). Sen. Schumer issued a press release on Democratic committee assignments.
The Senate appointed Jackie Barber as Secretary of the Senate, Jennifer Hemingway as the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper, Robert Duncan as Secretary for the Majority and Gary Myrick as Secretary for the Minority.
House and Senate Schedules
The Joint Session of Congress to certify the presidential election is expected today.
The Senate has no hearings scheduled for this upcoming week. We can expect confirmation hearings next week; one for TV personality Peter Hegseth as Secretary of Defense has been announced for January 14th.
House Majority Leader Scalise announced two bills to be considered on the House floor pursuant to a rule. A look at docs.house.gov indicates seven bills on suspension (but not the two bills to be considered pursuant to a rule). Note that the Rules Committee need not meet for the two bills considered pursuant to a rule because they were authorized under the House Rules Package. Congress.gov does not show any hearings scheduled for this week.
Ethics
I wrote about the House Ethics Committee’s midnight decision to essentially permit congressmen to put campaign cash into their pockets as well as to wipe away other allegations of wrongdoing. I’m not going to recap it, so check out the link.
The Ethics Committee released a compendium of its activities for the 118th Congress. According to their data: The committee met 23 times over the Congress. It started or continued fact-gathering for 41 separate investigative matters, publicly addressed 20 matters, and resolved 12 matters. The Ethics Committee did not seek a House sanction in any matters. Nine investigate matters were pending with the committee as of January 2nd. The report has a lot of granular data.
The House Ethics Committee also released two reports submitted by the Office of Congressional Ethics related to Andy Ogles and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. The OCE reports were released because the House Ethics Committee had not disposed of the matters by end of the Congress.
The OCE report on Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick was transmitted to the Ethics Committee on September 15, 2023. There are multiple allegations around excessive contributions to her campaign, failing to report transactions, improper payments to a state political action committee, and use of non-official funds for official work.
The OCE report on Andy Ogles was transmitted to the Ethics Committee on June 20, 2024. OCE found that Rep. Ogles “may have omitted or misrepresented required information” in his FEC reports. In addition, his campaign committee “may have accepted excessive contributions reported as personal loans and contributions from the candidate that may not have been sourced from [his] personal funds,” and thus exceeded campaign contribution limits.
The House Rules renamed the Office of Congressional Ethics as the Office of Congressional Conduct.
Legislative Operations
At the end of December, the House of Representatives released six reports from the Clerk of the House of Representatives regarding ongoing efforts to modernize the House. They concerned:
Standardized formats for legislative documents — the project team has started the “Committee Reports” phase of the roadmap.
Comparative Print Suite — they’ve updated the natural language processors and production infrastructure. They’re working to address change requests and will be conducting user engagement activities to identify potential enhancements. The Senate is still working to launch the Senate Comparative Print Suite pilot. The Library of Congress is preparing a pilot of its Text Analysis Program.
Database of Committee votes — they expect to go to pilot phase for a small group of Committee users by the end of Q1 2025, having completed user requirements and design work.
Unique IDs for lobbyists — they contracted in October with a software developer to build a proof of concept for identify verification and management and will look to draft a user experience designer to join the team.
Expiration dates of federal programs — they’ve found significant conceptual and methodological issues with trying to compile an authoritative list.
Mahalo. Appreciate this!