Submission Accomplished
The House GOP’s Systematic Surrender of Congressional Power
Sometimes, it’s good to hear other people say it. “The GOP-controlled House is an arm of the White House,” Punchbowl’s morning newsletter declared last Wednesday. “Under Johnson and Trump, the House simply isn’t an independent branch of government anymore,” citing Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to shut down the House to avoid the chamber taking a position on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation files as one more instance of the trend.
Because of the promise of salacious details, more ink will be spilled on congressional Republicans’ role in containing details about Trump connection to Epstein’s crimes than other forfeitures of Legislative branch powers to the unitary executive. But as Punchbowl notes, those of us paying attention are witnessing a shocking process of surrender.
House Republicans made not a peep when Office of Management and Budget chief Russell Vought said he intentionally violated the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act by not submitting the president's budget because it wasn’t “in our interest” to do it, adding he might not ever do it because Congress doesn’t need it for appropriations. House Republican leadership actually demanded the Government Accountability Office allow the White House to ignore this same law by pushing legislation forbidding it to bring suit against the administration for impoundments it determines are illegal. House Republicans have forbidden members from challenging Trump’s tariff policy, which tramples over existing statute.
We have seen some signs of leadership push-back over the White House's coup at the Library of Congress, but those complaints are muted at best. This is not to say every House Republican is in lock-step with the abdication of their responsibilities, but in that hierarchical body, House Republican leadership is a subservient subsidiary of Trump Inc.
The situation with the Epstein files is another example in this trend, complicated by the fact that it cuts awkwardly across an issue that some in the MAGA base care about. Epstein’s sex trafficking ring became part of the online conspiratorial lore about Democratic Party leadership that benefitted Trump in the 2016 election. Epstein’s 2019 suicide, in light of Trump’s own personal relationship with him, cast some doubt in conspiracy-minded supporters that Trump really was an anti-elite crusader for justice, particularly those outside of the QAnon echo chambers on social media. Unsealing the records was a Trump campaign promise and part of the rationale for appointing conspiracy champions Kash Patel and Dan Bongino to the FBI.
Until this summer, the Epstein issue was one the White House was taking the lead in trying to contain even as it had stoked it for political advantage. It finally crossed over to impacting the Legislative branch last week when constituents immersed in Epstein lore started pressuring rank-and-file members to support unsealing the files. Some members reportedly worried they would look hypocritical not doing so after running on public disclosure.
The House's leaving town early to avoid floor votes that would put the House at loggerheads with the Trump administrations' effort to move on from the Epstein issue was the least worst of the options available to Johnson to cover Trump without the benefit of his own cover from the White House. A few members also staged rear guard actions in committee, adding a bunch of Democrats and other MAGA villains to subpoenas to testify. Senators, meanwhile, simply admitted to covering for Trump in debate on the floor. (Democrats, meanwhile, are finally catching on to the idea of pushing for votes that split the Republican base.)
This is not the stuff of a members’ “revolt.” As Julia Azari noted, the mismatching ideological parts of the MAGA coalition are being held together tightly by “an appetite for consolidating power, especially executive power.” Congressional Republicans have gladly given away their own power so that the President can rip it away from the various elites and constituencies they see as illegitimately hoarding it. This is their definition of making America great again.
What will be interesting is how constituent interest will cut across Republican unity and protection of Trump. The topic has burst beyond QAnon and Pizzagate hashtags. Most voters, especially non-partisans, seem to be taking at least casual interest in the Epstein files situation. Although the Administration has done a number of unpopular things, this issue seems to be the most unpredictable and destabilizing politically for Republican dedication to unitary executive power: public approval of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files is at 16%. Perhaps the White House recovers from this spin with a month’s pause. Perhaps the break accelerates the spiral. Will Republican members unhappily under Trump’s yoke then take advantage of the situation and make their break?
We don't intend to ignore the Senate's role in all this. Many members are deep in the hole with the House. But the mavericky senators ironically are more able to act as rear-guard institutionalists even as they triangulate their policy preferences against a desire to stay out of Trump's cross-hairs. The results are unpredictable.
For example, the Senate is forfeiting its advise and consent authority, particularly on nominations. This week, the Senate voted to confirm Trump’s former criminal defense attorney to the U.S. Court of Appeals despite multiple whistleblowers coming forward to say he had lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Over the decades, senators of both parties stocked the federal judiciary with unitary executive aficionados, pushed by presidents of both parties, which is why the courts won't save us. Will Congress?
Appropriations
The machinations around the Epstein files play against the backdrop of a teetering appropriations process, which now has one fewer working week to conclude before the end of the fiscal year. In its last scheduled week of work before summer recess, the Senate has made no progress toward Majority Leader John Thune’s goal of approving at least some of the 12 appropriations bills before September 30. The week started with Republicans sniping at each other over topline figures and Sen. John Kennedy initially holding back the first minibus of four bills because of insufficient cuts in the Legislative Branch package. Thursday night, Sen. Moran made a unanimous consent request to add the Agriculture, Legislative Branch, and CJS appropriations bills to Mil-Con/VA, and when he declined Sen. Van Hollen's request to add in language concerning the revocation of Maryland as the location for the new FBI headquarters, it was Van Hollen who objected to the UC.
OMB Director Russell Vought’s zeal for recissions, and apparent autonomy to pursue them, have further eroded the appropriations process and congressional consensus around protecting its powers of the purse. The recissions package Vought pushed were the first in 30 years. He has threatened to make more recissions in education funding by timing the 45-day window required by the Impoundment Control Act for congressional consideration with the end of the fiscal year, running out the clock before Congress could reject the withholding of spending. This "pocket rescission" is illegal, but that does not appear to be an impediment to a muscular White House largely abetted by compliant House Republican leadership and senators too timorous to oppose.
This week, the White House had to walk back Vought’s halting of $15 billion in National Institutes of Health grant payments when he finally went too far for Republican senators.
Democratic Appropriations staff, meanwhile, have created this tracker of impoundments and recissions, which they estimate at $425 billion in total spending. A total of 157 Democratic members also signed onto an amicus brief in a lawsuit brought by nearly two-dozen states over the Administration’s spending freezes. Litigation continues on the administration's unlawful removal of a statutorily-required apportionment disclosure website.
Data Transparency
Federal News Network named the enactment of the Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act as one of its 25 pivotal moments in its 25 years of coverage. As Daniel contributes to this retrospective, the way the legislation changed working culture within the federal bureaucracy is just as important as the data standardization it mandated that allows easy, reliable tracking of spending by agencies.
Relatedly, a federal judge ordered OMB to restore the public apportionments database by Thursday morning, ruling that Congress had clear authority in its 2022 mandate that spending decisions be made publicly available online. Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his decision, “there is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public’s money.” The administration has appealed.
OMB has updated listings of executive branch managers as required under the PLUM Act. The data is current as of June 30, but agencies are responsible for its accuracy. The positions include those requiring Senate confirmation, votes for which are recorded by the Secretary of the Senate. Syncing that data source to the PLUM data site makes good sense.
Congressional operations
Every House committee now has access to a new closed captioning service funded by the House’s Modernization Initiatives Account (MIA). The Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Modernization & Innovation recommended and piloted the service, which has a 98-percent accuracy rate. The captions are displayed in real time on committee room screens or on personal devices using a QR code.
If the captioning is pushed out on an API, it could provide instantaneous transcriptions of hearings as well. Just saying.
More MIA projects. The CHA Modernization Subcommittee also officially recommended three new projects receive MIA funding: a project to create a new ecosystem for constituent engagement; discovery work on a committee archiving project; and for a House Sergeant at Arms WebEOC modernization project.
Tracking legislation. We’ve pulled together a resource for official sources for legislative tracking in the House and Senate, including institutional, floor, and committee updates. The House is generally more transparent about its legislative work flow than the Senate. For some unknown reason, Senate Republicans haven't published an updated floor schedule since July 2023.
Stock buy bans. The Senate HSGAC voted to advance Sen. Josh Hawley’s stock trading ban bill Wednesday after a contentious hearing. To garner Democratic support needed to move the bill, Hawley added a provision also forbidding the Vice President and President from trading individual stocks, which prompted opposition from the White House. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said she would file a discharge petition banning member stock trades when the House returns to session. We note that in addition to passing legislation, each chamber could incorporate much of this into their internal rules if they really wanted to.
Jan 6 redux part II. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, with the endorsement of Speaker Johnson, has introduced a resolution to reestablish the Judiciary subcommittee he chaired last Congress looking into the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Oversight
A congressional delegation once again was denied access to an immigration detention facility, despite having statutory power to do so. The director of the Baltimore facility told Rep. Kweisi Mfume that she had been ordered not to allow anyone into the facility, even members of Congress. This is an obvious violation of federal law.
Members have had enough: 12 filed suit Wednesday against U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in federal court to allow unannounced inspections. Their complaint cites a provision included in the FY 2019 appropriations act in response to similar obstruction by the first Trump Administration that required DHS give members of Congress access to immigrant detention facilities.
Modernization
The CHA Modernization Subcommittee released a set of July 15 reports on various ongoing modernization projects in the House recommended by the Select House Committee on the Modernization of Congress:
Adopting Standardized format for legislative documents (This semiannual report provides updates on the cross-agency United States Legislative Markup (USLM) data standards project):
Work on publishing committee reports in the format should complete this year.
GPO is installing a new all-XML system for its publication of legislative documents that will better support mobile devices and laptops.
OLRC is preparing to transition to a new U.S. Code editing system and to publish U.S. Code in USLM later this year.
Since December, 29 staff in 20 Senate committees have begun using the advanced edition of the comparative print suite. A total of 432 House staff and all 90 House Office of Legal Counsel staff have access to the advanced edition.
The Library of Congress is preparing a pilot of the Text Analysis Program (TAP) that allows users to identify and compare bills with similar text.
Committee Voting Module and Centralized Committee Portal:
The Clerk of the House reported continued progress toward delivering the Committee Activity Portal, which will allow viewing and managing committee votes as data, tracking committee and subcommittee referrals, and managing member names rank orders on committees. It is not ready for a pilot yet.
The rebuild of the lobbyist disclosure system formed an executive decision board last year, which meets monthly. A project team began work in May for product discovery and user experience research.
The team’s first deliverable will be a unified congressional lobbying disclosure filing website to act as a temporary single source point.
Graphics in bill text. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez explained her adopted amendment that requests the House Clerk and other Legislative branch offices to study the feasibility of adding illustrations like blueprints to bill text. Instead of having to read lengthy descriptions of a structure or geographic location, constituents could just interpret visuals.
The indefatigable Ringwiss points out that House rules already allow for such inclusions in bills, but there is no publication process for doing so. We appreciated Gluesenkamp Perez sharing her learning journey through Legislative branch offices to discover who would be responsible for making it happen as this is very much why things like the Joint Data Task Force exist.
Ethics
The House Ethics Committee released two reports and started two investigations on Friday
The committee voted unanimously to re-authorize the investigation of Rep. Henry Cuellar, who was indicted for bribery in federal court in 2024.
The committee also voted unanimously to re-authorize the investigation of Rep. Shelia Cherfilus-McCormick for routing community project funding toward a for-profit entity against House rules.
The committee issued its report on Rep. Mike Kelly’s wife’s purchase of stock of a steel company in his district, finding it violated the House’s Official Code of Conduct but that it lacked the evidence to determine if it violated conflict of interest or insider trading rules. Victoria Kelly did not fully cooperate with the committee.
Finally, the committee found that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez violated impermissible gift rules when she received a gown for the Met Gala in 2021. Although she paid to rent the gown, advisors and fashion designers did not provide its true cost.
Odds and Ends
Unlike many federal agencies (and both chambers of Congress), the IRS doesn’t have an official historian. The National Taxpayer’s Union Foundation thinks creating that office would contribute significantly to institutional memory. We’d add this is a good idea for Legislative branch agencies, too, that can publish their institutional history. By the way, we’ve compiled a list of authoritative histories of the Legislative branch, including committees.
American Samoans have petitioned the House for the U.S. to grant residents of the territory federal voting rights and the ability to serve as commissioned military officers. The petition was presented by Speaker Johnson’s office as a memorial from the State Senate of Alaska.
Post-Congress Roll Call tracks the next career moves of the 80 members who left office after the 118th Congress (four have passed away). Fewer lobbyists than you might expect!
A Note on the First Branch Forecast
The American Governance Institute, which publishes the First Branch Forecast, is pleased to announce that Chris Nehls has joined our staff as special policy advisor. One of his responsibilities is to help write the newsletter. As you can tell by today's edition, he is an excellent fit. – Daniel
New Capitol Police IG reports
The department continues the work of releasing older inspector general’s reports to the public, compensating for previous years of poor transparency:
2019 report: OIG-2019-14 Analysis of the United States Capitol Police Wireless Network and Devices (released on 07-15-25)
2018 report: OIG-2018-10 Assessment of the United States Capitol Police Advanced Law Enforcement Response Team (released 07-15-25)
2017 report: OIG-2017-01 Evaluation of the United States Capitol Police Disciplinary Process (released 07-15-25)
2013 report: OIG-2013-01 Audit of United States Capitol Police’s Fiscal Year 2012 Financial Statements (released 07-15-25)
2012 report: OIG-2012-02 Audit of United States Capitol Police’s Fiscal Year 2011 Financial Statements (released 07-15-25)
2012 report: OIG-2012-03 Management Letter Related to the Audit of United States Capitol Police’s Year 2011 Financial Statements (released 07-15-25)
2012 report: OIG-2012-04 Agreed-Upon Procedures of United States Capitol Police Time and Attendance System (released 07-15-25)
2012 report: OIG-2012-01 Independent Audit of United States Capitol Police Enterprise Architecture (released 07-15-25)
2010 report: OIG-2010-02 Review of Hazardous Materials Response Team Procurement Process (released 07-15-25)
2009 report: OIG-2009-04 Local Travel Reimbursement (released 07-15-25)
2009 report: OIG-2009-05 Audit of United States Capitol Police Purchase Card Program (released 07-15-25)
2008 report: OIG-2008-04 Audit of United States Capitol Police Memorial Fund (released 07-15-25)
2008 report: OIG-2008-08 Review of Compliance with United States Capitol Police Hiring Standards (released 07-15-25)
Nothing on the GAO situation?