By Rudy Barnes, Jr.
Members of Congress are sworn to support and defend the Constitution with its separation of powers as political checks and balances. A New York Times article on March 14 reported that those in Trump’s Republican Congress ignored their Constitutional obligations and “enthusiastically turned over its powers to Trump’s White House.” See https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/us/politics/trump-republicans-congress-power.html.
In 2020 I wrote a commentary on the Demise of American Democracy: Is It Deja Vu All Over Again? And on March 8, 2025 I wrote on How Trump Has Undermined Trust in America. https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2025/03/musings-on-how-trump-has-undermined.html. In February 2025 I opined that if a new majority in Congress is not elected in the 2026 elections, Trump will have the power to end Constitutional democracy as we know it. A March 14, 2025 article in The NYTimes article indicates that our worst fears may now be realized. https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2025/02/musings-on-demise-of-american-democracy.html.
After Trump’s first term and his campaign promises in the 2024 election We should have seen this Constitutional crisis coming. Democracy is only as strong as a majority of its voters make it; and it appears that a majority of American voters are split between Trump’s Republican regime. NBC news reported on February 15 that 53% of voters support the Trump regime.
Polarized partisan politics have corrupted American democracy since the 1850’s, when Abraham Lincoln led the fledgling Republican Party to assume power before the Civil War. That terrible war merely reversed the parties in power. Until the 1960’s South Carolina was a one- party Democratic (blue) state; today it’s a one-party Republican (red) state.
American politics are a two-party duopoly. Third party candidates cannot compete with institutional partisan political structures, and candidates won’t run for office unless they have a reasonable chance of winning. That limits candidates to the two major parties; and both parties attract demagogues like Trump and Musk.
Voters share culpability with Trump and Musk for the Constitutional crisis. It’s as much about the loss of political legitimacy among voters as it is about Trump and Musk. Without voters affirming the primacy of the Constitution over autocracy in 2026, the Constitution is in real danger. The political devastation of Trump’s Republican Congress could be a requiem for the end of American democracy.
https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2025/02/musings-on-demise-of-american-democracy.html.
Notes:
How a GOP Congress that Ceded its Constitutional Power to Trump Eroded Its Influence https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/us/politics/trump-republicans-congress-power.html.
By Carl Ulse and Catie Edmondson, NYTimes, March 14, 2025.
The Republican-led Congress isn’t just watching the Trump administration gobble up its constitutional powers. It’s enthusiastically turning them over to the White House.
GOP lawmakers are doing so this week by embracing a stopgap spending bill that gives the administration wide discretion over how federal dollars are distributed, in effect handing off the legislative branch’s spending authority to President Trump. But that is just one example of how Congress, under unified Republican control, is proactively relinquishing some of its critical authority on oversight, economic issues, and more.
As they cleared the way for passing the spending measure on Tuesday, House Republicans leaders also quietly surrendered their chamber’s ability to undo Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China in an effort to shield their Republican cohorts from having to take a politically tough vote. That ended the only legislative recourse that Congress had to challenge the tariffs that are all but certain to have a major impact on their constituents. Republicans have also stood by, many of them cheering, as the administration has upended federal departments and programs funded by Congress and fired thousands of workers with no notice to or consultation with the lawmakers charged with overseeing federal agencies.
So far, no congressional committee has held an oversight hearing to scrutinize the moves or demand answers that would typically be expected when an administration undertakes such major changes. “This is us, in a sense, giving the keys to the president to be able to continue to do the great work that they’re doing.” Those were the words of Representative Michael Cloud (R-Tex) explaining his support for the stopgap funding the House passed this week and that is pending in the Senate. This is us, in a sense, giving the keys to the president,” said Cloud.
But the sentiment he described encapsulates the overarching attitude of Republicans in Congress at the dawn of Mr. Trump’s second term, as they happily acknowledge they are turning control over to the president, who in turn is benefiting from perhaps the most compliant Congress in history, congratulating his supporters and condemning his opponents.
“They are actively giving it away,” Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, said of his Republican colleagues’ attitude toward congressional authority. “And they are doing so in an atmosphere where it’s clear this administration is willing to abuse the power they already have.”
In the past, lawmakers of both parties have fiercely protected their turf, pushing back strongly at moments when presidents have attempted to usurp congressional prerogatives. They saw Article I of the Constitution as reflecting their branch’s primary importance in a system of checks and balances. They saw the executive branch as meaning to administer their designs. Presidents came and went, members would often say, while Congress remained a constant. With the House and Senate so polarized and legislative success so difficult to achieve in recent years, power has been inexorably gravitating down Capitol Hill toward the White House, which has been more than willing to try and exercise it with executive orders and other unilateral action. But Trump is taking the shift to new levels with his iron grip on congressional Republicans exercised through a combination of cultivating warm personal relationships with them and the constant threat that they will pay a hefty political price for crossing him.
“This is the Super Bowl,” Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News in describing how Congress would work with Mr. Trump to change the way government functions. “This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for our entire careers, and finally, the stars have aligned so we can do that better.” But Trump, Musk and other top administration officials have already made it clear that they have little regard for Congress’s authority, and Mr. Johnson has positioned himself more as a subordinate to the president than the leader of a coequal branch of government with its own power. And once lawmakers have yielded their authority, they will find it hard to claw it back.
“For the moment, Republicans do not appear to be concerned with the precedent they are setting. Conservative House G.O.P. lawmakers who typically oppose appropriations bills backed this week’s short-term spending bill precisely because it would hand Mr. Trump much of the authority for funding decisions that Congress would usually reserve for itself. They said they were reversing themselves in part because the Trump administration had already demonstrated it would disregard congressional instructions to allocate money for programs lawmakers voted to fund. Democrats cited that as a reason to reject the bill, but Republicans said it gave them confidence that the administration would withhold money and reduce spending no matter what Congress said.
Republicans’ willingness to allow Trump and Musk to snatch away Congress’s vaunted power of the purse has inflamed Democrats with the power grab for a blank check short-term spending bill. “House Republicans didn’t merely refuse to address the lawlessness we have seen from Trump and Musk,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “They would actually empower it with this bill, because the House Republicans’ bill fails to include the typical detailed spending directives, the basic guardrails that Congress provides each year in our funding bills.”
Still, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, moved on Thursday to line up Democratic votes to allow the stopgap funding bill to move forward in the Senate, arguing that a shutdown would actually cede even more power to Trump and Musk.
Congressional Republicans have also relinquished some of their power on economic issues. They gave up any possibility of holding a House vote this year to overturn tariffs enacted by the president. The power to impose such levies was originally vested with the legislative branch, but lawmakers over time have increasingly delegated it to the executive. Still, under current law, Congress can vote to undo tariffs imposed by the president. Under language that GOP leaders tucked into a procedural measure this week, that law would effectively be nullified. “They are abdicating their most important Constitutional obligation: oversight over the executive branch on trade,” said Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee who had led the effort to force a vote on resolutions to end the tariffs. “Republicans have unequivocally showed us who they are — cowards who kowtow to the president on everything including the economy.”
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