The US Congress is missing in action

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The most important task of the US legislature — America’s first branch of government — is to check the executive. By that measure, the country’s 119th Congress has lost its purpose less than two months after going into session. Donald Trump’s administration is explicitly pursuing a “unitary executive theory” of the US presidency that largely bypasses Capitol Hill and has scant basis in constitutional law. Instead of asserting its prerogatives, Congress is rolling over.

Bodies created by law can only be undone by law. Yet Congress has done nothing to stop the closure of USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Department of Education looks to be next on Elon Musk’s target list. Congress created the role of inspectors-general whose job it is to blow the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse in federal agencies and departments. It raised no objections, though, when Trump summarily fired 17 of them in his first week. Congress has the power of the purse. Yet only portions of the judiciary, America’s third branch of government, have objected to Trump’s spending freezes and Musk’s budget clawbacks.

The lion’s share of the blame for Capitol Hill’s passivity belongs to Republicans, who have narrow majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Those who still believe the Republican party is a normal political outfit are turning a blind eye.

Here is a sample of resolutions proposed by Republican lawmakers in the past few weeks: Florida’s Ann Paulina Luna wants Congress to pass a law adding Trump’s likeness to Mount Rushmore alongside presidents such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to reflect his “towering legacy”; New York’s Claudia Tenney proposes to make Trump’s June 14 birthday a federal holiday alongside Washington’s; a bill from Tennessee’s Andy Ogles would amend the US constitution to allow Trump to run for a third term so he has time to restore “America to greatness”. North Carolina’s Addison McDowell would rename Washington’s Dulles airport the Donald J Trump International Airport to thank him for the new “golden age of America”.

Such displays might have embarrassed George III, who praised Washington as the “greatest man in the world” for shedding his military commission after the revolutionary war. But the runes are more ominous than that. The Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowski, was a rare Republican voice in rebuking Trump for “embracing [Vladimir] Putin” after Friday’s humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Many, however, chose to amplify a fringe reporter’s complaint that Ukraine’s president had failed to wear a suit. None has objected to Musk’s regulation baseball cap and T-shirt, let alone to the unconfirmed billionaire’s ex officio usurping of Congress’s fiscal prerogative. Musk has not even been summoned to testify.

The US Senate once boasted of being the world’s greatest deliberative body. Yet it has confirmed patently unqualified nominees to lead the Pentagon, the Department of Health and Human Services and as Director of National Intelligence. Musk corralled Republican waverers by threatening to spend millions to eject them.

The Democratic Party, meanwhile, is responding to Trump’s power grab with routine manoeuvres. Though in the minority and lacking teeth, Democrats also seem to have lost their tongue. As Trump has single-mindedly shown in recent years, a minority party can upend national perception when it acts in unison. There are stirrings of pushback outside the US capital in town hall meetings and protests at Tesla showrooms. Peaceful opposition is a sacred American right. Congress was meant to hold the presidency to account on behalf of the people. In its absence, the states, business, civil society and the public must occupy that vacancy.