Congressional Republicans Threaten their own Power to Protect Trump

The broad story of the second Trump era has been of two inverse and related trends: The growth of a personalist Presidency, and the decline of state capacity. A system built on loyalty to one man cannot tolerate institutions bound by other values, and so it must break them. This pattern has been observed again and again in the executive branch, which is unsurprising.

But now we see Trump’s loyalists in Congress target their own legislative institutions for being unwilling to bend the knee.

The latest, but by no means only example is the proposed House Republican budget that would cut in half funding the Government Accountability Office. GAO is the non-partisan legislative watchdog that gives Congress the capacity to investigate what the executive branch is up to. GAO does careful investigative reports on the topics that Congress determines are important. For example, DOGE might have actually been moderately effective if it paid attention to GAO’s High Risk series documenting the biggest challenges to making the government effective.

The basic job of institutions is to defend their existence. Right now, Congress is failing to do that. Ah, you might think, blind defense of outdated institutions is a flaw. Maybe sometimes. But not here. Congress — and more specifically congressional Republicans — has been largely acquiescent to Trump, failing its role as a check against an executive branch that badly needs checking. And it is now attacking the congressional capacities that allow it to fulfill its constitutional role

https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/congressional-republicans-threaten