As shutdown drags and Trump flexes, Congress cedes its relevance

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) speaks to reporters alongside other Republican senators outside the West Wing after a lunch with President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, Oct. 21, 2025. As the shutdown drags and Donald Trump flexes, Congress cedes its relevance; “it’s like we have given up,” one Republican lawmaker said. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

By CARL HULSE

By almost any measure, Congress is failing. And flailing.

The government is shut down for the 22nd day, with many federal workers not being paid, agencies and museums closed, and top lawmakers making no serious effort to resolve the disruptive impasse. Congressional staff members have begun referring to themselves as volunteers.

The House has, quite literally, ground to a halt. The chamber has not voted since Sept. 19 and Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to call members back, preventing them from doing any legislative work. He has refused to seat a new duly elected Democratic member from Arizona one month after her victory, though he encouraged her to return home and work for constituents she does not yet officially represent because he won’t administer her the oath of office.

As the Trump administration shifts billions of dollars around to take care of its priorities during the shutdown with scant input from lawmakers, ignoring Congress’ clear constitutional supremacy over the power of the purse, Republicans in control have done nothing to push back.

Nor have they made any move to exercise oversight of President Donald Trump’s legally questionable military moves off the coast of South America, his imposition and threats of tariffs, or anything else that has challenged the authority of their beleaguered institution.

“The Congress is adrift,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “It’s like we have given up. And that’s not a good signal to the American public.”

Since assuming office in January, Trump and his top aides, seasoned from their first stint in the White House, have aggressively and enthusiastically usurped congressional power with little resistance from GOP leaders in the House and the Senate. In many instances, they have willingly ceded their prerogatives and cheered on the president.

Even as administration policies threaten economic harm to huge swaths of rural America that they represent, congressional Republicans have been mainly silent as Trump has unilaterally imposed and threatened tariffs to achieve his own strategic, political and economic goals. Never mind that the Constitution gives Congress chief responsibility for levying tariffs.

The administration has embarked on deadly military operations off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia without the consent of Congress and no call from Republican lawmakers to scrutinize any oversight of the activities, even as the Pentagon cracks down on media coverage and communications with Congress.

Despite deep bipartisan support for sanctions on Russia over its war with Ukraine, Republicans have repeatedly reversed course and delayed legislative action because of mixed signals from Trump, who only days ago exhibited a willingness to restrain Moscow before he again pulled back. On Wednesday, his administration announced new penalties on Russia but still sidestepped Congress, which has pressed for more stringent measures.

Trump himself suggested this week that Congress had little left to do after passing its sweeping domestic policy and tax bill this year since Republicans had packaged all of his top priorities into the special filibuster-proof measure adopted solely with GOP votes.

“We don’t need to pass any more bills,” Trump told Senate Republicans at the White House on Tuesday as they reveled in their unity in the shutdown fight over a cheeseburger-and-fries lunch. “We got everything in that bill.”

Lawmakers in both parties worry that the steady erosion of congressional prerogative they are witnessing daily could inflict permanent damage on the institution at the forefront of representative government.

“There is a real danger that self-inflicted wounds by this institution will imperil it,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “I think people are shaking their heads that Congress has reached this point in America.”

Democrats have been largely steamrollered by Trump and his Republican allies all year. They have relied on the courts to hold the line against illegal actions by the White House, a hope that has met with mixed success.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his members are now employing what little leverage they do possess by denying Republicans the 60 votes they need to pass a short-term spending bill to fund the government. They are demanding that Republicans join them in extending pandemic-era Obamacare insurance subsidies that are scheduled to expire at the end of the year to avoid big premium increases on millions of people.

But Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., refuse to negotiate with Democrats until they approve the short-term spending bill, creating the impasse that has shuttered much of the government.

And Republican leaders have made it clear that they view their role as subordinate to the president, saying they won’t open talks with their Democratic counterparts unless Trump allows them to do so.

“Leader Thune and I visited with President Trump this afternoon and he confirmed he is ready and willing for the three of us to meet with Leader Jeffries and Senator Schumer as soon as Schumer reopens the government,” the speaker wrote on social media, referring to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the House minority leader.

The current shutdown has been distinguished from past ones by a marked lack of urgency to resolve it, with senators repeating the same failed votes for days on end in a “Groundhog Day” exhibition before flying home for the weekends. The House chamber, on the other hand, has remained entirely empty except for occasional brief pro forma sessions in an extraordinary display of absenteeism.

Johnson has said he wants lawmakers to stay away to keep the pressure on Democrats. But there is a belief among both Democrats and Republicans that he doesn’t want to take the risk that fractious House members could convene and make his job holding the line more difficult.

He has also used the excuse of the House being out of formal session to refuse to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., who was elected in September in a special election to replace her late father, Raúl.