Fothergill is the RepresentUs Deputy Mobilization Director.
Each new Congress represents an opportunity for our elected officials to show that they can make life better for the American people. While there are plenty of hot-button issues that sharply divide us, there are just as many issues that have overwhelming bipartisan support. One of those issues is corruption.
Since no one wants there to be more corruption in government, you would think that the new Congress would take this golden opportunity to tackle something that folks across the political spectrum agree upon. But in one of the first votes of the 118th Congress, the Republican majority voted to gut one of the only safeguards the federal government has against corruption: the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE).
The OCE was created in 2008 following corruption scandal after corruption scandal. A bipartisan task force concluded that the best way to clean up Congress was with an independent body with oversight authority. Because of the conflict of interest, current elected officials could not be trusted to investigate their colleagues or themselves. As far as process goes, the OCE carries out corruption investigations, then refers their findings to the House Ethics Committee for further action.
Since its inception, the OCE has done its job investigating corruption from members of both parties. It has also lived up to its nonpartisan mission, referring nearly the same number of Democrats (52) and Republicans (50) to the Ethics Committee. More recently, it has shed light on members of Congress violating the STOCK Act – a law that was passed to prevent members of Congress financially benefiting from insider knowledge.
Given all the good important work the OCE has done, what possible explanation could the new majority have for dismantling it? Is there a massive pro-corruption movement I’m not aware of that is demanding this? Obviously, the answer is no.
This backwards move could not have come at a worse time. Our government is already experiencing a dangerous lack of trust with the public. More than two-thirds of Americans agree that “most politicians are corrupt” and nearly 70% believe the government “mainly works to benefit powerful elites” rather than “ordinary people". It’s no wonder, that when Congress fails year after year to tackle corruption, that confidence in government is at an all-time low. This continued failure to act poses a serious threat to our democracy.
What’s particularly baffling is that, in speech after speech on the House floor last week, member after member said some version of “Washington is broken”. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a bait and switch. In the public eye they correctly say that things need to change, but if you look at their actions, they have an odd way of showing they believe it. It’s almost as if they think that we the American people aren’t watching and aren’t paying attention.
Fortunately, the fight isn’t over. The OCE may be hobbled, but it hasn’t been eliminated. RepresentUs and our partners strongly opposed and sounded the alarm about gutting the OCE. Now, led by Common Cause, we’re planning to submit a letter to members of Congress outlining how the office can be strengthened. First and foremost, it should be codified into law so that a pro-corruption Congress can’t so easily dismantle it. It should also have subpoena power to better conduct its investigations.
Apart from reversing course and strengthening the OCE, there are other obvious steps Congress can take to tackle corruption. Overwhelming majorities of Americans also oppose members of Congress trading stocks while in office. This issue was brought to the forefront when multiple elected officials sold stocks following an internal COVID-19 briefing. Senators and House members proposed several bipartisan bills last Congress to strengthen the STOCK Act and ban congressional stock trading. There’s no excuse for failing to act.
At the end of the day, this is about restoring trust in our elected officials and our government. Congress simply cannot function when the American people don’t think it has their best interests at heart. If the new majority and all of Congress finally gets serious about tackling corruption, the American people will reward them for it. Enough is enough.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.