Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Congress is losing some of its best players this year

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Rep. Derek Kilmer

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Rep. Derek Kilmer, two congressional workhorses, are retiring at the end of the year.

Fitch is a former CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation and a former Capitol Hill staffer.

The college basketball world got a jolt to its system this month when beloved University of Virginia coach Tony Bennett announced his retirement. A big loss for the Cavaliers, and even a loss for the sport. When great leaders or players leave an industry, it can cause significant harm for their organization and the people they serve.

Similarly, at the end of the 118th Congress, the House and Senate will lose a greater number of “superstar players” than at almost any other time in recent memory. Most of these public servants are not household names, yet that is the definition of a “workhorse” in Congress (in contrast to a “show horse”). They show up, put their heads together and hammer out bill after bill to benefit the American people.


While many of the retiring lawmakers are laudable, here are four who have made outstanding contributions to their constituents and the nation.

Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) has served in the House for 10 years, after 10 years in the Washington Legislature. In 2019 Kilmer was tapped to lead a new ad-hoc panel, the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. After its first year, The Washington Post called it “the most important committee you’ve never heard of.” The evenly split panel adopted more than 200 recommendations to improve Congress as an institution, and always with an eye towards improving services to constituents.

In every facet of operation, the committee broke the rules and pulled down partisan barriers. Instead of using the traditional hearing room dais to sit above their witnesses and audience, they all sat around a table together. Instead of two partisan staffs, they had one bipartisan staff. At hearings they didn’t divide into two camps, but instead sat next to each other, Democrat next to Republican. Collectively, the recommendations will strengthen Congress, allow constituents to have a greater voice in government and lead to better service to (and representation of) the American people.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) arrived in Congress in 2005, at age 29, as a bit of a partisan firebrand and the youngest member of Congress. As he grew into the job, and rose in GOP leadership ranks, time seemed to soften his approach. In 2020 he did not join his fellow Republicans in voting against the certification of Joe Biden’s election.

And in 2023 he assumed the important role of chairman of the Financial Services Committee. While holding ideological views, McHenry was credited with shepherding bipartisan legislation through the committee, often to the displeasure of more partisan elements of his party. His cooling demeanor may be why he was selected as speaker pro tempore when Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was forced out of his position in 2023.

One columnist noted of McHenry’s career, “In like a thespian, out like a Madisonian.” This may be why the Congressional Management Foundation selected McHenry for a Lifetime Achievement Democracy Award in 2024.

The retirement of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) is another great loss to Congress. A conservative on many issues, she also built bipartisan relationships as a member of the moderate Republican Main Street Caucus. McMorris Rodgers also pushed innovation in the institution of Congress. She famously quipped that Congress is a “19th century institution using 20th century technology to respond to 21st century problems.”

She broke glass ceilings in her rise to power, becoming the first woman to chair the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. She also holds a distinction no other person can claim: While in the House of Representatives she birthed three children!

Throughout her five decades in public service, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) has been a champion of manufacturing and agriculture in Michigan. “We don’t have an economy unless somebody makes something and somebody grows something,” she said. In the Senate she helped write the Affordable Care Act and passed major reforms to bring down the cost of health insurance and prescription drugs and to require health insurance plans to cover maternity care.

She was the first woman to chair a county board of commissioners in Michigan in the 1970s, first woman to preside over the Michigan House of Representatives, and first woman elected to the Senate from Michigan in 2001.

Any team that loses star players is much less likely to succeed in the next season. For Congress, and the country, 2025 will likely be a rebuilding year for democracy.

Read More

The Roots of America’s Violence:
White Supremacy, Power, and the Struggle for Dignity
Ragiv:Charlie Kirk in Tampa July 2025 (cropped).jpg - Vükiped

The Roots of America’s Violence: White Supremacy, Power, and the Struggle for Dignity

In September 2025, activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a Utah campus event. His death was shocking — not only for its brutality, but because it showed that political violence is not just a relic of the past or a threat on the horizon. It is part of our national identity. Today’s surge in violence follows patterns we’ve seen before. Let’s take a look at that history.

When Pope Alexander VI issued the Doctrine of Discovery in 1493, he gave theological and legal cover for European conquest of lands already inhabited by indigenous people. These papal bulls declared non-Christian peoples “less than” and their lands open for seizure. This was more than a geopolitical maneuver — it embedded into the Western imagination a belief in the inherent supremacy of some over others.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Noosphere Is Here–and the Struggle for Its Soul Now Runs Through Musk, Putin, and Trump

The noosphere is here—and it’s under siege. This essay explores how Musk, Trump, and Putin are shaping the global mind through Starlink, X, and cognitive warfare.

Getty Images, Yuichiro Chino

The Noosphere Is Here–and the Struggle for Its Soul Now Runs Through Musk, Putin, and Trump

In the early 20th century, two thinkers—Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and French Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin—imagined a moment when humanity’s collective consciousness would crystallize into a new planetary layer: the noosphere, from the Greek nous, meaning “mind.” A web of thought enveloping the globe, driven by shared knowledge, science, and a spiritual awakening.

Today, the noosphere is no longer speculation. It is orbiting above us, pulsing through the algorithms of our digital platforms. And it is being weaponized in real time. Its arrival has not ushered in global unity but cognitive warfare. Its architecture is not governed by democracies or international institutions but by a handful of unaccountable actors.

Keep ReadingShow less
2025 Democracy Awards Ceremony Celebrates Bipartisan Excellence in Public Service

The Democracy Awards Ceremony hosted by the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) on Thursday, September 18, 2025

Credit: CMF

2025 Democracy Awards Ceremony Celebrates Bipartisan Excellence in Public Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) hosted its annual Democracy Awards Ceremony on Thursday, September 18, recognizing exceptional Members of Congress and staff who exemplify outstanding public service, operational excellence, and innovation in their work on Capitol Hill.

In the stately House Ways & Means Committee Hearing Room, the 8th annual Democracy Awards ceremony unfolded as a heartfelt tribute to the congressional offices honored earlier this summer. The event marked more than just a formal recognition—it was a celebration of integrity, dedication, and the enduring spirit of public service.

Keep ReadingShow less
What Makes Trump’s Power Grab Different?

Workers hang a large photo of President Donald Trump next to a U.S. flag on the facade of the Department of Labor headquarters building in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 27, 2025.

Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Images/TNS

What Makes Trump’s Power Grab Different?

For many, the evidence is in: Donald Trump wants to be an autocrat. If you haven’t read an op-ed or heard a radio, TV or podcast commentator make that case, it’s probably because you’ve tried hard to avoid doing so. It would require virtually never watching cable news, including pro-Trump outlets, because there are few things Fox News and its imitators love more than running clips of MSNBC hosts and other “resistance” types, not to mention Democratic politicians, melting down over Trump’s “war on democracy,” “authoritarian power-grabs,” etc.

Move further to the right, and you’ll find populists who want Trump to be an autocrat. They use terms like “Red Caesarism,” or “neomonarchism,” while others pine for an American Pinochet or Francisco Franco or compare Trump to biblical figures like the Persian King Cyrus or ancient Israel’s King David. I can’t really blame anyone for taking these pathetic Bonapartists at their word.

Keep ReadingShow less