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.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.