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.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.