The bipartisan committee tasked with recommending how to make Congress more efficient, effective and collegial issued its latest round of unanimous recommendations Tuesday, focusing on oversight, facilities, the legislative process and continuity in times of crisis.
Last week, the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress met to hear from three witnesses on improving “customer service” in Congress. Ideas presented by the witnesses on how to improve communication between constituents and staffers in order to better serve the American people were incorporated into the recommendations.
“The American people deserve a Congress that works better for them. These bipartisan recommendations work to strengthen some of the House’s most essential functions so representatives can do a better job serving their constituents,” said Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer, chairman of the committee.
The recommendations passed were broken down into four categories: strengthening congressional oversight, modernizing House office buildings, updating the legislative process and ensuring Congress can continue to operate in an emergency.
“I came to Washington to fix Congress so it can better serve the American people,” said Vice Chair William Timmons, a Republican. “The passage of today’s 29 recommendations will ensure the House can better serve the American people by providing staff with additional tools to strengthen oversight and hold the Executive Branch accountable, equipping support offices with the resources they need to turn the will of the people into law, and giving district offices the additional support and guidance they need to better serve their communities.”
The section on oversight included 14 recommendations to improve access to technological resources for staffers, establish bipartisan support programs, and improve communications and tools for constituent service.
The second category focused on reinventing the House’s workspace to spur greater communication and more efficient workdays. These recommendations include surveying House employees to assess the use of office space, expanding options for meeting spaces, establishing modern ways of communicating during construction, and implementing flexible and modern designs for workplace furniture.
The four proposals in the third category cover updating Congress’ bill tracking system, exempting student loan repayments from maximum compensation, developing a technology solution to automate responses to constituents, and generating other tools to better facilitate legislative drafting between Members and their staff.
The last category embraced an idea to establish a joint committee within Congress to review House and Senate rules and regulations. The committee would be responsible for submitting a report containing approved recommendations to the House. This final recommendation would be a way for a bipartisan committee to keep both the House and Senate accountable and ensure that lawmakers continue to represent the American people even in times of crisis.
Over the course of the 116th and 117th Congresses, the committee has approved 143 other recommendations that have covered issues ranging from streamlining Congress’ bill-writing process to, introducing modern technologies to boosting congressional capacity to reforming the budget and appropriations process. Of the 171 total recommendations, 37 have been fully implemented and 76 that have been partially implemented, according to data shared by the committee.
Previously, the modernization committee has been primarily focused on reforming Congress from within. Last Thursday’s hearing marked one of the few times it has prioritized the relationship between Members and their constituents.
Nearly 80 percent of the public believes Congress is not doing enough to represent constituents. The committee’s work may be a step toward reversing the trend, but the full House needs to approve the proposals before they can be implemented.
The committee’s next hearing will take place July 28. Members will hear testimony on topics that include simplifying the legislative process, improving civic infrastructure, growing the size of the House and extending term lengths. The committee’s final session will be held Sept. 14 and will analyze the status of the recommendations implemented and further discuss ways the committee can help improve and modernize Congress.
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.