The bipartisan committee tasked with improving and modernizing operations in the House of Representatives took a step toward institutionalizing more than 30 of its recommendations on Tuesday. And with the panel set to expire at the end of the year, this may be one of its members’ final opportunities to bring about change.
Four members of the House – two Democrats and two Republicans – introduced legislation to implement 32 of the recommendations advanced by the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress over the past four years. A previous resolution, which included 28 recommendations, passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2020.
The new resolution includes proposals to update technology on Capitol Hill, increase collaboration, and improve staff recruitment and retention.
The committee was created at the start of the 116th Congress, in January 2019, and tasked with developing recommendations to improve congressional operations, reduce partisanship and create transparency. The committee was renewed for the 117th Congress and will conclude its work at the end of 2022.
“The Modernization Committee has developed and passed 171 bipartisan recommendations that will ensure the House can be more efficient and effective in serving the American people,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer of Washington, the committee’s Democratic chairman. “But our goal is not just to make recommendations – it’s to make change. This Resolution will put institutional weight behind more than 30 of those recommendations and help make sure these great ideas are put into effect.”
The bill was co-sponsored by the panel’s Republican vice Chairman, William Timmons of South Carolina. The House Administration Committee’s chair (Democrat Zoe Lofgren of California and Republican Rodney Davis of Illinois) also added their support to the measure. Their committee would likely be tasked with implementing approved programs.
“This resolution is a step toward implementing changes that will ensure the House can more effectively serve the American people,” Davis said.
The 32 recommendations include:
- Establishing space for bipartisan gatherings of House members in the Capitol.
- Scheduling a bipartisan retreat for lawmakers and their spouses at the start of each two-year congressional session.
- Providing training, during orientation for new lawmakers, to facilitate policy debates and understanding opposing points of view.
- Encouraging committees and subcommittees to test alternative hearing formats to better share ideas in a civil manner.
- Improving committee scheduling tools to avoid double-booking lawmakers.
- Streamline services for procurement of office supplies and sending official mail.
- Developing plans for ensuring continuity of operations in the event of an emergency.
- Making permanent a current, temporary task force that is developing strategies for advancing the House workforce, including mentorship and training programs, tools for evaluating compensation, and improving fellowship and internship opportunities.
- Improving access for disabled people in congressional buildings.
- Reviewing congressional budgets.
“I came to Congress to help fix Washington, and I’m proud of the Modernization Committee’s work to produce 171 recommendations that will help Congress work better for the American people,” Timmons said. “This resolution, a follow-up to the first MODCOM Resolution that passed the House overwhelmingly in the last Congress, seeks to continue that positive momentum by putting an additional 32 recommendations on a path to full implementation.”
The committee will hold its final hearing on Sept. 14, according to spokeswoman Susan Curran. That session will focus on ways Congress can continue its modernization efforts after the committee expires. Members anticipate issuing a final set of recommendations on Sept. 29, focusing on technology and constituent engagement.
All 171 recommendations are available on the committee’s website, broken down into the 116th Congress and the 117th Congress.
Separately, the Congressional Management Foundation announced its annual Democracy Award winners on Tuesday, with two House members honored for their work on “innovation and modernization.” Republican Garret Graves of Louisiana and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts were recognized for their use of technology to meet constituents’ needs and improve office operations.
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.