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As worker bees like Republican Sen. Rob Portman head for the exits, it will become even harder for Congress to pass legislation.
After the attack, government's 'first branch' struggles to keep from breaking
Feb 16 2021
To bemoan the trials faced by members of Congress these days may seem naïve, even perverse.
The lawmakers on Capitol Hill represent one of the most hated classes in American public life. If service in Congress has become polarized, fruitless and even dangerous, anti-government rhetoric from Capitol Hill ideologues is at least partly to blame. Public approval for Congress stands at just 25 percent — up a few points from last month, but still well below most public institutions.
Yet it is fair to say that House members and senators are in the throes of an existential, electoral and institutional crisis.
<p>
The mob assault on the Capitol is over but the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-members-say-theyre-targets-ask-for-better-security/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">death threats</a> continue, and congressional aides are leaving the Hill in droves. So are many lawmakers, including relative moderates like Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/richard-shelby-joins-3-other-republican-senators-not-seeking-re-election-2022-1567661" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">one of four</a> Republican senators who have already announced they won't run again in 2022.
</p><p>A delay in the release of detailed census data that has now stretched to five months, into September, will <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/redistricting/2020-census-delays-and-the-impact-on-redistricting-637261879.aspx" target="_blank">significantly delay</a> the once-a-decade redrawing of congressional districts — leaving dozens of incumbents as well as their potential challengers in the dark about where they will even run their campaigns and when they can get started.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p><span></span>As Steve Israel, a former congressman who once ran the House Democrats' campaign operation, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/28/census-redistricting-delays-2022-house-463388" target="_blank">told Politico</a>, you "have your players lined up," but "you don't know where the field begins and ends."<br></p><p>
Renewed Republican <a href="https://www.vox.com/22254482/republicans-voter-suppression-state-legislatures" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">assaults on voter access</a> — in the legislatures of many of the biggest states under their control— may also complicate congressional elections, making it harder for candidates <a href="https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/02/08/making-it-easier-to-vote-is-good-for-republicans-too/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">in both parties</a> to mobilize and turn out would-be constituents.
</p><p>
All this comes on the heels of an unprecedented, four-year assault on public servants by former President Donald Trump. His <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/02/trump-is-continuing-deconstruction-administrative-state/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">evisceration</a> of the professional civil service in federal agencies, and his attacks on state election officials who were then <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/election-workers-threats-trump/2020/12/02/d3e14d78-34c2-11eb-8d38-6aea1adb3839_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">threatened with violence</a>, have been well documented. But Congress, too, was sidelined by Trump's chaotic governing style, and by the constant demand for lawmakers to respond to his erratic tweets and policy moves.
</p><p>
Add to this the logistical hurdles and health threats posed by the pandemic, combined with Congress' ongoing failure to modernize its own operations, and morale on Capitol Hill may have reached a nadir. Deficits in staff training and pay, weakened committees, and escalating partisanship and campaign costs all have taken their toll. Now, in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, many lawmakers are literally fearing for their lives.
</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>
"They realize they can't get anything passed," says Brad Fitch, president of the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonprofit that works to make the legislative branch more functional. "They realize the committees have been neutered on some level by leadership. And they can't serve their constituents, because they don't have power to do that."
</p><p>
The problem is not that the supply of congressional candidates will dry up. The 2022 midterm promises to be funded with billions of dollars and extremely hard fought — especially as Republicans, who almost always do well the first election after a Democrat enters the White House, <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2021/02/10/these-47-house-democrats-are-on-the-gops-target-list-for-2022/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">set out to build</a> on 2020 gains that put them only a handful of seats from the House majority.
</p><p>
The problem is rather what caliber of public servant might seek out a life on Capitol Hill as it is today.
</p><p>
Congress has always had its share of colorful outliers, of course. The late Jim Traficant, an Ohio Democrat who was the last person expelled from the House after a 2002 bribery conviction, <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2014/09/27/james-traficant-dies-following-tractor-accident-2/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">comes to mind</a>. But the arrival in the House of Georgia's Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right conspiracy theorist with little to no policy agenda and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/us/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">recently stripped</a> of both her committee posts, bodes poorly for the institution. So does the departure of Portman, one of a long list of lawmakers known as worker bees willing to work across the aisle who has left or is heading for the exits.
</p><p>
Some lay the blame squarely on the shoulders <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/13/republican-legislatures-trump-conspiracy-458507" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">of Republicans</a>, who even following his departure continue largely to defend Trump, amplify his election falsehoods and stoke ideological divisions and obstructionism.
</p><p>
But the solution to Capitol Hill's woes will not come from one party alone. One of its few bright spots lately has been the work of the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which toiled in the previous two years to issue 97 bipartisan recommendations for how to make the institution work better — and was rewarded with two more years to propose even more improvements.
</p><p>
The panel's <a href="https://modernizecongress.house.gov/recommendations" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">recommendations</a> include shoring up congressional staff and support organizations, streamlining the congressional calendar to create blocks of time for committee work, modernizing the budget process — and encouraging more bipartisan oversight, retreats and training. Some of the proposals are already being implemented and more will be soon. The goal is a Congress that's more transparent, accountable, effective and even civil.
</p><p>
The committee's work is supported by some 70 groups, including the CMF and the Partnership for Public Service, in the vanguard of a growing coalition to reform and revitalize the battered Congress.
</p><p>
It's a mission that's gained urgency since Jan. 6, which spawned a new initiative by close to two dozen civil society groups dubbed <a href="https://capitolstrong.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CapitolStrong</a>. That coalition will work to strengthen and invest in Congress and those who work there, particularly congressional staff.
</p><p>
Voters "like to demonize the institution," notes Fitch. "But in reality, we need a robust and healthy Congress. We need public service professionals."
</p><p>
Some voters might roll their eyes, but if the "first branch" breaks, democracy will pay the price.
</p><p>
<em>Carney is a contributing writer.</em>
</p>
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With Bidens in the White House, civic education should get more support.
For educators, a time of opportunity after civic life's current stress test
Jan 14 2021
Civic educators watched last week's riotous assault on the Capitol with a mixture of alarm and hope. The mob's brazen disregard for the truth and the rule of law shook teachers around the nation, but also made a stunning case for the need to invest in civic learning, which could enjoy a breakthrough year in 2021.
A bipartisan bill to invest $1 billion in civic education, a teacher-friendly incoming president, popular support for civic learning, a surge in youth activism — and the fragile state of American democracy itself — have all combined to create "sort-of a Sputnik moment" for civics, says Louise Dubé, the executive director of iCivics.
<p>Her organization, the nation's leading provider of civic learning resources, is leading a 144-member CivXNow Coalition of civic education groups that is working to mobilize allies from the Girl Scouts to the American Bar Association, along with legions of educators, students and teachers, to support the bipartisan Educating for Democracy Act. </p>
<p>Authored in the Senate by Republican John Cornyn of Texas and Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware, a close ally of President-elect Joe Biden, the bill <a href="https://www.coons.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/201130%20Educating%20for%20Democracy%20one-pager%20vINTRO.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">would dole out $1 billion</a> to states for American history and civics programs and ramp up teacher training and student assessments. A House version was introduced by Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro and Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>The bill sets out to reverse chronic underinvestment in civic learning, <a href="https://www.icivics.org/news/product-announcement/new-white-paper-icivics-generation-citizen-makes-case-equity-and-diversity?" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">which now receives</a> just 5 cents in federal funding per student each year — compared with $50 per student annually for STEM education.</p>
<p>"I'm really heartened by the fact that the bill in the House and the bill in the Senate are bipartisan, despite the billion-dollar price tag," says Dubé. "That tells me that our political leaders recognize the depth of the problem. And it would be transformative for this field, for students and for educators."</p>
<p>The same hurdles that have plagued civic education for decades remain, of course. </p>
<p>Civic learning tends to get lost between the cracks of social studies, history and geography, can spook teachers wary of political controversies, and has triggered <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/what-is-civic-education" target="_self">partisan disputes</a> over whether students should learn facts and dates or how to transform communities. <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2018/02/21/446857/state-civics-education/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Only nine states</a> and D.C. required a full year of civics or government studies to graduate as of 2018, though dozens of state legislatures will be mulling bills in their 2021 sessions to mandate more civic learning.</p>
<p>President Trump has undermined civic education both directly and indirectly, <a href="https://www.edweek.org/education/opinion-trump-has-been-awful-for-civic-education/2020/10" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">some argue</a>, by modeling uncivil behavior as well as by roiling partisan disputes over what students should learn. </p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>He has bullied and jeered at detractors, flouted the truth and the rule of law, assailed representative democracy with his unfounded voter fraud claims — and has now ended up as the first president impeached two times. Even as the nation grappled last year with racial reckoning, and students clamored for greater equity and diversity in classroom materials, Trump signed an executive order to promote "patriotic education" that <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-protecting-americas-founding-ideals-promoting-patriotic-education/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">he said</a> would counter efforts to "paint America as a systemically racist country."</p>
<p>The Trump era may also have created an opening for civic education, however.</p>
<p>Americans' civic knowledge actually increased in 2019, <a href="https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-civics-knowledge-increases-2019-survey/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center</a>, a product of the president's constant clashes with Congress over budgets, immigration, impeachment and executive power. Trump's controversial presidency also helped spur record voter turnout, including among young Americans fired up over issues like race, global warming and gun safety.</p>
<p>Public support for civic learning cuts across party and ideology. Pollster Frank Luntz found in a survey last year that more than half of voters in both parties <a href="https://www.civxnow.org/sites/default/files/resources/CivXNow%20infographic%20-%20Luntz%20polling%20-%20FINAL.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">identified civic education</a> as the best way to strengthen American identity. </p>
<p>Curriculum standards for civics, history and social studies, which vary by state but which in many cases have drawn fire as outdated, facts-heavy and lacking diverse perspectives, may also be in for a reset. A bipartisan group of national educators is poised to unveil a new roadmap for civic learning with the help of <a href="https://ethics.harvard.edu/news/neh-and-department-education-award-650000-educating-american-democracy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a $650,000 grant</a> from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Education Department. </p>
<p>Led by iCivics — in collaboration with Arizona State, Harvard and Tufts universities — the roadmap is expected to stress critical thinking over rote memorization, and to encourage students to embrace and actively engage in constitutional democracy. To be unveiled in March, the project is dubbed "Educating for American Democracy: A Roadmap for Excellence in History and Civics Education for All Learners," and sets out to define what students should know with an emphasis on civic agency, equity, diversity and inclusion.</p>
<p>Both the roadmap and the $1 billion legislation may find allies in the top ranks of the new administration. Biden is poised to move the Education Department <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/11/10/933423976/what-a-biden-presidency-could-mean-for-education" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">in a new direction</a> and the new first lady, Jill Biden, is a community college professor. Betsy DeVos, Trump's only Education secretary until quitting last week after the mob stormed the Capitol, clashed with teachers and promoted controversial charter schools, but Biden <a href="https://joebiden.com/education/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">has pledged</a> to invest in teacher salaries and training.</p>
<p>The biggest hurdle facing the bill may be the coronavirus pandemic, which will continue to suck all the oxygen out of the education policy room until schools and politicians figure out a way to safely reopen classrooms and help students make up what they've lost during virtual learning. </p>
<p>Another challenge is that the Educating for Democracy Act will likely be considered as part of the reauthorization of the federal law governing federal aid to elementary and secondary schools, which invariably stirs up disputes over the shared role of states and the federal government over testing, standards and unfunded mandates.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Dubé is cautiously optimistic civic education may finally be ripe for revival. If nothing else, the mandate for it may never have been more evident. "Clearly, we are a nation so polarized as to be dysfunctional," she said. "And that polarization cannot keep going on in a system that asks for compromise."</p>
<p><em>Carney is a contributing writer.</em><em> She also heads The Civic Circle, a member of the CivXNow Coalition.</em></p>
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Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ensured the military would play "no role" in post-election disputes.
The top 6 reasons why democracy's guardrails held after the election
Dec 01 2020
The certification of election results on Monday in Arizona and Wisconsin, the last of the six states where President Trump challenged his defeat, is a bittersweet victory for advocates of rule by the people. The nation's brush with autocracy was troublingly close, and the damage to public confidence in elections could be lasting.
Still, it's worth acknowledging the guardrails that have held fast against the nation's severe democracy stress test, and against Trump's specious and ongoing fraud allegations. There's no guarantee these railings would hold against a more sophisticated adversary, and the need to shore up voting rights and election administration remains urgent.
But the fundamentals of American democracy appear to have prevailed, thanks to key institutions that upheld the law and relied on the facts. These are the six most important:
<p><strong>The military: </strong>As early as August, Congress received assurances from Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the military would play "no role" in any post-election disputes.</p>
<p>And after Trump raised fresh alarms with his post-election firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and some of his top Pentagon aides, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-and-his-supporters-are-discovering-how-hard-it-is-to-sabotage-election-results/2020/11/17/96d37bbe-290e-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Milley declared</a> pointedly on Veterans Day: "We are unique among militaries. We do not take an oath to a king, or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. ... We take an oath to the Constitution."</p>
<p><strong>The courts: </strong>The long list of judges who rejected Trump's election challenges include several conservatives nominated by Trump and his GOP predecessors, who debunked the president's legal claims as baseless in the extreme. </p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>As attorney Mark Aronchick, who represented Philadelphia in several Trump campaign cases, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/us/politics/trump-republicans-election-results.html?searchResultPosition=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">told The New York Times</a><em>, </em>the president's legal challenges were "very much a stress test on what I will shout from the rooftops is the best legal system the world has ever seen, in terms of independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. And at both the state and federal level, the system has come through with flying colors."</p>
<p><strong>The states: </strong>Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's Republican secretary of state, has drawn justifiable notice for withstanding personal threats and calls for his resignation to certify his state's election results, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/us/politics/trump-republicans-election-results.html?searchResultPosition=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">stating memorably</a>: "Numbers don't lie." </p>
<p>But Raffensperger is only one of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/18/trump-is-testing-democracy-nine-out-10-senior-elected-republicans-are-failing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">more than two dozen</a> GOP secretaries of state who rejected Trump's false fraud allegations. Rank-and-file election administrators, poll workers and even volunteers, who managed to run an election that generated record turnout amid a pandemic with few significant problems, also carried democracy on their shoulders. State legislators, too, refused to step in and overrule voters, sensing public backlash but also in some cases resisting White House pressure.</p>
<p><strong>The media: </strong>Mainstream news outlets, and even in some instances conservative Fox News, have choked the Trump campaign's <a href="https://www.persuasion.community/p/trumps-firehose-of-falsehood" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Russia-style firehose</a> of campaign disinformation with relentless fact checks and around-the-clock reporting. </p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>The misrepresentations continue, and the president's fabrications of voter fraud have been swallowed whole by millions of Republican voters. But fact-based reporting has made it harder for the Trump campaign to advance its false claims in court, and helped mobilize voters to hold public officials accountable.</p>
<p><strong>The hardware: </strong>An estimated 95 percent of votes this year were cast either using a mail-in paper ballot or a voting machine that produced a verifiable and auditable paper trail — equipment installed thanks to decades of lobbying by voting rights advocates and election security experts. </p>
<p>Voter-verifiable paper trails are considered an essential backstop against voting machine breakdowns, the best possible guard against hacking and as a crucial tool for audits and recounts. Existing <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voting-system-paper-trail-requirements.aspx" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">state requirements vary</a>, and counties in some states still use paperless voting machines despite the risk, pointing to the need for federal guidelines. But in Georgia, where a new system this year allowed voters to cast ballots with a verifiable paper trail statewide for the first time, paper records proved crucial in facilitating not one but two watertight recounts, and in debunking on its face Trump's unfounded claim that Dominion Voting Systems had somehow altered the state tally.</p>
<p><strong>The voters: </strong>Almost <a href="http://www.electproject.org/2020g" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">160 million</a> voters turned out in this election, at almost 67 percent the highest percentage of the eligible population since the first presidential election of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Thousands of public and private players helped turn out voters, from business leaders to campus organizers. High turnout is at least one reason why President-elect Joe Biden's win over Trump — a margin of 4 percentage points, or 6.2 million nationwide, translating to 306 electoral votes — was sufficiently solid to withstand almost three dozen legal challenges in the past month. A closer margin could have made it much easier for Trump to manipulate the outcome. Voters have also remained engaged, exerting public pressure on GOP legislators to refrain from intervening in election certifications.</p>
<p>The success of these and other democracy guardrails may be small consolation, given the extent of Trump's assault on the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power and the basic right to vote. Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/24/this-unnerving-election-does-not-bode-well-next-one/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">has created a playbook</a> for some future would-be autocrat to follow, election law experts warn, and recent Supreme Court rulings <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/opinion/trump-election-courts.html?referringSource=articleShare" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">may also jeopardize</a> voting rights by giving state legislatures new powers to restrict access to the polls. </p>
<p>In the minds of good-governance advocates, all this points to the need to shore up democracy's guardrails still further in plenty of time for the 2022 midterm election. </p>
<p>The likeliest place to start is with the revival of HR 1, the House's catchall democracy reform package. That bill proposes automatic voter registration nationwide, expanded early and absentee voting, and funding to modernize election systems, among other changes. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has signaled she'll move it to the front burner early in the new Congress, but even if her narrowed House Democratic majority passes it again the measure would still face stiff opposition in a Senate where the GOP will hold at least 50 seats.</p>
<p>Many other policy changes will be needed as well -- including the sort of new executive branch ethics rules that Biden advocated during the campaign — in the wake of Trump's destructive presidency. But for the moment, at least, the system's guardrails have held.</p>
<div></div><p><em>Carney is a contributing writer.</em></p>
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