By Nia-Malika Henderson / Bloomberg Opinion
As lawmakers head off for their August recess, what they did and didn’t do over the past seven months tells us a lot about what will happen over the next 17.
The GOP-controlled Congress operated as an extension of President Trump, with pockets of (performative) resistance that always folded to his demands. Democrats could do little to block Trump’s transformative agenda as he upended the federal government, shuttered federal agencies and rewrote policy with a stroke of his pen. This has all set up the stakes and strategy for the midterms in 2026, a preview of which will likely unfold as lawmakers hear from their constituents over the next four weeks.
In particular, there were five telling moments over the first seven months of the 119th Congress that tell us a lot about what to expect next:
Joni Ernst’s vote for Pete Hegseth. The first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate was seen as the main barrier between Fox News host Pete Hegseth and the top job at the Pentagon. And for a few days, it looked like she would be the roadblock to one of Trump’s most consequential and least qualified nominees. With Trump’s original choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, having been forced to bow out almost immediately, a second defeat could have set a very different tone for Congress’ relationship with the White House; and possibly put the confirmation of other nominees, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard, in jeopardy. Yet, after pressure from Trump, fellow Iowa Republicans and the MAGA base, Ernst gave in, paving the way for Hegseth and all the ineptitude and chaos that has come from him leading 2.87 million employees, the federal government’s biggest workforce. And once Hegseth was in, it was clear the other nominees would follow.
Ernst, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, suggested that she would work with Hegseth on issues that are important to her, like women in combat roles and preventing sexual assault. But since then, Hegseth has removed women from several top jobs and, with Signalgate, shared sensitive information on a commercial messaging app. Ernst is now said to be mulling retirement. Watch this space.
The shutdown that wasn’t. Since Trump’s inauguration, no Democrat has embodied the party’s fecklessness more than Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader from New York. Faced with a base that wanted a fight, Schumer caved at big moments, most visibly when he gave up any leverage in the government shutdown fight in March. Then there was his choice of strongly worded letters as a mode of opposing Trump’s agenda. And he took the Senate floor to announce that he stripped the name “big, beautiful bill” from Trump’s tax-and-spending legislation and changed it to simply “the act.” Thanks, Chuck.
At 74, serving his fifth term, Schumer has embodied the cautious and calcified upper ranks of the Democratic Party, which has sparked rare criticism from the lower chamber and renewed calls for a generational shift. His approval numbers are declining in his home state as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez numbers have seen a boost and a young progressive has won the Democratic primary in the New York City mayor’s race. Schumer will likely get a second chance at using leverage in the next shutdown fight when Congress reconvenes. A big question is whether he’ll play his cards any differently.
“We are all afraid.” Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the quiet part out loud when she answered a voter’s question in April about how to respond to people who are fearful in the current political environment. “I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real,” she admitted. Murkowski’s blunt take on the Trump era captured not only the GOP-led Congress’ sentiments about Trump, but the media, universities, corporations, foreign leaders, federal employees, ordinary citizens and groups that Trump regularly maligns, like immigrants and transgender people. Trump told Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in a 2016 interview that real power is fear. He has that in spades.
Although Murkowski was one of just seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial in 2021, and survived a 2022 attempt by the MAGA wing of the party to replace her, she ultimately became the deciding vote to pass Trump’s megabill; despite calling it a “bad bill” and acknowledging that it would hurt Americans.
Flight of the moderates. So far, 23 lawmakers have announced their retirements; the highest number in years. Notably, this list includes Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. Both are centrists, a vanishing breed in the Trump era. Bacon’s seat, known as “the blue dot,” could flip, helping Democrats get the gavel. (Though upcoming redistricting by Texas could make that much more difficult.)
In his retirement statement, Bacon, a retired Air Force officer, sounded like a Republican from another era, highlighting Trump’s stamp on the party and the globe. “I also want to continue advocating for a strong national security strategy and a strong alliance system with countries that share our love of democracy, free markets and the rule of law.” Tillis lamented that “leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.” With swing votes in both chambers retiring or caving, expect even less compromise in the coming years.
The return of the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein. The House adjourned a day early because the convicted sex offender who committed suicide as he awaited trial in 2019 was becoming a troublesome issue. The conspiracy theory surrounding him, fanned by Trump and his cabinet officials, has animated MAGA for years, and now threatens to fracture it. With Democrats sensing an opening, and Republicans wanting to deliver, a vote to subpoena the Epstein files happened anyway. “It is just sort of trying to let the air out of the balloon on the Epstein issue,” said Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who has joined with Democrat Ro Khanna to try to force a vote on the release of Epstein documents. The genie is still not back in the bottle, with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell possibly set to testify remotely, from prison, in August.
Democrats, still finding their footing in the Trump era, have gone on offense, casting Trump as siding with the rich and powerful and stoking the MAGA fissures. They have unexpectedly found some success. The twists and turns of conspiracy theories are hard to predict and contain, so it’s a guessing game as to where this ends up and what the political cost could be.
Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.
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