President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the government shutdown played a “big role” in Democrats’ victories Tuesday night and urged Republicans to kill the Senate filibuster to quickly restore federal funding.
“If you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans,” Trump said during a breakfast with Senate Republicans at the White House. “Last night, it was not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas. I don’t think it was good for Republicans. I don’t think it was good for anybody. We had an interesting evening and learned a lot.”
He cited outside pollsters who have attributed the GOP losses to the fact that Trump wasn’t on the ballot, depressing turnout among the MAGA base. “I don’t know about that but I was honored that they said that,” he added.
Trump used his candid autopsy of the election results to urge Republicans to kill the Senate filibuster to quickly reopen the government and then enact their agenda, including a national voter ID requirement.
He acknowledged that it’s an unlikely proposition as most Senate Republicans oppose the move but warned that he believes Democrats will do so the next time they’re in power.
“It’s possible you’re not going to do that, and I’m going to go by your wishes,” he said. “You’re very smart people. But I think it’s a tremendous mistake. It would be a tragic mistake, actually.”
On Wednesday, the shutdown stretched into its longest in U.S. history, with the previous 35-day shutdown set during Trump’s first term in 2019. Republican and Democratic lawmakers are locked in a stalemate.
Democrats on Tuesday won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey and a high-profile mayoral race in New York City in which Trump endorsed two of the losing candidates. Complicating Trump’s newfound focus on a swift end to the shutdown, the romp only further ratcheted up pressure on Democratic senators who are signaling they could be ready to end the record-breaking government shutdown to hold the line until they secure an extension to Affordable Care Act subsidies.
“Republicans aren’t the ones asking for anything, so for them it’s a choice between changing the rules or helping Dems find an offramp,” Liam Donovan, a veteran GOP strategist, told POLITICO. “Last night’s result theoretically allows Democrats to declare victory and end this on their own terms, but success makes choreography of any resolution that much trickier.”
Northern Virginia counties with large concentrations of federal workers shifted toward Democrats. Over a fifth of voters in CNN’s Virginia exit poll said someone in their household was a federal worker or contractor; of those, 63 percent supported Democrat Abigail Spanberger.
Progressive advocacy groups, Democratic strategists and some of the party’s Senate hopefuls immediately seized on the results as a spine-stiffener for the senators.
“It would be moronic for congressional Democrats to cave after voters said hell no to Trump and his creation of economic pain for Americans. Trump should honor the will of the people and fold,” Adam Green, who co-founded the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Tuesday night.
A Senate Democratic aide, granted anonymity to discuss caucus deliberations, said “it’s hard for anyone to argue the message from voters is ‘please cave ASAP’ to Trump.” The pressure “will be enormous for moderates to hold the line.”
“This should send a chill down the spines of congressional Republicans and make them realize they need to come to the table if they have any hope of changing the political tides,” Democratic strategist Jared Leopold said.
As Cheney told an interviewer in 2005: “I do have the view that over the years there had been an erosion of presidential power and authority, that it’s reflected in a number of developments – the War Powers Act. … I am one of those who believe that was an infringement upon the authority of the President. … A lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both, in the ’70s served to erode the authority, I think, the President needs to be effective especially in a national security area.”
Cheney’s experience in the Ford years set in place a decades-long effort to enhance presidential power, to reinvigorate an office that he believed Congress had wrongly diminished. When Bush surprisingly picked Cheney to be his vice president in July 2000, Cheney finally had a chance to right that perceived wrong.
Now, nearly two decades later, President Donald Trump is using this theory to push his agenda. He set the tone for his second term by issuing 26 executive orders, four proclamations and 12 memorandums on his first day back in office. The barrage of unilateral presidential actions has not yet let up.
These have included Trump’s efforts to remove thousands of government workers and fire several prominent officials, such as members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the chair of the Commission on Civil Rights. He has also attempted to shut down entire agencies, such as the Department of Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
As a political science scholar who studies presidential power, I believe Trump’s recent actions mark the culmination of the unitary executive theory, which is perhaps the most contentious and consequential constitutional theory of the past several decades.
A prescription for a potent presidency
In 2017, Trump complained that the scope of his power as president was limited: “You know, the saddest thing is that because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved with the FBI, I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.”
The unitary executive theory suggests that such limits wrongly curtail the powers of the chief executive.
Formed by conservative legal theorists in the 1980s to help President Ronald Reagan roll back liberal policies, the unitary executive theory promises to radically expand presidential power.
There is no widely agreed upon definition of the theory. And even its proponents disagree about what it says and what it might justify. But in its most basic version, the unitary executive theory claims that whatever the federal government does that is executive in nature – from implementing and enforcing laws to managing most of what the federal government does – the president alone should personally control it.
This means the president should have total control over the executive branch, with its dozens of major governmental institutions and millions of employees. Put simply, the theory says the president should be able to issue orders to subordinates and to fire them at will.
President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office next to a poster displaying the Trump Gold Card on Sept. 19, 2025. AP Photo/Alex Brandon
The president could boss around the FBI or order the U.S. attorney general to investigate his political opponents, as Trump has done. The president could issue signing statements – a written pronouncement – that reinterpret or ignore parts of the laws, like George W. Bush did in 2006 to circumvent a ban on torture. The president could control independent agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The president might be able to force the Federal Reserve to change interest rates, as Trump has suggested. And the president might possess inherent power to wage war as he sees fit without a formal authorization from Congress, as officials argued during Bush’s presidency.
A constitutionally questionable doctrine
A theory is one thing. But if it gains the official endorsement of the Supreme Court, it can become governing orthodoxy. It appears to many observers and scholars that Trump’s actions have intentionally invited court cases by which he hopes the judiciary will embrace the theory and thus permit him to do even more. And the current Supreme Court appears ready to grant that wish.
Until recently, the judiciary tended to indirectly address the claims that now appear more formally as the unitary executive theory.
During the country’s first two centuries, courts touched on aspects of the theory in cases such as Kendall v. U.S. in 1838, which limited presidential control of the postmaster general, and Myers v. U.S. in 1926, which held that the president could remove a postmaster in Oregon.
In 1935, in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the high court unanimously held that Congress could limit the president’s ability to fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. And in Morrison v. Olson the court in 1988 upheld the ability of Congress to limit the president’s ability to fire an independent counsel.
Some of those decisions aligned with some unitary executive claims, but others directly repudiated them.
These decisions clearly suggest that long-standing, anti-unitarian landmark decisions such as Humphrey’s are on increasingly thin ice. In fact, in Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2019 concurring opinion in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, where the court ruled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s leadership structure was unconstitutional, he articulated his desire to “repudiate” the “erroneous precedent” of Humphrey’s.
Several cases from the court’s emergency docket, or shadow docket, in recent months indicate that other justices share that desire. Such cases do not require full arguments but can indicate where the court is headed.
In Trump v. Wilcox, Trump v. Boyle and Trump v. Slaughter, all from 2025, the court upheld Trump’s firing of officials from the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.
Previously, these officials had appeared to be protected from political interference.
Remarks by conservative justices in those cases indicated that the court will soon reassess anti-unitary precedents.
In Trump v. Boyle, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote, “whether this Court will narrow or overrule a precedent … there is at least a fair prospect (not certainty, but at least a reasonable prospect) that we will do so.” And in her dissent in Trump v. Slaughter, Justice Elena Kagan said the conservative majority was “raring” to overturn Humphrey’s and finally officially embrace the unitary executive.
In short, the writing is on the wall, and Humphrey’s may soon go the way of Roe v. Wade and other landmark decisions that had guided American life for decades.
As for what judicial endorsement of the unitary executive theory could mean in practice, Trump seems to hope it will mean total control and hence the ability to eradicate the so-called “deep state.” Other conservatives hope it will diminish the government’s regulatory role.
Kagan recently warned it could mean the end of administrative governance – the ways that the federal government provides services, oversees businesses and enforces the law – as we know it:
“Humphrey’s undergirds a significant feature of American governance: bipartisan administrative bodies carrying out expertise-based functions with a measure of independence from presidential control. Congress created them … out of one basic vision. It thought that in certain spheres of government, a group of knowledgeable people from both parties – none of whom a President could remove without cause – would make decisions likely to advance the long-term public good.”
If the Supreme Court officially makes the chief executive a unitary executive, the advancement of the public good may depend on little more than the whims of the president, a state of affairs normally more characteristic of dictatorship than democracy.
Judicial approval of the unitary executive theory might well have pleased Cheney by enshrining a significant means of enhancing presidential power. But ironically, the former vice president would be displeased for such power to be accessible to the current president, whom Cheney criticized, calling Trump a “threat to our republic.”
Graham G. Dodds does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Jay Jones, the Democrats’ scandal-plagued attorney general nominee who sparked a Republican-led backlash over violent text messages, secured victory in what turned into a high-profile race in Virginia’s statewide electoral contests Tuesday.
Spurred largely by anti-Donald Trump sentiments among voters, Jones defeated Republican Jason Miyares, the incumbent in the race who the GOP put much of its political capital in protecting. Republicans hoped the public outrage over Jones’ 2022 texts — where he detailed the hypothetical killing of a GOP lawmaker — would be enough to all but disqualify him from winning the post.
“To everyone who didn’t give up on this campaign: I say thank you,” Jones said Tuesday night. “I will protect our jobs, our health care and our economy from Donald Trump’s attacks.”
Jones had been leading Miyares in polling as the final month of campaigning approached. But the contest took a dramatic turn after the National Review reported that Jones sent to a colleague three years ago a series of texts that included “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head” — a reference to then-Virginia GOP House Speaker Todd Gilbert. The comments were quickly condemned by the party, but the scandal broke after Virginia’s 45-day early voting period began, leaving the party little recourse but to keep him on the ticket rather than ask him to step aside.
Republicans used Jones to attack Spanberger and openly questioned whether she could effectively lead the state if she was unwilling to speak out forcefully and call for a down-ballot candidate to end his bid. She condemned Jones’ text messages as “abhorrent” but refused to rescind her endorsement. Jones later expressed regret for sending the texts.
That left Jones, who makes history as Virginia’s first Black attorney general, to fend for himself. While some Democrats embraced him in the final days of the campaign including both Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine at a get-out-the-vote rally in Norfolk — the event’s headliners, Spanberger and former President Barack Obama, made no mention of him at all.
Miyares, who has ties to Trump’s former co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita, took advantage of his incumbency and lapped Jones in fundraising. He gave Republicans hope, even before the scandal, that he could be the party’s best chance at blocking Democrats attempts at a clean sweep of the top statewide offices.
“As much as I love Abigail, the most important position this year is the attorney general’s race,” said Del. Joshua Cole, a Democrat in Virginia’s General Assembly. “In Trump’s America, we need a Democratic attorney general, and the Republicans know that. That’s why they [pulled] out all the stops” for Miyares.
But the text messages weren’t the only issue Republicans hit Jones with. He also faced renewed criticism over a years-old reckless driving charge where he was caught driving 116 mph in a 70 mph zone and struck a deal to forgo jail time by paying a fine and performing community service. Jones reportedly completed some of those community service hours while working at his own political action committee, giving Miyares and his Republican allies more material to paint Jones as being “above the law.”
Jones’ texting scandal had the potential to drag down other Democrats. During an interview on “Next Question with Katie Couric” last month Spanberger lamented having to repeatedly answer questions about Jones.
“The fact that I have to spend even a moment’s time talking about somebody else’s text messages from years ago, rather than what I want to do as governor, is something that I am deeply unhappy about,” Spanberger said on the podcast. Weeks prior during the lone gubernatorial debate, Spanberger said about Jones texts: “The voters now have the information, and it is up to voters to make an individual choice based on this information.”
Trump also sought to tie Spanberger to Jones.
“Radical Left Lunatic, Jay Jones, who is running against Jason Miyares, the GREAT Attorney General in Virginia, made SICK and DEMENTED jokes…” the president wrote in a Truth Social post, giving his full endorsement to Miyares. “Abigail Spanberger, who is running for Governor, is weak and ineffective, and refuses to acknowledge what this Lunatic has done,” he wrote in early October.
While Republicans zeroed in on the Jones texts in the closing stretch, calling the attorney general race a “referendum on decency,” some Democrats pushed back on that line of attack before Tuesday night.
“Show me one of them that stood up and chastised Donald Trump about January 6, about saying that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody,” said Susan Swecker, a Democratic National Committee member and former chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia last week. “Don’t be coming over to my party and lecturing me about something that our nominee for attorney general did.”
Jones’ texting scandal, along with Maine Senate Democratic candidate Graham Platner coming under attack for previous social media posts, provides fresh challenges to DNC Chair Ken Martin.
He acknowledged in an interview with POLITICO Sunday evening that improving vetting of candidates in the future is something the party will have to evaluate.
“It’s not up to the DNC and to the party a chair to decide what’s disqualifying or not,” Martin said. “We all are gonna have to do a much better job of vetting our candidates as we move forward.”
NEW YORK — The common theme that emerged from Democrats’ trio of wins in New York, New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday was affordability.
For all their ideological differences, Zohran Mamdani, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger found a shared language that aims at the heart of President Donald Trump’s populism: the high cost of everyday life.
Their wins suggest a recalibration of Democratic politics — from moral crusades to kitchen-table math.
Heading into the 2026 midterms, that formula will be hard to ignore. Democrats now have proof that campaigns grounded in affordability and competence can still unite the party’s fractious coalition — from democratic socialists in the nation’s biggest city to centrists in its quintessential suburbs.
“In a big-tent party like this, we’re going to have lots of different ideas, lots of different ways to accomplish the same goal, and that’s where we’re unified,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in an interview ahead of Election Day. “What is Zohran Mamdani, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger running on that’s similar? Affordability.”
The message wasn’t flashy — and it wasn’t new. But in a political landscape that’s been dominated by culture-war battles and Trump’s omnipresence, Democrats found traction by talking about rent, utilities and groceries instead of ideology.
Mamdani’s three main mayoral campaign pledges were simple: Freeze the rent for two million New Yorkers. Fast and free buses. Childcare for all.
The promises from the state assemblymember appealed to a broad swath of New Yorkers. Exorbitant daycare costs are an issue that even some Republicans, like Ivanka Trump, have talked about in recent years but that remains a burden for even well-to-do parents.
While Sherrill, a Democratic member of Congress, often talked about abortion rights in her campaign for governor of New Jersey, it was far from the most prominent issue. Her closing message largely relied on her plan to drive down utility costs — and blaming Trump for wreaking havoc on the economy.
A key plank of her “it’s the economy stupid” campaign turn was promising to declare a state of emergency and freeze utility rates when she takes office. Some progressives weren’t happy that she wasn’t talking more about immigration — an issue that another member of the New Jersey congressional delegation is now being prosecuted after taking on — but it didn’t matter.
Garden State Democrats knew that Trump drew in some of their core voters — Black and Hispanic voters — with promises about the economy during the 2024 campaign. But Sherrill bet that she could bring them back into the fold by pointing out how he hasn’t delivered.
Spanberger — a congressional Democrat like Sherrill — also resisted any temptation to center her Virginia gubernatorial campaign on the latest controversies from the White House and instead stuck to an economic message, specifically the cost of life for Virginians. Exit polls showed that was the top issue for voters by a wide margin, followed by health care.
The question now is whether Democrats can sustain that balance once governing — and inflation, housing costs and Trump’s shadow — put it to the test.
In their victory speeches, the trio hewed closely to their campaign messages.
In Brooklyn, Mamdani said that his election was a “mandate for a city you can afford.”
Though Sherrill closed her victory speech in East Brunswick by echoing the language of the “No Kings” protests, much of her speech was focused on New Jersey’s motto — “Liberty and Prosperity.”
“Liberty alone is not enough if the government makes it impossible for you to feed your family, to get a good education or to get a good job,” Sherrill said.
In Richmond, Spanberger said voters “chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most: lowering costs, keeping our communities safe and strengthening our economy for every Virginian.”
Former President Barack Obama, who campaigned this weekend for Sherrill and Spanberger, said during his New Jersey stop that people voted for Trump and Republicans “because they were, understandably, frustrated with inflation and high gas prices and the difficulty of affording a home, and they were worried about their children’s futures.”
“Now, nine months later, you’ve got to ask yourself, has any of that gotten better?” Obama asked.
Voters seem to think not.
Daniel Hanand Liz Crampton contributed to this report.
For Democrats, Tuesday night felt like 2017 all over again.
All across the country, Democrats won big, from the marquee races to the down-ballot contests. Counties that had shifted right a year ago veered back to the left, and the suburbs that powered Democrats’ massive wins in the first Trump administration came roaring back. Exit polls even showed Democrats improved their margins with non-college educated voters.
The strength of the wins hints at Democrats’ appetite to take on Trump as he ends his first year in office and voters’ concerns about cost of living.
Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to double-digit victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Two Georgia Democrats flipped seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for a Democrat in nearly two decades. Democrats flipped a pair of Republican-held state Senate seats in Mississippi, cracking the GOP supermajority in a deep-red state. And a successful California ballot measure delivered five additional seats for the party’s House margins ahead of the 2026 midterms, offsetting Texas’ redistricting push.
But they also started to overperform in special elections, hinting that the tide was turning. And on Tuesday, their first big electoral test of the second Trump era, they didn’t just match the wins from eight years ago that had been a harbinger of a blue wave in the 2018 midterms — in several key races, they exceeded them.
“Virginians and voters spoke loud and clear that they’re pissed off at the Trump administration,” Christina Freundlich, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race. “Democrats came out in record numbers, and this is a foreshadow of what we’re going to see next year.”
Democrats rode the traditional, party-out-of-power tailwinds, reenergizing its own base by pushing back on Trump’s second-term policies that have alarmed liberals. Spanberger’s and Sherrill’s messaging on the stagnant economy and affordability crisis helped their party bounce back in its first political test of the second Trump era — and by margins that even surprised some Democrats.
“After brutal losses, like 2024 and 2016, it is hard to trust polling … and your gut of what should happen historically. You can’t trust it,” said Stephanie Schriock, a Democratic strategist who formerly led EMILY’s List, a progressive group that elects women. “But everything, the internal polling, the organizations on the ground, the No Kings and Indivisible movement, the energy, it was all there.”
During Trump’s last midterm cycle in 2018, Democrats picked up 40 House seats — and Spanberger and Sherrill were part of that wave.
In Virginia, whose odd-year state elections are often seen as a bellwether ahead of midterms and presidential elections, Democrats flipped at least 13 seats in the House of Delegates. In the attorney general race, Democrat Jay Jones won by at least six points, overperforming expectations even as controversy mired his campaign’s final stretch, following revelations of violent text messages. Across the state, virtually every county shifted blue from former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 performance.
Spanberger’s double-digit victory was powered by a familiar set of voters: While she did better than Democrats from the past decade just about everywhere, her strongest gains were in suburban and exurban Virginia, including Loudoun County. Those are some of the same areas that powered Democrats’ resistance to Trump during his first term, but had drifted toward the GOP during President Joe Biden’s tenure.
In Prince William County, a wealthy enclave outside Washington, Democrat Ralph Northam won by 23 points in 2017; last year, Harris’ margin fell to under 18 points there. Spanberger won it by a whopping nearly 34 points.
And while slightly less dramatic, Spanberger’s strong showing in southeast Virginia could provide hope for Democrats aiming to flip districts held by GOP Reps. Jen Kiggans and Rob Wittman next year, even before potential changes from a redistricting push to help make that effort easier.
“The mood music is the same soundtrack,” Ian Russell, a Democratic strategist who focuses on House races, said of the comparison to 2018. “A deeply unpopular president, the same one, and a lot of Americans are very concerned about key issues like health care costs spiking.”
In the top races — the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, as well as the New York mayoral — all Democrats cleared 50 percent support. The trio of candidates represent both ends of the Democratic spectrum: democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani and traditional moderates Spanberger and Sherill. Republicans are already salivating over the change to turn Mamdani into a boogeyman and tie him to more moderate Democrats across the country.
But Democrats argued “the throughline on all of these races was: talk about affordability,” said David Hogg, a Democratic activist who co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a group focused on electing young people.
“Tomorrow, there are going to be a lot of mischaracterizations and bad faith arguments about how every single policy Zohran ran on here should and will be applied across the country,” Hogg said. “Even if the policies aren’t transferrable [among states], what is transferrable are the tactics, listening to voters and not giving bullshit talking points..”
Democrats’ are still battling a damaged brand, according to NBC News’ exit poll that showed that more voters in Virginia, New Jersey and California hold unfavorable views of the Democratic Party than favorable ones. But the Tuesday elections could inject new energy and focus into a party that has been without for much of the year.
Republicans, already feeling the traditional midterm headwinds, warned Tuesday’s results could portend serious challenges next year. That’s particularly acute without Trump on the ballot, as one national Republican consultant said, because “you get all the damage with none of the benefits.”
Another GOP strategist, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the biggest challenge will be figuring out how to turn out low-propensity Trump voters next year. The most troubling sign for Republicans out of Tuesday’s results were Georgia Democrats’ flips of the two statewide seats in a sleepy Public Service Commission race, the strategist added.
The state’s Senate race next year is almost certain to be among the biggest of the cycle, with Republicans looking to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.
“The one thing that would worry me, besides making sure you hold the House, is looking at how Democrats were able to fire up their base in some of these local elections in Georgia,” the strategist said.
Legislative progress depends on bipartisanship − but amateur lawmakers undermine it with their inexperience as legislators.Bloomberg Creative via Getty Images
The ongoing government shutdown shows how hard it has become for Congress to do its most basic job: keeping the government running. Ending the stalemate will require lawmakers from both parties to strike a deal – a reminder that legislative progress depends on bipartisanship.
Politicians often call for greater cooperation across party lines, and research shows that bills rarely become law without it. Bipartisan deal-making is also popular with the public. Recent polls demonstrate that Americans are twice as likely to favor leaders who compromise to get things done over those who stick to their beliefs and accomplish less.
Yet partisan gridlock continues to stall policymaking.
These “amateur” politicians, with no prior experience in elected office, present themselves as problem-solvers rather than politicians. Many come from outside government entirely – including business owners, military veterans and schoolteachers. Amateurs’ real-world backgrounds are often seen as assets by voters, donors and even politicians themselves – qualities thought to make them more effective in Congress.
As scholars oflegislative politics, we wanted to interrogate that claim. And our new study reaches a different conclusion: Electing amateurs reduces bipartisan cooperation in Congress.
We find that, once in office, political newcomers are less likely than career politicians to work across the aisle. The very outsiders many voters hope will “fix” Congress contribute to the partisan divisions that keep it from functioning.
Amateurs are more likely to view bipartisanship as a concession rather than a tool for advancing policy.
U.S. representatives of the 119th Congress are sworn in during the first day of session in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 3, 2025. Win McNamee/Getty Images
What the data shows
We analyzed over 2.2 million policymaking actions from 1980 to 2022 to assess how often members of the U.S. House of Representatives worked across the aisle to co-author bills. Legislation developed through bipartisan collaboration is much more likely to become law. We then compared the collaboration patterns of first-term amateurs – legislators who have never held office and were just elected to Congress – against the collaboration patterns of established incumbents.
The difference was clear. Over the past four decades, amateur lawmakers worked across party lines far less often than incumbent lawmakers, both when developing their own legislation and when lending support to other legislators’ proposals.
This finding is not simply a “freshman effect,” observed among all new members of Congress who are still learning its norms and procedures.
First-term representatives who entered Congress with prior elected experience in state or local office engaged in bipartisan cooperation about as frequently as longer-serving incumbents. This suggests that what matters for bipartisan engagement is prior experience in elected office, not a lack of experience in Congress itself.
The impact on democracy
Amateur lawmakers are about 10–20 percentage points less likely to engage in bipartisanship during their first term than experienced officeholders.
To put it in perspective, the size of the amateur effect is roughly on par with the collapse in bipartisan relationships that followed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. After some Republican members refused to certify the 2020 presidential election results, Democrats largely stopped working with them in that Congress – a decline in collaboration comparable in scale to what we observe among amateurs.
These effects are likely to continue, with amateurs making up nearly half of all first-term lawmakers in recent years compared to decades past. Notable amateurs elected to Congress include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor-Greene. As new cohorts of amateurs enter office each election cycle, this bipartisanship problem will persist.
Learning to value bipartisanship
Our findings show that amateur lawmakers’ approach to bipartisanship evolves as they gain office-holding experience. By their third term in Congress – about six years after first taking office – the gap in bipartisan behavior between amateurs and experienced legislators largely disappears.
However, we show that these backgrounds do not necessarily prepare amateurs for the demands of governing. Experience holding state or local office exposes politicians to the practical realities of policymaking. Lacking that experience, amateurs are more likely to view bipartisanship as giving up on their principles rather than a method for serving the public interest. We find that this tendency diminishes only as newcomers gain firsthand experience in the legislative process.
A global trend with familiar consequences
The U.S. is not alone in this trend toward amateurism. Around the world, political newcomers have surged to power amid frustration with traditional elites.
In each case, widespread outsider success in the legislature delivered disruption – but not necessarily effective governance. These groups often start with promises of pragmatic reform but struggle once in office.
Amateur politicians are once again emerging in response to this discontent, positioning themselves as outsiders who can bring change to Washington. Yet, as our research shows, these newcomers will undervalue the bipartisan relationships needed to govern effectively.
As voters look for change, the challenge will be to balance the desire for fresh perspectives with the experience required to sustain cooperation – and to keep Congress, and democracy, working.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Why can’t every country get along with each other? – Dale T., age 11, Helena, Montana
Countries often share similar goals, such as peace and prosperity for their citizens, so it might seem strange that they find it hard to get along. Cultural differences may sometimes cause countries such as China and the United States to compete for global influence, but even countries sharing similar values or cultures still find reasons to clash.
So why do countries compete or even go to war? As a political science scholar researching some of the most conflict-prone regions in the world, I find that the answer often comes down to three factors: scarcity, uneven distribution and perception.
Scarcity leads to hard choices
Scarcity is the reality that there are not enough resources – such as food, oil, water and land – to go around. While countries would prefer to pursue all the resources they need, they are forced to prioritize the resources that will make them most secure.
For instance, the Nile River serves as a water resource for more than 300 million people in 11 countries in Africa. However, because water is a scarce resource used for drinking, irrigation farming and hydroelectric power, countries such as Egypt and Ethiopia have often fought about using the river.
Uneven distribution means relying on others
Uneven distribution means that not everyone starts off with the same resources. Nations have different levels of power and capabilities, and this shapes how they calculate risk and opportunity when dealing with each other.
For instance, countries concerned about the United States’ dominant power joined together in a rival international organization known as BRICS+ in 2009. Its founding members include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and several other countries have joined over the years.
Perception can lead to misunderstanding
Perception is how countries view each other’s actions. A nation can build up its weapons to be safe from potential attacks, but another nation might view this move as threatening rather than defensive.
For instance, India developed nuclear capability in the 1970s to protect itself, but neighboring Pakistan perceived this as a threat and soon developed its own nuclear weapons. The two countries have since engaged in occasional conflict.
Classroom international relations
Countries have leaders with different personal experiences and backgrounds. To understand how countries interact, it is useful to draw an analogy to a classroom simulation I use in my courses.
Annabelle and Morgan are two good friends who are taking a course in international relations. For a simulation game, their teacher assigns Annabelle and Morgan to lead two different groups. Their classmates are also assigned to be leaders of a handful of other groups. Each group must decide how to spend its resources, build its industries and form partnerships.
In the game, scarcity was represented by a set number of points both groups could use to purchase resources. Since there were not enough points to provide everyone with everything they desired, each group had to prioritize needs. Should they invest more points in defense, social goods or industry?
Annabelle’s team started with 100 points and Morgan’s team started with 30. That uneven distribution mattered. Annabelle’s group could comfortably invest in industry, while Morgan’s had to focus on survival. Morgan’s group had to decide whether to trust more resource-rich groups and grow their industry points through trade, or find allies among groups with lots of military resources to prepare for potential conflict.
Perception came in when Morgan’s team was not sure how Annabelle’s team was spending its points. If they were spending many points on military, they could attack another group and steal its points. To protect her group, Morgan decided to form an alliance with two other groups. In return, Annabelle’s group perceived the alliance as a threat and started spending more points on military.
In the final round of the game, Morgan’s new alliance invaded Annabelle’s group and took most of their resource points. Annabelle felt betrayed, since she assumed her friendship with Morgan would allow their groups to work together. Morgan felt uneasy but also justified. She did not know how other members of Annabelle’s group would decide to act, so she prioritized her own group’s safety.
By the end of the game, Annabelle and Morgan were angry and frustrated with each other and their friendship was strained.
Cooperation turns into conflict
Even countries that share common goals or values sometimes compete, and the motivations are rarely simple.
Nations cooperate because it helps them grow, but they also take actions to protect themselves. When two countries compete over similar resources, and when their power balance is not clear, they can get the wrong idea about each other’s actions and engage in conflict. At the extreme, they may even go to war.
Competition and mistrust can arise even among friends who share similar goals. Similarly, while every country might want peace and stability, the forces of scarcity, uneven distribution and perception make it impossible for everyone to get along all the time.
Still, understanding these realities can help countries to build trust and work toward a shared respect that makes peace more likely.
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Kaleb Demerew does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
At stake is more than the scope of presidential power. The case highlights a deeper question of accountability: Who should decide what Americans pay for imported goods – the president acting alone, unelected judges reading emergency laws broadly, or the elected representatives who must face voters when prices rise?
When tariffs end up in court, it’s usually because Congress has failed to act. Over the past few decades, lawmakers have ceded much of their trade authority to presidents eager to move quickly – and the courts have been left to clean up the mess. Each new lawsuit makes it seem as though judges are running the economy when, in fact, they’re being pulled into policy questions they’re neither trained nor elected to answer.
As an economist, not a lawyer, I view this as more than a constitutional curiosity. It’s about how the world’s largest economy makes decisions that ripple through global markets, factory floors and family budgets. A duty on steel may help a mill in Ohio while raising bridge-construction and car-buying costs everywhere else. A tariff on electronics might nudge assembly onshore yet squeeze hospital and school budgets that depend on those devices.
These are choices about distribution – who gains, who pays, and for how long – that demand analysis, transparency and, above all, democratic ownership.
How did the US get here?
Congress didn’t exactly lose its tariff power; it gave it away.
The Constitution assigns “Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” to Congress, not the White House. Historically, Congress set tariff lines in law – consider the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. The pivot began with the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act of 1934, which let presidents adjust rates within limits via executive agreements. In the 1960s and ’70s, Congress passed laws expanding the president’s authority over trade, granting new powers to restrict or adjust imports without a separate congressional vote if certain conditions are met.
In my view, two key incentives drove the drift: blame avoidance and gridlock. Tariffs are redistributive by design: They benefit some sectors and regions while imposing costs on others. Casting a vote that helps steelworkers in one state but raises prices for builders in another is politically risky. Delegating to the White House allowed lawmakers to sidestep the fallout when prices rise or when jobs shift.
Judges interpret statutes and precedent; they don’t run general equilibrium models, forecast inflation paths or map supply chain rerouting. Evidence in court is confined to a single case file. Remedies are blunt: They are either to uphold, strike down or send back. Tariff design, by contrast, is about calibration: how high, how long, which sectors, which exclusions, what off-ramps, what triggers for renewal or repeal.
When lawsuits substitute for legislation, countries drift into policy by injunction. Companies see rules whipsaw; projects are delayed or shelved; households experience price swings that feel arbitrary; trading partners retaliate against policies they see as improvisational.
A matter of accountability
Accountability sits at the center of the problem. Most judges aren’t elected; lawmakers are. Lifetime tenure protects judicial independence – good for rights, bad for setting taxes. No one can vote out a court when tariffs push up the price of a school Chromebook or a contractor’s rebar.
Members of Congress, by contrast, must explain themselves. They can hold hearings, commission impact analyses, hear from unions and small businesses, and then defend the trade-offs. If tariffs save jobs in one town but raise prices nationwide, voters know exactly whom to reward or punish. That democratic link is why the Constitution places “Duties and Imposts” in the hands of Congress.
None of this means paralysis when it comes to trade policy. The United States has done this before – via trade-promotion and fast-track authorities that set clear goals and required renewal votes – while the EU and Japan have paired swift action with built-in legislative oversight.
Congress can be nimble without being reckless. Best practices for tariffs include setting clear targets using accessible language, having independent analysts conduct reviews before and after a tariff is put in place, and having diplomacy baked into a broader trade-security strategy that reports retaliation risks.
The challenge facing the court
In my view, the Supreme Court’s role here is both modest and vital: to enforce the statute and the constitutional line.
If a general emergency law doesn’t clearly authorize sweeping, long-duration tariffs, it’s not activism to say so plainly. It’s boundary-keeping that returns the pen to Congress. What I think the court should avoid is appearing to write the tariff code from the bench. That swaps democratic ownership for judicial improvisation and guarantees more litigation as a strategy.
In theory, a more public, accountable system would also free everyone to focus on what they do best. That means economists measuring who gains and who pays, lawmakers weighing trade-offs and answering to voters, and courts enforcing the rules – not designing the policy.
Bedassa Tadesse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
