In the years in which Americans choose a president, that race usually monopolizes the nation’s attention. There are, however, 469 other races this year to choose the people who represent us in Washington, D.C.
Those elections are, collectively, as essential to the governance of the United States as the campaign for the White House. In addition to sculpting the nation’s laws, Congress allocates the federal budget, approves the country’s borrowing and regulates its commerce. It holds the authority to wage wars, ratify treaties, confirm appointees and hold federal officials accountable through investigations and the impeachment process.
In other words, Congress is the body that enables or restrains the ambitions and agenda of the White House. And while these core responsibilities won’t change no matter who wins on Tuesday, if Donald Trump is re-elected president, the House of Representatives and the Senate will be vital checks on what he could do in office.
Mr. Trump has demonstrated that he lacks the character, temperament and commitment to the Constitution necessary to be trusted with the power and responsibility of the presidency. He was impeached twice in his first term for actions in flagrant defiance of his duties. He was criminally indicted on felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the election. Yet many of the former president’s worst instincts never came to pass in his previous administration. That’s not because he moderated those instincts once in power, as some of his reluctant supporters now suggest. The most important factor limiting the damage done by Mr. Trump’s urges has always been others stepping in to stop him, from his own appointees to members of the House and the Senate.
The first major duty of this new Congress will be to ensure the peaceful transfer of power. Its members will be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025, three days before the Jan. 6 certification process to make official the winner of the presidential election. Republicans in 2021 proved themselves unworthy of this basic responsibility. Mr. Trump’s allies were complicit in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. A majority of House Republicans declined to certify the election — the current speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was one of the architects of the schemes to overturn it — and a majority of Senate Republicans refused to convict Mr. Trump for his role in that attempted coup, including the storming of the Capitol.
Thankfully, the Electoral Count Reform Act, passed by a bipartisan majority in 2022, goes a long way toward reducing or eliminating opportunities for subterfuge, regardless of who controls the two chambers. Election interference, if it happens, is more likely to occur on the state level this time around. But the continued indulgence of Mr. Trump’s false charges that the last election was stolen or the next one will be provide ample reason not to want a Republican leader wielding the gavel in either chamber.
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