President Donald Trump’s expansion of executive branch authority has famously met little resistance from Republican lawmakers, who, despite controlling both the House and Senate, set a 21st-century record last year for fewest votes taken in the first year of a two-year Congress. And 2026 isn’t shaping up to be much better. Trump is in the driver’s seat on policy issues, so without clear direction from him on priorities, the GOP-led Congress is gearing up to spin its wheels.
It is, in brief, a form of political malpractice that borders on madness in a midterm election year.
Trump is in the driver’s seat on policy issues, so without clear direction from him on priorities, the GOP-led Congress is gearing up to spin its wheels.
In his record-long State of the Union address this week, Trump had few asks of his fellow Republicans. That is, he spent more time trumpeting past successes than calling for legislation or, for that matter, proposing specific solutions to the problems he rattled off. While it was perhaps classic Trump to focus a nationally televised address on pet issues and grievances, his approach was effectively at odds with the original purpose of this particular presidential address.
Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution requires the president “from time to time [to] give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The founders’ point was for the chief executive to give Congress an idea of how the laws it has passed are being carried out, what effects those laws are having throughout the country and what legislation might be required to address other problems concerning the White House.
For more than a century, the State of the Union was delivered as written report, not a speech to a room full of lawmakers. However, since the advent of radio and, later, television and the internet, presidents have taken the opportunity to inform Congress and sell the public on their policies. The next several days or weeks were then spent barnstorming across the country on behalf of those proposals, telling listeners to pressure their representatives.
The details packed into a written overview of the country’s well-being might bore some audiences to tears — but would be greatly useful to a legislature that cared about governing the country. This brings us back to today’s Washington and its do-little Congress.
Trump used the State of the Union as a political speech for his own ends, not a report to a separate branch to aid in its crucial work. This president prefers to shape policy by executive order than new legislation, perhaps because laws beyond rubber-stamping funding requests are legislative proof that the executive — as the Supreme Court took pains to remind him in its tariff decision — doesn’t have boundless authority to act unilaterally.
Trump has made clear that he thinks Congress doesn’t need to stress over new legislation. He recently said on Fox Business that after signing last year’s “Big Beautiful Bill” into law, congressional Republicans have “gotten everything passed that we need.” The roughly 900-page bill was passed via “budget reconciliation,” a process that allows certain types of legislation to dodge the 60-vote procedural threshold in the Senate.
Trump’s nonengagement on priorities for Congress ahead of the midterms hasn’t stopped some Republican lawmakers from looking for something do. Now, Trump’s nonengagement on priorities for Congress ahead of the midterms hasn’t stopped some Republican lawmakers from looking for something do. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has been teasing the potential for a conservative health care bill to make up for the Obamacare subsidies his caucus allowed to lapse. There’s likewise been chatter among the GOP rank-and-file about potentially codifying the Trump-imposed tariffs the Supreme Court recently struck down. Given Democratic opposition in the Senate, where the filibuster still reigns, the likely best hope for either measure (or both) would be to pack them into a second reconciliation bill. But as Punchbowl News pointed out, Johnson only has a middling number of votes to spare on getting a massive package passed. And he only barely managed to get Trump’s signature legislation through last year. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., doesn’t need the same degree of unity on reconciliation bills — thanks to their ability to dodge the filibuster — but he does still need at least 50 of his members to sign off. He also needs signoff from the Senate parliamentarian, who adjudicates whether provisions meet the byzantine requirements to be included in a budget bill. In short, Republicans’ willingness to prioritize a powerful executive at the expense of effective legislators is looking like a real monkey’s paw situation as the midterms loom. Trump’s attention has been everywhere but Congress. Even on lawmakers’ most basic of tasks, appropriating funds, this White House has still made clear that it views spending legislation as guidelines to be ignored when inconvenient. Some semblance of a clearer vision from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. could help Johnson and Thune chart a course for the next few months. But as things stand, lawmakers are set to meander their way to the midterms, looking for small wins to stave off defeat at the ballot box this fall.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
