There has been talk that Republicans in the House and Senate have voluntarily surrendered their power to Donald Trump.
The US system of government depends on a separation of powers between three equal branches, but the nation has never before had a congressional majority that turned its power over to the president, as doing so would violate the system’s very structure.
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Such a surrender by the legislative branch to the executive means that the congressional majority no longer represents the people who elect it.
A Congress under the control of the White House is a rubber stamp, not a check on the president’s power.
The chatter that Trump is really the one running Congress was confirmed by a report in The Wall Street Journal by the White House itself:
Inside the White House, top advisers joke that they are ruling Congress with an “iron fist,” according to people who have heard the comments. Steve Bannon, the influential Trump ally, likened Congress to the Duma, the Russian assembly that is largely ceremonial. When senior White House aide Stephen Miller recently held a party at the exclusive Ned’s Club to celebrate his 40th birthday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) showed up to honor Miller, the people said.
Bannon, who worked in the first Trump administration, attributed some of the faded resistance to Trump’s comeback after four years “in the wilderness,” a period that he said hardened Trump. “He’s doing things now he wouldn’t have ever considered the first time,” Bannon said. “He’s jackhammering away on levels you haven’t seen before.”
The government is shut down because Donald Trump’s White House wants it that way.