It’s not just the presidency: Trump is changing Congress
counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and is part of a continuing effort by the president and his administration to rewrite the narrative of a probe that has shadowed the White House. Democrats, already alarmed by the Justice Department’s earlier dismissal of the case against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, denounced the president as further undermining the rule of law.
Stone, 67, had been set to report to prison on Tuesday after a federal appeals court rejected his bid to postpone his surrender date. But he told The Associated Press that Trump called him Friday evening to tell him he was off the hook.
“The president told me that he had decided, in an act of clemency, to issue a full commutation of my sentence, and he urged me to vigorously pursue my appeal and my vindication,” Stone said by phone from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he was celebrating with friends. He said he had to change rooms because there were “too many people opening bottles of Champagne here.”
Although a commutation does not nullify Stone’s felony convictions in the same way a pardon would, it protects him from serving prison time.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump isn’t just changing the presidency during his first term in office. He’s also changing Congress.
More than perhaps any president in modern history, Trump has been willing to ignore, defy and toy with the legislative branch, asserting power and breaking norms in ways his predecessors would hardly dare.
Republicans shrug it off as Trump being Trump, leaving Democrats almost alone to object. While the Democratic-run House took the extraordinary step of impeaching the president, the GOP-controlled Senate acquitted. Over time, there’s been a noticeable imbalance of power, a president with few restraints drifting toward what the founders warned against.
Think of it as “the incredible shrinkage” of Congress, said historian Douglas Brinkley.
“It’s created this massive void in our democracy,” Brinkley told The Associated Press.
As Trump seeks reelection with the country facing crises unseen in a lifetime, Congress is confronting questions about its ability to shape the direction and future of the nation.
This week, the Supreme Court weighed in, acknowledging the “clash between rival branches of government” over Trump’s financial records. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority to return the case to lower courts, said that while the subpoenas for the documents were broad, the president went too far in claiming virtual immunity from congressional oversight.
“What was at stake is, is the president above the law?” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., taking the ruling as a win for her end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The erosion has taken place in ways large and small.
First, Trump took money for his promised border wall with Mexico without lawmaker approval, circumventing Congress’s bedrock power over spending. Then he began to fill top posts with officials who did not have the support of senators, negating their role to advise and consent on nominees.
And when the House launched investigations that led to impeachment — the ultimate check on the executive — Trump refused to comply with subpoenas, declaring them invalid. The courts are now left to decide.
Presidents have almost always reached to grab power. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free enslaved people. Barack Obama issued executive actions on immigration when Congress wouldn’t comply.
But typically presidents only go so far, knowing Congress is eyeing their every move, ready and willing to intervene. The executive knows they may soon need votes from lawmakers on other matters, creating a need for cooperation.
Trump rejects that model outright, treating the Congress as support staff to his presidency and relying on sheer force of personality to shape the government to his will. A simple Trump tweet can cower critics and reward loyalists all the same. His power only grows as lawmakers, particularly Senate Republicans, stay silent.
The result is a an exhaustive, head-spinning era that’s turning Capitol Hill into a spectator stand of those watching, reacting and shaking a fist as their institutional prerogative is slipping away.
“There’s a deeper institutional question,” said Sen.
Angus King, the independent from Maine. “The Congress is abdicating its responsibilities to the executive.”
The singular challenge to Trump comes from Pelosi, a seasoned legislator who captured the Democratic majority after Trump’s first two years in large part because voters longed for a check on his power. In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has taken a different tack, working with the Republican president or at times around him as GOP senators avoid direct confrontations.
“Congress is evolving,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, RFla., once a Trump rival for the White House.
Rubio acknowledges the Congress is a different place than when he arrived a decade ago on the tea party wave. He wishes, at times, that Congress would be more assertive.
“America is going through a transformational moment, as we have many times in our history,” he said. He notes that lawmakers still join forces, including on his legislation on human rights in Hong Kong. “It’s easy to watch what is happening here today and think these are the worst times in congressional history. That’s not accurate.”
But day in and day out, Congress is mostly unwilling to pull together, Republicans declining to join Democrats to rebuke the president when he overreaches or confront him with bipartisan legislation to force his hand.
“There isn’t even a whimper out of the Republican side,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the assistant Democratic leader.
“Every president does that — they will push their authority as far as they can,” Durbin said. “For Trump, it has been nonstop.”