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- [00:01]
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Ryan Reynolds
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of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes.
- [00:59]
Martin DeCaro
Me slow when network history as it happens July 24, 2026 Congress has slide into irrelevance.
- [01:09]
Gerald Ford
I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
- [01:12]
Congressional Member
Mr. Ford, you stated that the theory on which you pardoned Richard Nixon was
- [01:17]
Political Analyst
that he had suffered enough in the House of Representatives. That's where the landslide nature of the Democratic victory on this election day 74 shows up. I said this election would be a
- [01:28]
Gerald Ford
referendum on Richard Nixon.
- [01:30]
Newt Gingrich
On the first day of the 100 Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government.
- [01:43]
Political Analyst
Today we enter a new era in American government. Today one political party is listening to the concerns of the American people.
- [01:50]
Newt Gingrich
We are taking the first steps and we're taking them in a contract with the American people.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Well, I think what we've seen is that working class Americans want a clear champion and there is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018.
- [02:05]
Martin DeCaro
Across American history, at critical moments, Congress has checked executive power. It has course corrected when democracy was in danger, as in the mid-1970s after Watergate, in Vietnam. But not anymore. At least not right now in our age of the imperial presidency under the corrupt rule of a rogue executive. But this problem did not begin yesterday. That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:32]
Maya Kornberg
I don't think Congress is broken. I think Congress is stuck in certain ways. It is unable to deliver for the American people in the way that it was intended to. If we take, for example, Article 1 and what Congress is meant to be doing, Congress is given the right to declare war, and yet it hasn't declared war since World War II.
- [02:57]
Political Analyst
An off year election is a little like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces, when put together, don't make a picture. There are some 500 diverse races of national interest tonight, and they are to fill 34 Senate seats, a third of the Senate.
- [03:11]
Martin DeCaro
When voters went to the polls in the 1974 midterm elections, Richard Nixon had been gone for only three months. The cloud of Watergate still hung low over the electorate. Americans were angry. President Ford pardoned Nixon, and the economy wasn't in great shape either.
- [03:27]
Congressional Member
That even though somebody is impeached, that person shall nonetheless be liable to punishment according to law.
- [03:34]
Political Analyst
Mrs. Holtzman? I was fully cognizant of the fact that the President, on resignation, was accountable for any criminal charges. But I would like to say that the reason I gave the pardon was not as to Mr. Nixon himself, I repeat, and I repeat with emphasis, the purpose of the pardon was to try and get the United States, the Congress, the President, and the American people, focusing on the serious problems we have both at home and abroad.
- [04:15]
Martin DeCaro
Democrats won a net of 49 seats in the House, expanding their majority to 291 to 144. They gained four seats in the Senate for a 60 to 38 majority. And after the big wins, House Speaker Carl Albert promised his party would prioritize the economy today. He might have used the word affordability.
- [04:35]
Political Analyst
I think the mandate is that we move to fill the gaps that are open now in the approach to the economy. The war on inflation is something that's very important. We hope the administration also gets the message because we're all in this together now.
- [04:57]
Martin DeCaro
That new Congress, also known as the Watergate babies, also prioritized reforms after the criminal abuses of the Vietnam War under multiple presidents and the Watergate scandal under Nixon.
- [05:08]
Political Analyst
Capitol Hill. The House Judiciary Committee has started a formal inquiry into whether it should approve the impeachment of the President. The Senate Judiciary Committee is hearing proposals that would shift control of the Watergate investigation from the White House to a court.
- [05:23]
Martin DeCaro
Maya Kornberg writes about these historically important reforms to check executive power in her new book, How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress. She focuses on three historical cases. The 1974 midterms, the Republican Revolution of 1994, when the GOP gained control of both chambers for the first time in 40 years after gaining 54 seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate.
- [05:49]
Congressional Member
They're very different Republicans. The ones in the Congress are much more conservative than the pragmatic Republican governors that are did very well yesterday again in re elections. And if these Republicans in Congress send them a bunch of constitutional amendments, it'll be interesting to see how the Republican governors feel about them. They might not want it.
- [06:07]
Martin DeCaro
And the 2018 midterm elections during Trump's first term, when Alexandria Ocasio Cortez stunned the Democratic establishment in the primary.
- [06:15]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
I cannot believe these numbers right now, but I do know that every single person here has worked their butt off to change the future of the Bronx and Queen.
- [06:26]
Martin DeCaro
Now, the 1994 midterms during Clinton's first term are remembered for the Contract with
- [06:30]
Newt Gingrich
America Select, a major independent auditing firm, to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud and abuse. Third, cut the number of House committees and cut committee staffs by one third.
- [06:50]
Martin DeCaro
Internal reform measures like that last one Gingrich mentioned there have made Congress's job more difficult to this day. Congress today is not acting as a co equal branch. Its Republican majority has utterly failed to exercise oversight over the monumentally corrupt and incompetent Trump administration. But when it comes to the abuse of war powers by the executive, Congress long ago ceded its responsibility. Trump is hardly the first president to wage an unnecessary war while Congress looks on rather than defund it or stop it by either rescinding an authorization or invoking the Vietnam era War Powers Resolution. Maya Kornberg is a senior research fellow at NYU Law's Brennan center for justice and the author of the aforementioned Stuck. Maya Kornberg, welcome to the show.
- [07:40]
Maya Kornberg
Thank you so much for having me.
- [07:41]
Martin DeCaro
Congress is supposed to be a co equal branch of government, but it seems to be the weakest of the three branches. Is Congress broken? What do we mean by that? You know, where is it broken? Why don't we start with that? From 30,000ft up.
- [07:56]
Maya Kornberg
I don't think Congress is broken. I think Congress is stuck in certain ways, which is why I just wrote a book about Congress with the title Stuck. I do think that it is unable to deliver for the American people in the way that it was intended to. If we take, for example, Article 1 and what Congress is meant to be doing, Congress is given the right to declare war, and yet it hasn't declared war since World War II. Congress is given the power of the purse to guide funding decisions, and yet we're seeing a president who is either withholding Funds or in.
- [08:35]
Congressional Member
In.
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Maya Kornberg
In many different ways, kind of bypassing this congressional power. And we're seeing a. It is, on so many metrics, at historic lows in terms of its productivity, in terms of the number of days it's meeting, in terms of the number of bills it's passing, and a near historic low in terms of popularity. The latest poll showed that only about 10% of Americans are happy with the way that Congress is doing its job. So I think that Congress is not permanently broken. I do think that it is stuck in the situation. I'm happy to talk a little bit more about why I think it got here, but I certainly think that we can get it out of the situation if we focus on it.
- [09:13]
Martin DeCaro
Well, there are a lot of reasons for this, and some items I wasn't aware of until reading your book deal with internal or structural decision making. Congress can make its own rules, and these things can be changed. But it seems that people who benefit from keeping these rules the way they are wouldn't see an incentive to changing them. For instance, the size of congressional staffs is limited. Hasn't changed since the 1970s. Each Congress member can only hire 18 people. So for research and for information, members have to then look to outside sources, which are lobbyists and think tanks who do not offer disinterested advice.
- [09:54]
Maya Kornberg
Yeah, the capacity issue is one that people don't often realize. There are several different layers to the staffing problem. The first one is that there's been a cap on the number of staff that members can hire in their personal offices. And that cap has not changed since the mid-70s, even though constituencies have grown tremendously in that time, and members are dealing with even more complex policy issues. They're only allowed to hire 18 staff, and they don't have a very large budget, to be fair, even if that cap was raised, which it should be, and budgets should be increased. Now, in addition to that, if you think about other kinds of professional staff in Congress. So committee staff, support agency staff. We have a Congress today that has several thousand fewer professional staff than it did a few decades ago. One of the narrative arcs in the book tracks how this happened and when it started in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House, he was really instrumental in gutting committee staff, slashing that by a third, defunding entire Congressional support agencies, and cutting staffing to others. And Congress has really not recovered. And so we're seeing a Congress today. There's a lot of anger from the American public that I'm seeing At a Congress that isn't standing, standing up to the executive. But when you have a Congress that is, by a recent metric that I saw, has 120 times less funding than the executive branch, just many fewer professional staff, it's hard for it to hold its own.
- [11:20]
Martin DeCaro
We might even need a larger Congress given the size of the population in the country. Now let's talk about Gingrich and his revolution. I wasn't aware again until reading your book about the changes he made prior to his reforms, such as they were even freshmen or first term members of Congress could wield some influence. Getting on a committee, becoming a committee chair, you could wield influence. But Gingrich really shifted the power to the party leadership at the top of the House. Right. Explain how that has contributed to these problems.
- [11:53]
Maya Kornberg
You know, we all learn in school about the kind of Schoolhouse Rock version of how a bill becomes a law, right. It's introduced and then it's sent to a committee and then the committees deliberate and then they amend it and they send it back and then there's a vote.
- [12:05]
Political Analyst
I'm only a bill and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill. Well, it's a long, long journey to the Capitol City. It's a long, long wait while I'm sitting in committee.
- [12:20]
Maya Kornberg
And that is not the way that things happen in Congress today, in part because of the changes in the 90s that I'll get to in a moment. Right now, what we see all too often is a system in which a few party leaders write a piece of legislation. Sometimes, as you noted before, with the help of some lobbyists, they push it down for a vote. Sometimes members say that they don't even have time to read the piece of legislation before they have to vote on it. Many times committees are bypassed altogether and it's just not a very small d Democratic process. Right. When you're electing members and they don't even have time to read the legislation that they have to vote on, let alone drive their legislative agenda. It's an extremely hyper centralized process, especially in the House. So as you mentioned, you know, my book starts in the 1970s. It didn't used to be like that in the 1970s. You had many examples and I talk about them in the book of, you know, of folks like Toby Moffat and Steve Neal and Henry Waxman who rose up to leadership positions and were able to drive forward key pieces of the legislative agenda. What happened in the 90s was that Newt Gingrich doubled the power of the party speaker in the steering committee. The steering Committee is the committee that decides committee assignments. He, in various ways, including cutting staffing, which. Which was another way of disempowering people, really brought power to party leadership. That change did not start with him. You know, some of the changes in the 1970s of the book Chronicles also contributed to this. So in the 70s, one of the changes that we saw in Congress was that committee assignments, which used to be made by the Ways and Means Committee, were moved to the party steering committee, which was controlled by party leaders. Right. Then Gingrich doubled the power of the party speaker on that committee later on. So these are various ways of creating a system where party leaders have power to decide who gets leadership positions and who has power within the chamber. We've kind of seen that snowball process
- [14:12]
Martin DeCaro
issues are not the most exciting things to learn about, but they're critically important. Another piece of what you just described is having less time to legislate at all because of too much money in politics. I know it's a cliche to say there's too much money in politics, but it's true. I find it obscene that billions, billions are spent on getting people elected or not elected in these campaigns, but because members have to raise funds almost all the time, they can't actually legislate as much as they used to, either.
- [14:43]
Maya Kornberg
Yeah. And I think that this cannot be overstated in terms of just what a cataclysmic change this is just in the last 50 years and the way in which it has gotten Congress to the level of stuckness that we're seeing today,
- [14:56]
Martin DeCaro
especially in the House. Right. Because they're running every two years. So they.
- [14:59]
Maya Kornberg
Yeah, yeah. But also, you know, the cost of running a Senate. Senate campaign similarly, is just astronomical. So in. In the 1970s, again, key decade here in 1976, the Supreme Court decision, Buckley Vivaleo rules that spending limits are unconstitutional in campaigns. And then we have the 2010 decision, Citizens United, which allows unlimited amounts of outside spending to flood campaigns. And so, as a result of some of these rulings, we're seeing, as you're saying, just running for Congress becoming increasingly expensive. And we know that. I think that's in the news a lot. I think what people don't realize is that it doesn't end there. What I write about in my research and what I've talked about with. With members, is the way in which money shapes pathways to power even once they're elected, and even if they're in a safe seat, where even though they have to run every two years, it's not necessarily competitive and expensive election. So right now members are expected to pay what's called dues to the party in order to kind of campaign their way into leadership positions on committees or within party leadership. That's a key contributor when you want to be seen as someone who could be on some of those key committees. Members also have now what's called a leadership pac. Almost every member of the House has one where they literally pay money to other members, to other leadership PACs and other campaign committees in order to build cloud and build relationships in the chamber. And so what we're seeing as a result of that is that those same structural disadvantages that make it so hard for so many Americans to run for Congress are just being recreated when they get to Congress. And then they want to build power in this hyper centralized and money focused chamber. And then the other thing that I want to highlight with money is just how much time members spend dialing for dollars. You know, I've talked about this with members, I've talked about this with schedulers and chiefs of staff as well. They have to spend so much of their time doing what's called call time, just calling people up and asking them for money. That takes away for the time that they spend legislating. According to one recent study, members of Congress are only spending about a third of their time legislating. Now, certainly there's other things that they need to do as part of their job, but a third of their time legislating, that's just not enough time. And a lot of the time is getting eaten up by these fundraising calls.
- [17:12]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, I know there's a movement among some of the younger or newer members to rely on small donors. Because if you have to rely on the big ones, of course you become beholden to them. They are expecting something in return for their money. I want to get to some historical issues here and revisit the post Watergate class of 1974 and then the Gingrich revolution. Gingrich was in Congress already, but it was the first midterm election of Bill Clinton's presidency when Republicans swept back to power. Those are important chapters in your book. But one other thing about today's Congress, there's also just the issue of hyper partisanship. The political milieu in our country now, which is heavily influenced by the media as well. The zero sum, the zero sum mindset that you're not allowed to work with the other side. You're supposed to destroy the other side. So here's a sound bite I'm going to play for you this is Mitch McConnell speaking shortly after the midterm elections in President Obama's first term. Prior to the midterms, McConnell had said something like, it is a Republican's congressional priority to make Obama a one term president. And then the midterms happened and the Republicans did quite well. There was a backlash to the Affordable Care act, Obamacare, and McConnell is asked about at an appearance at the Heritage foundation about that remark about making Obama a one term president. Listen in.
- [18:34]
Gerald Ford
Over the past week, some have said it was indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term. But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill, to end the bailouts, cut spending and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all of those things is to put someone in the White House who won't veto any of these things. We can hope the president will start listening to the electorate after Tuesday's election, but we can't plan on that. And it would be foolish to expect that Republicans will be able to completely reverse the damage Democrats have done as long as a Democrat holds the veto pen.
- [19:22]
Martin DeCaro
So another way of putting that is this is how politics are supposed to work. A role of Congress is to actually be stuck, to borrow the title of your book, and to stop legislation that our side disagrees with.
- [19:35]
Maya Kornberg
The role of Congress is to pass legislation and to put a check on the executive and be a part of the checks and balances system. It cannot do that. First of all, if it does not have independence as a branch when it comes to checking the executive, if it does have an independent source of information and expertise, as I was talking about with staffing, if it doesn't have some kind of branch pride or institutionalism. What we're seeing now, for example, with some rumblings, at least of some bipartisanship when it comes to standing up to the president with war powers. And we saw that in the 1970s with Nixon, and we've seen that in other times that is necessary. When we think about Congress as a branch and when we think about an actually strong checks and balances system. Now when it comes to legislating, Congress by design is a place where, and not just Congress, you know, state legislatures, city councils, legislatures in general, you have to compromise and build coalitions in order to move forward your agenda. It is, it is not like being in an executive position. Some of the most effective legislators that I can think of that I spotlight in the book and you know, we're talking historically, so I'll give, for example, Henry Waxman's work. Those are legislators who, you know, they stuck to their guns on the one hand, but on, on the other hand, they were able to build coalitions with folks that they disagreed with. And he did that, and that was instrumental to, you know, him guarding AIDS funding in the 80s or passing environmental legislation, drawing attention to some of the drug abuse problems in Major League Baseball. You know, just a wide ranging array of things. I think that the legislators that I spotlight who've been most effective are those who are able to find sometimes what might be unlikely allies. If that's going to help them open a door, open a window. Sorry.
- [21:23]
Martin DeCaro
When a door is closed, sometimes it is necessary to reach across the aisle. You spotlight Tom Davis, a moderate Republican from Virginia who grew disgusted with the hyper partisanship you mentioned, how the Medicare, or is it Medicaid or. I think both of them in the 1960s had bipartisan support, whereas the Affordable Care act had no Republicans voting for it. So I don't necessarily agree with McConnell or his politics there, but his argument, or the argument of Republicans would have been or was, we're doing our job as an independent co equal branch. We're stopping an executive whose policies we disagree with. So Republicans are certainly not holding the executive to account today. Mitch McConnell is still in the Senate, barely. Right. They're not applying that same standard to the Trump presidency. Good segue to the Watergate babies of 1974. Nixon resigned in August of 74.
- [22:16]
Gerald Ford
I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
- [22:19]
Political Analyst
My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men.
- [22:33]
Martin DeCaro
The midterm elections that year brought a lot of new members in. Mostly Democrats, not entirely, but mostly because there was a consensus that the executive had gotten too powerful because of Watergate, because of Vietnam. Going back to lbj, what, in your view, are the most important reforms or the most enduring reforms from that 74 class? And just that whole new wind that swept into Congress after Watergate.
- [22:58]
Maya Kornberg
So in 1974, as you're saying, there was a real wind of change that reached Congress. I do want to underscore that point. The Watergate babies, as they're known, they were on average younger, with less legislative experience, and have a kind of, if not demographically at least, and professionally, more diverse lived experience than some of the folks that were there when they got to Congress. And so I think they breathed some new life into a Congress that was already starting to Stand up to President Nixon was already doing things like passing the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which a lot of folks have been revisiting. Now, one of the things that I want to go back to that the Watergate babies did, in addition to pushing to end the Vietnam War and other policy changes, was the process change that, as you're mentioning, folks kind of don't always linger on or know about. So when they got to Congress, there were already changes brewing in terms of the process of making committee assignments, like I was talking about before, and leadership decisions. And what the freshmen did when they got there was to vote and give the right amount of votes. Others joined them in the vote to make some changes that made it easier for freshmen to gain power. So they made the Ways and Means Committee, the powerful committee, bigger to allow for freshmen to have more seats. They made a rule that everyone has to receive one subcommittee assignment before someone receives two. That was also also to give more freshmen opportunities. They, as I mentioned earlier, took the power to make committee assignments away from Ways and Means and over to the party Steering Committee, where freshmen would have more of a say because they were a huge part of the Democratic caucus. So taken together, all these changes allowed for folks, as I mentioned earlier, to rise up through the ranks and gain power more quickly. And I think that point matters not just because it's important to know some of the process changes in Congress, but also because I think it's actually extremely important to keep in mind. Today we're in a hyper centralized Congress, but we're also in the midst of a midterm election, and there could be another wave that brings in a whole new crop of new young freshmen. And they could employ those same tactics that the folks in 74 employed because their collective power could allow them to change some processes so that overall it's easier for freshmen to get some of these appointments.
- [25:12]
Martin DeCaro
I hope so. I mean, Congress does need to assert itself. We're living in the age of the Imperial presidency, and at this point we have a rogue executive, the War Powers Act. I've talked about this on my show quite a bit over the years. In your view, is the problem with the language in the bill or the legislation, which only takes about 5 minutes to read it is not a long piece of legislation or is the problem elsewhere? We simply have had Presidents who don't want to abide by it and Congresses, multiple Congresses, Democratic and Republican, who don't want to assert their prerogatives.
- [25:44]
Political Analyst
Right.
- [25:44]
Maya Kornberg
First of all, I think that war powers is one example. As I Mentioned power of the purse is another where there is, you know, it's one thing what the Constitution says and it's another thing what actually happens in reality. And I think that this speaks to a more overarching point that I make in my book and in all my work, which is just how malleable our democratic system is. The relationships between the President and Congress kind of ebb and flow, that push and pull of the power dynamic. And you know, how malleable Congress is as an institution. So with that preface, I do think that the War powers Resolution of 1973, as you mentioned, there's two key provisions, which is really that the President has to give Congress not within 48 hours of starting hostilities, then there's a 60 day window to get approval. I certainly think that that window needs to be shortened. And you know, we're seeing again a lot of folks revisiting that legislation now with the Iran war. But I think that it's not all, you know, in that legislation, as you're saying, you can, you can pass it. And at this point it's seen as largely symbolic. What we need is a Congress that allows for both the independent expertise and oversight power to actually hold the executive accountable in military, in other areas of executive control. And we need a Republican Party and a Congress in general that is willing to stand up to the President when they disagree.
- [27:05]
Martin DeCaro
Can't they just defund the war Congress?
- [27:07]
Maya Kornberg
Well, so we're seeing right now a really active argument about the cost of the war and testimony by Pete Hadseth and others about the tremendous cost of the war.
- [27:17]
Military Official
Without these funds, we face critical shortfalls that threaten our ability to also simply pay ourselves service members, rapidly replenish equipment and munitions and sustain vital operations without disruption. This supplemental request serves two purposes. Sustain our military readiness to meet this year's new demands and accelerate critical capabilities to replace and augment those we have used in contingencies.
- [27:44]
Maya Kornberg
Again, I think that this speaks to power of the purse. Congress does make funding decisions. But when you have a President who is impounding, or, you know, that's another word for refusing to spend.
- [27:55]
Martin DeCaro
It's a Watergate legacy, billions of dollars
- [27:56]
Maya Kornberg
of congressional spending and is finding loopholes and ways to spend money that Congress has not authorized, it kind of speaks to another way that the President is bypassing something that Congress theoretically has the power to do.
- [28:07]
Martin DeCaro
I mean, Obama did this with a Libya intervention which was a disaster and also eroded Congress's power, or Congress allowed its power to be eroded.
- [28:15]
Congressional Representative
But broadening our military mission to Include regime change would be a mistake. Mistake.
- [28:20]
Political Analyst
He was constitutionally required to make that case to the Congress and to get its authorization. He did not.
- [28:29]
Martin DeCaro
You know, Adil Haque, who's an international legal expert, was on my show explaining War Powers Act a couple months ago.
- [28:35]
Adil Haque
One is about the Constitution itself and its constraints on presidential power. And then there is a statutory obligation to consult with Congress after the fact. And both of these are operative. So Congress is essentially saying, we're not obligating you to see congressional authorization before committing our troops to war. The Constitution does that. All we are doing is imposing this additional statutory obligation to consult with us. That's coming from us. But the most fundamental constraint comes from the Constitution itself, not from the war power.
- [29:13]
Martin DeCaro
But presidents treat it as if, oh, well, we're not quite in a war, not quite in hostility. So there's loopholes.
- [29:19]
Congressional Representative
And as I said yesterday, we will not, I repeat, we will not deploy any US Troops on the ground tap.
- [29:26]
Martin DeCaro
Subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads, get early access and enjoy all of our bonus content or go to history as it happens.com. Impeachment. Is it broken? It's not an effective tool to checking an executive.
- [29:55]
Maya Kornberg
Listen, I think that there's a lot more effective tools for checking an executive, and I want to grow back to committee hearings. For example, committee hearings are meant to be a place in which committees with jurisdiction over certain different executive agencies can bring people in and get information and question folks in executive agencies. The whole system around, you know how the GAO collects information from the OMB about the President spending money or refusing to spend money that the Congress has authorized or not authorized. You know, that, that, that's a way, you know, all of these processes, there's, there's a lot of, I think, processes, again, interagency processes, processes, committee processes, other things where Congress can and should be conducting oversight in a way that is both effective and collaborative because a lot of times the agencies also have information and brain power that Congress needs. I think impeachment is a different kind of thing and to me seems more as kind of a symbolic and public facing show rather than kind of some of the internal process ways of conducting oversight.
- [30:56]
Martin DeCaro
Well, you mentioned hearings, and I haven't been on the Hill for a while, but I used to cover hearings here and there. They have a public purpose. Right, right. But a lot of the hearings I see now, watching them online, it's theater. So if it's a Republican administration, the Democrats on the committee will ask confrontational questions and the Republicans are just Doing softballs, and then it's vice versa. Right. That has to end. And also it's just become theater to get your 30 second clip that goes viral online. You address how social media has distorted politics. There's also the issue of violence. Social media makes it easier to threaten lawmakers. And you, you document how this problem is really severe, especially for people of color and women.
- [31:37]
Maya Kornberg
So first of all, I want to address the first thing that you said, which is that hearings are increasingly theatrical. And what I would ask is kind of, what are the hearings that you're watching online? Right. Those are probably the hearings that are getting attention online. Those are the hearings that are making headlines. Those are the hearings that we see. And so we associate them with hearings in general, but they're actually only a small slide slice of, as you know, all the hearings that are going on on the Hill. I would argue that the hearings that are perhaps more effective at both conducting effective oversight, gaining specialization and expertise on different topics and, and all the different things that hearings are supposed to do are the hearings you probably haven't seen on television because folks there are asking inquisitive questions and are sorry to interject.
- [32:21]
Martin DeCaro
You might catch them on C span 2 or C span 3, but, you know, even C Span has gotten into the viral video moment.
- [32:27]
Maya Kornberg
Yes, there's C Span and there's television. But just to bring the conversation back to social media again, I think that that's exacerbated something that we saw start with C Span when, you know, Newt Gingrich was giving speeches to an empty floor when television cameras were introduced into Congress because he knew that someone would be watching on C Span potentially. But social media allows anyone to, you know, create a viral clip. And when you add into the mix the fact that fundraising is increasingly nationalized, that a lot of folks are raising small dollars from across the country or big dollars from across the country, and a salacious moment can help them fund, then that creates even more of an incentive to, you know, do something salacious in a hearing or in another setting. You know, the book gives the example of Jim Wilson yelling, you lie in the middle of Barack Obama's address to Congress and using that clip to fundraise. Right. It went viral.
- [33:16]
Congressional Representative
This, too is false. The reforms, the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegal.
- [33:28]
Maya Kornberg
It's also something that freshmen in a House where they increasingly don't have a ton of power to move things legislatively, they can use social media to elevate their public profile, to raise public awareness about things. And I talk about, in the book the different kinds of power that legislators can have. I think that there's a kind of power to move things legislatively, and then there's a kind of prophetic power of the megaphone. And sometimes people don't realize that they're not the same. They don't translate neatly one after the other.
- [33:53]
Martin DeCaro
You draw a contrast between Lauren Underwood, who keeps a lower profile, partly because if she has a high profile online social media, she gets more threats to her physical safety versus some of the other newcomers in Congress who seem to be there only to create viral moments. I mean, Nancy Mace, to me, was a perfect example of that. She was not in Congress to legislate. She was there to draw attention to herself. Whereas Lauren Underwood doesn't make a lot of headlines, but she's doing it, I guess, the right way.
- [34:22]
Maya Kornberg
Yeah. In the book, I give the example that I am quoting Representative John Castan, another representative from the class of 2018, who is not necessarily a viral social media star. And he talked about it as prophets and kings. Right. Prophets have the power of the megaphone and kings have the power to govern. Certainly you can be a little bit of both. But I do think that there's a tendency, again, to the earlier point we were talking about which hearings you're seeing online, which things you're seeing online, to think, okay, we know the names of folks like AOC or Nancy Mace or Marjorie Taylor Greene. There's another, you know, 500 folks in Congress, and a lot of them might have a lot more legislative power than the folks you see on social media, but it's a different kind of power. And I think that it's a different kind of exposure also, to your earlier point, that members also choose to have when they lean into that social media stardom and influencer position that you can have as a public figure.
- [35:18]
Martin DeCaro
Final question here. One takeaway from your book is that a member of Congress, especially if you're in the House and you're a first or second termer, doesn't seem like a very appealing job anymore. How or what steps could be taken to make that job more appealing? Because you cite a whole number of members of Congress who say, I've had it with this. I don't want this job anymore.
- [35:42]
Maya Kornberg
So I'll say a few things, and I'll preface what I'm going to say with the fact that I think this is the exact time to be having this conversation, because a lot of people that I know are putting a lot of energy into electing people this November to Congress. But it doesn't really matter who we elect to Congress if we're electing them and they're spending all day dying, filing for dollars and they can't read the legislation that they vote on. And they're really so afraid sometimes for the safety of themselves and their families that they can't vote their conscience or engage with constituents to the extent that we need them to be doing so. I think we need to think about how to make this job better, not just for the good of the members, but also for the good of Americans who deserve representatives who can do the job that we are electing them to do. You know, one thing that I'd like to see in a new rules package in the 120th Congress is incre increased capacity for staff at all levels, more subcommittee staff and committee staff and support agency staff. As I mentioned, Congress can't stand up and do its job when it has the brain drain over the past few decades. So I think there's the capacity issue. I think that we desperately need for Congress a better onboarding and understanding for members of how to do their job and what resources they have beyond staffing, including increased security staffing. I think we desperately need to change campaign finance in this country and constitutional amendment to end Citizens United, and that will go a long way towards making Congress more effective. And the last thing that I'll say that we might not see it tomorrow is that though it might seem mundane to folks, reorganizing internal structures in Congress could not be more important to Congress being able to do its job and stand up to the president. So we're seeing a committee system in Congress that has not been reorganized since the 1970s, 70s. It's not equipped to deal with modern problems, to deal with the modern economy, internal process when it comes to ethics and other things that folks in the American public are really mad about now that it just has no teeth. So we need ethics reform in Congress. We need reform in terms of internal processes with committees and oversight and agencies and all these things. And I think taken together, some of that institutional focus can help ensure that the folks that we're electing in November can actually do their job in January.
- [37:56]
Gerald Ford
There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge. But in this case, the question is moot because former President Trump is constitutionally not eligible for conviction. We have no power to convict and disqualify a former office holder who is now a private citizen.
- [38:40]
Martin DeCaro
On the next episode of History As It Happens, Joseph Ellis will be back to talk about his new book about the tragic side of the American Revolution. But in the meantime, sign up for my free newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for History As It Happens.
- [39:03]
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