The topic of this episode is, “What Happens If Congress Gets Blown Up?”

On a sunny Tuesday morning 25 years ago, Congress reconvened. Speaker Dennis Hastert called the House of Representatives to order, and then the Illinois Republican recognized Representative Earl Blumenauer. The bow-tie-wearing Democrat from Oregon then began delivering a speech criticizing the marketing of tobacco.

He was the first of three members who were queued up to give speeches that morning. Only a handful of representatives were in the chamber. Most lawmakers were in their personal offices preparing for a full day of votes, hearings, and meetings, which would begin at 10:00 AM. Much the same was happening across the Capitol, where senators and their staff were preparing to start the day’s business.

But by 9:45 AM, legislators were fleeing the Capitol, and Hastert, the leaders of the Senate, and other top legislative branch officials were being whisked away to an undisclosed location in Virginia by the Capitol Police and their personal security details. Planes had struck and set aflame the two World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

United Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark, New Jersey, with enough fuel to carry it to San Francisco, had also been hijacked, and it was heading toward Washington, DC, and possibly the US Capitol. Were it not for the brave passengers of Flight 93 who stormed the cockpit and brought the plane down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the federal government could have been crippled for months.

A quarter of a century has passed since that terrible day, September 11, 2001. Yet, unfortunately, it appears that Congress still is not fully prepared to recover and to resume its duties should a large number of its members be killed or disabled. This is a problem, and it is a problem that should have been solved long ago, because the legislative branch is the heart of our federal government, and our system will not work unless we have a fully functioning Congress.

To discuss this issue, I have with me today my colleague, John Fortier. He is a senior fellow here at the American Enterprise Institute, the author of many books, and, critically, he served on two commissions studying the continuity of Congress.

Read the full transcript here.

The topic of this episode is, “Are we being too hard on Congress?”

Hating Congress has become a national pastime. If you asked the average American what they think of Congress, they’ll tell you that it is corrupt, that nobody is doing anything, and that the President and Supreme Court are making all the decisions. They’ll also gripe that Congress keeps passing bigger and bigger spending bills, but that Congress also cannot keep the government open.

No bones about it, Congress falls short in many ways.

To be fair, however, Congress also gets a lot of bad press. Many of you no doubt recall the podcast I did with Rob Oldham last summer, where we discussed the research showing that Congress does not get a lot of media coverage for doing good things but gets plenty of bad ink for its conflicts, its kooks, and its shortcomings.

But bad press aside, are we being too hard on Congress?

According to a brand new book, the answer is “yes.” The book is titled A Case for Congress (University of Oklahoma Press, 2026) and it was authored by Frances Lee, a superb scholar at Princeton University. Frances, I should add, was a guest on this podcast a couple of years ago and helped us think more clearly about partisan polarization and its effects on Congress.

I read Frances’ book this summer and thought I would use this month’s podcast to share those thoughts. So here we go.

Read the full transcript here.

The topic of this episode is, “How can the average American influence a member of Congress?”

A lot of Americans feel no connection to the US Congress. If you asked them, they probably could not name their members in the House of Representatives and their Senators. And few voters have had a conversation with their legislators, or have tried to persuade them by sending a letter or email to their legislators.

I am not picking on the average voter. I can tell you that before I started writing a doctoral dissertation on Congress in my late 20s, I had never been in contact with a representative or Senator. It simply had not occurred to me, nor did I believe that if I asked these people in suits who were hundreds of miles away from me, they would help me.

What was lost on me and is lost on so many other Americans is this basic truth: if you don’t tell Congress what you want, then how can you expect it to do what you want? Voting for candidates who support policies you prefer is important, but it's not enough. You need to communicate to your legislators to remind them of what you want and to let them know that your vote in the next election is not to be taken for granted.

So how can the average American get his voice heard on Capitol Hill? Here to help me answer this question is Brad Fitch, the author of the book, The Citizen’s Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials (Sunwater, 2025). Brad knows an awful lot about Capitol Hill—he has been there for 40 years and previously served as the CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation and a congressional staffer.

Read the full transcript of the episode here.