Marty Kress was a senior U.S. Senate committee staff member, former associate administrator of NASA, former VP at Battelle and AVP and institute director at Ohio State University.
There are moments in time when great nations act – when people act.
If we are to do justice to our nation’s 250th birthday, it’s our time to stand up for the principles, institutions, processes and laws that earned our nation global respect.
Our government is not performing in the best interest of our country, nor is our system of checks and balances. When a Supreme Court Justice admonishes Congress for not doing its job – that’s telling.
Everybody wants to assume November midterms will right the ship of state. But even if the Democrats were to win the House and Senate, the latter being a long shot, the former not a given, their margins will be so thin they won’t be able to dramatically impact how President Donald Trump operates.
Get ready for a stalemate
They will be in charge, but not with the 60 votes needed in the Senate to advance legislation.
Like Republicans today, reconciliation bills that only require 51 votes would be their only legislative tool, as they were for Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill last year and for this year’s Republican agenda for ICE funding and a White House ballroom.
Wonder why this Congress is called The Do-Nothing Congress.
Whereas Trump will sign a Republican reconciliation bill that incorporates his priorities, he’ll veto any Democrat reconciliation bill that challenges his agenda. So, we’d have a stalemate until 2028.
If we realize that a slim Democratic congressional majority has little ability to restore health care funding, enact immigration reform, balance budget priorities, reestablish respect for law, restore environmental regulations, right relations with our allies or restore the integrity of DOJ, DHS, HHS, FBI or ICE, what options are there to address these issues?
A call to action for both parties
Might I suggest that rather than just focus energy on midterms and securing Democratic control of the House and Senate, what if an equal amount of energy were devoted to building bipartisan coalitions around a core set of issues that the new democratic leadership in either house would work with Republicans and Independents to enact?
We could start to form one or two of these coalitions now and make them part of the midterm debate so it’s more than a referendum on Trump; it’s a call to action for both parties to work together to right our ship of state and to correct for the overreach of the Project 2025 agenda.
To succeed, the coalitions would be bipartisan, linked to issues critical to America’s health and well-being and the rule of law. They would unite people, rather than divide, embracing Republicans, Democrats and Independents.
Candidate topics for coalition consideration could be: restoring health care cuts; voting reforms that enable people to vote; restricting the impoundment of congressionally approved funding; reestablishing U.S. ag as a reliable global supplier of food; immigration reform that recognizes the value of undocumented workers to our communities and economy; investments for infrastructure and AI projects; job training programs for workers in emerging industries; foreign aid that provides humanitarian assistance and secures strategic assets; legal reforms that strengthen the rule of law; and rejoining global organizations.
Picture a bipartisan immigration reform coalition led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops with guidance from a Senator and Congressmen from each party. Layer it with mayors/governors of key communities, key employment sectors of immigrants (agriculture, health care, construction, the military, services sector), key unions, education associations and community activists.
Coalition would provide Congress with the votes to frame and pass an immigration reform bill, reining in ICE operations against other than violent criminals.
This bipartisan coalition would enable officials on both sides of the aisle to vote for legislation backed by broad, bipartisan, public support. We’d look like Hungary’s winning coalition.
Over time, a coalition of these coalitions could even support a centrist/moderate candidate for president in 2028, perhaps as a third-party candidate or independent.
In this scenario, the key outcome from 2026 mid-term would be securing the political will for Ds and Rs to create bipartisan coalitions and implement meaningful policies in 2027.
We can’t wait until 2028 and hope everything gets better. No one party has the answers. But members of both parties working together might.
The question: Are enough members willing to break from their party leadership for the good of the country?
Marty Kress was a senior U.S. Senate committee staff member, former associate administrator of NASA, former VP at Battelle and AVP and institute director at Ohio State University.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: A midterms blue wave can’t save America from Trump. Here’s what can | Opinion
Reporting by Marty Kress, Guest Columnist / The Columbus Dispatch
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