**Congress’s Gelded Age***

Utah’s Republican-dominated legislature and governor are determined to choose which voters will elect the state’s eunuchs to serve in Trump’s royal court.

Photo by COARSE + FINE on Unsplash

Soon to become a half-billion-dollar monument to self, filled with cheap looking shiny objects, fit for faux royalty, and plastered with his gold-plated brand,[i] the iconic East Wing is rubble. As horrifying as these images are, the current state of the East Wing is aesthetically more pleasing than the Oval Office with its newly installed gaudy, garish, tawdry décor which, it’s been suggested, Liberace would find tasteless. The president is transforming the White House’s neoclassical architecture into a style inspired by the Magpie Syndrome which is awaiting its own classification in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Observers have underscored the obvious: the AI-generated video of Trump piloting a fighter jet as it dumps feces onto “No Kings” protesters followed by the East Wing demolition, both of which MAGA devotees love love love, is a perfect metaphor of his presidency. Potty humor and shiny object phases often peak between the ages of 4 and 8 for most mentally stable and healthy individuals.

An emasculated Congress looks on from the distance of their home districts. It did not take a government shutdown for members of the Republican-led Congress to classify themselves as “non-essential,” but they continue collecting their paychecks during the speaker-imposed extended furlough and government shutdown. Most non-furloughed “essential” employees — the ones who are actually doing something for the American people — are going without pay with the hope of backpay when the shutdown ends. Furloughed workers have less hope for backpay under a draft legal opinion from the Office of Management and Budget.

Of note, “the Trump administration has managed to move money around to ensure that some people get paid, particularly those doing work deemed critical to President Trump’s priorities. ‘We got the people that we want paid, paid. OK?’ Trump said at the White House last week.” So if you are a Trump loyalist who works for the government . . . .

I had originally intended to address this post to the congressional delegation of the state where I live. The working title was, “‘Under Your Watch?’ or is it ‘While You Watch?’” Utah, a red state with districts hermetically sealed through carefully gerrymandered districts to prevent infiltration by the “party of hate, evil and Satan,” has six members. More on gerrymandering below.

As it soon became clear Congress was ceding its Article 1 power and responsibilities to Trump and abandoning any check on his transparent corruption and abuses of power, I wrote letters in the form of blog posts to Utah Senators Curtis[ii] and Lee[iii] (linked in the endnotes). I knew years ago that Senator Lee was a lost cause but at the time, I had naïve hope for Senator Curtis, which too is now lost.

Senator Curtis’s government website declares, “America’s founding principles” serve as his “guide.” In my post addressed to him, I asked the senator to identify which founding principles he was referring to:

“[P]lease be very specific. Please identify which of America’s founding principles guide you and the context in which they undergird a constitutional republic and liberal democratic values in the United States, assuming that’s what you meant. I don’t mean to presume, but could you have meant that the citizenry has a right to self-government and to resoundingly reject tyranny? That the Constitution was designed for self-government by creating three independent branches of government, each to serve as active, vocal, and necessary checks on the others? Unlike your colleague, the senior senator from Utah, I’m guessing you did not mean as ‘founding principles’ that only white, well-to-do men, landowners preferably and likely slaveholders, should have any say in government while the women and farm animals, along with the slaves, are considered chattel.

“The unitary executive’s unconstrained, unchecked, and clearly unbalanced actions that step well into Congress’s constitutional domain resemble those on the Declaration’s long list of despotic measures from which the thirteen states declared their independence — and fought a war. . . .

“The constituents you serve are entitled to know exactly where you stand on every issue. And if your answer is that you throw up your hands, express no view, and leave it to the courts to decide whether the executive’s conduct is unconstitutional, you abdicate your own responsibility and violate the oath you swore to uphold the Constitution.”

I was wrong to presume what the senator might have meant.

I went to the website of each member of Utah’s congressional delegation[iv] to see if there was something there, anything more than bromides and platitudes like Senator Curtis’s “America’s founding principles serve as my guide,” to give me hope that cowardice and MAGA zeal were not their defining characteristics. It became obvious the five men are missing their testicles. The lone woman and sixth member Celeste Maloy — with whom I disagree on virtually every policy position — was the only congressperson to say anything that even hints at the government’s structural demolition as Trump shits the country into a fascist abyss —while Congress watches:

“America has the greatest system of governance in the world, and Congress is one of our key institutions. However, the executive branch has become too powerful and assumed Congress’ job of legislating. I believe we need to rebalance the powers between our three branches of government, and Congress needs to reclaim its rulemaking authority.” (Emphasis added).

Under the current regime, it must take cojones to do the job. If she didn’t have her own, I presume it was Senator Curtis who gifted her his.

As for Congress’s gelded age, Annie Karni wrote in yesterday’s New York Times:

“Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to put the House on an indefinite hiatus that is now stretching into its second month while the government is shut down is the latest in a series of moves he has made that have diminished the role of Congress and shrunken the speakership at a critical moment.

“It’s an approach born of political expedience that could have far-reaching consequences for an institution that has already ceded much of its power to President Trump. And Mr. Johnson, who without the president’s backing wields little influence over his own members, has chosen to make himself subservient to Mr. Trump, a break with many speakers of the past who sought in their own ways to act more as a governing partner with the president than as his underling.

“‘I’m the speaker and the president,’ Mr. Trump has joked . . . .

“Mr. Johnson has done little in recent weeks to contest the point. . . .

“Mr. Johnson appears to be using the considerable power of the speakership to render the House irrelevant.” (Emphasis added.)

Ms. Karni’s use of the word “little” was generous.

Utah’s Republican-dominated legislature and governor are determined to choose which voters will elect the state’s eunuchs who serve in Trump’s royal court. According to Democracy Docket, the Utah legislature’s placement of “raw political advantage ahead of respect for the will of voters,” might be the “most egregious” redistricting power-play in the country, even though it is centered on a single district where a Democrat could be elected.

In 2018, Utah voters approved Proposition 4, known as the “Better Boundaries Initiative,” which created an independent commission to draw legislative maps and ban partisan gerrymandering. Two years later, the legislature overturned the will of the voters by making the commission advisory, meaning the legislature could — and does — ignore its recommendations.

The Republican legislature carved up Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County among the four congressional districts to guarantee a Republican sweep. The League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government challenged the legislature’s nullification of Proposition 4, and the court battle continues. In August this year, Trial Judge Diane Gibson reinstated Proposition 4, and ordered the legislature to draw new, compliant maps. The Utah Supreme Court affirmed. The legislature created new maps that remain partisan, and this past week the trial court heard competing expert testimony on the central issues. The Utah Republican Party also launched a ballot initiative to repeal Proposition 4. Judge Gibson has until November 10, 2025 to decide which maps she will approve.

See This is the Most Brazen GOP Gerrymander Yet (Matt Cohen, Democracy Docket, October 18, 2025).

Release the Epstein files.

Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, the talented fiction writer and novelist, is my brother. He deserves considerable credit for offering substantive and technical suggestions to my blog. His second novel, The Contortionists*, which Rob himself narrates for the audio version, is a psychological page-turner about a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community. It is a literary masterpiece.

[i] Burnin’ Down the House (Maureen Down, The New York Times, October 25, 2025):

“A Jackie Kennedy garden was plowed over by the bulldozers. The woman with the best taste in the history of the White House was rubbished by the man with the worst taste in the history of the White House. . . .

“But Trump has so little respect for this 123-year-old symbol of American history that he didn’t check with federal planning officials or Congress before he obliterated one side of the White House. As if he’s tearing down a gas station. . . .

“Trump does not do small or modest. He does big, flashy odes to self. The joke when Trump was first running was that he’d slap his name on the White House facade as he did with all his other properties. And now it’s happening. White House officials are saying Trump will name the ballroom after himself.”

[ii] Dear Senator Curtis (R-Utah): Please Speak Up . . . I Can’t Hear You (Medium (no pay wall), February 23, 2025).

[iii] Dear Sen. Lee: What Are You Doing to Preserve the ‘Glorious 246-Year Legacy of Independence from Tyranny’ (Medium (no pay wall), March 9, 2025).

[iv] Blake Moore (R), 1st District

Celeste Maloy (R), 2nd District

Mike Kennedy (R), 3rd District

Burgess Owens (R), 4th District

John Curtis (R)

Mike Lee (R)