Republicans have had complete control of the federal government for nearly a year now, and after months of chaos, scandal and infighting, they have little "to show for it," according to a new analysis from MS NOW.
The GOP won a trifecta in the 2024 election, as Donald Trump returned to the presidency, while the party held onto its House majority by a thread and took back the Senate. The Supreme Court has also had a 6-to-3 majority of conservative justices appointed by Republicans since 2020, effectively giving the party control in all corners of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government.
Despite this, MS NOW's Hayes Brown on Monday argued that "it’s impressive how little the GOP managed to get done legislatively" despite all that power. Most of the year's legislative achievements were wrapped up in the sweeping and unpopular Big Beautiful Bill spending package, while Trump himself made a grab for all the power he could for the presidency with little to no pushback from Congress or the Supreme Court.
In total, Congress passed only 61 bills in 2025, with over a third of them, 22, focused solely on overturning rules and regulations introduced under former President Joe Biden. Two others were focused on renaming federal buildings. The House set a record for the least amount of votes undertaken within the first year of a new Congress in the 21st Century, 362, with Speaker Mike Johnson frequently calling recesses "early when faced with revolts from his caucus." The Senate, meanwhile, spent most of its year confirming Trump's various nominees as opposed to crafting new legislation.
By comparison, 97 bills were passed out of both chambers of Congress in 2017, Trump's first year as president, when the GOP had a similar trifecta, with the two-year session ultimately passing 344 bills by the end of 2018.
"President Donald Trump spent this year barreling forward in myriad directions, enthusiastically stretching executive power to previously untested boundaries as he implements his agenda," Brown wrote. Little of the president’s energy was spent working with Congress, however, to try to turn his policies into law. Even at times when more leadership could have helped guide an internally divided party, Trump left the heavy lifting to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D."
The lack of legislation was compounded by the fact that the Big Beautiful Bill "contained most of the GOP’s legislative priorities," with Johnson and Thune spending most of the first half of the year hammering out its details. Anything not included in that bill was largely left to the wayside.
Brown also predicted that, as is common for divided Congresses, things could slow down even further if Democrats retake that House majority in the 2026 midterms, as many have predicted they will do.
"Which points up another sad truth: For lawmakers deciding whether to stay or go, this largely wasted year could actually be a high point of productivity," Brown concluded.
