Tanned, rested and ready, Congress has returned from the August recess. It is unclear why.

The Democrats’ House and Senate minorities have no power — the ability to achieve intended effects. The Republican majorities have no power because they are not permitted intention independent of this president’s preferences.

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He refuses to enforce the law that strictly required the TikTok app to be sold or banned, at the latest, by April. He believes Congress’s spending power is merely the power to suggest spending ceilings. Try to cite a long-standing tenet of conservatism he has not traduced. Federalism? To end voting by mail and impose voter identification requirements, he would truncate, by executive order, the states’ constitutionally enumerated power to conduct elections. He would commandeer state and local governments with an executive order banning no-cash bail. Free markets? See “state capitalism,” below.

-George F. Will