One of the most momentous days in U.S. history was January 6, 2021. Hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters forced their way into the Capitol to disrupt the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. In images that horrified the world, the demonstrators—whom Trump, together with several congressional Republican allies, earlier had exhorted to “fight like hell”—entered both chambers while fighting with police and defacing parts of the building. They hung a hangman’s noose aimed at Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to follow Trump’s directive to break the rules and award the president another term. One of the protestors was shot and killed when she tried to enter the lobby near the House floor.

The rioting was a culmination of Trump’s aggressive brand of right-wing populism that left a significant stamp on Congress. A number of his supporters on Capitol Hill eschewed compromise in favor of all-out conflict, professing little regard for many long-standing traditions. The result left many political analysts wondering if partisanship and dysfunction had permanently taken root and if Congress could re-emerge as an institution capable of addressing society’s major problems.

In the years since Congress A to Z was last published in 2014, January 6 and its precursor political situation are just the most prominent of the history-defining events that have involved Congress. Trump became the only president ever to be impeached twice, only to win acquittal both times by sympathetic Republican senators. He installed three justices on the Supreme Court, the most by a single-term president since Herbert Hoover. He and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also reshaped the rest of the federal judiciary: Trump won confirmation of fifty-four federal appellate judges in four years, just one short of the fifty-five that Barack Obama saw confirmed in twice as much time. McConnell drew widespread attention—and Democrats’ condemnation—when he refused to hold a hearing on one of Obama’s Supreme Court nominees before the 2016 election, only to swiftly steer a Trump nominee to confirmation right before the 2020 contest.

[Page xiv]Party control of the House and Senate over the last decade has see-sawed. The main trend has been in opposition to the incumbent president. With Obama in the White House, Republicans regained the Senate majority in 2014 while retaining their majority in the House. In 2016, Republicans held onto congressional control with Trump’s election, only to see their majority topple in the House two years later amid widespread Democratic frustration with Trump. As Trump went down in defeat in 2020, however, Democrats saw their House majority dwindle while managing to recapture the Senate thanks to two special-election races in Georgia held just before the January 6 riots. Most major legislation, whether it has been the Republicans’ 2017 tax overhaul or the Democrats’ 2021 infrastructure bill, has been passed almost entirely along party lines.

The evolution of the Republican Party toward hard-edged conservatism was accompanied by the emergence of a visible and strongly progressive Democratic Party wing. Young lawmakers such as New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez harnessed the power of Twitter and other social media to gain national prominence as they sought to push Congress toward left-wing solutions on climate change and other issues. Grassroots movements, such as Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo antisexual harassment cause, gained greater prominence. Democrats in general, however, remained largely aligned with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the first woman to hold that title. Pelosi managed to overcome internal divisions to steer several significant measures into law, including a 2021 bill aiming to jump-start a revitalization of the nation’s infrastructure that was a chief Biden priority.

In the Senate, much of the debate centered not around legislation but over whether to overhaul use of a potent tactical weapon for the minority—the filibuster. Many Democrats, veterans as well as newcomers, argued that the requirement of gathering sixty votes to proceed on almost all legislation and overcome a filibuster had become severely outmoded with a Republican Party remaining implacable on taking up what they said were necessary measures such as safeguarding Americans’ voting rights. “An out-of-date structure of national government, which is very difficult to change but alarmingly easy to abuse, has become America’s great handicap,” veteran political commentator James Fallows wrote, citing the filibuster in particular. But two Democratic senators, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, held firm in countering that they would not take part in what they said would be a massive disruption of the Senate’s operations.

The complexity of governing became even more complicated by a coronavirus pandemic that paralyzed Congress for much of 2020 and made an indelible mark thereafter. Trillions of dollars were spent on shoring up medical preparedness and other needs. In the interest of safety, House members parted with long-standing [Page xv]precedent and allowed voting to be done remotely, and much of the work of holding hearings and other events was done online. The Capitol itself remained closed to visitors long after many governmental and nongovernment buildings opened.

It is with these developments in mind that Congress A to Z has been retooled to help students, activists, interested citizens, and anyone concerned about the vitality of self-government in the United States understand better the ways in which the most representative institution of the federal government operates. This edition contains several dozen new terms dealing with issues in which Congress is actively involved, from abortion to whistleblowing. The coronavirus pandemic has been so consequential that it earned a new entry. Definitions of new movements, such as Black Lives Matter, also have been added along with entries covering diversity in Congress itself, as have terms such as “socialism” that increasingly figure in congressional attacks. We also have added a specific entry dealing with the uniqueness of congressional jargon. Many existing entries, such as those dealing with Congress’s power of the purse along with security at the Capitol, have been thoroughly re-envisioned to reflect recent developments.

The original edition of Congress A to Z was planned and in large part written by Mary Cohn, for many years a senior editor at Congressional Quarterly. Portions of her work are continued in this edition. Subsequent editions were updated by many CQ reporters and editors, most recently by Chuck McCutcheon, a former CQ editor who was coauthor of two editions of National Journal’s Almanac of American Politics. This edition was updated under the supervision of SAGE editor Laura Notton. The entries in Congress A to Z and its companion volumes on the presidency, the Supreme Court, elections, and the Constitution, are extensively cross-referenced to guide readers to related information elsewhere in each book. Most entries contain a list of further readings to enhance continuation of the research and reading journey, and in which a deliberate focus has been made to include books published over the last two decades. Each volume is also available as an online edition.

Readers who need more extensive, in-depth explanations of Congress as an institution may wish to consult CQ Press’s Guide to Congress, Seventh Edition, after reading the appropriate entries in Congress A to Z.

We hope that this volume, and the others that make up the American Government A to Z series, will achieve the simple goal underpinning all the books: to provide readers with easily understood, accurate information about Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court, the elections that so dramatically influence these institutions, and the Constitution of the United States.[Page xvi]