A strange thought has been bouncing around in my head lately. If the current administration gets its way regarding how the various departments and agencies are run, even whether or not money appropriated by Congress for them is spent in the first place, that could do more than simply create a governance and democracy problem for the country. Presidential overreach and malfeasance could force Congress to adopt radically different solutions to the national problems we want and need it to address.

Most dramatically, it could consider establishing administrative bodies responsible directly to it, not to the executive branch. Assuming the United States survived whatever the interim brought, the Trump–MAGA–DOGE approach to politics and rule could eventually lead the way to a more parliamentary form of government that limited the president’s role to the things specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The Necessary and Proper Clause speaks to Congress, after all, not the executive.

This idea still sounds outlandish to me, mainly because I don’t see the administration getting away with its unitary executive theory. If it does, however, then Congress would have to start thinking hard about what is necessary and proper, even removing agencies and departments from the executive branch. Or it could starve these institutions of funds and set up its own. Trump and DOGE have already done a lot of work to make this last option possible.

The president would still have his plenary powers to appoint major officials with the consent of the Senate, but Congress would be under no obligation to fund this cabinet beyond whatever it deemed prudent. Over time, Congress might find it necessary and appropriate to appoint officials from within its own ranks with duties that resemble those of a prime minister and that legislator’s cabinet. If the U.S. president has too much power and can’t be trusted to exercise it with prudent restraint, why shouldn’t Congress begin governing in a way that might lead in this direction?

Parliamentary government might not be the specific goal, but reining in an out-of-control executive certainly needs to be. The result could then well turn out to be a place not unlike where monarchical misrule led in Britain. If the Supreme Court oversteps in order to defend an authoritarian executive, Congress could seek a remedy there as well, changing its size and structure, for example. In short, the extreme degree of power that the Trump administration is trying to assert need not end in the direction they seek or in the pre-MAGA status quo either.

Of course, the nation itself is currently too divided for such sweeping legislation, which would require veto-proof majorities, at least initially. Nonetheless, state initiatives to require run-off elections or weighted voting could yield legislators with more nuanced views and the desire and ability to work for their constituents instead of for a tyrant.