1. United States
2. Wisc.
3. Letter

I do not recall a moment when we, the American people, ceded the authority vested in you to the Executive Branch so that it might act without restraint. I do not recall granting permission for Congress to surrender its constitutional responsibility, nor do I recall consenting to a government in which one branch rules by will while another looks on in silence. If such a moment exists, you should name it plainly, for it has not been disclosed to the people you are sworn to serve. The Constitution of the United States does not envision a passive legislature. It charges you with resistance where resistance is required, with oversight where power overreaches, and with accountability where the public trust is endangered. When you decline these duties, when you acquiesce rather than govern, you do not merely fail in strategy or preference. You fail in vocation. The authority you possess is not your own, it is borrowed, conditional, and accountable to the people from whom it comes. Your collective inaction is therefore unacceptable. What now passes for policy bears little resemblance to the will of the people, and one must ask when you last sought that will in earnest. When did you last listen without instructing, hear without persuading, or attend to the moral temperature of the nation without attempting to manage it? You were not elected to shape the conscience of the public, but to represent it faithfully and to govern within the limits of your sworn authority. This nation’s government, of the people, by the people, for the people, as President Lincoln named it, depends upon a legislature that understands itself as servant rather than spectator. The people are not an inconvenience to be managed, nor a backdrop for political theater. They are the source of your authority, and your singular task is to exercise that authority on their behalf with diligence, courage, and restraint. You may protest that the will of the people is difficult to discern, that opinions are many and consensus elusive. And yet you are surrounded by staff, supported by institutions, and equipped with tools of communication undreamed of by those who framed this republic. The difficulty you face is not one of access or capacity, but of resolve. The work of representation is arduous by design, and it was never meant to be evaded. The year of midterm elections is now upon us. The people are watching, and they are not indifferent. Beneath the noise of manufactured outrage and automated voices lies a deep and widespread dissatisfaction with a government that appears unwilling to govern itself. There remains time for repentance, for Congress to reclaim the authority it has surrendered and to fulfill the responsibility it has neglected. But if you will not act, then you should have the honesty to step aside and make room for those willing to do so. Office is not an entitlement, it is a trust. My prayers continue for the work of the 119th Congress of the United States. May it serve the interests of all the people of these United States, reclaim the power it has given away, and restore the dignity of a nation whose credibility has suffered in the sight of the world. May you yet remember who you are, whom you serve, and what has been entrusted to you.