Even by the standards of an institution that has set records for dysfunction in recent years, the Republican-led Congress in 2025 hit new lows for productivity.

Plagued by a razor-thin majority, intraparty divisions and a fear of doing anything that might draw President Trump’s ire, Speaker Mike Johnson toiled to keep the House running.

He left the chamber out of session for a nearly eight-week period that coincided with the longest government shutdown in history. He maneuvered to avoid politically difficult votes on canceling Mr. Trump’s tariffs, releasing the Epstein files and extending health care subsidies, ultimately prompting his own rank-and-file to team with Democrats to go around him and force action. And he presided over a free-for-all of censures and reprimands on the House floor as lawmakers’ frustrations boiled over.

Fed up with the toxicity and inertia, some Republicans, including once-loyal Trump allies like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, headed for the exits, diminishing the majority’s already thin voting margin.

A look at some key metrics illustrates the cost and scale of the dysfunction.

The most basic: House members cast 362 votes in 2025, the second-lowest count in the last quarter century. The only other year in that time frame when the House cast fewer votes was 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States.

That was also the fewest votes cast in a nonelection year since 1990. Congressional leaders typically schedule less time in session in Washington during election years to allow lawmakers to return to their districts more frequently to campaign.

The record-low levels of activity in the House in 2025 contributed to the fact that very few bills were enacted into law.

The only other year since 2001 that Congress enacted fewer bills was 2023, a time of so much turbulence that far-right Republicans ousted their own speaker, Kevin McCarthy, for working with Democrats to pass spending legislation.

The lack of productivity that year could also be attributed to divided government: Republicans controlled the House, Democrats controlled the Senate and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was running for re-election. But in 2025, Republicans had a governing trifecta in Washington, controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House.

While Congress moved uncharacteristically quickly to meet Mr. Trump’s demand that it deliver his tax cut and domestic policy law, Mr. Johnson also labored to quash measures the president opposed. He even resorted repeatedly to an arcane maneuver to ensure that the House would not be forced to vote on a measure to cancel his tariffs.

It was one example of how, under Mr. Johnson, the House marginalized itself last year, as Congress more broadly ceded its power to Mr. Trump.

The speaker also attempted to avoid votes on other measures the president opposed, including legislation to compel the Justice Department to disclose materials regarding Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019; and a bipartisan bill to extend health care subsidies that expired at the end of 2025.

That generated so much resistance in his own ranks that it fueled a record number of successful efforts to go around Mr. Johnson and force legislation to the floor. That can be done by way of what is known as a discharge petition, which circumvents the normal process for bringing up a bill, which is controlled by the speaker, if a majority of House members sign a petition demanding it.

Historically, members of the majority were reluctant to embarrass their party’s leaders by using a discharge petition, and lawmakers feared retaliation for publicly supporting efforts to subvert the speaker. The efforts were viewed more as public statements of discontent than viable legislative vehicles. But in 2025, several succeeded and led to concrete action.

The Epstein measure was enacted last fall, and the House this month passed a bill to restore the health subsidies, though it has an uphill road to enactment in an election year.

As it has spun its wheels on legislation, the House has increasingly been consumed by partisan measures aimed at scolding and punishing each other. Official rebukes, once exceedingly rare and mostly reserved for egregious conduct or illegal acts, have become commonplace. Six of them came to the floor in 2025 for six different members.

That number was on par with 2023, when members targeted four lawmakers, including George Santos, whom they expelled from Congress as he faced 23 federal criminal charges and was discovered to have lied to voters about much of his biography.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger took multiple swipes at the Trump administration on Saturday as she was sworn-in as Virginia’s first female governor. 

Spanberger, who handily defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in November and takes over for Republican Glenn Youngkin, told a crowd at the State Capitol that, “I know many of you are worried about the recklessness coming out of Washington.” 

“You are worried about policies that are hurting our communities, cutting health care access, imperiling rural hospitals and driving up costs. You are worried about Washington policies that are closing off markets, hurting innovation and private industry, and attacking those who have devoted their lives to public service,” Spanberger said. 

“You are worried about an administration that is gilding buildings while schools crumble, breaking, breaking, breaking the social safety net and sowing fear across our communities, betraying the values of who we are as Americans, the very values that we celebrate here on these steps,” she continued.

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“And across the Commonwealth, everything keeps getting a bit more expensive. Groceries, medicine, day care, the electricity bill, rent and the mortgage. Families are strained, kids are stressed, and so much just seems to be getting harder and harder,” Spanberger added. 

She then said, “Growing up, my parents always taught me that when faced with something unacceptable, you must speak up.”

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“You must take action. You must right what you believe is wrong and fix what isn’t working. And I know that some who are here today, or watching from home, may disagree with the litany of challenges and the hardships that I laid out,” Spanberger also said. “Your perspective may differ from mine, but that does not preclude us from working together where we may find common cause.” 

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for a response to Spanberger’s remarks.

“The history and the gravity of this moment are not lost on me. I maintain an abiding sense of gratitude to those who work, generation after generation, to ensure women could be among those casting ballots,” Spanberger said at one point during her speech.

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Prior to her inauguration speech, Youngkin posted a video on X where he said it was an “honor of a lifetime” to serve the state. 

President Trump this week pardoned a San Diego-area woman whose sentence he commuted during his first term but who shortly wound up back in prison for a different scheme.

In 2016 a federal jury convicted Adriana Camberos and her then-husband, Joseph Shayota, on conspiracy charges in connection with an elaborate scheme to sell millions of bottles of counterfeit 5-Hour Energy shots in the United States. She was sentenced to 26 months in prison and served barely more than half of that time when Trump commuted her sentence in 2021.

But her freedom proved fleeting. In 2024, Camberos and her brother, Andres, were convicted in a separate case that involved lying to manufacturers to purchase wholesale groceries and additional items at big discounts after pledging that they were meant for sale in Mexico or to prisoners or rehabilitation facilities. The siblings then instead sold the products at higher prices to U.S. distributors, prosecutors said.

To avoid detection, prosecutors said, Camberos and her brother committed bank and mail fraud. Prosecutors said the pair made millions in illegal profits, funding a lavish lifestyle that included a Lamborghini Huracan, multiple homes in the San Diego area and a beachside condominium in Coronado.

The decision to pardon Camberos came amid a flurry of such actions from Trump in recent days, including for the father of a large donor to his super PAC and the former governor of Puerto Rico, who pleaded guilty last August to a campaign finance violation in a federal case that authorities say also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker.

The president has issued a number of clemencies during the first year of his second term, many for defendants in criminal cases once touted by federal prosecutors. The moves come amid a continuing Trump administration effort to erode public integrity guardrails — including the firing of the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

Among those granted relief of their prison sentences are defendants with connections to the president or to people in his orbit.

Administration officials have not offered a public explanation for Trump’s decision to pardon Camberos. But a White House official, speaking on background, said the administration felt it was correcting an earlier wrong by pardoning Camberos, arguing that she and her brother were unfairly targeted and subject to a political prosecution under the administration of former President Biden. The official alleged the Biden administration targeted the Camberos family in response to the earlier conviction and that the conduct was a typical part of the Camberos’ wholesale grocery business.

Ahead of her first conviction, authorities said Camberos and her then-husband operated a company called Baja Exporting, which contracted with the distributors of 5-Hour Energy to sell the product in Mexico. However, the company then altered the goods’ Spanish-language packaging and labeling and instead distributed them in the U.S. at well below the company’s normal retail price, prosecutors alleged.

That relabeling effort involved 350,000 bottles sold from late 2009 through 2011 at 15% below normal retail prices, according to authorities. The couple then took things a step further, joining with other defendants in Southern California and Michigan to manufacture a bogus concoction bottled and labeled to mimic the authentic product, according to court records. The scheme transformed the following year into one that produced and marketed several million bottles of counterfeit drink that was mixed under unsanitary conditions by day laborers, prosecutors said.

Six other defendants pleaded guilty to similar charges in connection with the scheme.

It wasn’t clear whether any consumers were harmed. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates 5-Hour Energy as a dietary supplement, has investigated at least eight deaths and a dozen life-threatening reactions involving energy shots before and during the time period of the counterfeiting.

The recent wave of clemencies joins previous Trump pardons of former Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and former Republican Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, whose promising political career was upended by a corruption scandal and two federal prison stints.

Trump also pardoned former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned from Congress after a tax fraud conviction and made headlines for threatening to throw a reporter off a Capitol balcony over a question he didn’t like. Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of cheating banks and evading taxes, also received pardons from Trump.

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos and the Associated Press contributed to this report.