Five Takeaways: Congress to Campus <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Catherine Kane ’26<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Late September, former US Representatives Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Peter Kostmayer (D-Pa.) visited Macalester for the fourth annual Congress to Campus event, arriving amid a Congressional funding showdown and unprecedented actions by the Trump administration.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Congress to Campus is the flagship program of the Association of Former Members of Congress. For more than forty years, the program has sent former elected leaders to more than 140 colleges and universities to model how to converse across differences and help foster the skills necessary for a thriving democracy. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Representatives Davis and Kostmayer spoke to the Macalester community about the shifting balance of power between the federal government\u2019s executive and legislative branches. Here are five takeaways from their conversation:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Gerrymandering facilitates political polarization<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kostmayer put it bluntly: \u201cYou can\u2019t have the politicians doing reapportionment, they just can\u2019t help themselves.\u201d Davis agreed, arguing that it takes \u201ca lot of hubris to look at gerrymandering with a straight face and say it works with democracy.\u201d He suggested that the courts may ultimately need to step in as a more impartial force in drawing congressional districts, but that so far, they have been reluctant. Davis also pointed to gerrymandering as the root of much of the political polarization in Congress today. With few competitive districts, politicians no longer need to appeal to moderate voters, and instead cater to the more extreme elements of their parties.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Restrictions on international students are short sighted<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Davis and Kostmayer both criticized the current administration\u2019s efforts to make it more difficult for international students to study at American universities. Davis argued that it is in the United States\u2019 \u201cbest interest to try to be a welcoming country\u201d for foreign scholars and innovators. Kostmayer went further, calling the policies \u201ccruel and unproductive,\u201d warning that they jeopardize the global reputation of American higher education as the \u201cenvy of the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The current administration\u2019s exercise of executive power is unprecedented<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Representative Davis and Representative Kostmayer agreed that the Trump administration\u2019s firing of independent members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Federal Trade Commission is unprecedented. Davis noted, however, that many presidents, when faced with resistance from regulators, bureaucrats, and a gridlocked Congress, often become frustrated and push the boundaries of executive power. He gave the examples of President Biden\u2019s attempt to cancel federal student loan debt and President Obama\u2019s DACA executive order. Kostmayer disagreed with Davis\u2019 comparison, calling President Trump\u2019s actions \u201cnot comparable to the behavior of his predecessors,\u201d and adding the actions are \u201cvery, very dangerous.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Government shutdowns are risky, political stunts<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Davis represented Fairfax County, Virginia, a congressional district with 70,000 federal employees. For him, shutdowns were always off the table. \u201cIt doesn’t make any sense to me on a rational basis,\u201d Davis said of congressional Democrats\u2019 plan to block the Republican spending package, \u201cbut on a political basis, it doesn’t make any sense <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> to do it.\u201d Kostmayer characterized shutdowns as a maneuver for the parties to \u201cmake their points, make their arguments and stare each other down,\u201d but ultimately comes at a \u201cvery high price.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Change happens at the ballot box<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe way to fix things is at the ballot box,\u201d Kostmayer said. \u201cThose are the facts, ladies and gentlemen: we aren\u2019t going to have a change in this country until we have new people in charge of making policy.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read about a couple of topics that former Representatives Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Peter Kostmayer (D-Pa.) discussed at this year’s Congress to Campus event. <\/p>","protected":false},"author":677,"featured_media":28165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[635],"class_list":["post-28157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-newswire","tag-congress-to-campus"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":false,"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28157"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29211,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28157\/revisions\/29211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}