Here’s the ugly truth: A lawmaker’s top priority is not to legislate, but to stay in Congress. Every vote, especially a bipartisan one, risks tarnishing an incumbent’s record of ideological purity and opens the door to a far-right or far-left primary challenger. The primary way to overcome such gridlock is sustained political pressure on lawmakers by activists who mobilize public opinion for change.
Thanks to activists, we have the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, seat belt laws that spread across the country, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, the Assault Weapons Ban Act of 1994, and campaign finance reform in 2002.
In other words, a motivated public has had a major hand in some of our nation’s most important legislation. But in recent years, activists have become more impulsive and impatient, demanding swift action on big issues without the compromise and incremental work that produces substantive, lasting change. Signing ceremonies in the Rose Garden feel good in the moment, but too often the excitement fades quickly. Big, swift executive actions issued by presidents without Congress have often blown up in our faces.
So here’s my plea to activists on the left and the right, many of whom don’t agree with me, but you have more power than you know. If you can master impulse control, pressure Congress, and play the long game to pass solid, consensus-based legislation, you might improve your chances of achieving lasting change on issues like gun control, religious freedom, and immigration. And if you don’t, well, just look around you.
Take gun control, for example. It’s been nearly seven years since Stephen Paddock shot and killed 60 people and injured hundreds more at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, fueled in part by bump stocks, attachments that greatly increase the rate of fire for semi-automatic rifles. Paddock fired more than 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes.
In the wake of the shooting, 82 percent of Americans surveyed said they supported a ban on bump stocks. Activists pressured Congress to amend the National Firearms Act of 1934 to include bump stocks in the definition of illegal machine guns. Congress responded, and within a month both the House and Senate had introduced bills to ban bump stocks.
However, the bill was not passed.
President Donald Trump saw an opportunity to score a political victory for himself on an issue that has widespread support, while avoiding House and Senate Republicans having to take votes that would have alienated parts of their base. By executive order, his administration simply declared that bump stocks would be included in the National Firearms Act. Gun control activists applauded. Then they largely went ahead.
I shouldn’t have done that.
Last week, the Supreme Court struck down the Trump Administration’s ban, implying that only Congress can ban bump stocks. This outcome was so predictable that I’ve predicted it for years. Senator Dianne Feinstein predicted this outcome just days after the ban went into effect. Whether you believe the Supreme Court’s decision was correct or not, there’s nothing surprising about this case.
But when Congress passed a bipartisan gun control bill in 2022, a ban on bump stocks was not included, even though litigation challenging President Trump’s executive order was already underway. The public pressure had already been lifted, and the moment had passed.
This is not the first time in recent years that activists have squandered opportunities to codify change, embracing, even preferring, short-term, sugar-coated victories that fade as quickly and easily as they were achieved.
In 2014, comprehensive immigration reform was a reality. Activists worked so effectively that a bill offering a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants already in the US passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support. House Republicans held firm, but with the right compromises and sustained public pressure, progress was possible. But they got much of what they wanted with a stroke of the pen from President Barack Obama.
His “year of action” has excited activists: He has signed more than 80 executive orders, including an expansion of DACA to include more Dreamers.
But again, these changes were generally short-lived: Trump reversed many of them within months of taking office, yet conservative activists were eager to pursue their own sense of gratification, praising his short-lived executive orders on abortion, immigration, religious freedom and more.
This cycle of one step forward, two steps back has only intensified under the Biden administration with major steps like student loan forgiveness and new climate change regulations. Some activists seem convinced that there is no point in working with Congress. Or maybe they just prefer to declare a quick victory and get more funding.
And there’s more. Left activists seem excited about President Biden’s new policy of granting legal protections to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens. “This is the biggest thing since DACA,” one immigration activist said without a trace of irony. Lawyers ready to challenge the executive order are already in the bullpen.
It would certainly be difficult to get these kinds of immigration changes through Congress right now — Republicans recently voted down an immigration bill — but that’s how the legislative process works. There are always proposals that can’t be rejected. There are always more forces that can be leveraged. It’s not that Congress isn’t working, it’s that there aren’t enough people willing to make it work.
The fact that many activists are content with fleeting executive orders is inexcusable. Such actions are often worse than getting nothing. At the very least, getting nothing would keep the pressure on Congress going. Getting nothing would only encourage more and more people to resist closed doors. But when activists declare a victory, even if it is a hollow one, they give everyone permission to go ahead. They absolve Congress and unfairly take credit for the president. And they fail in the most important job: bringing lasting change to those who need it most.
Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch and host of the legal podcast “Advisory Opinions.” He served as director of public affairs at the Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019 and as senior counsel to the deputy attorney general during the Russia investigation.
The Times is committed to publishing Diverse characters To the Editor: Tell us what you think about this article or any other article. Tips. And here is our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section Facebook, Instagram, Tick ​​tock, WhatsApp, X and thread.
