Disruption? The Senate During the Trump Era

What happens when a tradition-bound institution encounters an iconoclastic president intent on changing how the government operates? In Disruption?, Sean M. Theriault has gathered nineteen leading authors from a range of subfields to provide a compelling understanding for if, how, and to what extent Trump disrupted the Senate. As the authors argue, Trump became trapped in the norms and rules of the Senate on some dimensions, while he became the story to which all senators needed to respond on others. This book shows how multiple facets of the Senate changed during Trump's presidency, including the legislative process, party leadership, roll-call voting, and communications. Comprehensive in its coverage of the period and embedding it in a deep historical context, this book highlights how these changes reflected back on to not only the Trump administration, but also the very legitimacy of the Senate itself.

Sean M. Theriault is University Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He has authored dozens of articles and six books on the US Congress, including Congress: The First Branch (Oxford, 2020), The Great Broadening (2019), and The Gingrich Senators (Oxford, 2013). He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the Friar Centennial Teaching Fellow and UT's Professor of the Year.

Introduction: Disruption? The Senate during the Trump Era
Frank H. Mackaman and Sean M. Theriault

Chapter 1: The Changing Senate's Unchanging Rules
Donald A. Ritchie

Chapter 2: The Filibuster and the Trump Senate: The View from the Mid-Twentieth Century American South
Joseph Crespino

Chapter 3: Trump's Senate: A Bicameral Perspective
C. Lawrence Evans

Chapter 4: Unorthodox Legislating in Trump's Senate
Molly E. Reynolds

Chapter 5: High Stakes Negotiation: Reaching Agreement on Pandemic Aid in 2020
Frances Lee, Bettina Poirier, and Christopher Betram

Chapter 6: The Surprisingly Effective Lawmaking of Minority-Party Democrats in the Senate during the Trump Era
Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman

Chapter 7: Leadership in the Modern Senate
James Wallner

Chapter 8: McConnell's President: The Anti-Institutionalist Partisan
Julian E. Zelizer

Chapter 9: Trump's Disregard for Senate Norms and Prerogatives
Niels Lesniewski

Chapter 10: Senate Communication in the Era of Trump
Annelise Russell

Chapter 11: The Crisis of Senate Legitimacy
Lee Drutman

Chapter 12: The End of the Institutionalist
Christina Bellantoni

Chapter 13: Presidents, Congress, and the Politics of Unilateral Action
William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe

Chapter 14: Afterward: The Future of the Senate
Sean M. Theriault

Index