As Trump and Musk Upend Washington, Congressional Phones Can’t Keep Up

Americans dialing their members of Congress for basic services are going straight to voice mail. Interns and young aides can’t answer the phones quickly enough. And a system that usually handles a few dozen calls per minute is straining to keep up with more than 1,500.

President Trump’s moves to upend the government — and his decision to empower the billionaire Elon Musk to carry out a slash-and-burn campaign inside the federal bureaucracy — are dominating the news and reverberating across the capital and beyond. And nowhere is the impact more readily apparent than the beleaguered congressional phone system, a major conduit for citizens to contact their representatives in Washington that in recent days has been nearly crippled as it absorbs tens of millions of calls responding to the new Washington order.

Congressional phone lines have been jammed to the point of failure, according to lawmakers and officials on Capitol Hill, in a stark reflection of a political system buckling to a breaking point under an emboldened and unbound Mr. Trump.

Calls are pouring in from constituents outraged about Mr. Trump’s unilateral moves and how he has allowed Mr. Musk to gain access to and begin dismantling critical parts of the federal bureaucracy, and demanding that members of Congress take a stand against them.

Others are calling Republican senators incessantly to either demand that they fall in line behind Mr. Trump and his cabinet nominees, or plead with them to break ranks and challenge the president.

The sheer volume of vitriol from both ends of the political spectrum has all but drowned out a core function of Congress: allowing Americans to seek and receive help from their elected representatives interacting with the government for basic needs.