The unexpectedly wide majorities that the Democratic Party will hold in both houses of the next Congress are amplifying calls to hold the Trump administration accountable for abuses of power and corruption, with inquiries into everything from President Donald Trump’s windfall of $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency to his son’s wedding celebration being bankrolled by a Russian oligarch to the ethically questionable conduct of Elon Musk.

On election night, U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the presumptive next speaker of the House, promised that Democrats would “bring accountability to those who have visited unprecedented corruption on this country.” Robert Garcia, the Democrat from California who is likely to serve as the next chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, put it more succinctly in a two-word message to the president and his family: “Lawyer up.”

But other Democrats have contended that investigating the many allegations of corruption and lawbreaking by members of the Trump administration would stoke partisan divisions and squander the mandate that voters gave to their party on Nov. 3. Rebecca Cooke, a newly elected Democrat from Wisconsin, told The New York Times that “accountability for this administration can come later.” Instead, she said, “We have to focus on delivering for the American people right away,” in particular by bringing down the cost of living. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, concurred, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “we cannot spend all of our time investigating Trump.”

Ms. Cooke and Mr. Sanders are correct that the cost of living is a paramount issue, as polls before the election indicated. Ms. Cooke’s advocacy for restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies that the outgoing Republican Congress allowed to expire is particularly welcome—even if any Democratic attempts to legislate to that end will remain complicated as long as Mr. Trump wields the veto pen. 

But public anger with Mr. Trump and his administration is not restricted to affordability. An NBC exit poll found that 90 percent of respondents deemed government corruption a “crucial or a major factor” in how they voted for Congress.

If Democrats pursue vigorous oversight of the administration through congressional hearings, they may not be squandering their mandate but fulfilling it. While they should remember that their duty is to govern on behalf of all Americans, not only the Democratic Party base, Mr. Jeffries, Mr. Garcia, and their colleagues may actually gain greater public trust by investigating the administration’s abuses of power in a fair and aboveboard manner. According to an AP Voter poll, roughly 70 percent of voters believe that Congress is doing “not enough” to provide “checks and balances” on the presidency. 

Congressional investigations of the Trump administration could worsen partisan tensions, yet the blame would not be on the investigators but on the individuals who committed unethical actions. Investigating public corruption does not degrade civic life; the corruption itself does. By carrying out its constitutionally mandated oversight of public officials’ malfeasance and breaches of public trust, Congress would reassert its role as a coequal branch of government in our constitutional republic. 

Public hearings on the Trump administration’s defiance of court orders, the attempted renaming (and potential demolition) of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in violation of a congressional statute and Mr. Trump’s likely violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause would not create acrimony in American politics; that acrimony has been at a fever pitch since Mr. Trump first ran for the presidency. 

Several months into Mr. Trump’s second term, the editors of America warned that the rapid expansion of presidential power had become untenable, and that reinforcing the constitutional order would require “building political consensus to constrain executive power.” Democrats should integrate investigations of the administration into this project of consensus-building and extend an open invitation to their Republican colleagues, particularly those who were just elected, to join in the renewed effort of constraining executive power. (They might find a partner in Senator John Curtis of Utah, who attributed Republican losses to “headline after headline of scandals, incompetence, and corruption.”) 

Accountability should not be confused with ideology. Democrats can take a moderate tone on policy issues that lack public consensus while holding the Trump administration to account for its violations of the law. There is nothing exclusively progressive about insisting that our leaders follow the law, and Democrats should make clear that uncovering corruption is not a partisan issue but is instead an American one.

It can also be called a Christian issue. If political life is a process of communal discernment in service of the common good, there must be a baseline expectation of moral virtue on the part of public officials. Pope Francis wrote that “vices detract from the credibility of political life overall, as well as the authority, decisions and actions of those engaged in it.” And as Pope Leo XIV wrote in a message to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences earlier this year, “democracy remains healthy…only when rooted in the moral law.” 

Opposing corruption and insisting on good government are prerequisites to proper deliberation on public policy, not distractions from it. I believe, along with Senator-elect James Talarico of Texas, that Americans should embrace a “politics of love” to find a way out of the moral wilderness of Trumpism, and as a Catholic I believe that the purpose of politics is not to dominate a foe but to foster communion. But developing a politics defined by love, and by greater social trust, will be impossible if the very legitimacy of the political community is trampled underfoot by corruption and lawbreaking. To work for reconciliation between Americans of different political stripes is laudable; to give oligarchs a blank check to undermine the republic without consequence would be unwise. 

Congressional oversight of the Trump administration should be conducted not in a partisan spirit of revenge but in a Christian spirit of concern for integrity in public life—a concern that the incoming cohort of Democrats who emphasize their Christian identity, including Mr. Talarico and Senator-elect Adam Hamilton of Kansas, may understand particularly well. The restoration of the rule of law and democratic norms in America will not come from ignoring public corruption but from a forthright confrontation with it.

Connor Hartigan is a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who writes about peacemaking, human rights and Catholic social thought. He is a former O’Hare fellow and editorial intern at America Media.