A diminished Congress is expected to heat back up

Look at this slide in how activist Congress was in 2010 and 2018 —both second years of presidential terms, with the president's party controlling both chambers.

What's happened: Dr. Robert Browning, executive director of the C-SPAN archives and a Purdue University professor, found in his end-of-year congressional statistics that Congress is meeting less, taking fewer votes and passing fewer laws.

At noon today, that clogged Congress is being disrupted, with Democrats taking over the House due to victories by activist, restive, insistent freshmen who will change both the face and tone of official Washington.

• Beginning during orientation, we have already seen that this class is "not asking permission to do things," as Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), who helped elect many of them as the House Dems' campaign chairman, told the WashPost.

Only one out of the 36 newly elected female House members is Republican (Carol Miller of West Virginia), according to an analysis by Malliga Och of Idaho State University and Shauna Shames of Rutgers University:

• "The number of Republican women in [the House] is actually dropping from 23 to 13."

"The 116th Congress will be the most diverse in U.S. history: 126 women will take office, including 43 women of color."

Go deeper: The 2018 midterm election races that made history