Congress
Trump’s two new tormenters: Courts and Congress
Donald Trump awakens Wednesday boxed in. Already in the pincer grip of federal courts that have slowed his agenda, he now faces a historically powerful incoming Democratic majority in Congress, eager to turn their gavels and subpoena power on their longtime tormentor.
And he’ll face them down while a new crop of Republicans seeks to eclipse him as the leader of their party.
This is how the last chapter of the Trump era in Washington begins.
For Trump, it’s an unfamiliar position. He has spent a decade seeking to project invincibility and has spent the first two years of his second term asserting unprecedented executive power with little pushback from a Republican-controlled Congress. He sought to salvage that reputation with a social media post as Republican losses piled up.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote Tuesday night.
Not exactly a salve for a party in crisis.
Democrats also face a choice: how much of their investigative muscle and political capital are they willing to spend investigating a weakened Trump. The party continues to see Trump as a useful, unifying foil. Some of their incoming members have flirted with seeking to impeach him a third time, though Democratic leaders have not committed to that course.
If there was any doubt about the House’s intent, however, Rep. Robert Garcia — expected to lead the House Oversight Committee — erased it quickly.
“LAWYER UP,” Garcia posted on X Tuesday night, just as news outlets began calling the House for Democrats. Garcia and other House allies have projected a muscular investigative agenda aimed at what they have described as Trump’s corruption and alleged self-enrichment, his abuses of executive power, his misuse of pardons for the politically and financially connected and his decision to empower ICE to lead a mass deportation campaign.
Trump has never willingly ceded the spotlight — and has never needed to. Before Tuesday, he was at his weakest point in 2021, shortly after a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol and Republican leaders seemed poised to abandon him. But because he remained politically viable, those leaders quickly returned to the fold, helping engineer his return to power and beat back impeachment and a fusillade of criminal charges.
Now, though, there is no political future for Trump, who is in his final two years of elected office. And it was in that context that he signaled a rare conciliatory approach Tuesday.
“We’re going to work with the Democrats to make sure things go well for our country,” he said in an interview with Blue Light News’s Dasha Burns on Blue Light News Elections Live. “I don’t want to sit here for two years just vetoing everything.”
Democrat Aaron Ford won Nevada’s gubernatorial race, ousting Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo and becoming the first Black person elected to lead the battleground state.
Ford’s victory gives Democrats a key pickup and elevates the two-term attorney general, who made his working-class upbringing and ties to organized labor central to his campaign. He joins a growing list of Black governors-elect, following earlier victories by Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia and Republican Rep. Byron Donalds in Florida.
Ford, a native of Dallas, campaigned on building more affordable housing, expanding union apprenticeship programs and repealing the state’s right-to-work law, with backing from the powerful Culinary Union.
His win returns the governor’s office to Democratic control four years after Lombardo defeated Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak. Ford overcame the incumbent’s substantial financial advantage in a race that tested Democrats’ efforts to win over working-class voters.
The result is a turnaround for Democrats in a state Donald Trump carried by 3 percentage points in 2024, and it gives the party an opening to rebuild support in a major battleground state ahead of 2028.
The conservative movement to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports showed its message could resonate beyond Republican strongholds.
Voters in Arizona — a state with a Democratic governor and senators — approved a ballot initiative further restricting transgender students from participating on sports teams that align with their gender identity.
The measure expands the state’s existing ban on trans athletes participating on women’s school sports teams, adds restrictions on locker-room use and defines a person’s sex based on their original birth certificate.
Similar measures in Colorado and Washington are leading in early results, though votes are still being counted. In Nebraska, voters also added a ban to their state constitution.
The issue has found a champion in President Donald Trump, who has pushed a suite of anti-trans federal policies since returning to the White House.
But conservatives had made little progress outside the red states that swiftly passed bans in recent years. The measures on the ballot this year marked the first time voters had the chance to weigh in on the issue. The measures’ success could fuel similar campaigns to bypass resistant legislatures in more states.
A new age of Democratic power is coming to Washington.
The party Tuesday swept both chambers of Congress as Republicans faced generational-level losses across the country. As of publication time, Democrats have won at least 54 Senate seats and have flipped about 20 House seats, with many competitive races still uncalled. Voters pummeled the GOP out of power and effectively cemented President Donald Trump’s lame-duck era.
Ahead of the election, most senior House Democrats dared not imagine more than a 10-seat majority. Now it’s looking like 250 seats or more are not out of the question — all but assuring Hakeem Jeffries will cruise to the speakership.
In the Senate, Democrats won Kansas for the first time in nearly a century, sent a Texan to the chamber after a more than 30-year absence, broke a nearly 30-year losing streak in South Carolina and elected the first Iowan in more than a decade.
They could even be on the cusp of a Mississippi Senate seat for the first time in roughly four decades. Scott Colom has a less than 50 vote lead on Cindy Hyde-Smith as we write. The Alaska race between incumbent Dan Sullivan and Mary Peltola also remains in tossup territory.
Longtime GOP incumbents like Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Missouri Rep. Ann Wagner are out of jobs. NRCC Chair Richard Hudson is hanging by a thread, as is House Rules Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx — both caught in a ticketwide GOP collapse in North Carolina.
Also decimated: the corps of Republican moderates on Capitol Hill, including Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Jen Kiggans.
The massive gains in both chambers, unthinkable even a few months ago, will have an instant impact. Republicans’ hopes to check off a list of priority legislation in the lame-duck session are in jeopardy, and they will quickly have to confront questions about their leadership.
Trump’s once ironclad grip over Washington is also in question, as he can no longer flex his influence over a Republican-led Congress willing to bend to his whims and waive away allegations of his administration’s corruption. Some in his party are also beginning to contemplate their future after he leaves the White House.
“Voters all across America have spoken, and this is a wake-up call for all conservatives,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, arguing the GOP needed to “start governing on the core principles they campaigned on.”
What else we’re watching:
— GOP LEADERSHIP HAZY: Speaker Mike Johnson’s political future is now up in the air with the House majority lost under his watch. Several Republicans prior to the election doubted he would jump into the race to become minority leader. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan could jump into the running to become the top House Republican as soon as Wednesday, ahead of a Friday deadline to announce their candidacy. The GOP conference will vote next week. Trump, pressed on whether he backs Johnson to return as minority leader, did not answer directly. “I think he’s done a very good job,” Trump told Blue Light News Tuesday night. “I mean, they’re going to have to make that decision. He’s going to have to make that decision. But he’s a good person and a good man.” Many House Republicans were already speculating early this morning if the entire leadership team could get swept up in the GOP loss.
— ‘LAWYER UP’: DEMS READY PROBES — Democrats’ sweep of Congress sets the stage for an unrelenting oversight platform next year. Democrats plan to use their new subpoena power and agenda-setting authority to target possible corruption among members of Trump’s family, Elon Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency and the Department of Homeland Security’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics, according to interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, aides and attorneys. “LAWYER UP,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on House Oversight, posted on social media Tuesday as the party’s House majority was coming into focus.
Dasha Burns, Mia McCarthy and Chris Marquette contributed to this report.
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