White House officials have spent months preparing a plan to keep advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda through executive power if Democrats win control of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Reuters reported on Sunday, November 1.
Senior officials have been working since April to identify actions Trump could take without congressional approval, while also preparing for the investigations a Democratic-controlled Congress would almost certainly launch into his administration.
Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and budget director Russell Vought have led the work with the White House Counsel’s Office, according to a White House official and two people familiar with the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity. White House counsel Will Scharf and his team are examining what Trump can legally do on his own, where he could push the limits of his authority, and how to defend those decisions in court, the official said.
Among the executive actions under consideration are new tariffs on imports of critical minerals and wind turbines, tighter rules on visas for international students and temporary foreign workers, and measures aimed at lowering housing and construction costs, the White House official said. Federal agencies have submitted proposals and legal reviews of actions the administration could take unilaterally, one of the people familiar with the plans said.
Vought, whose Office of Management and Budget oversees federal spending, is examining which priorities can move forward using money Congress has already appropriated, two of the people said. He also wants to change federal grant rules to give political appointees more say in which government programmes receive taxpayer money, potentially giving the White House more influence over federal spending without seeking congressional approval.
Trump has been briefed on the preparations and has taken part in discussions about them, the White House official said. Asked how comfortable Trump would be governing through executive authority under a Democratic Congress, one of the people said, “very comfortable.”
Governing without Congress
Democrats need a net gain of four seats in the House of Representatives as well as in the Senate to overturn Republicans’ narrow 218-214 and 53-47 majorities. Opinion polls favour Democrats to win the House, while the Senate remains too close to call, Reuters reported.
Capturing Congress would give Democrats the power to investigate Trump, block legislation and constrain his spending priorities. But Trump would retain broad executive authority over trade, foreign policy and the federal bureaucracy that he has already used aggressively during his second term, which began in January 2025.
Trump has already tested the reach of presidential power since returning to office, using executive authority to impose sweeping tariffs, intensify immigration enforcement, shrink the federal workforce, and pursue foreign-policy goals including the war against Iran without Congress’s approval or new laws. A major exception was his package of tax and spending cuts, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law in July 2025.
“President Trump in the last two years has basically ignored Congress and tried to do as much as possible through executive orders and executive power,” Nathan Gonzales, editor at Inside Elections, which provides nonpartisan political analysis, told Reuters. “I think he will only continue if there are Democratic majorities.”
Trump has repeatedly invoked national emergencies to expand his ability to act without new legislation. Congress can vote to end those emergencies, but Trump could veto such a move, requiring two-thirds majorities in both chambers to override him.
For the past month, Trump has held rallies across the country trying to preserve Republican control of Congress, even as his aides privately prepare for a very different political landscape in 2027. The White House pushed back on the prospect of Republican losses and accused the media of promoting a false narrative.
“This administration and commonsense Republicans will continue to secure our borders, restore law and order, putting more money back into the pockets of hard-working Americans, and deliver wins for the American people,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said.
Trump himself has signalled he expects a fight over legislation if Republicans lose Congress. “I guess I’ll become Mr. Veto,” he told the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast in an interview excerpt released on Sunday, adding that he expected he could issue vetoes for “a month or two” before reaching compromises with Democrats, according to the Khaleej Times report of the Reuters story.
Democratic investigations
A Democratic Congress could still create significant obstacles that executive action cannot remove. Control of the Senate would allow Democrats to block Trump’s judicial and executive-branch nominees, including any Supreme Court pick.
“I would anticipate they will be very reluctant to approve any of the president’s appointments,” Andrew Busch, a public policy professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and author of a history of midterm elections, told Reuters.
Democrats could also refuse to pass Trump-backed legislation. But Trump could veto Democratic legislation he does not like, and Democrats are unlikely to have enough votes in the House to override him. Courts could block executive actions that exceed Trump’s legal authority, and the White House plans to seek legal opinions from the Justice Department to determine what Trump can do without Congress and how to defend those actions if they are challenged in court, one of the people said.
One challenge, however, cannot be sidestepped through executive action: congressional investigations. Reuters previously reported that senior House Democrats and committee aides have discussed using hearings, subpoenas and document requests to examine whether Trump has used his presidential power to benefit himself, allies or donors.
Trump aides have been preparing for that prospect for months, all three people said. White House lawyers have been briefing political appointees and agency leaders on how to handle congressional inquiries, document requests and subpoenas, one person said, and have advised officials to be careful about what they put in writing. They also sought a Justice Department opinion that could allow Trump to invoke executive privilege to shield communications with private advisers from congressional scrutiny, the person said.
Voters will decide the shape of Congress on Tuesday, November 3, when all 435 House seats and more than a third of the Senate are on the ballot. Whether the White House’s executive-power plan is ever needed will depend on that result, but the preparations show an administration already planning for a second half of the term in which its agenda moves by presidential order rather than by legislation.
