Congress, brought to its knees by Trump. Here’s what powers it could regain with a Democratic majority

“Suppose… a legislative body constituted in such a way as to represent the majority without necessarily being a slave to its passions. An executive power possessing its own strength. And then a judiciary independent of the other two powers. Then you will still have a democratic government, but there will be almost no risk of tyranny.” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote this in his Democracy in America. The greatness of the American experiment, according to constitutional scholars, has always been based on the balance of powers. No one has supremacy; no one dominates the others. But Donald Trump has tried to turn Congress into an appendage. Not only did he govern by issuing a disproportionate number of executive orders – ceremoniously signing the scrolls with a thick black permanent marker – but he controlled his Republican majority in Congress as if senators and representatives had been chosen not by the electorate, but by him. He purged the party of those who were not loyal to him and, in the primaries, backed those who promised him total obedience.

Over the past two years of his second, more powerful term in office, Trump has turned the Speaker of the House into a butler. The Speaker, as leader of the House majority and second in line to the presidency after the Vice-President, is supposed to control the political agenda, safeguarding the independence and central role of Congress. Precisely because Trump has created this climate of fear amongst the ranks in Washington, Mike Johnson – who claimed that the 2020 election had been stolen by the Democrats – was chosen as Speaker at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump persuaded his loyal MAGA supporters to vote for him. Johnson, by undermining the principle of checks and balances at the heart of the Constitution, allowed the legislative branch to follow the agenda set by the White House. Even regarding public spending decisions made by the House, Trump treated the legislators’ decisions as mere recommendations, not as binding obligations. The same occurred, even in the first 100 days of his presidency, on issues such as immigration, education, the allocation of federal resources and the dismantling of government agencies. In 2025, the House passed a record low number of laws, whilst the number of presidential decrees was double that of his first term, which began in 2016 (when there was still a conservative, anti-MAGA faction).

The desire for a Trump-style presidential system was not only evident in the way he treated Congress – as a second-class branch of government – but it was here that the tyrannical tendency described by Tocqueville, and against which the Founding Fathers had drafted the Constitution, became most apparent. Even the way in which relations between Capitol Hill and the White House have been portrayed shows that we have entered a presidentialist narrative. There was talk of a ‘revolt’ when six GOP senators – who proved more independent than their colleagues in the House – dared to express disdain for the construction of the baroque ballroom and the demolition of the East Wing. With a Democratic majority in the House, MPs could secure three forms of power, wresting them from MAGA-presidential influence.

They could:

One: investigate members of the Trump administration – particularly in relation to financial dealings with private companies, including impeachment proceedings, which, however, require a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

Two: regain control of public spending and the budget.

And thirdly, by appointing the heads of the committees, to exercise greater control over the legislative agenda and the activities of federal departments – that is, to ensure that laws passed by Congress are actually enforced, and to monitor how this is done.

In the worst-case scenario, the new chamber may be able to reclaim a supervisory role.

A Democratic-controlled Senate could block the appointment of judges – including to the Supreme Court – or the replacement of cabinet members. However, it is easier to undo than to rebuild, and through a combination of vetoes and executive orders, the President could retain the power that has been taken away from Congress: regulating foreign trade (tariffs!) and authorising wars (Iran!), two key issues in these mid-term elections.