🙅 Can Dems Stop Trump From ‘Epically’ Stonewalling Them Next Year?
Both sides know what's coming should Democrats win the House: a blizzard of investigations and subpoenas met by a stubborn defense from a president who spent Monday on the offensive against… vaccines.
On this day in 2022, FBI agents searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents improperly retained after leaving the White House. Trump faced 40 criminal counts in the matter but avoided trial before returning to power.
Happy Tuesday! It’s Swin again. The Trump White House is acting like it’s a foregone conclusion that Democrats take back the U.S. House next year… to the point that President Donald Trump is preemptively, and rather hilariously, spinning that the voters are “very angry” at Republican candidates but they are “not angry at me.” (They are extremely mad at him, and he is the reason his party’s chances are looking increasingly dreadful in the 2026 midterm elections, but who’s keeping score, really?)
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we get into some new reporting on just how much the White House is planning for a congressional Democratic majority to take over within months – and those plans involve a lottttttttttttttttttttttttttt of defiance of Congress, on a scale that could make even first-term Trump administration officials blush. Plus, Trump signs an insane executive order on vaccines and doctor-turned-Senator Bill Cassidy, the man who made Robert F. Kennedy Jr. health secretary, decides to say anti-vaccine conspiracy theories are wrong. Let’s read in.
Immovable Object Awaits Usually Stoppable Force
If (or, as many Democratic and Republican officials now expect, when) Democrats retake the House after the 2026 midterms, they will have a humongous pile of subpoenas ready to go. Democrats aren’t in the majority today, so their demands for documents are largely for public-relations purposes. But should they win back the House, several lawmakers and senior aides on Capitol Hill tell me they have planned – in the phrasing of one of those aides – a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy of investigations, requests, televised hearings, and possible criminal referrals.
One goal would be to slam Donald Trump, his administration, and some of the broader MAGA elite with so many investigations and oversight demands that at the very least the onslaught slows down the president’s vast and increasingly authoritarian machinery of destruction and abuses, which has so far enjoyed the protection of Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
The historic levels of corruption of President Trump, his family business empire, and other associates and enablers; the rank lawlessness of so much of the administration, at home and abroad; ICE killings; the Epstein files; Elon Musk’s empire and DOGE legacy; the ongoing catastrophic Iran war; and so much else – you name it, Dems are ready to slam Trumpland with investigations about it, the congressional sources say.