Here’s what Trump really has to worry about if Congress flips in the midterm elections

Donald Trump has told voters his greatest fear: Should Democrats return to power in both chambers of Congress next year, he’ll face a third impeachment effort, watch Democrats pack the Supreme Court and see his enemies end the legislative filibuster.

What prominent Democrats on the Hill are promising, however, is something more akin to a death by a thousand cuts, as the constraints of Congress close around him.

November’s midterms are increasingly looking like they’ll result in the worst possible outcome for Republicans: The destruction of two congressional majorities, including a hard-fought Senate majority that the GOP won with a crushing victory in the 2024 election cycle and election analysts, at the time, warned could require a multi-cycle effort by Democrats to undo. The 2026 map shifted quickly under Republicans’ feet, however, driven by retirements, the interference of the president, and the recruitment of formidable Democratic candidates in red-purple states like Texas and Alaska.

Just listen to Sen. Jim Justice, a conservative Republican, who warned his party in comments to reporters this week that the ongoing war with Iran was doing more damage to Republicans than they realized.

“This situation in Iran is causing repercussions like you can’t imagine,” Justice told reporters on Monday, according to Punchbowl News. He added that his party was “scared to death about the midterms”.

But while the president warns of the expansion of a massive progressive effort to reshape government if his party loses, Democrats on key committees say that there are better ways to rein in Trump’s more radical urges while still leaving open the possibility of taking positive action to reverse some of the reshaping that has already occurred, thanks to the efforts of Elon Musk’s DOGE and the Trumpification of the Department of Justice.

Rep. Grace Meng, a New York congresswoman and the senior Democrat on the Justice subcommittee of the powerful Appropriations panel, told The Independent that under a Democratic speaker, her committee and the chamber’s Oversight panel would work together to halt efforts like the planned DoJ “anti-weaponization” fund, and the use of the Justice Department as the president’s personal “criminal defense firm”.

“Oversight and appropriations go hand in hand,” said Meng. “The process on the appropriations committee is not the most exciting necessarily, but we’ve been able to hold them accountable, and sometimes with our bipartisan Republican House colleagues.”

Meng said that the Appropriations process could be used to re-establish oversight on many parts of the administration which saw those guardrails eroded or removed over the course of 2025 and early 2026.

“We will, for example, make sure that we are ramping up oversight for agencies like ICE,” said the congresswoman. “It’s not my subcommittee, but it’s also part of the appropriations process.”

“There are a lot of ways, not necessarily the most sexy ways and the most exciting, but this is an effective way that we can hold them accountable.”

And the congresswoman predicted that Republicans would show more of an appetite to work with Democrats come January, especially if the president’s approval ratings continue to slide, including among GOP voters. She cautioned, however, that GOP support, like the bipartisan opposition that emerged against the anti-weaponization fund, came with an asterisk attached.

“I think it depends on, quite frankly, the way that let’s say an amendment or a rider is written,” said Meng. “Like the language that we use, so that it’s not something that sounds like it’s only targeting President Trump, but that would apply to all presidents in the future.”

On the issue of the actual investigations Democrats plan to launch, the list of targets is long.

Among the most prominent are the Trump family’s crypto schemes and the other lucrative financial dealings that caused his family’s net worth to explode in 2025, the pardons issued by Trump after he took office for a second time, and the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case — including the transfer of Ghislaine Maxwell to a lower-security facility around the time she spoke with Todd Blanche, the new attorney general. Plenty of other potential targets could follow.

Democrats will likely find the Justice Department unwilling to enforce subpoenas they issue for administration officials or Trumpworld allies, but at the same time the White House and broader administration are unlikely to abandon the Hill entirely.

Meng and Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat serving as ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, both pointed to the firings of Trump Cabinet officials after appearances in congressional hearings as proof that their party could conduct effective oversight of the administration even if the DoJ wasn’t, as Meng put it, a “willing partner”. Raskin, who formerly served on the Oversight panel during Trump 1.0, is now one of the leading Democratic voices in the House against the potential DoJ fund to reward January 6 rioters.

“Even in the minority, we have been playing offense against the Administration on a daily basis. The House Judiciary Committee has conducted oversight hearings with two cabinet secretaries—Attorney General Bondi and Secretary Noem. Both were fired shortly after Judiciary Committee Democrats powerfully exposed and condemned the corruption and lawlessness pervading the work of these two cabinet officials,” Raskin told The Independent in an emailed statement.

“Our efforts in this Congress will continue and expand next Congress. We already have a strong team of investigators and experienced counsel engaged in this work, and that capacity will expand significantly in the Majority.”