With Americans voting on 3 November 2026 in midterm elections that will decide control of Congress for the rest of President Donald Trump’s second term, the White House has spent months preparing for a result it publicly says it does not expect: a Democratic takeover of one or both chambers. According to reporting by Reuters, published on 1 November and based on a White House official and two other people familiar with the planning, senior officials have been working since April to identify what the president could still do on his own if Congress turns against him. The work is not a single document or a single order. It is a running catalogue of executive actions, legal arguments and spending manoeuvres, assembled so that a change in Congress would slow the administration’s agenda rather than stop it.
The officials at the centre of the effort, according to the reporting, are deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, budget director Russell Vought and White House counsel Will Scharf. Each brings a different piece of the puzzle. Miller, long associated with the administration’s immigration policy, is involved in identifying actions that could be taken without new legislation. Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget, is examining what can be done with money Congress has already approved. Scharf and his legal team are testing the boundaries: what the president can lawfully do alone, where he could push those boundaries, and how the administration would defend its choices in court when they are challenged, as many of them almost certainly would be.
President Trump himself has been briefed on the preparations and has taken part in discussions about them, the reporting says. That detail matters because it separates this planning from ordinary staff-level contingency work. It suggests the White House is treating a Democratic Congress not as a remote possibility to be filed away, but as a scenario the president himself is weighing in public as well as in private. In a podcast interview excerpt released on 1 November, Trump offered his own shorthand for how he would handle a hostile Congress. Asked what he would do if Democrats took control, he said, in effect, that he would become “Mr. Veto,” blocking Democratic bills for a month or two before negotiating. The remark was characteristically blunt, but it also described a real constitutional sequence: a president who cannot pass his own legislation can still refuse to sign the other side’s.
The policy areas under review show where the administration believes executive power can do the most work. On trade, officials are examining new tariffs on imports of critical minerals and wind turbines, two sectors where the president has already used trade powers extensively in his second term. On immigration, they are looking at tighter visa rules for international students and temporary foreign workers, building on an enforcement and restriction agenda that has defined much of the administration’s domestic policy since January 2025. On housing, the planning covers measures intended to reduce housing and construction costs, an issue that has become politically central as voters complain about the cost of living. On federal spending, Vought is reviewing which priorities can be advanced using funds already appropriated by Congress, without waiting for a new spending bill.
One of the more consequential ideas under consideration, according to the reporting, concerns federal grants. Vought is said to want to change grant rules so that political appointees have greater influence over which government programmes receive taxpayer money. If adopted, that would give the White House more direct control over how federal money flows, even when Congress writes the cheques. Supporters of such a change would argue that the executive branch should have discretion in administering programmes Congress has funded. Critics would argue that it risks turning grant-making into a political reward system, and that it would invite legal challenges over whether the administration was respecting Congress’s power of the purse. The reporting presents the idea as under consideration, not as a decided policy, and that distinction is important: much of what is being described is preparation, not announcement.
That preparation extends beyond policy to legal defence. White House lawyers have begun advising political appointees and agency officials on how to respond to congressional inquiries, subpoenas and document requests, according to the reporting. That is the other side of a Democratic takeover. A Democratic-controlled House would not only be able to block legislation; it could launch investigations into the administration, demand documents, compel testimony and use committee hearings to shape public debate. The White House is therefore preparing for scrutiny as well as for governing. The two preparations are linked: every executive action taken without Congress is likely to be investigated by a Congress controlled by the opposition, and the legal work done now is intended to survive both court challenges and committee rooms.
Trump White House Executive Power Plan After the 2026 Midterms
To understand why the White House believes it could keep governing, it helps to separate what a president can do alone from what only Congress can do. A president can issue executive orders, direct federal agencies, set enforcement priorities, negotiate with foreign governments and use powers Congress has already granted in existing statutes. A president cannot pass new laws, cannot appropriate new money and cannot override a veto-proof majority. Trump has already tested the first set of powers aggressively in his second term, using executive authority to impose tariffs, tighten immigration enforcement and reduce the size of the federal workforce. His major tax and spending package, by contrast, required congressional approval before he signed it into law in July 2025. That contrast is the shape of the next two years if Democrats win: broad unilateral action in some areas, and a hard limit in others.
The arithmetic of the election explains why the planning is focused on both chambers. Republicans currently hold narrow majorities of 218 to 214 in the House of Representatives and 53 to 47 in the Senate. Democrats need a net gain of four seats in each chamber to take control of both. All 435 House seats are on the ballot, along with 35 of the 100 Senate seats and governorships in 36 states. The House is widely expected to be the more vulnerable chamber for the party in power, while Senate control is considered much closer to call. If Democrats take only the House, the administration would face investigations and a legislative blockade, but a Republican Senate could still confirm nominees and block Democratic bills. If Democrats take both chambers, the blockade would be complete, and the president’s veto and executive authority would become his principal tools.
The veto itself is a powerful but limited instrument. Overriding a presidential veto requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers, a threshold that would be extremely difficult for either party to reach given the current balance. Trump has issued only two vetoes in his second term so far, compared with thirteen by his predecessor, according to reporting on the podcast interview. That low number reflects a period in which his party controlled Congress and sent him legislation he wanted to sign. A Democratic Congress would change that dynamic entirely, turning the veto from a rarely used tool into a routine feature of governing. Trump’s own account of the sequence — veto first, negotiate later — suggests he expects a period of confrontation before compromise, rather than immediate deal-making.
The White House’s public response to the reporting has been to reject any suggestion that defeat is inevitable. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said the administration would continue pursuing its policy priorities and pushed back against the idea that Republican losses were a foregone conclusion. That response is consistent with the administration’s campaign message in the final days before the election, in which Trump has argued that his party can hold both chambers and has campaigned in Republican strongholds to drive turnout. The existence of contingency planning does not contradict that message; governments routinely prepare for outcomes they are campaigning to avoid. What it does show is that the White House is not relying on campaign optimism alone.
There are also limits to what the planning can achieve, and the reporting is careful to present them as proposals rather than decisions. No executive action described in the reporting has been announced as policy. Agencies have submitted proposals and legal assessments, but whether any particular tariff, visa rule or housing measure is adopted will depend on the election result, on legal advice and on political calculation after the votes are counted. Executive actions are also vulnerable in ways legislation is not: they can be challenged in court, reversed by a future president and, in some cases, overturned by Congress itself. The administration’s experience in its first two years shows both sides of that coin — swift action through executive power, followed by litigation that has sometimes slowed or blocked it.
The broader significance of the story is not just about one election. It is about how the American presidency has evolved. Presidents of both parties have increasingly relied on executive action when Congress is divided or hostile, and Congress has increasingly struggled to pass major legislation even when one party controls it. The White House planning described by Reuters fits that pattern, but it also sharpens it: it is an explicit, months-long effort to map the outer limits of unilateral power before the election that would make that power necessary. Whether voters reward or punish that approach will be visible first in the results on 3 November, and then in the governing that follows when the new Congress takes office on 3 January 2027.
For now, the election itself is the immediate test. The midterm results will determine which parts of the White House plan are ever needed, and which remain contingency papers. If Republicans hold Congress, the administration can return to legislation as its primary route. If Democrats take control, the plan becomes the governing strategy, and the courts and the committee rooms become the arenas where its limits are tested. Either way, the reporting makes one thing clear: the White House has been thinking about life after the midterms since April, and it does not intend to treat a Democratic Congress as the end of its agenda.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Firstpost, Khaleej Times and Moneycontrol.