President Donald Trump has given Washington two messages at once since the midterm elections, and the tension between them is now the central fact of American politics. In interviews with The New York Times, CBS News and Fox News, and in posts on Truth Social, he has said he is willing to work with Democrats, that he will accept the results, and that agreements are possible. At the same time, he has brandished his veto power, posting an image of a red cap bearing the single word VETO, telling CBS News he has total veto power, and telling Fox News that after a couple of months of vetoes, Democrats will come and ask how to get things done. The question for the next two years is not which message is sincere. It is which issues are concrete enough that veto threats become negotiations, and immigration is the first issue the president himself has named.
Immigration is a revealing choice, because it is an issue on which both parties have failed to legislate for decades despite repeated attempts, and on which the president’s own record is polarising. Speaking to Fox News after the results, President Trump said he believed his administration could work with Democrats on immigration, adding that he had always felt the two sides should be able to reach agreement. He did not announce any specific policy change, explain which immigration proposals he would support, or set out a timetable. That vagueness is itself significant: an opening without specifics is an invitation to negotiate, not a deal, and Democrats will judge it by what the White House puts on the table, not by the tone of a television interview. But the fact that the president named immigration first, rather than taxes or deregulation, suggests the White House sees it as the most plausible early test of divided government.
Trump’s Immigration Opening and Veto Leverage After the Midterms
The veto is the mechanism that makes the opening credible, in the White House’s telling. Under the Constitution, a president can reject legislation passed by both chambers, and Congress can override a veto only with a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate, a threshold Democrats do not hold despite their midterm gains. President Trump explained the logic himself in his pre-election interview with the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, saying he would become Mr Veto if Democrats took Congress, and repeating the point on election night: Democrats would send over bills he considered unacceptable, he would veto them, and after a month or two of vetoes they would come over and make a deal. That is a bargaining strategy, not just a blocking strategy: the veto is meant to force Democrats to negotiate on White House terms, trading Democratic priorities for provisions the president wants.
Democrats have answered that strategy with their own framing. Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat who won re-election to a House seat Republicans sought to redraw in their favour, said of the veto threat: let him do that, and let him still tell the American people affordability is a hoax, adding that Democrats have to deliver on getting costs down and that this is the mandate. That response captures the Democratic calculation: vetoes are politically costly for the president who casts them if voters blame him for blocking popular legislation, and Democrats believe they can win the argument about who is standing in the way. The veto is therefore a weapon for both sides, not just for the White House: each veto creates a public fight about the bill that was blocked, and the side that wins that fight gains leverage for the next round.
The president’s own post-election conduct has added to the uncertainty. On his first public appearance after the defeat, on November 4, he showed reporters around the under-construction White House ballroom rather than holding a formal press conference on the results, and his Truth Social posts swung between congratulating Democrats, insisting he was not on the ballot, and promoting the veto image. In a telephone interview with The New York Times, he said he was absolutely willing to accept the results and would look forward to working with Democrats, adding that they would probably work something out. In a separate interview, he said he could work with Democrats on many issues, more than people imagine, and that they have a lot of really good ideas. Supporters read this as flexibility; critics read it as improvisation. Either way, no formal negotiation has been announced, and no Democratic leader has publicly accepted a White House invitation to talks on specific legislation.
Permitting Reform, Energy and the Economy in Trump Divided Government Talks
Beyond immigration, the most concrete legislative test already on the calendar is permitting reform. The Senate had been planning a vote on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, a bill to speed up approvals for pipelines, power lines and other infrastructure projects, with a procedural vote and final vote expected within weeks of the election and a House vote likely after Thanksgiving. That timetable is now in doubt. Former officials and policy experts expect the new Democratic majorities to step up scrutiny of the administration’s energy record, and some have warned that Democrats may decide to punt the permitting discussion until they also control the White House, noting that President Trump has already threatened to veto Democratic legislation. Others argue that permitting reform is one of the few areas where business groups, labour unions and both parties see gains, and that a deal remains possible if the White House offers Democrats something in return, such as clean-energy provisions or community protections.
Energy policy more broadly shows why divided government will be fought as much through oversight as through legislation. Democrats are planning investigations into Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and his team, according to reporting cited by The Japan Times, including over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool upgrades and officials’ dealings with oil and gas companies, and into companies that cut deals to trade offshore wind leases for fossil fuel infrastructure and get out of Clean Air Act requirements. Those investigations do not need the president’s signature, and they give Democrats leverage even where they cannot pass laws: a secretary facing subpoenas and hostile hearings may be more willing to negotiate on permits, leases and regulations than one facing no scrutiny at all. The White House, for its part, retains executive authority over much of energy policy, from leasing decisions to regulatory enforcement, and can act without Congress where the law allows, subject to court challenge.
The economy is the third arena, and the hardest to predict. The president retains tools that do not require Congress: tariffs, executive orders, regulatory changes and foreign-policy decisions that affect prices, including the war with Iran, which Democrats blame for pushing up costs. Democrats retain the power of the purse in the House and Senate, the ability to block or reshape spending, and the oversight powers to examine how funds are spent, including repeated freezes and withholdings of appropriated money for agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. Neither side can govern the economy alone, and both sides will claim the voters’ mandate on affordability, which exit polls showed was the dominant issue of the election. That shared claim is likely to produce stalemate on big-ticket items and, paradoxically, to make narrow deals more attractive: each side needs something to show voters before 2028.
What a Trump Democrats Deal Would Have to Look Like
A genuine deal in divided government has a recognisable shape, and it is worth setting out, because it distinguishes real negotiation from theatre. Each side must get something it can sell to its own base, the agreement must survive a presidential signature and a congressional vote, and it must be specific enough to implement. On immigration, that could mean pairing border enforcement measures the president wants with legal-status provisions Democrats want, though neither side has publicly described such a package since the election. On permitting, it could mean faster approvals for both fossil-fuel and clean-energy projects, with environmental safeguards that satisfy enough Democrats and enough industry groups to pass. On the economy, it could mean targeted cost-of-living measures, such as housing or health-care provisions, attached to broader bills both sides need. None of these packages exists yet, and inventing one would be speculation, not reporting.
The alternative to deals is also clear, and it is the scenario the president’s veto rhetoric points toward: two years of vetoes, executive actions, court challenges and oversight fights, with each side blaming the other for gridlock and positioning for the 2028 presidential election. That outcome is not inevitable, but it is the default if neither side moves first, because the institutional incentives point that way. Presidents gain little from signing the opposition’s bills, opposition majorities gain little from passing the president’s agenda, and both gain from being seen to fight. The president’s immigration opening is interesting precisely because it breaks that logic slightly: it is the one area where he has volunteered that cooperation is possible, and it therefore puts the burden on both sides to test whether the opening is real.
The next few weeks will provide the first evidence. The lame-duck session will show whether the outgoing Congress can pass anything the president will sign, the new Congress’s first bills in January will show what Democrats prioritise, and the White House’s first formal legislative proposals of 2027 will show whether the immigration opening becomes a document or remains a remark. Until then, the honest summary is this: the president has offered to work with Democrats and threatened to veto their bills, Democrats have promised affordability and accountability and warned against obstruction, and no deal has yet been struck. An earlier USN report on what President Trump still controls without Congress set out the powers he keeps regardless of the result; this article sets out the narrower question of what he might still agree to, and that question remains open.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from The Economic Times, The Japan Times and The National News.