The White House has spent months preparing for a future in which it must govern without a friendly Congress, developing plans to advance major parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda through executive power even if Democrats take control of one or both chambers. According to reporting by Reuters, based on a White House official and two people familiar with the plans, senior officials have been working since April to identify executive actions on immigration, tariffs, housing costs and federal spending that Trump could pursue without congressional approval. The planning, which the president has been briefed on and has taken part in, is designed to outlast any single election result: it is a blueprint for governing through the presidency’s own powers in the second half of a term, whatever the composition of Congress turns out to be.
The officials at the centre of the effort are among the most consequential figures in the administration. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of much of the administration’s immigration policy, and budget director Russell Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget and oversees federal spending, have been working with the White House Counsel’s Office to map the options. White House counsel Will Scharf and his team are examining what Trump can legally do on his own, where he could push the limits of his authority, and how to defend those decisions in court, according to the White House official who spoke to Reuters. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity, which is standard for internal planning of this kind, but the account is consistent with the administration’s record in its first two years, in which executive action has been the primary vehicle for policy change.
Trump himself has described the prospect with characteristic bluntness. Asked how he would handle a Democratic Congress, he told the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast that he expected he could issue vetoes for a month or two before reaching compromises with Democrats. “I guess I’ll become Mr. Veto,” he said in an interview excerpt released on Sunday 1 November. “And then at some point, we’ll probably make deals.” In other reporting of the same remarks, he added that he was not going to let Democrats ruin what he regards as his record, and that after an initial period in which Democratic bills were vetoed, the two sides would come together and negotiate. The two halves of that message, veto first, deal later, capture the dual strategy the White House is preparing: use executive power and the veto to hold the line, then bargain from a position of preserved strength.
The planning underscores a paradox of American divided government. Capturing control of Congress would give Democrats real powers: the ability to investigate the administration, to block legislation, to constrain spending priorities, and, if they won the Senate, to block judicial and executive-branch nominees, including any future Supreme Court pick. But it would not strip the presidency of the broad executive authority over trade, foreign policy and the federal bureaucracy that Trump has already used aggressively during his second term. Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has used executive authority to impose sweeping tariffs, intensify immigration enforcement, shrink the federal workforce, and pursue foreign-policy goals, including the war against Iran, without Congress’s approval or new laws. A Democratic Congress would change the legislative arithmetic, but it would not, by itself, reverse that executive record.
Trump executive power plan for governing after the midterms
The specific measures under consideration show how far executive power can reach into domestic policy. Federal agencies have submitted proposals and legal reviews of actions the administration could take unilaterally, according to one of the people familiar with the plans. Among the measures reported are additional tariffs on imports of critical minerals and wind turbines, tighter visa rules for international students and temporary foreign workers, and steps aimed at reducing housing and construction costs. Each of those areas sits at the intersection of presidential authority and congressional prerogative: tariffs draw on trade statutes that delegate power to the president, visa rules draw on the executive’s authority over immigration administration, and housing costs can be affected through federal rules, grant conditions and regulatory relief, even without a new housing bill.
Spending is the area where Vought’s role is most distinctive. As budget director, he oversees the machinery by which appropriated money is actually spent, and he is examining which priorities can move forward using money already appropriated by Congress, according to two of the people familiar with the plans. He also wants to change federal grant rules to give political appointees more say in which government programmes receive taxpayer money, potentially giving the White House more influence over federal spending without seeking fresh congressional approval. That is a subtle but powerful form of executive power: Congress appropriates money in broad categories, but the executive branch decides, within legal limits, how grants are awarded, what conditions attach to them, and how quickly funds flow. Shifting those decisions towards political appointees would shift the balance of practical control over spending, even if the appropriations totals themselves remained set by Congress.
The legal work underpinning the plan is as important as the policy list. Scharf’s team is not simply collecting ideas; it is testing them against the limits of presidential authority and preparing defences for the litigation that would almost certainly follow. Every major executive action of the second Trump term has been challenged in court, and the administration has both won and lost significant cases, including the Supreme Court’s February 2026 ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorise the president’s broad reciprocal tariffs. That ruling is a reminder that executive power has judicial limits, and the White House planning reportedly takes those limits seriously, distinguishing between actions the president can clearly take alone, actions where he could push the limits, and actions that would require Congress. The distinction between those categories is the difference between a durable policy and a press release that dies in court.
Trump has repeatedly invoked national emergencies to expand his ability to act without new legislation, and that tool would remain available under a Democratic Congress, with an important check. Congress can vote to end a declared emergency, but Trump could veto such a move, requiring two-thirds majorities in both chambers to override him. That veto math is central to the White House’s confidence. Democrats would need a net gain of four seats in the House as well as the Senate to overturn the Republicans’ narrow 218-214 and 53-47 majorities, and even a Democratic majority would fall well short of the two-thirds needed to override a veto. The veto, in other words, is not just a defensive weapon for blocking Democratic legislation; it is also a shield for the president’s own emergency-based actions, unless a veto-proof majority can be assembled.
What a Democratic Congress could still block
A Democratic Congress would nevertheless create significant obstacles that executive action cannot sidestep, and the White House planning acknowledges them. The most important is investigations. Congressional investigations cannot be vetoed, and they can compel testimony, demand documents and dominate news cycles in ways that constrain an administration’s freedom of manoeuvre. Reuters previously reported that senior House Democrats and committee aides have discussed using hearings, subpoenas and document requests to examine whether Trump has used his presidential power to benefit himself, allies or donors. An administration that governs by executive order is, by definition, generating a paper trail of decisions that a hostile committee can subpoena and scrutinise, and the White House is reported to be bracing for that scrutiny as part of the same planning exercise.
Nominees are a second obstacle. Control of the Senate would allow Democrats to block Trump’s judicial and executive-branch nominees, including any Supreme Court pick that might arise. That power is absolute in practice: without Senate confirmation, a nominee cannot take office, and the administration would need to rely on acting officials, recess appointments or vacancies, each of which carries its own legal and political costs. The same logic applies to legislation. Democrats could refuse to pass Trump-backed bills, and the president could veto Democratic bills, producing a legislative stalemate in which neither side’s programme advances through Congress. In that stalemate, the relative advantage shifts to whichever side can act without Congress, which is why the executive-action planning matters so much to the White House’s strategy.
Spending is a third constraint, and it cuts both ways. A Democratic Congress could refuse to fund administration priorities, decline to extend temporary tariff authorities, or attach conditions to appropriations that limit how money can be used. The White House’s answer, through Vought’s work on already-appropriated funds and grant rules, is to maximise what can be done within existing appropriations. But there are limits to that approach: money runs out, programmes expire, and a Congress determined to starve a policy can usually find a way to do so over time, even if it cannot stop the policy immediately. The planning therefore resembles a holding operation as much as an offensive strategy, designed to keep the administration’s priorities alive through the second half of the term while it seeks deals on the margins.
History provides a useful frame for judging how this might play out. Presidents facing an opposition Congress have often turned to executive action, from Barack Obama’s declaration that he would act “with or without Congress” to Trump’s own first-term reliance on executive orders on immigration and the border wall. What is distinctive about the current planning is its earliness and its breadth: it began in April, months before the midterms, it spans immigration, trade, housing and spending, and it pairs policy options with legal vetting and courtroom defence strategies. It is less a contingency sketched on the eve of an election than a standing project of the administration, one that would shape governing even if Republicans retained Congress, since the same executive tools would remain available either way.
Governing by executive order and the limits of the strategy
The strategy also carries risks that the White House planning must weigh. Executive actions are inherently reversible: a future president can rescind them with a signature, and a court can enjoin them while litigation proceeds, leaving policy in limbo. Businesses, state governments and individuals making long-term decisions, whether about building a factory, hiring foreign workers or investing in housing, prefer the certainty of legislation to the volatility of executive orders that may be challenged or reversed. The administration’s own experience with tariffs illustrates the point: the Supreme Court’s rejection of the emergency-powers tariffs forced a rapid pivot to a different statute, with a 150-day clock and a new round of litigation over refunds. Executive power is fast, but it is also fragile, and the more an administration relies on it, the more its legacy depends on courts and successors rather than on laws that endure.
There is also a democratic argument that will be pressed by critics, whatever the legal merits of individual actions. Governing without Congress, as a sustained strategy rather than an occasional necessity, concentrates policy-making in the presidency and reduces the role of the branch most directly accountable to voters in frequent elections. Supporters of the strategy reply that the president is himself elected nationally, that Congress’s refusal to legislate is itself a political choice, and that executive action is a legitimate response to legislative obstruction. That debate is as old as the presidency, and it will not be settled by the planning documents. It will be settled, case by case, in courts, in Congress and at the ballot box, as each executive action is tested against statutes, the Constitution and public opinion.
For now, the significance of the reporting lies less in any single measure than in what it reveals about the administration’s state of mind. The White House is not waiting to discover whether it will face a Democratic Congress before deciding how to govern. It has spent seven months preparing for that possibility, assembling a menu of unilateral actions, a legal defence for each, and a spending strategy to fund them. Trump, asked about the prospect, answered with a persona, Mr. Veto, and a promise of eventual deals. The combination, veto plus executive action plus negotiation, is the administration’s answer to divided government: hold the line with the powers the presidency already possesses, and bargain only from a position where the core agenda has already been advanced by other means. Whether that answer works will be determined not by the planning, but by the courts, by Congress and by the durability of the executive actions themselves in the two years that follow.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Reuters [LINK: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-white-house-maps-path-govern-without-congress-if-democrats-win-2026-11-01/], Khaleej Times [LINK: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/world/americas/white-house-maps-path-to-govern-without-congress-if-democrats-win?amp=1] and Firstpost [LINK: https://www.firstpost.com/world/trump-prepares-to-govern-through-executive-power-if-democrats-take-congress-in-us-midterms-report-14056947.html].