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Donald Trump’s favorite economic weapon may be on borrowed time now that Democrats are set to take over Congress in January.

In a Wednesday op-ed for The Washington Post, Zachary Karabell writes that the incoming Democratic majority should devote the next two years to “stripping the presidency of the imperial trappings it has acquired in fits and starts since World War II,” beginning with tariffs.

“There is no natural constituency for unbridled presidential power in perpetuity,” the columnist argues.

Virtually everything Trump has done unilaterally has been done through the power given the presidency by Congress, according to the columnist, ranging from the domestic tools granted by the post-9/11 Patriot Act to the ability to levy tariffs, which was added to arcane trade laws over the course of the 20th century.

While the Constitution’s Article I grants Congress the power to impose “Duties, Imposts and Excises,” in the years since, lawmakers have ceded to presidents the right to impose tariffs without congressional approval. In February, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to strike down Trump’s tariffs imposed under a declaration of emergency, and other courts ruled that the president had exceeded the authority Congress intended to give him. However, “the underlying problem is the laws that made the flexing possible in the first place,” the Karabell argues.

Tariffs are “both the most obviously flawed of Trump’s policies economically and the most objectionable to huge swaths of people,” according to the columnist. They have infuriated everybody from farmers in the Midwestern states to businesspeople across the country, and voter anger at tariffs is credited with helping Democrats win last week in Maine, Ohio and Texas, the column argues.

The columnist writes that barely a third of Americans support the administration’s tariffs, and blue-collar workers, many of whom once bought the idea that tariffs would bring factory jobs home, have turned on them, going from 49 percent in favor a year ago to 58 percent opposed.

That means that the Democrats have a two-for-one deal, the columnist writes: cutting back on the president’s tariff powers would both restore a balance under the Constitution and attack “one of the root causes of inflation and affordability.”

But standing in the way is Trump himself, the self-proclaimed “Tariff Man,” who would almost certainly veto such legislation. That would mean convincing at least 30 Republicans in the House and 11 GOP senators to vote with Democrats and override the veto, based on current projections.

But, the columnist argues, the tariffs are unpopular enough in many Republican districts that a bipartisan coalition might be amassed to chip away at them one by one — repealing, for example, the tariffs against Canada — or to dramatically curb the president’s tariff powers.

There is precedent for this: after Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate in 1974, Congress passed reforms to the civil service and installed inspectors general in major departments. Since then, the reforms have been weakened, and both Trump and a Supreme Court that adheres to the unitary executive theory have assaulted them.

“The risk is that the catnip of investigations and anger stands in the way of building a coalition that includes Republicans,” Karabell warns.

The new Congress is set to be sworn in on Jan. 3.

President Donald Trump and the Republicans’ effort to shift the courts to the right could be at an end, with the Democrats set to take control of the Senate next year.

During his first term, he put over 230 judges on the federal bench, including three on the Supreme Court. So far in his second term, the Senate has confirmed 57 of the president’s judicial appointments. In total, Trump nominees now make up about one-third of the active federal bench.

But the Democrats are now in a position to take at least 54 of the Senate seats and as many as 56, depending on the results in Mississippi and Alaska, so it’s very unlikely that Trump will be filling many more of the vacancies on the U.S. district and appeals courts.

“No one, or nearly no one, is going to get confirmed, so what he does in terms of nominating people, we’ll see,” Ed Whelan, a distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and former law clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, told CBS News.

There are 28 vacancies on the federal courts and another 15 that will be opening up over the coming weeks and months. The president has formally sent 16 of his nominees to the Senate.

The GOP-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee is moving with alacrity to get those appointments before the chamber changes hands.

Republicans are violating “numerous longstanding standards in a desperate attempt to confirm more than 30 qualified loyalists to lifetime appointments before Democrats take the majority,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday.

But Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the Judiciary Committee, was not impressed by Durbin’s assertion that he was departing from committee practice.

“Historically, this committee has shortened timelines when circumstances warrant it,” he said.

“The priority is going to be getting the judges across the finish line,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters on Monday.

But the federal bench seats that remain open at the end of the current Congress are likely to stay unfilled for at least the next two years.

“What we’ve seen is the federal courts being stacked with extremists and loyalists, and now Democrats have the power to stop the reshaping of our courts in a very dangerous direction,” said Rachel Rossi, president of the Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group.

Democrats’ complete trouncing of the Republicans in last week’s midterms also makes it highly unlikely that a Supreme Court justice appointed by a GOP president would be retiring in the final two years of Trump’s term, as a successor would almost certainly not be able to get through the Senate.

“Trump has managed to put in jeopardy his biggest achievement,” Whelan said.

U.S. District Judge April Perry is clashing with top Justice Department official Stanley Woodward as she tries to sort through a scandal that has erupted amid the Broadview Six case.

The existing Broadview Six case is over. It was about six officials and activists who were arrested outside of the Broadview immigration detention center outside of Chicago. The case against those individuals has been dismissed, but Judge Perry is now investigating whether the prosecutors who brought it misled her or concealed misconduct. DOJ is challenging how she can conduct that investigation, especially when the prosecutors themselves could face criminal consequences.

There are two layers: what went wrong in the original prosecution and whether officials gave truthful explanations afterward. Several questions remain about the grand jury and prosecutor Sheri Mecklenburg.

Perry’s concern has become questions about whether the prosecution mishandled the case and withheld information that would have allowed her to discover it. There's even a broader concern that top Justice Department officials in Washington or even the White House were involved in the matter. So, a hearing is scheduled to address it.

On Tuesday, Woodward challenged Perry's hearing, which will call prosecutors to court to ask whether anyone intentionally misled or lied to her. In fact, Woodward even questioned Judge Perry's authority to hold it. Chicago Sun-Times reported Woodward's complaint and filing, saying that anyone called to talk about the matter may simply claim their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The report also noted that it has become clear that Judge Perry doesn't believe what U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros told her about the case. He now faces possible sanctions or a criminal contempt finding by the judge.

“The court has presented the United States Attorney and his subordinates with a Catch-22,” Woodward said in his five-page filing. “They can testify and risk prosecution, or they can assert their rights under the Fifth Amendment and risk antagonizing the court.”

Woodward suggested that there's little Judge Perry can do about any DOJ lawyer who may have lied to her, the article said. The judge made it clear, however, that she has inherent authority to sanction abuse of the judicial process.

On Wednesday morning, Perry updated the docket with her own statement to Woodward, Seidel and national security analyst Marcy Wheeler observed. The judge call its "professed" lack of clarity "immaterial."

"The Government's 'motion for clarification' is denied. The Court explained the reasons for the upcoming hearing in open court" in May and again in October, she said. "Moreover, the Court laid out its reasoning in writing in its Order of 11/2/2026. ... Finally, the Government's attorney agreed on 10/5/2026 that 'this Court certainly has the authority to ask witnesses to come testify about factual matters.'"

"Ultimately, the Government's professed lack of clarity about the Court's inherent authority to ask lawyers who have made misstatements to or misled the court to explain their actions is immaterial. The Government does not represent at least 3.4 of the individuals who have been asked to testify, two of whom have expressed their willingness to do so. And there is no indication on this docket that the Government represents the fourth individual. The Court strikes the motion hearing set for 11/17."

For a long time, the Deep South was one of the safest bets in the Republican column. But after the midterms last week, perhaps that’s no longer the case.

In a column on Wednesday, the New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie argues that this is a problem of the Republicans’ own making. He says that the GOP’s eagerness to take advantage of a Supreme Court ruling on voting rights has sparked a backlash that’s changed the national political landscape.

“The South has not been this competitive in national politics since the 1970s and ’80s,” Bouie writes.

South Carolina elected Democrat Annie Andrews to fill the seat of Lindsey Graham, making her the first Democrat elected to the Senate in the state since Fritz Hollings in 1998. As Bouie notes, Andrews now holds a seat previously held by Strom Thurmond and John C. Calhoun.

But that’s not all. In Georgia, Democrats control all three top statewide offices for the first time since the first term of George W. Bush. And in Mississippi, a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2015, voters are on the verge of electing Democrat Scott Colom to the Senate.

Bouie argues that this all started with the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais in April. In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito gutted the remaining parts of the Voting Rights Act. He ruled that mandating majority-minority districts is itself an act of racial discrimination, and that states could engage in gerrymandering for partisan gain even if Black voters were harmed.

Alito went further, arguing that, if you control for race, voting in the South is not racially polarized at all. As Bouie put it, it’s “a C-minus rhetorical move that should embarrass an undergraduate.”

Tennessee wasted no time in reacting by splitting up the majority-Black city of Memphis into bits and pieces and spreading them out into mostly rural districts. Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama did the same, and some Republicans went so far as to cancel elections already underway.

“Republicans reacted to the Callais decision like it was a gold rush,” Bouie writes.

It didn’t work out quite the way they’d expected. Black voters and their allies mobilized, tying the issue of voting rights to other bread-and-butter issues such as health care and wages.

“Black Americans voted at a whopping 96 percent of the presidential turnout,” Bouie writes, citing an analysis of Deep South turnout from Strength in Numbers.

Without this turnout, Bouie argues, South Carolina and Mississippi might have slipped away from the Democrats, and the party might not have swept Georgia and North Carolina.

“It is possible that these victories are a one-off,” Bouie writes. But he argues that Democrats are still obligated to deliver a new Voting Rights Act and end partisan gerrymandering for the voters, even though Trump almost certainly wouldn’t sign such a bill.

“The party can either honor the work of the voters who made their success possible or see whatever advantage they now have dissipate in disappointment and anger,” Bouie writes.

David Aaronberg, the Florida state attorney targeted and fired by Gov. Ron DeSantis, flagged the new appointment of a "special master" to investigate lawyers for President Donald Trump to see if they lied to the judge, intentionally misled her or flat-out ignored court orders.

Judge Ana Reyes has been incensed after the Trump administration was caught cutting down hundreds of trees on the recreational island in the middle of the Potomac River in Washington D.C. to make way for his new PGA-style golf course.

"The judge got upset at Trump because the judge here thought that Trump was playing her. Judge Reyes thought that the Trump lawyers were ignoring her orders because they were not supposed to tear down all those hundreds of trees without notice. And they gave notice like 10 minutes before 5 p.m. on a holiday weekend," explained Aaronberg.

The golfers and organizations involved in the lawsuit argued that the government was already moving forward with its renovations despite the need of an environmental review as federal law requires, Aaronberg explained. Case in point: the government's decision to cut down 430 trees in less than 24 hours, only informing Reyes just before the close of business.

So, the judge brought in Jessie Liu, a U.S. attorney who Trump himself nominated to run the federal prosecutor's office in Washington. In fact, she was nominated by Trump three times for a post, but each time was declared not sufficiently "MAGA."

"So his lawyers are saying, no, no, don't believe Trump. This plan to... tear down the trees is not part of the new renovations for the golf course," he said. "It's part of a previous plan that had been approved."

The problem is that Trump's social media posts are making things very difficult for Trump's lawyers to argue in court. For one, Secretary Doug Burgum and Tom Fazio, the designer of the course, said that the work would last about 15 months and that they planned to close the existing course on Nov. 15. Trump posted on Truth Social that the work would begin immediately on Oct. 26.

So, Reyes called in Trump officials to testify under oath about when the closure would begin, and none of them could or would answer. Finally, they made it clear that construction would begin on Nov. 15 after all.

Jude Reyes slapped a temporary restraining order on the case as they sorted through things.

"So, this is why the judge has her head splitting. It's like, when did the president give the instruction? Who received it? What did the government's lawyers tell the court after that?" Aaronberg paraphrased the days of hearings.

That's where Jessie Liu comes in: to investigate the ethical conduct of the Justice Department lawyers.

"The ethics rule to understand here is the duty of candor to the court. Lawyers get to argue their client's side hard. I mean, really, they have a duty to work for their clients," Aaronberg said. "But they also have to be truthful with the judge. And as they learn, they've made a material misstatement. They need to correct. And that's why the date the lawyer learned something can matter as much the date the lawyer first spoke."

Liu could decide that the judge must refer those who violated orders or say they were honest mistakes.

"But, I mean, do you think it's an innocent explanation here?" Aaronberg asked. "I mean, the federal government went to court to defend a golf course project. And now its lawyers may have to account for what they told a judge when they said it and what they had in front of them at the time. And the person the judge wants reading those receipts is someone Trump once picked to represent the United States."

What makes it ironic is that after Trump nominated Liu three times, their relationship unraveled. It turns out Trump was furious over how her office handled the prosecution of Trump pal Roger Stone.

"By picking Liu, Reyes chose someone with unimpeachable conservative and federal credentials who was vetted and appointed by Trump himself. So that's what's so great about this appointment," said Aaronberg, noting that Trump allies can't call her a liberal activist.

One of President Donald Trump's first moves after losing badly in the midterms was to sign an executive order concerning the White House, and as a new analysis for MS NOW argued, it is an "embarrassing" order that shows his continuing commitment to "nonsense."

Writing for the outlet on Wednesday morning, reporter and columnist Hayes Brown discussed the executive order Trump signed on Thursday of last week, authorizing the Oval Office to be recognized as a national monument. In doing so, Trump explained that future presidents would be prevented from making new changes to the famed room without congressional approval.

This move was widely interpreted as an effort to try to prevent the next president from removing the "overly ornate" gold decorations that Trump slathered the Oval Office in during his second term. Trump's obsession with building new monuments in Washington D.C., and redecorating the White House is reportedly part of his concern about securing his own legacy as president, leading to further concerns that his efforts will be torn down as soon as he leaves office.

Trump also claimed that undoing his changes to the White House would now require congressional approval from Congress in order to "stick," which Brown argued is a notion "inconsistent with his administration’s stance on executive authority."

"He has steadfastly refused to let Congress tie his hands on most matters," Brown wrote. "His proclamation is a blatant attempt to keep future presidents from doing what he himself is doing. Even if Congress did need to get involved, Trump seems not to have considered that the Democrats taking office soon will likely happily sign off on any efforts to undo... his gold-plated gussying."

In the wake of an election where voters said their biggest issues were the cost-of-living and Trump's self-enriching corruption, choosing to sign an order like this, Brown argued, was "quite a display of tunnel vision from a president whacked by voters who had every reason to believe he only cares about his own interests and not theirs."

"Friday’s spectacle felt like the White House staff placating a toddler on the verge of a tantrum," he concluded. "The document has no real impact on anything, but if it makes Trump feel better to sign a piece of paper, then hand one to him. Consider that a staffer took the time to write this proclamation, newly installed White House chief of staff Stephen Miller likely reviewed it, a communications aide drafted a fact sheet and a staff secretary scheduled a signing. It’s an incredible use of resources on exactly the kind of nonsense that has left the GOP rudderless but provided Trump a degree of escapism when he’s supposed to be working for the people."

Well before the seating of Democratic congressional majorities in January, opponents of Donald Trump are making clear that the investigation agenda is alive and building the case for “accountability” for Trump family grift and overly close relationships with the nation’s wealthiest.

The midterm results were still coming in as Representatives Robert Garcia, D-Ca., in line to head the House Government Oversight Committee, and Jaimie Raskin, D-Md., who will chair the Judiciary Committee were telling Trump administration figures to preserve documents for hearings to start soon.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was targeting financial documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and expected House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries was underscoring that besides price-cutting efforts, investigations were high on the list of priorities.

Democrats made clear after stunning midterm victories that with subpoena power, they will flex investigative muscles to target Trump administration officials and corporate supporters whom they say have thus far dodged oversight by Republicans in Congress.

The issue will be not just uncovering details of bad behavior by Team Trump but devising laws to prevent repeat in the future.

Some of the issues will surface even starting this week as Congress returns for its lame-duck session, since a call by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to impeach War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hangs in the air. That resolution to open impeachment proceedings was shelved by Republicans in a procedural vote Tuesday night but will return in January.

A key issue, of course, is that so much is being conflated as “corruption” by Trump that decisions will be needed to focus what can be achieved. The generalization of “corruption” to cover everything from personal money-making from international negotiations to the possible selling of pardons or White House influence was a dominant theme for the Democratic electoral tidal wave this week.

Access to Trump is being conflated with receipts of a jet plane from Qatari officials; tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest are being lumped in with perceived shakedowns of foreign figures who need American support.

The thinking appears to be narrowing targets rather than considering impeachment proceedings against Trump, which would likely be seen as retributive rather than seeking accountability.

As Team Trump resists, the committees say they will aim at corporate figures, including Elon Musk and Big Tech leaders, to look at corruptive practices from figures who cannot claim a shield from Congress. It’s all enough to have drawn counterthreats of investigation by Attorney General Todd Blanche about inexplicable, unspecified “crimes” that Democrats are overstepping a line of government oversight to target individuals and companies.

The Targets

For Garcia, announced targets include investigation of “The Trump Crime Family, Crony corporations ripping off the American people, Corrupt Trump admin officials profiting off the presidency, Associates of Jeffrey Epstein” and promoting hearings with Epstein victims.

There will be specific looks at Corey Lewandowski, who stands accused of funneling contracts at the Department of Homeland Security to allies, and resigned Ambassador Katie Gilfoyle for soliciting payments in return for private contractor payments. Garcia also has written to demand information about a Russian oligarch’s contributions to Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding.

Musk will be asked to answer for his actions as head of DOGE efforts early on that have been kept secret or his role in slowing or halting satellite surveillance and intelligence to Ukraine, even as Musk and his companies have gotten oodles in government contracts. The House Judiciary Committee Democrats are hiring investigators and prosecutors to “put an end to the rampant and out-of-control corruption overflowing the Trump swamp,” according to a post. The perceived politicization of Trump-generated prosecutions against political enemies is a focus of review as well as Trump’s personal reaping of financial benefits from office, including reported pardons for payments. Raskin wants information on the pressure campaign the White House put on law firms that later agreed to do pro bono work and the Justice Department’s anti-weaponization fund.

The House Homeland Security Committee Democrats told Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “clear your calendar” in anticipation of harsh reviews of the excesses of Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Three committees in the House and two in the Senate are focusing on immigration.

Beyond the Democratic effort, there are a slew of “democracy defender” groups emerging, including CREW, made up of former government ethics lawyers, Defiance.org, which, among other things runs a mobile Jeffrey Epstein files library, Democracy Docket, election law specialists opposing Trump’s voting limits, and The Rule of Law Project, former Justice Department prosecutors working with states to prepare cases that they feel should be brought, as well as Indivisible and other more politically active groups.

Silence in Return

Much of what Democrats have said has drawn official silence from the Trump administration. The appointment of Stephen Miller as White House Chief of Staff says the Trump government will resist any attempts toward “accountability” – the Democratic term — as political retribution by opponents looking to score points in the next presidential election.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has argued that executive privilege covers the president’s conversations with outside advisers, an idea that is likely to be challenged in court once it is asserted, but that court battle could be lengthy, and one senior Democratic staffer said it could play a role in how the party reinitiates some of its investigations.

Justice clearly sees itself as a defender of anyone in the administration called to account.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Cabinet secretaries down to mid-level staffers have hired lawyers in anticipation of congressional inquiries. Officials are preparing for probes into Trump’s efforts to build a new ballroom, golf course, and memorial to himself, as well as his dealings with the Kennedy Center. Firms are unlikely to be able to represent numerous staffers who may be implicated in the same probe, leaving administration officials scrambling to secure their preferred firms.

For sure, Justice will not prosecute its own Republican colleagues for ignoring congressional subpoenas.

For Democrats, the problem will be picking effective investigations and devising legislative solutions that address more than Trump behavior by presidents, Cabinets, judges and members of Congress more generally. Look for sweeping attempts to bar stock trading by those in office or specific bars on taking money from government contractors for two or more years out of office.

Addressing “corruption” will be a full-time affair that will require bipartisan effort – even out of self-protection from a next president from another party – to change the rules.

Picking Jordan as Minority Leader

Republicans chose Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the strident, never-stop partisan as party leader. Along with the White House choice of Stephen Miller as White House Chief of Staff, it seems clear that Republican lawmakers are actively supporting conflict with the incoming Democratic majority rather than looking for ways to heed the overwhelming message of the midterms.

Jordan’s pitch to colleagues was all about fight. Presumably the good news is that Jordan will no longer be the chief Republican voice on the House Judiciary Committee – one of the battlegrounds over oversight and accountability

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

A number of leading voices in the MAGA movement who host podcasts have been oddly quiet since the midterm drubbing last week. The hosts of The Bulwark are making no secret of the fact that they love it.

On Nov. 10’s episode of The Bulwark’s “Next Level” podcast, GOP strategist Sarah Longwell admitted as much.

“I’m not going to lie. I’m doing some schadenfreude,” she said. “Some of it is like watching Trump, you know, just bring out his ‘How could this have happened? It must be rigged. It’s the voting machines.’ And then watching all of the Republican influencers go like, shut up. Like, nobody wants this right now.”

Longwell said the right-wing influencers are still trying to “come to grips” with the results, and mentioned that MAGA streamer Tim Pool lamented that Republicans have lost young men for a generation.

“It’s just fun watching their spaces right now,” she said.

“So many of them are shutting down their podcast,” Longwell said. “Laura Loomer shut down her podcast. Katie Miller shut down her podcast.”

“Yeah, we’re losing some real content creators,” one of her co-hosts quipped.

Katie Miller is married to Stephen Miller, Trump’s new chief of staff in the White House. This inspired the hosts to go on a bit of a tangent about the fact that Katie Miller has a tattoo on her lip that, according to one host, reads “YOLO.” One of the hosts said they learned this from a Bulwark colleague named Andrew Egger.

“That’s kind of a great tattoo,” said one of the hosts.

“The problem is if YOLO means to you, you only live once, so you might as well spend it with the most despicable white nationalist in the country,” the host said.

For his part, Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw celebrated Stephen Miller’s promotion and, in a post read by the hosts, appeared to dismiss the podcasters as entertainers not worth pursuing.

Longwell mocked the lecturing from a man who frequently appears on Joe Rogan, but said he had a point.

“It is true they are entertainers. They are not serious about policy,” she said. “As much as we don’t want it to be true that people are getting their political news from these types of people, it is just true that that is happening.”

But that’s the bigger problem for the Republican Party. Not only is Trump crying voter fraud, but Stephen Miller is now running the White House West Wing. And it seems like some of the people who were getting Trump’s message to young men have stopped talking.

“Guys, this is what it’s going to be like,” one of the hosts told listeners as the episode wrapped up. “It’s going to be wheels off for the next two years and perhaps beyond.”