U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks to the media before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., en route to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, August 21, 2026.
As the November election draws near, some Democrats are already measuring for new decor in House committee hearing rooms, preparing for the investigations they plan to launch. Authors Susan Glasser and Peter Baker were asked on MS NOW how President Donald Trump is likely to respond to his new reality of heightened accountability.
This week, the Washington Post spoke with a dozen Democratic lawmakers on what they're planning if their party takes back the House. One intends to begin an investigation into how Trump and his family have managed to profit from the government, how the family's businesses are winning lucrative government contracts, and to look for legitimate solutions to fix corruption in politics.
“There’s so much corruption and grift that it’s going to take the entire House on the Democratic side to do investigations appropriately,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Cal.).
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calf.) has his sights on the House Natural Resources Committee. He wants to know how Trump's allies secured lucrative mining and energy deals.
Then there's Trump's bulldozing of the White House, threats to tear down the Kennedy Center after bankrupting it and his "botched" job "fixing" the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) has already requested documents.
Even Republicans have been investigating the Department of Homeland Security over the corruption that took place under the direction of Secretary Kristi Noem. Now, Democrats intend to turn their eyes to a laundry list of missteps under Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Co-host Eugene Daniels noted that Trump has two more years in office. There is a high likelihood that he will pardon himself along with those in his government. Public investigations can still continue and lawmakers can use them to ultimately craft legislation that can curb illegal behavior by government officials with tangible consequences. Daniels wanted to know what that world looks like and how Glasser thinks Trump will react when he is backed into a corner.
"You know, lame duck. Trump is not sort of [a] neutered, do nothing, while-away his way his time on the golf course Trump," Glasser cautioned. "It is a man who has a long history of escalating. And you know, his personal motto, which he's been very clear about, including with journalists over the years, is, if somebody punches, you, punch back harder. And I think now that he has such an expansive view of the powers that he believes he has in the Oval Office when he's challenged, if he were to be defeated, that's when I would look for him to do things that perhaps he's been constrained from doing so far."
She said many Americans think Trump has already done so much that he can't possibly escalate, but she warned there's still more.
"Look at what he did after republicans were defeated in the 2018 midterms. The first thing he did was to fire his attorney general to, you know, make maximal demands on Congress, which led to, at the time, the longest shutdown of the government in history," Glasser continued.
What was different after 2018 is that Democrats held the House majority while Republicans still maintained the Senate. In a world where the House and Senate are both Democratic, a budget bill to fully fund the government could pass both chambers through reconciliation, and Trump could veto it, shutting down the government. He would be the one publicly taking blame.
Glasser said that Trump has been signaling for a while that he won't "sit back and take a defeat in the midterm elections."
"So, even though the polls and everything suggest Republicans are really going to have a tough time, that doesn't mean that Trump will just, you know, come out and meekly declare defeat and that he's, you know, been chided by the electorate as Barack Obama and others did," she said.
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