Despite a consistent swing toward Donald Trump across the country on Tuesday, the House of Representatives is still—barely—within the grasp of Democrats. And the reason why is an ancient mystery that every national journalist seems to forget every two years: California is not on your schedule when it comes to counting votes. First, a word on why it would matter—at all—whether Democrats take the House.
It’s true that Donald Trump has shown every willingness to extend executive power in whatever way he wants, armed now with a literal get-out-of-jail-free card from the Supreme Court. It’s true that a Republican Senate will allow Trump to seed the federal courts and executive agencies with all of his loyalists, who can then carry out his bidding. (I would expect Democratic attorneys general to spend mountains of time in court litigating against those executive actions; whether they will be as successful as during Biden’s term or Trump’s first term, when they were actually fairly successful, is another matter.
) And it’s true that the areas where presidents have wide latitude, like foreign policy and immigration and tariffs, are at the president-elect’s whim. But Congress, despite all impressions to the contrary, does matter. Control of the oversight committees, and the subpoena power that affords, would offer some glimmer of finding a way back to the that’s been so lacking for decades.
On legislation, the Trump tax cuts expire at the end of next year, and a f.
