Democrats win Congress: How they did it, and what it means

The Democratic Party has pulled off a stunning upset in the United States midterm elections, flipping multiple bellwether seats to win comfortable control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The party has won 53 seats, and leads in three others in the 100-seat Senate. The Associated Press also reported that the party had won the House of Representatives — marking the first instance since Barack Obama’s second term that the incumbent president has neither chamber of Congress with him.

With several races still too close to call, it could be several days before the final results are known, but several Democrats have already painted the outcome as a defeat for US President Donald Trump, who has himself conceded that his opponents bettered his party’s campaign.

We take a look at how the Democrats won Congress, and what they could do with that power.

The Democratic Party flipped several seats in the Senate, including many that it hasn’t won in decades.

The Democrats have won the House of Representatives, according to The Associated Press, crossing the 218-seat mark needed for a majority in the 435-member chamber.

These wins also include several seats that were previously held by Trump’s Republican Party.

With the win in the House, announced by AP hours after their win in the Senate was declared, the Democrats now have control of both chambers of Congress.

Democrats had promised to end the war on Iran, bring down the cost of living and hold the Trump administration accountable for alleged abuses of power, if they won Congress. But following through on those promises may not be easy.

The House and the Senate help pass laws and approve government spending. But neither chamber can act alone, and each chamber of Congress has powers the other does not.

For instance, the Senate is uniquely empowered to approve Trump’s nominations to top government posts. With a majority in the Senate, Democrats can block the president from appointing allies as ambassadors, cabinet members and federal judges, including on the Supreme Court.

The party that holds the majority in the Senate also gets to control committees that can launch investigations, demand documents and summon witnesses to testify.

Separately, if a president or top government official is successfully impeached in the House, the Senate is then tasked with overseeing a trial that could result in the defendant’s removal from office.

Trump was impeached twice during his first term as president, in 2019 and 2021, but the Senate acquitted him in both cases.

Commanding a Senate majority will also give Democrats greater power over legislation. Both chambers of Congress must pass a bill before a president can sign it into law.

There is a significant hurdle to the Democrats advancing their legislative agenda, though.

Even measures that have bipartisan support – like raising the minimum wage – would have to get past Trump’s veto. Already, Trump has signalled he plans to use the power liberally, telling a podcast on Monday, “I’ll veto everything.”

To override a veto, Democrats would need to rally a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate, meaning they would need some Republicans on their side.

Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, expects a Democrat-led Congress to actively wield its constitutional power to investigate.

“In terms of time spent and newspaper ink spilled, this is where you’re going to see the most action from Dems, by a mile,” she told Al Jazeera in an email.

Senator Richard Blumenthal is currently the ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He is expected to become its chair as a result of Tuesday’s vote.

In September, ahead of the midterm election, Blumenthal suggested to the Reuters news agency that Democrats would leverage their congressional majority to scrutinise Trump administration activities. “We will use our subpoena power, absolutely,” he said.

Congressional investigations, which do not require White House approval, could make life harder for Trump, whose family has spent the last two years expanding its business interests into everything from cryptocurrency and drones to artificial intelligence and prediction markets.

Trump’s personal wealth has soared by an estimated $2.2bn, according to financial disclosure forms released this year.

Democratic senators have already been laying the groundwork for such investigations. Some have sent letters to companies and government departments, demanding they preserve records.

Those requests have broached a range of subjects, including the private donations Trump solicited for his White House ballroom and accusations of partisan investigations.

Whether everyone will cooperate, however, is another question. Trump administration officials could challenge any future Senate subpoenas in court, potentially delaying investigations for months or years.

While Blessing does not expect “Trump’s nuclear family to show up to a subpoena”, she said there are many other witnesses Democrats could question, including government employees and people working for organisations linked to Trump’s inner circle.

That could help Democrats uncover potential wrongdoing involving Trump and his allies. But even if they do, there is no guarantee of legal consequences. Democrats could take evidence of a possible crime to prosecutors, but Trump’s Justice Department would have to decide whether to pursue charges.

Impeachment is also a possibility if criminal action is uncovered, but no president has ever been removed from office as a result of such proceedings.

That has left some Democrats wondering how much time they should spend investigating Trump instead of focusing on issues that affect voters more directly.

“We just have to be thoughtful and strategic about where investigative work goes and not allow that to distract us from solving fairly immediate cost problems that American families feel,” Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told The Hill on Tuesday.

The Democratic majority will not take control of the Senate until January 3.

That means the next two months may be critical for the US-Israel war on Iran, according to Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft, a foreign policy think tank.

Trump could respond to Tuesday’s midterm losses by escalating the war before Democrats have a chance to challenge him.

“He has shown a pattern in which, in the face of humiliation and defeat, he becomes more reckless,” Parsi said.

Once Democrats take power in the Senate, Parsi said they would need to take an aggressive approach to rein in Trump’s war powers, including by trying to restrict funding for the conflict.

The Trump administration can continue spending money already allocated for military operations, but with control of Congress, Democrats could potentially stonewall any further funding for the war.

“It creates a limitation for how long he can pursue the war,” Parsi said. “If he needs more funding for it, we’re not talking about small sums that he can just reallocate from other places easily.”

Any budget bill, however, would need enough votes to overcome a possible Trump veto. There is also the question of whether Democrats would be willing to limit military spending.

Blessing noted that Democrats have historically been reluctant to withhold military funding out of fear of being accused of undermining US troops.

But there are other pathways Democrats could pursue to heighten pressure for the war to end.

They could, for example, use Senate control to investigate the war and whether the Trump administration complied with the rule of law in carrying out its attacks.

“Rigorous oversight would not restrict military operations by itself but could raise the political costs of the war beyond what the president or other key officials are willing to endure,” said David Janovsky, a policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog.

It is unclear whether Democrats will unite behind a push to curtail the war.

But Parsi warned that if the party does not attempt to rein in Trump, its inaction could have political consequences.

“ It will no longer be just Trump’s war,” he said. “They will also co-own it, because they will be complicit, because they have the ability to stop it.”

Ahead of the midterm election, voters consistently ranked economic issues as a top concern.

Dean Baker, an economist and cofounder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research think tank, said one of the biggest things Democrats could do to relieve such concerns is push for an end to the war on Iran.

Since the war began in February, Iran has restricted commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for the global fuel and fertiliser trade.

Using the Senate to scrutinise the administration’s handling of the war could help build political pressure to end it. That, in turn, could bring down petrol prices and ease pressure on household budgets, Baker argued.

The expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies in 2025 has left many Americans facing higher insurance premiums. Democrats could try to restore those subsidies, along with reversing cuts to Medicaid, the government healthcare programme for low-income Americans.

Baker said they could use negotiations over government spending to push Republicans to agree to such measures. With bipartisan support and widespread public backing, it would be politically difficult for Trump to refuse any effort to reduce healthcare costs.

“They can make the politics such that he doesn’t want to veto it,” Baker said of the Democrats.

Democrats could also try to reverse Trump’s tariffs, although that would require support from the House and either Trump’s approval or enough votes to override his veto.

“Prices are like rockets and feathers. They shoot up like rockets; they come down like feathers,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic think tank.

But there is another way Democrats could try to tackle high prices, without needing Trump’s approval.

With control of Senate committees, they could investigate companies over everything from grocery prices and rents to rising electricity bills.

“There’s a lot of precedent for getting some real material outcomes just through having the gavels and being able to subpoena CEOs and haul people in front of Congress,” Jacquez told Al Jazeera.