民主黨調查計劃蓋過跨黨協商，華盛頓合作前景蒙陰影

The News

President Donald Trump is known to occasionally seek collaboration with — even offer praise to — his opponents. Newly ascendant Democrats, however, aren’t in much of a dealmaking mood.

As Democrats prepare to take control of the House and Senate next year, they are already plotting out ways to investigate the president, his administration, and its allies. Democrats’ ravenous appetite for investigations — and the White House’s hostility towards them — raises serious questions about whether the two parties will be able to work together to any extent, even as administration officials begin floating opportunities for bipartisan cooperation.

“They’re going to be out for blood,” one Trump administration official told Semafor.

Democrats have spent Trump’s second term on the sidelines, trying to learn from the aftermath of the first Trump administration. Even before voters delivered Republicans a generational rebuke, leaders had been methodically mapping out a multi-pronged oversight approach.

Incoming House Oversight Chair Robert Garcia, D-Calif., told Semafor his committee will be “laser focused on four major lanes” — the Trump family, immigration, corporations, and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“We’ve been laying the groundwork,” said Garcia, who released a statement after the midterms advising Republicans to “lawyer up.” He predicted that every Democratic committee chair would get in on the action: “There’s more than enough corruption to go around.”

Prior to the election, returning and incoming House Democrats had expressed “an incredible amount of interest” in joining the Oversight panel, Garcia said. Now, leaders in both chambers believe voters have given them free rein to take their efforts to the next level.

“Americans are calling for accountability, not accomodation,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday. “Whenever Trump defies the will of the American people or the law, we will launch investigations, take him to court, and entangle him in legislative razor wire.”

The administration is already warning them to back off.

“As the President has said, he’s willing to work with anyone to continue delivering victories for hardworking Americans. If Democrats choose to pursue sham investigations and radical left policies, they are choosing to work against the American people,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Semafor.

Its resistance is no surprise to Democrats, who had already begun strategizing how to circumvent Trump by probing the private sector instead. Government officials can invoke executive privilege to avoid providing documents, as they have in the Kennedy Center case; corporate leaders cannot.

“We are cognizant of lessons learned from Trump 1.0 of how much they use the courts to string out the process,” said Dan Goshorn, Senate Finance Committee Democrats’ chief investigation counsel, said.

“So from our perspective, private companies have more of a reputational risk and are going to be more willing to cooperate,” Goshorn added. “We’re going to go wherever the information is.”

a modicum of legislative optimism

After the bruising results, Trump on Tuesday suggested he’s open to collaborating with Democrats on legislation, telling The New York Times that “we’ll probably work something out.”

Some administration officials predicted Trump and Democrats could find common ground on changing immigration enforcement and addressing pharmaceutical costs — though one Trump adviser expressed skepticism at the idea of an immigration deal, pointing to exit polls showing that the issue remained one of the few Republican strengths.

That adviser suggested the president and Democrats could also work together on AI — particularly rules around data centers — and other cost-of-living issues. Specific bipartisan ideas could include enacting manufacturing and clean energy tax credits or reauthorizing federal transportation programs.

Trump “at his core does like dealmaking,” one person close to the White House told Semafor.

But it’s unclear how long that goodwill can last amid a torrent of congressional oversight. Trump’s aides are bracing for impact, with the administration official predicting Democrats would try to tear down Trump’s new ballroom.

“There’s going to be a lot more war than peace,” a former Trump administration official said. “The Democrats feel they have a mandate to torture the administration with subpoenas and lawfare.”

Spending legislation will pose an early first test. Government funding is slated to lapse next month, which Garcia said Democrats will use to finalize their plans for next year.

“It’s going to be very hard for Democrats to look at what happened [Tuesday] and … pass a clean continuing resolution that locks in Medicaid cuts and SNAP cuts and ICE funding and Pentagon funding after you’ve just seen the biggest mandate in the history of midterm elections against the Republican agenda,” Groundwork Collaborative’s Alex Jacquez told Semafor.

Working with Democrats would also inevitably expose Trump to criticism from his own party. The person close to the White House warned a bipartisan immigration deal could “damage the GOP even further.”

big oversight plans

The Trump family’s “enormous amount of grift” is “at the top of [Democrats’] list,” Garcia said, now that lawmakers in both chambers will be able to schedule hearings and issue subpoenas. He pointed to the money the Trumps have made from cryptocurrency; the Russian oligarch who helped pay for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding; and Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner’s business ventures.

Lawmakers also plan to scrutinize “pay-to-play and profitmaking” at the Department of Homeland Security, including by former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski. And they’ll go after “corporate corruption, particularly anyone that’s worked with the Trumps to rip off the American people,” as well as the Epstein investigation.

“Republicans have done little to nothing to advance it,” Garcia said of that probe.

The House Judiciary Committee is bracing to tackle other corruption issues, like pardons. Other panels will delve deeper into the Trump administration’s economic policies, with many Democrats already warning that a failure to prioritize the cost of living alongside corruption could fail to attract new voters come 2028.

Other bicameral priorities include the Trump administration’s oversight of the housing sector; its handling of tariff exemptions and refunds; and its forays into Venezuela and Iran, particularly when it comes to the latter’s impact on gas prices. Schumer on Wednesday promised that Democrats would wield their power of the purse to “end the war.”

Democrats have indicated little interest in impeaching Trump, but his Cabinet could be another matter. Schumer declined to say Wednesday whether the election results gave Democrats a “mandate” to remove Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a politically divisive move.

Either way, the looming Democrat-led investigations are no surprise to those inside the White House — the Trump adviser told Semafor they expected as much should Republicans perform poorly in the midterms. Some administration officials have already sought legal counsel.

eleanor and shelby’s view

Don’t believe any rosy rhetoric: Democrats aren’t particularly interested in working with the president, especially now that they have proof of voters’ discontent. And the White House’s prickliness now is just a preview of how it will react once the investigations begin.

“We will work hard to drive costs down, with the president or without him,” Schumer told a reporter Tuesday who asked how Democrats might work with Trump.

“If the other side of the aisle wants to work with us to deliver the type of bold, dramatic, and decisive change the American people are demanding, we’ll sit down and we’ll have that conversation,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said later.

Room for Disagreement

Democrats’ ambitious investigative plans aren’t without their own risks.

“There’s a risk for congressional Democrats of doing too much; of having their eyes be bigger than their stomach,” Mayer Brown’s Jonathan Becker, a former Senate Democratic aide, said.

“I would imagine there’s an attempt to try and hone in on a few big themes,” he continued. “Whether congressional Democrats can ultimately follow through is another story.”

Notable

• Democrats might not get the chance to impeach Hegseth: Trump has been asking advisers whether the Defense secretary should keep his job, people familiar with the conversations told CBS News.
• One financial services lobbyist told Politico that regulators “will likely spend more time in the witness chair than writing rules,” adding that “keeping regulators busy testifying has always been one of the most effective ways to slow them down.”