What Happens If The Democrats Win The Midterms?

0:00So far during his second term as US president, Donald Trump has governed with a Congress run by his own party, the House, the Senate, and every committee chair in both. So, essentially, he's been playing the game on easy mode. But on the 3rd of November, Americans vote in the midterms, and that arrangement may come [music] to an end. Republicans hold the House by just a handful of seats, and the Senate 53 to 47. So, the polls and prediction markets are both showing the same thing, that Republicans are in

0:28trouble. And if Democrats take control of Congress, Donald Trump's life could become very, very difficult. At the very least, he could face relentless investigations, subpoenas, and political warfare. At the very worst, he could find himself facing impeachment proceedings for a third time. So, what can a Democratic Congress actually do to a president with two years [music] left on his term? Well, to find out, we'll look at the powers Democrats could unleash if they take control of the House, what happens if they capture the Senate as well, and just how much damage they could do to the remainder of Trump's presidency. My name is DC, and

1:05this is The Coin Bureau. So, what's actually at stake in this midterm? Well, it's about a certain power that Congress holds. Of course, writing laws is the part most people are at least somewhat familiar with. But Congress can also ask questions, demand documents, and call officials in to explain themselves. This is what's known as oversight. It's Congress checking the work of the government it funds, and virtually all of it runs through committees. Each committee has a chair, and the chair always comes from the majority party. So, the chair decides which hearings happen, when they happen, and who gets called to the witness table. And right now, when a Democrat

1:44asks the administration for documents, that request often falls on deaf ears. But change who chairs the committee, and it's a whole other story. So, for the last two years, Congress has stood between this president and almost every uncomfortable question ever asked. It's been his shield, but taking that shield away doesn't need a new law or any

2:03drastic action. It just needs the house. By the latest counts, Republicans hold 218 seats to Democrats 214 with a few vacancies. So, Democrats need a net gain of about four. Now, for context, the president's party lost an average of 29 House seats in midterms between 1918 and 2016. And this year's numbers don't look any kinder to the White House. As I make this video, Silver Bulletins generic ballot average has Democrats ahead by 8.9 points. Well, Decision Desk HQ has them at 49% against

2:3741%. Prediction markets and bookmakers put the odds of a Democratic House at 90 to 94%. So, the shield is very much on the line. But to be clear, it's not as if everything just changes after election night, even if there is a Democratic sweep. The gavels change hands in January, subpoenas get filed in court, and there are a million other moving parts. So, keeping track of all that as it happens is asking a lot of any one person, which is exactly what the Coin Bureau Club is for. This is where our research team tracks major developments like this as they unfold and breaks down what they mean for the markets. And

3:12members get direct access to that team through our private Discord. So, if you want to stay ahead of what's happening in Washington and understand what it means for your money, join the Coin Bureau Club today. You'll find the link in the description below, or you can scan the QR code currently on your screen. Okay, back to the house. So, what actually changes on the 3rd of January

3:33if the Democrats were to take the house? Well, for starters, they take control of every House committee, putting Democrats in charge of deciding who gets investigated and what gets investigated. And they gain the power to issue subpoenas, legal orders that can compel people to hand over documents or testify. Refuse one, and the committee can refer you to the Justice Department for criminal contempt or take you to court. So, officials who never had to answer any question from Democrats would find themselves compelled to do so. And to see what this looks like, we can go back to November 2018 when Democrats gained about 40 House seats, their

4:11biggest gain since the post-Watergate election of 1974. By January the following year, Elijah Cummings ran Oversight, Jerry Nadler ran Judiciary, Adam Schiff ran Intelligence, and Richard Neal ran Ways and Means. Neal used a section of the tax code to request 6 years of Trump's tax returns. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin refused and that turned into a court fight lasting years. Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee went after the Mueller report's most important witness. It subpoenaed former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who had told investigators that Trump ordered him to get Mueller

4:47fired. The White House then told him not to appear, which sparked a separate battle over whether presidential aides have absolute immunity from Congress. Committees also subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, Capital One, and the accounting firm Mazars for Trump's financial records, a fight that reached the Supreme Court in July 2020. By the middle of 2019, the House had voted to hold Attorney General Barr and Commerce Secretary Ross in contempt. Then that December, it impeached him. So, a busy first year, to put it mildly. So, the subpoenas didn't always win, and plenty were still tied up in court long after the headlines moved on. But, they set the agenda in Washington for an entire

5:27year. And coming back to today, that target list is already being drawn up. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has talked up day one oversight and, in his words, and I quote, "Holding the crooks accountable." Jamie Raskin has said the potential scope of investigations is, quote, "Gargantuan." And Congressman Robert Garcia apparently keeps a running list on a whiteboard. His priorities include the Trump family's businesses, the Epstein files, immigration enforcement, and RFK Jr.'s handling of vaccines. So, broadly, that's three targets. The first is the administration's own decisions, the policies no committee has been able to dig in so far. The second is the people around Trump, the officials and the

6:09advisers who'd actually be called in to testify. And the third is the family's business dealings. That includes reports that a Russian oligarch helped fund a party for Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding. It also includes questions about how Jared Kushner's private equity business overlaps with his foreign policy advising. Now, to be clear, those are reported claims and lines of inquiry, not findings. But that's the idea. The committee doesn't need to prove anything to make it a story. It just needs to shed light on some suspicious activity and keep asking questions. So, the real power of a House majority comes from repetition. It's sustained scrutiny that can set the

6:49headlines for months at a time. But scrutiny is only one part of what the House gets. The House also gets power over money. The Constitution says, and I quote, "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in the consequence of appropriations made by law." Now, in simpler terms, that means nothing gets spent unless the House votes for it. And that closes the route Republicans have relied on for the biggest bills. It's called reconciliation, a budget process that lets spending, tax, and debt limit bills pass the Senate with a simple majority. But reconciliation still has to clear the House. So, with a Democratic House, the party-line route

7:29closes, and the legislative agenda stalls. Then we have the deadlines. The current stopgap funding bill, known as continuing resolution, runs out in early December. And this Congress has already struggled to keep the lights on. There was a 43-day shutdown last autumn and a brief lapse at the start of February. Then a 76-day shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security only ended on the 30th of April. That's all with his own party running both chambers. Easy mode,

7:57apparently, came with the odd outage. Then there's the debt ceiling. Gross federal debt passed $40 trillion in August and the legal limit is at $41.1 trillion. Republicans are weighing raising it before the 3rd of January specifically to deny a Democratic House that leverage. So, the urgency here is clear. Because a divided government has turned these deadlines into standoffs before. In 2011, a debt ceiling fight ended with the S&P cutting America's credit rating from triple A to double A plus for the first time ever. In 2013, a fight over the Affordable Care Act shut the government down for 16 days. And in December 2018, a fight over border wall

8:38funding started a 35-day shutdown that ran straight into the new Democratic House. Now, of course, it doesn't always end that way. The 2023 deal between Biden and McCarthy suspended the debt limit and capped spending without a default. So, a president used to signing whatever his party sends him would get stalemated instead. And every deadline becomes a negotiation with a House that has

9:01demands of its own. But then, if the House gets the subpoenas and the purse, why is the Senate actually the bigger prize? Well, because the Senate decides who runs the government in the first place. Cabinet secretaries, federal judges, and senior officials all need Senate confirmation. Republicans hold the Senate 53 to 47. So, Democrats need a net gain of four seats. And it really does have to be four because at 50/50,

9:28Vice President Vance breaks the tie. Now, the map is wider than you might expect. There's an open seat in North Carolina after Tom Tillis retired. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown is taking on Jon Husted. And in Texas, it's Ken Paxton against James Talarico. Iowa and Michigan both have open seats. Susan Collins faces a heated race in Maine, and even Alaska is being talked about as competitive. So, as I make this video, Kalshi and PredictIt price a Democratic Senate at around 61 to 64% while UK bookmakers imply roughly 66%, and some forecasting models are even higher. So, the markets lean Democratic here as well, just with less conviction than on

10:08the House. But even if Democrats do get there, the effect could still be a bit blunt. Nominees simply stop moving. And as a recent example of how that works in practice, back in 2016, Justice Scalia died, leaving a seat open on the Supreme Court. President Obama then nominated Merrick Garland to fill it. Mitch McConnell's Senate argued the seat shouldn't be filled in an election year,

10:31and that voters should simply decide. So, there was no hearing and no vote. The nomination sat there for 293 days until it expired in January 2017. So, a Senate majority doesn't have to vote a nominee down. It only has to decline to vote at all. Apply that to a second-term president replacing cabinet secretaries, filling judgeships, and staffing agencies, and the picture changes quickly. The House can investigate him, but the Senate decides whether he still controls his own government. And there's one force at work here that no election can ever change. Trump can't run again because the 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two terms. So, once the midterms are

11:12done, Washington starts looking past him to 2028. And when Congress stops cooperating, executive orders become the main tool they have left. They don't need a vote, which is their appeal. But they can't create money, the courts can block them, and the next president can undo them. Meanwhile, ambitious Republicans have their own futures to think about. Anyone eyeing 2028 needs a brand and a fundraising base that will outlast this White House, and that

11:40doesn't always mean following its lead. That's just the nature of politics, especially when power has a very clear end date, which brings us to the word that would hang over each of those hearings we speculated on earlier, impeachment. To boil it down quite a bit, impeachment has two basic steps. The House charges the president by simple majority, then the Senate holds the trial and conviction needs 2/3 of the senators present, which is 67 if all 100 vote. And as you may be aware, Trump has been down that road twice. In December 2019, the House impeached him for abuse of power by 230 to 197, and for obstruction of Congress by 229 to

12:20198. But in February 2020, the Senate acquitted him 52 to 48 on abuse of power. Mitt Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict, the first senator ever to vote to convict a president of his own party. Then, in January 2021, the House impeached him again, 232 to 197 for incitement of insurrection, with 10 Republicans now joining in. A month later, the Senate voted 57 to 43 to convict. Seven Republicans crossed over, but it still fell 10 votes short. So, twice impeached, twice acquitted. Now, it's hardly a long shot to think that Democratic House means a third impeachment. Much of the Democratic base

13:01wants that. Progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna have pushed for it, while Rahm Emanuel and Joe Manchin have warned it would be a distraction. Jeffries has declined to rule it in or out, but the leadership's line is that investigations and an evidence record come first. Raskin said Democrats are in a quote, "very sober" about what that 2/3 requirement means on on Senate side. So, the investigations have a purpose beyond sticking it to their political opponents with some

13:30nasty headlines. They're the groundwork. Every subpoena, every hearing, [clears throat] and every document would feed the record any future impeachment relies on. But, the hard numbers at the end don't change. Even a Democratic Senate would be at around 51 seats, but conviction needs 67. So, up until now, Trump has had a Congress that never really said no. Friendly chairs and a Senate run by his own side. But, now one night in November could change absolutely everything. And, depending on how Americans vote, the final 2 years of Trump's presidency could become a political nightmare. So, how do you see the midterms actually going? Do Democrats stop at the House or take the

14:09Senate as well? Or, do you think Republicans are about to stage a major upset to shock the prediction markets? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments down below. And, if you want to go deeper on how America's debt crossed $40 trillion and why that ceiling keeps coming back, then definitely check out our video on

14:26that right over here. As always, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you again very soon. This is DC signing off.