Despite the Republican Party’s historic midterm defeat, President Donald Trump may retain significant presidential power, leaving Democrats facing an uphill battle to hold his administration accountable. Jonathan Swan, a White House reporter at The New York Times, said the political outcome remains difficult to predict. He argued that Democrats will need to balance resistance to Trump with recognition of the power structure his administration has built. The battle also runs through the standard mechanics of divided government: midterm losses for the party holding the White House typically shift leverage in Congress, and with it the oversight tools — hearings, subpoenas and referrals — that an opposition can bring to bear against a sitting administration.

“I think there’s going to be this interesting tension between Trump being repudiated at the polls and being a true lame duck, but also still being a very powerful President because the executive branch has accrued so much power and enlarged itself so much over the past twenty-five years, particularly in foreign policy and national security,” Swan said in an interview with The New Yorker.

Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent at The New York Times, described the shift in political power as nearly unprecedented, comparing it with a form of political fallout the country has not experienced in decades. She cautioned, however, that the defeat may not produce the same level of civic reaction or congressional reform seen after Watergate.

“This is a post-Watergate-level wipeout of a party, but it’s not likely to come with the same level of civic reaction in terms of congressional reforms and so forth,” Haberman told The New Yorker. She also noted that Trump has a history of refusing to back down. The Watergate comparison carries historical weight: that era produced a wave of oversight and ethics legislation — including the War Powers Resolution and the Ethics in Government Act — that strengthened Congress’s hand in checking the White House.

Haberman co-authored Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump with Swan. The title invokes the “imperial presidency,” a phrase popularized by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in the 1970s to describe a White House operating with diminished constraint from Congress and the courts. In the book, the two journalists provide an inside account of the first year of Trump’s second term, examining how his return to the White House was accompanied by fewer guardrails, less institutional resistance and minimal pushback from staff members. Those conditions, they write, allowed Trump to exercise an unexpected degree of power.

Haberman said Trump’s record of confrontation could contribute to further political conflict. In the days before the midterm elections, he dismissed polls showing him and Republicans in an unfavorable position. His repeated efforts to question the legitimacy of election results could also shape how he responds to the new political environment.

“Trump has shown that he is just willing to punch and attack, and make very miserable, members of his own party. Somebody said to me recently, 'You’re gonna see a lot of Republicans who are gonna just suddenly be standing up to him.' And I said, 'Well, we’ve been hearing that for years.' Point me to the Republican who is suddenly gonna go side with the Democrats in a real way on these investigations, or on an impeachment of the president,” Haberman said. “Maybe it will happen, but I am skeptical until it’s proved otherwise that something is really going to challenge his power.”

Swan said Democrats’ most immediate challenge would be deciding which matters to pursue first. During the first two years of Trump’s second term, his administration has been accused of unconstitutional policies and political crimes. Although Trump has vowed to work with Democrats after the GOP’s historic defeat, Swan said he does not expect that process to proceed smoothly. The referral route comes with built-in limits: Congress can flag potential wrongdoing to the Justice Department, but the department decides on its own whether to act.

“They can send a referral to the Justice Department, but it is run by Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche. I mean, the top level of the D.O.J. is essentially a Trump law firm,” Swan said. “So Democrats have to be creative as to how to get information. They have to go to entities on the outside that will feel compelled to provide. Banks, law firms, companies. But it’s gonna be a real challenge for them. It’s not like you just send a subpoena to Eric Trump and he’ll be right on it the next day. It’s gonna be really difficult.”

Swan said any tangible change could take years and urged observers to maintain realistic expectations. “Things can drag on to the next administration. That happened with subpoenas under Trump One. I’m just saying all of this so that people are realistic,” he said. How the confrontation unfolds may turn on a few observable markers: which oversight matters Democrats choose to prioritize, whether outside institutions — banks, law firms, companies — comply with requests for information, and whether subpoena disputes stall in court or drag into the next administration, as Swan said happened with subpoenas during Trump’s first term.

Source: https://www.alternet.org/gop-defeat/