Democrats won Congress. What can Trump's veto still do?

The Democratic Party won both houses of U.S. Congress in the midterm elections on Tuesday by a landslide.

While Republican President Donald Trump is still in power, the Democrats have a majority of seats in the House of Representatives (lower house) and the Senate (upper house).

In an early response to the midterm results on Tuesday night, Trump shared a photo to Truth Social of a MAGA-style hat printed with the word “VETO”.

What did he mean by that, and where does this result actually leave Trump?

The Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives.

A party needs 218 seats to hold a majority.

At the time of publishing, Associated Press has confirmed the Democrats have won 240 seats, with the party leading in many more.

Democrats also needed to ‘flip’ four Senate seats to gain a majority.

This means winning four seats that were held by Republicans.

So far, they have flipped seven.

This includes Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Kansas.

Note: Not all votes have been counted yet.

However, media outlets can ‘call’ an election before the official result is confirmed, based on mathematical projections using the votes counted so far.

Midterms

Every two years, all seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (a.k.a. the House) and a third of the seats in the Senate go up for election.

Half of the time, this coincides with the presidential elections held every four years.

The other half of the time, it falls in the middle of the president’s term.

Midterms are considered a referendum on the sitting president’s leadership.

At these midterms, the Democrats won a majority of seats in the Senate and the House, meaning they can control which bills go to Trump’s desk.

Here’s how that works:

I’m just a bill, sitting here on Capitol Hill

Members of either chamber of Congress can introduce a bill, and it must pass both before it reaches the President’s desk.

The President can either sign it into law or veto it.

There are two ways this can work: a regular or a pocket veto.

A regular veto, where the President blocks the bill and sends it back to Congress, can be overturned by a 2/3 majority of both chambers.

A pocket veto involves deliberately delaying signing off on the bill until Congress is no longer in session, meaning the president can’t send it back.

If a president wants to make something happen without Congressional approval, they can sign an executive order.

Executive orders aren’t laws, but can be binding on the government departments they affect.

Presidents or federal judges can overturn executive orders.

Congress can block them by passing bills, but given the President would need to sign the bill into law, it’s unlikely to happen.

Iran war

Nevertheless, the Democrats have tried to stop the war with Iran in Congress.

House Democrats have repeatedly introduced concurrent resolutions (not as powerful as bills) to call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

One of these gained enough Republican support to pass both chambers of Congress in June, but others have failed.

These resolutions are not binding on the President.

Update

Following the midterm results, Vice-President JD Vance and Texas Senator Ted Cruz both attributed the Republicans’ loss to the war.

Speaking to media on Wednesday (local time), Trump said Vance’s comments were “largely true”.

“If I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again because long term it’s the only answer.

You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Trump added: “I will get along, probably, with the Democrats, unless they want to be destructive, but I have the power of the veto”.

What’s next?

Following the midterms, Congress has entered a ‘lame duck session’.

The new session with the Democrat majority begins in January.

Until then, outgoing lawmakers are still able to introduce bills.

When Congress flips, often the party that will soon have a majority in the Senate will attempt a ‘filibuster’, delaying debate and voting on certain bills.

From January, it’s likely that Democrats will use their majority to block Republican bills, and Trump will veto Democrat bills.

As noted earlier, however, if the Democrats can secure enough Republican support for a 2/3 majority of Congress, they can overturn presidential vetoes.

This means there is a possible, though unlikely, path to upgrade the earlier resolutions on ending the war in Iran into bills, and pass them by overturning a veto.

Another possibility for the rest of Trump’s term is using executive orders to enact policy.

Democrats could then challenge those executive orders in federal court.

Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, has said the party’s approach will be to “work hard to drive costs down with the president or without him.”

Meanwhile, Democrat Representative for California Robert Garcia, who will take over the powerful House Oversight Committee in January, released a short statement on election night: “Lawyer up.”

The statement also notes Garcia “has vowed to take on the Trump Crime Family, corporate corruption, DHS and ICE abuses, and the cover-up of the Epstein files.”

The Oversight Committee has the power to legally summon people to appear or produce evidence.