It’s been a few days since the election, and things are starting to gel into a new reality. The country is coming to grips with MAGA’s crushing defeat and the fact that Donald Trump is a lame duck. The big question for both sides is where we go from here.
First, the good news is that the defeat was so YUGE that Trump isn’t contesting it. Although the Trump Administration tried to subvert the election in advance, its efforts were largely unsuccessful thanks to the courts. After the blue tsunami, the president has said he will accept the results, and then, as our friend Stan Mitchell noted on his podcast, went back to talking about his White House renovations.
Rather than planning for his political future, Trump signed a presidential decree that attempts to preserve the changes that he has made to the White House and Oval Office. The president seems uninterested in governing and just wants to concentrate on redecorating. Hopefully, he will continue focusing on construction projects rather than Stop the Steal II.
There was some speculation that Trump might return to his natural environment and make common cause with the Democrats on issues like national healthcare. After all, Trump seems primarily concerned with his legacy, and he really doesn’t have any ideological principles other than loving tariffs and Russia and hating immigrants.
That speculation was put to rest quickly. On Friday, Trump fired his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and named Stephen Miller as her replacement. The elevation of Miller, one of the most radical and dangerous members of the Administration, is hardly an olive branch. Rather, it reflects Trump’s intention to double down.
Similarly, a message from the White House to 3,000 right-wing groups that “We are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations” is an indication that Trump is circling the wagons rather than becoming conciliatory. It is also an indication that the Trump Adminstration fears defections from its base in the wake of the blunami. (I just made that up.)
What I think we can expect from Trump over the next two years is more of the same. He rarely made use of Congress in his first two (or six) years. His style of leadership, what might be called “pen and phone” governance, won’t change much without Republican majorities. If you never legislate, you don’t need a legislature.
What will change is that Congress has been compliant. It won’t be next year. Democrats won’t be able to break a filibuster or override a veto, but they can investigate, and they can say “no.” I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more showdowns over spending bills to continue funding the government, possibly resulting in government shutdowns, as Democrats try to use appropriations to rein in ICE and other out-of-control organizations.
The Democrats also won’t have the numbers to remove Trump from office. They can impeach him again, but what’s the point if they can’t find enough Republican votes to convict him?
As a refresher on impeachment, the House can impeach with a simple majority vote, but it takes two-thirds of the senators present to convict and remove him from office. It looks like Democrats will have 56 senators after Alaska and Mississippi are decided, so that would mean that the magic number of Republicans crossing the aisle would be 11 if everybody showed up.
That shortfall might not be true of other members of the Administration. The impeachment of Pete Hegseth might even happen before the new Congress is seated. Both parties are unhappy with the Secretary of Defense, who identifies as a Secretary of War but can’t seem to win one.
RFKJR is another likely impeachment target. The deeply weird Secretary of Health and Human Services is unpopular even among congressional Republicans. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is a medical doctor who pressed Kennedy on vaccines at his confirmation and has been critical since, but the problem is that Cassidy is one of the relatively moderate Republicans who won’t be returning next year.
He finished third in the primary this year after Trump endorsed a challenger. Louisiana Republican Julia Letlow eked out a win with 50.8 percent last week, and the new senator probably won’t be as amenable to standing up to Trump, even though Cassidy was no beacon of moral courage himself.
This brings up another question. One might think that surviving Republicans would be ready to break with Trump after the midterm disaster, but that ain’t necessarily so. Many of the outgoing Republican senators were the ones who might have flipped on Trump, but like Cassidy, if they haven’t been replaced by Democrats, they have been replaced by MAGA stalwarts like Ashley Moody in Florida or Barry Moore in Alabama. The remaining Republican senators might be fewer in number, but they are likely to be Trump uber loyalists.
Over the next two years, expect Trump to roll out a plethora of Executive Orders. His only path, other than working with Congress, is trying to bypass it. Most of these orders won’t be legal, but they may be hard to stop nonetheless. Trump still has his veto, and it takes time for the courts to act.
The president also still has control of the military and could restart the war with Iran or unilaterally invade Greenland, but he would run the risk of having Congress cut off funds with a War Powers vote. This might even be a potential strategy to try to swing voters against Democrats for not supporting the troops.
With respect to the Supreme Court, Alito and Thomas show no signs of giving Trump a last-minute pick with their retirements, but that hasn’t stopped MAGA from scheming to get another seat on the Court. Sarah Isgur of the Advisory Opinions podcast addressed the notion that Trump and the lame-duck Senate could try to confirm a new Supreme Court justice this year even if no one retires. That justice-in-waiting would then step in at the next retirement. Apparently, the plan would be lawful, but it would also be spitting in the face of the voters. Trump might go along with such a plan, but it would probably be a bridge too far for surviving Republican senators.
Such a plan would also guarantee that Democrats would expand the Supreme Court at the first opportunity. That’s not unlawful either.
As it is, Democrats just have to play the waiting game. It’s extremely unlikely that the new Senate will act on any Trump appointees to the Court. Schumer will follow the Mitch McConnell Rule for lame-duck nominations.
There is virtually no chance of a Republican winning the presidency in 2028 (so I’m telling y’all now to register as a Democrat, and pick the most moderate and centrist option). That means that the next president is likely to get to pick replacements for Alito and Thomas.
As the Advisory Opinions crew noted, the original sin that put Trump in power was the panic prompted by the death of Antonin Scalia in 2016. The fear of a Supreme Court dominated 5-4 by liberal justices moved Republicans to embrace Donald Trump. Now, 10 years later, we are once again facing the prospect of a 5-4 liberal Court.
Republicans sold the soul of their party when they rallied behind Trump, and now the bills for the three Supreme Court justices he appointed are coming due. (I consider those appointments to be the best thing about his presidencies.) As Lindsey Graham predicted, the Republican Party has been destroyed, and even if Marco Rubio jumps ship, as he is rumored to be considering, the American people are not going to hire another Republican after four years of Trump. If you doubt me, refer back to last Tuesday.
The good news for Republicans is that the filibuster is safe for now. There is no reason to nuke the filibuster with Trump still in the White House. If you can’t break a filibuster, you can’t override a veto.
The bad news for Republicans is that the damage they’ve done to their party may be long-term. While most probably consider the new Democratic politicians in formerly red states and districts to be one-termers, that also ain’t necessarily so. The two Democratic Georgia senators elected in 2020 have now both been re-elected, even though they were widely assumed to be temporary occupants of Georgia’s Senate seats.
Back in 1994, California was a purple state. That year, voters approved Proposition 187, which denied social services to illegal immigrants. The measure was ruled unconstitutional on the grounds that California could not enact its own immigration policy, but it changed the political landscape of the state. Republican support for the proposition (along with a couple of others) shifted Hispanic and pro-immigrant voters towards the Democrats. Republicans lost control of both houses of the state legislature and haven’t had a majority to this day. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the only Republican elected governor in the 30 years since Pete Wilson, who advanced Proposition 187, left office.
The question voters will answer over the next few decades is whether minorities will ever trust Republicans again after Trump’s expansion of the police state and racial profiling of suspected illegal immigrants. Hispanics helped put Trump over the top in 2024, but the demographic shifted towards Democrats by double-digit margins in 2026. The Trump Administration may have driven them permanently away from the GOP.
For years, Texas has been an anomaly. The state had a large share of Hispanic voters, about 40 percent of the population, but they were relatively conservative. That helped keep the state red, despite the long Republican hostility towards immigration reform and illegal immigrants. Donald Trump’s heavy-handed immigration policies cranked up that hostility by several hundred notches and may have permanently broken the trust of conservative Hispanics, many of whom had friends or relatives (who may have been US citizens or legal immigrants) who were targeted by ICE.
The bottom line here is Donald Trump is going to be like a dangerous animal for the next two years. The danger is not over, and it won’t be until he leaves office. The experience is sure to leave a bad taste in the mouth of most Americans, and how Republicans handle Trump’s last two years will affect how the country views them going forward.
How the next Democratic Administration acts will also play a role in how long Republicans are banished into the wilderness. If the Democrats give influence to the radical progressives and democratic socialists, voters might forgive Republicans quickly. On the other hand, if 2026 teaches Democrats that moderation is the key to majorities, Republicans might be a minority for a very long time.
For a long time, there has been a meme that says, “All they had to do was not be crazy.” Sadly, both parties have shown an inability to meet that low standard.
From the Racket News
