The White House has spent months preparing for the result it does not want on Tuesday. Reuters reported on Sunday that President Trump's team has been working since April on plans to keep governing without Congress if Democrats win the midterms — identifying executive actions the President could take on his own authority across immigration, tariffs, housing costs and federal spending, so that a change of power on Capitol Hill does not stop the administration's agenda.
The work, Reuters reported, is being led at the top of the building: deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, budget director Russell Vought and the White House Counsel's Office have spent the months since April mapping what the President can lawfully do alone, and the White House plans to seek formal Justice Department legal opinions to defend those actions in court. The same aides are also bracing for the other half of a Democratic victory — a wave of congressional investigations into the administration — and preparing for that fight at the same time.
The stakes of Tuesday are exact: Democrats need a net gain of four House seats, and the Senate, to take Congress. If they get both, every bill the administration wants would need Democratic votes, and every subpoena would carry Democratic signatures. The executive-action plans are the administration's answer — the same answer the President gave in his own words this weekend, telling Miranda Devine he would become "Mr. Veto" to Democratic bills and negotiate from the veto pen. Between the veto, which needs no one's permission, and executive action backed by Justice Department opinions, the White House position is that a midterm loss changes the terrain but not who governs.
For ordinary Americans, the practical meaning is that the policies they feel — at the border, at the checkout, in the cost of a mortgage — would keep being made in the White House either way, whoever wins on Tuesday. What changes with Congress is the volume of the fight, not the address where it happens. The President's own preference is unchanged and stated at every rally: hold the House and the Senate, and none of these contingency plans is ever needed.
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