Democrats are candid about what they will do if they get control of the Senate and House – here are their priorities | Democrats

The family business

Garcia ranks Trump family corruption first on his list for the oversight committee, while Raskin has requested information on the business dealings of Kushner and Trump Jr.

On 25 August, Raskin wrote to Kushner, renewing a demand for documents on his dual roles as an informal foreign policy adviser to Trump and the head of a private equity firm that does business with foreign governments. He has been chasing Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, since 2023, when he said it took $2bn from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund after Kushner left the White House.

There is also the $400m plane that Qatar gifted Trump, a Trump Jr wedding party that was partly funded by a Russian oligarch, and several multimillion-dollar defense contracts won by the extended Trump family that will draw more scrutiny.

The IRS settlement

In May, the Department of Justice settled the president’s $10bn lawsuit against the IRS with an order barring the agency from auditing past returns of Trump, his family and related companies.

Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the House ways and means committee, and Raskin demanded documents on the negotiations, the roles of the justice department and treasury officials, and safeguards against fraud, with a 27 May deadline ahead of treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s appearance before Neal’s committee.

In the Senate, Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the finance committee, and 12 other finance Democrats on 22 May called for a bipartisan investigation into the settlement and the administration’s decision to bar the IRS from auditing Trump, his family and businesses. At a hearing, Wyden pressed Bessent on whether the audit immunity remained in effect, which he declined to answer.

On 7 July, Wyden, Warren and Schumer wrote to 11 companies, including Kalshi and Polymarket, asking whether they intend to rely on the settlement as protection against audits, given Trump Jr’s financial ties with the companies. Raskin and Garcia, meanwhile, demanded correspondence between Trump’s lawyers and the justice department over his reported $230m claim for past investigations. A federal judge has said the order conflicts with federal law, according to Warren’s office, and the legal fight is unresolved.

Crypto and betting markets

Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, opened a preliminary inquiry and wrote to executives behind the $Trump meme coin and World Liberty Financial, asking about ownership and investment structure. Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, asked the Office of Government Ethics to review a reported deal involving World Liberty, Binance and a UAE state-backed fund.

Warren, Blumenthal, Gary Peters, Dick Durbin and Wyden demanded hearings after disclosures showed Trump earned more than $1.2bn from crypto ventures, including about $588m tied to World Liberty token sales. In the House, Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the financial services committee, has called for legislation to “end the President’s crypto profiteering and recoup his ill-gotten gains”.

On prediction markets, the July letter to Kalshi’s chief executive noted that Trump Jr is a “strategic advisor” to the company, and seven House Democrats asked the oversight chair, James Comer, to subpoena the markets over suspicious trades tied to the Iran war.

This one has the most bipartisan appeal: the Republican senator John Curtis asked the Senate judiciary committee to subpoena Trump Jr over his Kalshi and Polymarket ties, and Comer opened his own insider-trading probe.

Epstein and the emails

Thanks to a tag-team effort by representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, the Department of Justice was forced to release millions of files related to Jeffrey Epstein last year.

But off the bat, the justice department blew the legally mandated deadline to disclose the files. Then it released only about 3.5m pages of the 6m in its possession; it said it has deemed the rest duplicates. And there has been bipartisan consternation about heavy redactions in some places, and the apparently accidental disclosure of the names of victims in other places. The justice department is now facing a lawsuit from journalist Katie Phang over many of these issues.

Even under a Republican-controlled Congress, the oversight committee under GOP chair James Comer has been a rare spot of bipartisan comity, with members of both sides routinely (but not always) acting in concert to subpoena witnesses and hold them in contempt when they don’t cooperate. Expect that to continue in any new Democratic Congress.

The Pentagon and the wars

Jason Crow, a Colorado congressman who sits on the armed services and intelligence committees and co-chairs the House end corruption caucus, says he will start with the Pentagon, citing reports of defense money steered toward companies linked to the Trump family.

The sharpest look so far is a January letter from Warren, Blumenthal and Andy Kim. It lists companies backed by 1789 Capital, the venture firm Trump Jr joined as a partner: Cerberus ($45m), PsiQuantum ($10.8m), Firehawk Aerospace ($4.9m) and Vulcan Elements ($10m, plus a reported $620m loan). It also cites a $12.8m contract to Unusual Machines, a drone company in which Trump Jr holds a stake. The senators asked whether the Vulcan loan was competitive, which officials Trump Jr screened for Pentagon jobs, and for every contact between defense department officials and Trump Jr since 5 November 2024.

A later Pentagon reply, they wrote, showed no safeguards against such conflicts. Vulcan and the Pentagon have denied Trump Jr had any involvement in the loan.

On the war, Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, led his colleagues in demanding that Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Steve Witkoff and Kushner testify on the Iran war, and forced a vote to subpoena them. He also demanded documents on Venezuelan oil revenue routed into a Qatar account.

In 2025, Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, pressed for an expanded inspector general probe of the defense secretary’s use of Signal. He and Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House armed services committee, objected to a Hegseth memo routing Pentagon communications with Congress through his office.

Immigration enforcement and who profits

In March, Raskin and Warren led 52 lawmakers in writing to six companies tied to ICE’s warehouse detention plan: CoreCivic, Geo Group, GardaWorld Federal, Gosin Group, KVG LLC and PNK Group. They asked for expected profit margins, lobbying efforts and donations to Trump’s campaign or cabinet officials, by 13 April.

The plan carries a $38.3bn price tag and aims to hold nearly 100,000 people by November. The lawmakers flagged ICE paying $129m for a Georgia facility, nearly five times its assessed value, and a contracting official who came from Geo. Garcia’s oversight Democrats wrote separately to Geo about Corey Lewandowski’s dealings, after reports he sought personal payments from contractors.

Peters, the retiring top Democrat on the Senate homeland security committee, led a letter seeking every DHS contract that the border czar, Tom Homan, may have influenced, after reports of a bribery investigation. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House homeland security committee, would take the matter up there.

Warren’s Wall Street

If Democrats flip the Senate, now-ranking member Elizabeth Warren would be positioned to chair the banking committee, and private credit is her likeliest target. On 13 May, she wrote to Bessent and the SEC chair, Paul Atkins, on how deregulation has increased private credit risks, with responses due 26 May. In July 2025 she asked Bessent to run a stress test of the market, which he did not do. She has also written to ratings agencies including S&P, Moody’s and Fitch over reportedly inflated private credit ratings.

When Blue Owl restricted withdrawals from a fund, she called for higher bank capital requirements for private credit exposures, transparent data from the firms and a stress test.

The wildcard

Impeachment hangs over all of it. Trump was impeached twice in his first term and acquitted both times. Jeffries says Democrats have ruled nothing in and nothing out, while the House majority leader, Steve Scalise, predicts an attempt on “Day 1”.

Even if Jeffries does not ultimately pursue impeachment, Trump could ultimately force his hand. Nancy Pelosi held off left-wing calls for impeachment for months after she became speaker of the House after the 2018 midterms, but when Trump tried to get Ukrainian leaders to pursue an investigation of Joe Biden – and then incited the January 6 attack on the Capitol – Pelosi relented and oversaw two different impeachment trials.