Shanny Basar

🚨 Democrats win both houses of Congress. Quickie rundown on the effects for foreigners who don't follow US politics that closely, on what changes and what doesn't: 1) Domestic politics: Significant effect. Democrats can block Trump nominees -- including judges. Tonight's result might have prevented a 6-3 or 7-2 lock on the Supreme Court for another generation. Democrats can block his bills. Heck, they can even pass bills if there are topics where Trump wants to play ball with them. Don't hold your breath on the latter. Likeliest result is legislative inertia and constant conflict between White House and Congress. Most immmediate change: new investigations into (waves hands) ... everything we've witnessed over the last two years. Tonight's result also opens up a 2028 path for an I-told-you-so Republican -- on the war and on the alliance with big tech. Like DeSantis and maybe others. 2) Foreign affairs. Memo to Planet Earth: Here is where the legions of Trump haters around the world are likeliest to be disappointed. Tariffs? War? Threats to annex other countries? The US constitution, in theory, gives Congress control of these things like trade and war and presidential abuses. In practice, the founders did not anticipate the impossibility of cobbling together a 67% veto-proof majority on just about any contentious topic, let alone on impeaching and removing a president who ignores the constitution. So the president does what the president does. But I'll end with a caveat: Democrats now have the power to investigate. To hold hearings on things like: Why did Trump turn on Ukraine? What role did Kushner and Witkoff play? What do business owners hurt by tariffs have to say? Any whistleblowers out there with details on who's been insider trading war plans on betting markets? Hey -- why did a corrupt foreign businessmen get a pardon? Two years of this. Creates heat -- and heat means power, in this case limited power over foreign policy. 3) Investigate or legislate? Why not both. It's received wisdom that voters only care about bread-and-butter issues -- like health care and gas prices -- and investigations will be branded as witch hunts, certainly by the president. But polls show voters absolutely, deeply, do care about corruption right now. And if Democrats have any political skill in them, they'll be capable of holding those investigations, and of linking corruption to the same bread-and-butter issues that infuriate voters. "You hate that data center? That health policy? That tax policy? Here -- we're about to hold hearings with ballroom donors from such and such an industry who bought pardons/the status quo." 4) 2028 will be hell. I expect congressional investigations will turn up many, many potential crimes. Trump will pardon everyone he can. Democrats will transfer boxes of evidence to state AGs -- whatever they're allowed to. And within about three or four months, Donald Trump is going to realize he must do everything in his power to keep his friends in charge of the Justice Department and the FBI after 2028. Everything. And the extent to which he will go to achieve that is going to be the political story of next year. And now I'm gonna get my morning coffee in Ankara, Turkey.