If, after last week’s election, you’ve been asking, “What is the country in for these next two years?” — well, you’re not the only one. Five writers reflect on what Americans can realistically hope for from Congress during President Donald Trump’s final years in office.
James Hohmann: An immigration compromise?
The safe bet is that divided government produces nothing monumental over the next two years. But I am cautiously hopeful about an immigration bargain.
In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, President Donald Trump sketched the contours. Voters rewarded him for securing the border and removing dangerous criminals, he said, but punished Republicans when enforcement became “too tough” and swept up otherwise law-abiding people who had worked in hotels or landscaping for 10 or 15 years. Legal status for them, Trump said, is “actually doable.”
Immigration helped Trump topple the GOP establishment in 2016 and reclaim the White House in 2024. He is uniquely positioned to persuade the MAGA base that border control need not mean expelling every person who lacks legal status but has otherwise obeyed the law. This could be his Nixon-goes-to-China moment.
I am not naive. As I reported in 2018, Stephen Miller helped scuttle a compromise that would have given Trump much of what he wanted. Trump named Miller the next White House chief of staff shortly after taping the CBS interview, then insisted Monday there would be “no amnesty.” Democratic investigations could harden positions, and some progressives would treat any compromise as capitulation. Both parties would need to accept an imperfect deal rather than demand total victory.
Trump might relish signing the kind of reform that eluded George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The last broad bargain pairing enforcement with legalization was signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986. Forty years later, the opening is narrow but worth testing.
Damir Marusic: The artificial intelligence problem
The challenge for Democrats controlling Congress is that a positive agenda is probably out of reach. The question becomes: Where can they block most effectively? The answer might be in artificial intelligence regulation.
The Trump administration wants a uniform national framework with relatively light obligations on the AI industry. But without congressional preemption, states can continue experimenting with safety requirements, liability rules and consumer protections.
Preemption has proved a hard sell, even among Republicans. In July 2025, the Senate voted 99-1 to strip a proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation from a budget bill. Then, in December, Trump signed an executive order directing federal lawyers to challenge state AI laws and threatening to withhold certain broadband funding. In March, the White House proposed a legislative framework to establish a single national standard.
Compromise is unlikely. A bipartisan House draft that was floated in June, pairing a three-year limit on state rules with federal safety disclosures, stalled: Many Democrats rejected it as being too lenient, while the White House wanted broader preemption.
Democrats cannot easily dismantle the executive actions already undertaken, but they can prevent Trump from consolidating his deregulatory agenda into federal law.
Is a patchwork of state regulations a good thing, from my perspective? Not for developing a robust AI industry. But, as they say, elections have consequences.
Carine Hajjar: Busting corruption
It took two words on election night for Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California) to spell out Democratic priorities in the new Congress: “Lawyer up.”
Democrats didn’t gain a generational majority in Congress on kitchen-table frustrations alone — American voters ranked corruption as a top concern. The new majority is looking to prove it’s taking the issue seriously.
On legislation, Democrats might find some areas of bipartisan support. The Restore Trust in Congress Act, for example, was introduced with bipartisan support to ban congressional stock trading.
Last week Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a potential 2028 contender, called out corruption and criticized “congressmen making a windfall in the stock market.” Ahead of 2028, Republicans will have to distance themselves from the shady business that has come to define the Trump White House.
On investigations, Democrats have a growing list of targets. Garcia, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, is planning to look into Trump family dealings, corporate corruption, the Epstein files and more. Democratic representatives are already sending signals that they may look into agreements between pharmaceutical companies and the Trump administration.
The challenge for Democrats will be to prove they aren’t just sticking it to their opponents. Following the Biden administration, the party learned the hard way that lawsuits and investigations don’t always translate into political power.
Theodore R. Johnson: Back to the basics
What can the next Congress do? Job No. 1: Be Congress.
It would be a welcome improvement on the current version, which has behaved mostly as a wing of the White House. The formula for success is straightforward: Keep the government open. Bundle policy priorities into must-pass bills and continuing resolutions. Most importantly, do not fear the presidential veto.
The political calculus, though, is hard. There will be contests among Democrats for party influence and over legislative priorities. An ascendant progressive wing seems less willing to play junior partner to the party’s leadership. Decisions on which reforms to prioritize — on health care, voting rights, executive oversight, war — will not be easy. But majority bickering keeps Congress weak and unable to deliver the results that midterm voters expect.
One thing Americans are not interested in hearing: President Trump won’t let us, so we didn’t try. Overcoming a White House veto would need two-thirds of the Senate, no small feat. But that’s a solvable problem for the incoming Congress — as long as it takes care of Job No. 1.
Dominic Pino: Divided we stand
Americans yearn for divided government.
They’re sick of Republicans or Democrats trying to execute grand partisan plans. They rejected President Joe Biden’s FDR impersonation and are rejecting President Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “golden age.”
The American constitutional system is not designed for one-sided reimaginations of government. It requires compromise between and within branches of government. It’s gradual, not immediate. This can be unsatisfying to the most rabid partisans, but most Americans are not rabid partisans, and it was moderate voters who gave Democrats their massive victory. They don’t want a 39-point agenda for a whole-of-government approach to transforming society. They want a government that gets the basics right and can be otherwise safely ignored.
If Democrats can deliver that, they’ll cruise to victory in 2028 as well.
The post ‘Cautiously hopeful’: What to watch out for from a new Congress appeared first on Washington Post.
