Power moves that Trump, Republicans can execute during lame duck Congress to pigeonhole Democrats
Between a legislature subject to presidential veto, his powers of the pardon and the hue and cry of "revenge" from Democrats publicly targeting Trump and his administration members, Trump may be emboldened to act unilaterally on several issues before the "Blue Wave" actually washes ashore.
uncertain
Wave → execute → issues
President Donald Trump has already signaled he is willing to play offense in the final two years of his presidency, undeterred by Democrats’ election gains and certain that doubling down on the most popular aspects of his agenda is the strategy for a 2028 GOP comeback.
asserted
doubling → signal → comeback
Republicans in Congress, however, have not shown that sort of swagger, even when they owned all three levers of power in Washington.
asserted
they → show → Washington
But in recent days, GOP lawmakers expressed in interviews with Just the News a dozen or more major ideas to pigeonhole the new Democrat majorities, rally the MAGA base and begin to make the case for independent, young male, black and Hispanic voters to return to the coalition by the next presidential election.
asserted
voters → express → election
Here are eight of those ideas:
- Pass multiyear agency budgets for all key agencies that lock in federal spending until after Trump leaves office
This idea came up more than any in the interviews, both because it erases the failure of the GOP to markedly reshape and cut spending over the last two years and because it would hamstring Democrats from shutting down government or enforcing their priorities in 2027 or 2028.
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it → pass → 2027
If two or three-year budgets were passed in a reconciliation bill that requires only 51 GOP votes in the Senate, all of Trump’s immigration, law enforcement, election integrity, education, military regulatory reform and foreign aid priorities would be locked, and he could simply veto any Democrat efforts to reverse them.
uncertain
he → pass → them
This blueprint was already executed with the Homeland Security budget passed this summer.
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blueprint → execute → budget
A similar roadmap for all spending bills could be followed to keep government funded until 2029.
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government → follow → 2029
No excuses, no shutdowns and all GOP priorities locked in until a new president takes office.
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president → lock → office
The most common ideas for the spending bills were: locking in the elimination of USAID and wasteful foreign spending, reducing the Education Department to a shell of a federal bureaucracy, sending tax dollars to the states in bloc grants, making voter ID and citizenship checks mandatory for all states that take food stamp benefits, Medicaid, highway funds, FEMA, DOJ or Homeland grant money, formalizing the environmental regulatory reform agenda enacted by executive orders and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and fully funding the military, FBI, DOJ and immigration enforcement priorities he campaigned and won on.
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he → lock → military
No actions would more impress Wall Street, bond markets or everyday Americans than launching the first meaningful strike against runaway spending, something that’s been promised since the Reagan era and the Tea Party movement.
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that → impress → era
Trump doesn’t have time in a lame-duck Congress to enact all the fine print for a long-term plan.
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Trump → have → plan
But he does have time to impose across the board cuts and prioritize where the savings money goes.
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money → have → cuts
The two most popular ideas in the interviews were: enacting within the reconciliation bill a mandatory 15% reduction in each agency’s spending over the next two years but leaving it to the agencies on where to make the cuts; and naming a bipartisan debt and deficit commission to develop recommendations on a long-term strategy to get to a balanced budget to reduce the debt and building tariffs into a national revenue strategy.
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ideas → enact → strategy
According to the Brookings Institution, reconciliation has been used since 1980 to enact 23 bills as of the end of 2024 (four others were passed but vetoed by the president), including such significant pieces of legislation as major deficit reduction bills in the 1980s and 1990s, welfare reform in 1996, the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the Trump tax cuts in 2017, and the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act under Joe Biden.
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others → accord → Biden
The Democrats ignored this issue most important to middle America throughout the 2026 campaign, instead focusing on expanding the welfare state and socialist government expansion.
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Democrats → ignore → state
Yet, according to a Congressional Budget Office document cited by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, both funds are less than seven years from being bankrupt.
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funds → accord → Budget
Trump could become the first president in a half century to deal with this crisis, refusing to kick this can of crisis down the street any longer.
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Trump → become → street
Boomers and Gen X would benefit.
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Boomers → benefit → ?
The premise of the fix is simple: rerouting savings and the spoils of fighting fraud to the Social Security and Medicare funds to repay funds long pilfered through budget trickery.
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premise → reroute → trickery
Trump could declare, with the help of the reconciliation bill, a third of the mandatory federal agency budget cuts (5%) could be re-allocated to Medicare and Social Security as well as all monies recovered from the massive crackdown led by Vice President J.D. Vance and Attorney General Todd Blanche to the trust funds until they reach a solvency date of 2045.
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they → declare → 2045
- Strike at the left’s richest war chest: Nonprofits that fund ideology and politics instead of genuine charitable purposes
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could work on two executive orders with Trump that could be codified in the reconciliation bill.
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that → fund → bill
The first would sanction many tax-exempt nonprofits that have ties to terrorism, anarchism, Communism, socialism, sex trafficking, abortion advocacy, medical harm to children too young to consent to transgender procedures, personal enrichment and overt political activity.
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that → sanction → procedures
Such sanctions would immediately suspend these nonprofits' tax-exempt status and refer them to DOJ and the FBI for possible prosecution or civil action.
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sanctions → suspend → prosecution
The second EO would declare that all nonprofits be required to demonstrate by July 2027 that their work substantially contributes to the primary purpose of tax breaks: charitable good.
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work → declare → breaks
Those that can’t would lose their tax-exempt status at the beginning of the 2028 fiscal years, which is next Oct. 1.
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which → lose → years
- Sue to block the Democrat-led state compact seeking to end the Electoral College
Republicans have dangerously yawned for more than a decade as left-leaning states have pushed for ratification of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would require states to award electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote rather than the way the Founding Fathers intended in the Constitution.
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Fathers → sue → Constitution
Now that Democrats flipped numerous state legislatures, the GOP’s inaction has put the compact at the brink of being implemented in enough states to give Democrats a long-term blue wall.
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inaction → flip → wall
Many liberal publications declare so after Tuesday’s election.
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publications → declare → election
While Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral College, a corrective measure would hew to the letter and spirit of the Constitution in future races.
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measure → win → races
States that join the NPVIC are committing to assigning their state’s electoral votes in future elections based on a national vote, not the will of the majority of the state’s voters.
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that → join → voters
But the Constitution explicitly declares that "no State shall, without the Consent of Congress [...] enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State.”
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State → declare → State
Congress has never approved states entering into the NPVIC.
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Congress → approve → NPVIC
Voters in states where this has been approved would likely have standing to sue, as would the Justice Department, lawmakers argued in interviews.
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lawmakers → approve → interviews
- Rewire federal education policy with a major elimination, a bloc grant strategy and a protection of parent’s rights and choices
Conservatives have clamored since Jimmy Carter's presidency that the U.S. Education Department is an illegal expansion of federal authority because education was always intended by our Founding Fathers to be a locally controlled policy and not the responsibility of the central federal government.
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education → rewire → government
They’ve yammered plenty but never taken any meaningful action until Trump’s second term and Education Secretary Linda McMahon has achieved considerable agency shrinkage.
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McMahon → yammer → shrinkage
But those cuts can be reversed in the blink of a eye of a future Democrat president.
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cuts → reverse → president
The lame-duck Congress has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver on decades of empty promise.
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Congress → have → promise
Congress in the reconciliation bill could downgrade the Education Department from a Cabinet agency to a federal office and put it inside another agency like Treasury or DOJ.
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Congress → downgrade → Treasury
But it can survive the likely Democrat demagoguery by taking the savings and increasing the amount of federal funds that go to states to help schools.
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that → survive → schools
…and 14 more, not listed.
The Aporia
