In virtually every poll conducted this year and at ballot boxes across the nation last week, Americans were abundantly clear what they want from their government. They are worried about affordability, they are tired of the open corruption and profiteering by politicians and corporations, and they want their taxes to be spent on them — not on foreign wars.
In the midterm elections, voters dealt Donald Trump and the Republican Party a punishing blow just two years after elevating the MAGA movement in 2024. The GOP lost control of the House and Senate, five gubernatorial seats — including in Texas, Georgia, and Ohio — and shed swaths of downballot offices.
Democrats are ready to pounce.
The party, fresh off monumental midterm victories that exceeded even their most feverish daydreams, is already planning a wave of oversight actions and accountability measures against members of the Trump administration. House Democrats on the Oversight Committee previously outlined to Rolling Stone their investigative priorities for Trump’s lame-duck years — including, as enumerated by incoming Oversight Chair Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), “Trump family corruption, DHS and ICE, corporate corruption, and a refocus on the administration’s handling of the Epstein Scandal.” The power to subpoena witnesses and shape the federal budget is difficult for Trump to undermine.
Passing legislation is another story, as Democrats will be forced to deal with the power of the presidential veto. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t force Trump to use it.
In a Tuesday speech at the Popular Mandate summit in Washington, D.C., Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — who will soon become the chair of the Senate Banking Committee — laid out her vision for a bold policy agenda, and called on Democrats to “dare” Trump to veto the reforms voters are clamoring for.
“The biggest mistake we could make is to take our foot off the accelerator,” Warren tells Rolling Stone in an interview following her speech. “There are a lot of Republicans and a fair number of corporate Democrats who want to chalk this massive victory up to Trump’s war tariffs and just generally being lousy at running the country, but that isn’t the key part of what made this whole election different.”
Warren explains that Democrats staked their credibility with voters on issues like healthcare reform, tech regulation, the affordability of basic necessities, and a return to worker-centered economic growth. “Democrats in highly competitive elections were loud and front-footed about what’s wrong in the economy and how they specifically will fix it,” she says. “If Democrats then turn around and say thanks for sending us here, we’ll see in a couple years and maybe try to get something done [when we have the presidency], that breaks faith.”
In her speech on Tuesday, Warren outlined a reform platform for Democrats to capitalize on their staggering congressional majorities. “The reconciliation process allows us to pass big chunks of legislation that would improve people’s lives without a single Republican vote,” she said. “Reverse the healthcare cuts the Republicans put in place, expand healthcare coverage, and fund universal childcare — all with a 51-vote majority in the Senate.”
Warren at one point threatened to kill the filibuster if that’s what it would take to make progress.
Warren has supported an end to the president’s war in Iran, and is floating various pieces of legislation to cap credit card interest rates, pass healthcare reform, increase Social Security obligations on billionaires and the ultra-wealthy, and continue building on housing affordability. She also teased reviving her career-long pet project, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Republicans managed to muzzle, she says, but not kill.
It’s an ambitious agenda. Polling has shown that while Democrats made significant gains this election cycle, voters remain wary of the party at large. Already, there are concerns brewing within the party about whether current leadership — including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) — is best equipped to shepherd the party through this critical juncture.
“I don’t have anything on that,” Warren tells Rolling Stone, declining to weigh in on the subject. Several of her colleagues, including Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-Mich.), Sen.-elect Troy Jackson (D-Maine), and Sen.-elect James Talarico (D-Texas), have expressed support for a potential challenge. A faction of Senate Democrats is attempting to convince progressive Sen. Chris Van Hollen to level a challenge against Schumer. On Tuesday, Van Hollen told reporters that if “Schumer and the DSCC had had their way,” several of the newly elected senators in this incoming class would not have made it past their primaries.
Nevertheless, Warren is prepared to use her own position on the Senate Banking Committee to force the Trump administration to answer to the Democrats’ agenda. In July, when Trump refused to sign a rare bipartisan housing bill (eventually passing it via a de facto deadline expiration), the tug-of-war became a retrospective test run for some of the barriers dems may face in the next two years.
For Warren, part of the lesson was not to listen to the people who proposed going to Trump “with a begging bowl that only has two tablespoons’ worth of ideas in it” and hope that “he will be our friend again.”
We said, “The ball’s in your court now, Mr. President. Veto it. Let it go through, but we’re not backing down, and that’s how we got [the bill passed]. If we don’t learn from those lessons, shame on us,” Warren says.
Democrats will only have a few shots at passing major legislation before 2028, or before the shallow graces of cooperative Republicans run dry. Deals will need to be made, and political capital spent. “It may just sound like a basket of random stuff,” she muses. “But every single one of those goes back to the same point: corporate power is out of control, and people are feeling it every day in their lives.”
“They want their government to step in and unrig this system so they have a chance to build some real economic security,” she adds.
From her mouth to the president’s desk.