For months, senior White House officials have been drafting a “secret plan” designed to sidestep a Democratic midterm victory and allow President Donald Trump to “continue to pass laws without congressional approval,” The Telegraph reported.
The revelation comes from an unnamed White House official and two insiders who spoke with Reuters on the condition of anonymity, and suggests the Trump administration has long been aware of Republicans’ increasingly dire midterm prospects.
According to the unnamed White House official, White House counsel Will Scharf and his colleagues are exploring “what Trump can legally do on his own, where he could push the limits of his authority and how to defend those decisions in court.” Senior Trump administration officials, including Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, and Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, have been deeply involved in the planning, according to Reuters.
Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of the nonpartisan election analysis outlet Inside Elections, told Reuters that precedent already exists for Trump to advance his agenda without Congress. If Democrats seize Congress on Tuesday, Gonzales warned, Trump would likely lean even harder on those tactics.
“President Trump in the last two years has basically ignored Congress and tried to do as much as possible through executive orders and executive power,” Gonzales told Reuters. “I think he will only continue if there are Democratic majorities.”
Democrats led Republicans by 8.9 points on the generic congressional ballot as of Monday, according to Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin average, Forbes reported. That’s a wave-sized margin for a party that needs to flip just a handful of seats to reclaim the House.
The Senate, long viewed as a tougher climb for Democrats, has slipped into play as well. Democrats led in all seven Senate toss-up races heading into Tuesday, including a double-digit lead in Michigan in the final New York Times/Siena poll.