If Trump Wins, He Will Have Unified GOP Control

There will be very little to stop him.

In the US, we’re used to federal government paralysis. The founders designed the Constitution with numerous checks and balances—and when you add increasing polarization and partisanship to “numerous checks and balances,” you get gridlock. Presidential candidates make many promises, and they do try to keep them. But they often can’t, because they are blocked by the House, by the filibustering Senate, or by the Supreme Court.

The fact that presidents often can’t enact major portions of their agenda leads to alienation and confusion. It can also lead to complaisance, though. If presidents can’t get much done, why worry about MAGA? Trump says he’s going to deport 30 million people; he says he’s going to raise tariffs to astronomical levels. But we all “know” he won’t be able to actually do most of what he wants. Democrats raising the alarm about catastrophe are just fear mongering, right?

I think that, unfortunately, in this case, Democrats are not just fear mongering. Donald Trump will, if elected, probably be able to fulfill most of his campaign promises and more. That’s because if he wins, Trump will very likely have unified GOP control of government.

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Senate, House, Supreme Court

The GOP, of course, already has a Supreme Court supermajority. Whether or not Trump wins the election, they are also very likely to win the Senate.

In polling, most Democratic Senate candidates in swing states (including in AZ, OH, WI, TX, and PA) are running ahead of Harris. But the Senate map is so bad even massive overperformance probably isn’t going to be enough. Split Ticket gives Republicans a 76% chance to win the Senate. The Economist gives them about a 2 in 3 chance. Those odds go up substantially if Trump wins and a 50/50 tie goes to the Republicans.

Worse, votes for Senate and votes for President swing together. In other words, if Trump wins, that means that Republicans across the board have done well…and that means that close Senate races will probably go to the GOP.

It’s hard to imagine Jon Tester (MT), Sherrod Brown (OH), Dan Osborn (NE), Debby Mucarsel-Powell (FL) or Collin Allred (TX) winning if Trump has a good night. Tammy Baldwin (WI), Elissa Slotkin (MI), and Bob Casey (PA) could also be vulnerable. With West Virginia basically guaranteed to switch, Trump could easily end up with a 54 or 55 margin in the Senate, even before counting JD Vance as a tiebreaker.

At that point, Republicans would almost surely have the votes to dump the filibuster. And they’d have the incentive to do so if they also controlled the House. Which they very likely would.

I think a lot of Democrats have vaguely assumed that the House is in the bag since Democrats almost held it in 2022, a year that was supposed to be a disaster for them.

But the polling is much less confident.  Split Ticket’s House forecast is almost a pure tossup, with Democrats at 52%. 538’s aggregate of generic ballot polls gives Democrats a 1.4 point lead…but thanks to gerrymandering and Democratic vote concentration, Republicans tend to outperform their ballot numbers. A 1.4 point lead for Democrats is basically a tie.

The agenda is bleak

So what would Trump do with a MAGA congress and a MAGA Supreme Court? I think there’d be a major push to ban abortion rights nationwide. Similarly, there’d be the votes, and the will, to make trans healthcare illegal for young people, and probably for people of all ages. Trump could initiate his plans to deport 30 million people with little human rights oversight as he sets up concentration camps.

MAGA would also supercharge voter suppression; some sort of draconian voter ID law intended to disenfranchise as many Black and young people as possible seems likely. There could be national legislation aimed at preventing schools from discussing LGBT issues and Black history. Trump would probably attempt to use the national guard and federal forces to target enemies, including journalists and quite possibly Democratic politicians and officials. There would be little oversight here—not even if Trump started arresting Democratic congresspeople.

You can add in your own nightmare scenarios—the US sending weapons to Russia to help them conquer Ukraine, renewed Muslim bans, child separations, US airstrikes on Gaza and Iran, detainment, torture and deportation of student protestors (citizens or not), a national databank tracking women’s reproductive cycles, Obamacare repeal. Trump and Vance have a whole list of scary ideas and a compliant Republican Congress is unlikely to push back on any of them this time—especially as Trump works with them to end democracy and remove any electoral incentives other than “do what Trump says.”

And as for the Supreme Court—they’ve already said Trump can break the law with impunity. Expect him to take advantage of that.

Project 25 is not the main worry

The mainstream media, and the Democrats, have mostly been focused on the Republican Project 25 plan to flood the civil service with far-right loyalists and remove opposition to Trump within the executive branch. That’s frightening and deserves coverage.

Just as important, though, is the fact that a MAGA win is likely, in this election, to be a MAGA win across the board. The Senate map, and the right-wing hammerlock on the Supreme Court, means that a solid Trump win, or even a narrow Trump win, is likely to give Republicans absolute control of the federal government.

This isn’t a done deal, obviously. If Harris wins, the Democrats are likely to take the House. If she wins in a landslide, Democrats might even hold the Senate. But the Supreme Court will remain in GOP hands. If Democrats lose they are likely to be completely annihilated. If they win, they will at best be able to make indifferent progress against our supreme robed rulers.

This status quo is not sustainable. Democrats cannot save our republic by just winning every election forever. Once in office, they need to be much more serious about using the power they have to disqualify and prosecute election deniers and insurrectionists. They need to strip power from a rogue and illegitimate Supreme Court.

But while winning forever isn’t a viable strategy, winning right now is the only option we’ve got at the moment. The alternative is losing not just the presidency, but the government—and not just for a cycle, but for decades, and quite possibly forever. If you are not voting because you think Trump won’t keep his worst promises, I’d urge you to reconsider. He can keep them, and he will.