Reported by Al Jazeera
Trump has three options to affect legislation, say analysts: veto legislation, enforce executive orders or make deals.
As the United States midterm election results landed late on Tuesday night, United States President Donald Trump took a phone call from the news outlet Politico.
A wave for the Democratic Party had sunk Trump’s Republican Party. For the first time in his two stints as president, Trump’s Republican Party no longer controlled either chamber of Congress.
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But in the phone interview, Trump put on a brave face — and offered an olive branch: He said that he would be willing to work with Democrats .
“They’ve already called, and they want to work with me. I have the right to veto everything, but I don’t want to be just sitting there for two years just vetoing everything,” he said.
While a handful of seats remain to be counted, the Democrats have won comfortable majorities in both the House of Representatives, where they have secured at least 253 seats out of 435, and in the Senate, where they have won at least 54 out of 100.
Trump has since posted a picture on his Truth Social account using the Make America Great Again red baseball hat to read “VETO”. Despite the Democrats’ success, as president, Trump holds broad executive authority, with Article 1, Section 7 of the US Constitution stipulating that the president has the power to reject legislation passed by Congress through a veto.
Congress can override the veto, but would need to have a two-thirds majority, something that the Democrats do not have in either chamber.
But Trump’s comments to Politico underscore an alternate possibility — the president may pick and choose when to veto, and when to work with Democrats.
As it stands, Trump has three options: veto legislation, enforce executive orders or make deals.
Since Trump was inaugurated in January 2025, he has passed 292 executive orders: 67 this year and 225 last year, according to the Federal Register.
But now, according to Andrew Proctor, a lecturer in US politics at University College London, Trump has even less leverage…