Discourse that allows us to express a wide range of ideas, opinions, and analysis that can be used as an opportunity to critically examine and observe what our experience means to us beyond the given social/cultural contexts and norms that are provided us.
Watch live as Democrat Scott Colom speaks after defeating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested U.S. Senate race. Colom will be Mississippi’s first Black senator since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era
Mississippi Senate upset: Scott Colom's full victory speech
Scott Colom said his Senate campaign started with a prayer. Paying homage to the historical figures who came before him — the first Black senator in the country, Hiram Revels, civil rights icons Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer — Colom said he had to have faith to keep campaigning when others didn’t believe in him. In celebrating his win, Colom was clear to point out, “it’s not something that I did, y’all. It’s something that we did. All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this.”
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Scott Colom on what started his Senate campaign
Watch live as Democrat Scott Colom speaks after defeating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested U.S. Senate race. Colom will be Mississippi’s first Black senator since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era
Mississippi Senate upset: Scott Colom's full victory speech
Scott Colom said his Senate campaign started with a prayer. Paying homage to the historical figures who came before him — the first Black senator in the country, Hiram Revels, civil rights icons Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer — Colom said he had to have faith to keep campaigning when others didn’t believe in him. In celebrating his win, Colom was clear to point out, “it’s not something that I did, y’all. It’s something that we did. All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this.” CHAPTERS:
0:00 Scott Colom on what started his Senate campaign
5:28 "God didn't want us to get it the easy way" 14:48 Colom's message to Mississippians as he heads to Washington
Angie Nixon on Democratic Racism, and That $5,000 Check | The Joy Reid Show
She won Black voters, flipped Latino voters back, and still got left out. A candidate breaks down what it’s like to be ignored by the party she was fighting for.
Joy-Ann Lomena Reid (AKA Joy Reid) is a best-selling American author, political journalist and TV host. She was a national correspondent for MSNBC and is best known for hosting the Emmy-nominated, NAACP Award-winning political commentary and analysis show, The ReidOut, from 2020 to 2025.
Her previous anchoring credits include The Reid Report (2014–2015) and AM Joy (2016–2020).
Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested Senate race. U.S. Senator-Elect Colom celebrates a win as the state’s first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.
She won Black voters, flipped Latino voters back, and still got left out. A candidate breaks down what it’s like to be ignored by the party she was fighting for.
Joy-Ann Lomena Reid (AKA Joy Reid) is a best-selling American author, political journalist and TV host. She was a national correspondent for MSNBC and is best known for hosting the Emmy-nominated, NAACP Award-winning political commentary and analysis show, The ReidOut, from 2020 to 2025.
Her previous anchoring credits include The Reid Report (2014–2015) and AM Joy (2016–2020).
Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested Senate race. U.S. Senator-Elect Colom celebrates a win as the state’s first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.
Van Hollen Says He Will Challenge Schumer for Senate Majority Leader
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has emerged as a favorite of Democrats seeking an alternative to Senator Chuck Schumer, who says he has the votes to win.
Listen · 7:15 minutes
Chris Van Hollen had emerged as the favorite to challenge Chuck Schumer for the post and had expressed increasing willingness to do so in recent days. Credit: Daniele Volpe for The New York Times
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland announced on Thursday that he would challenge Senator Chuck Schumer of New York for majority leader, setting up a clash among Democrats just as they were celebrating their new majority and planning for a takeover of Congress in January.
The move by Mr. Van Hollen, a progressive Democrat elected to the Senate in 2016 after seven terms in the House representing the Washington, D.C., suburbs, comes as some Democratic senators and activists have called for an alternative to Mr. Schumer, a moderate whom they regard as too tied to the party establishment to lead a newly energized party forward in the next Congress.
Making his announcement in an interview on MS Now on Thursday evening, Mr. Van Hollen said his challenge to Mr. Schumer was “not about any one individual.” Instead, he said, it was to ensure that Democrats answered “the call of the American people” in the midterm elections, which he said was to “bring down costs” and end the war against Iran.
He said he had spoken to a large number of Democratic senators, including the incoming members, and did not believe that Mr. Schumer had a lock on the race, saying he had “more than 10” of the 55 Democratic senators and senators-elect behind him.
“Am I the underdog?” he said. “Yes.”
Mr. Van Hollen, who is also said to be weighing a run for president in 2028, had emerged as the favorite to challenge Mr. Schumer for the post and had expressed increasing willingness to do so in recent days.
On Thursday night, Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, who during his campaign called on Mr. Van Hollen to seek the post, greeted his announcement enthusiastically, saying he was “proud” to endorse him as majority leader.
“Last week, Michiganders rejected the failed status quo and the politics that too often leaves families behind,” Mr. El-Sayed said in a statement. “But we need to earn our mandate. That demands new leadership.”
Senate Democrats are scheduled to vote behind closed doors on Dec. 1 to determine who will be their leader when their party takes the Senate majority on Jan. 4.
In a statement, Mr. Schumer said that he welcomed “a discussion about the future of our caucus and the important work ahead,” but had enough commitments of support from Senate Democrats to be re-elected as leader.
“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together — 55 seats and counting is an amazing result,” he said, adding: “I look forward to leading our new Democratic majority and delivering for the American people.”
Mr. Schumer oversaw the Senate Democratic campaign effort that has flipped at least eight seats, with the Democrat Scott Colom on Wednesday called as the winner in the Mississippi Senate race. The Alaska Senate race result has not been called, but the Democrat Mary Peltola is slightly ahead there.
Despite that success, some in the ranks of Senate Democrats have called for a broad discussion of party leadership going forward and a debate over the agenda the party should pursue.
Other Democrats say that the leadership fight is distracting from the stunning victory Democrats recorded on Nov. 3 and hurting their preparation for January.
“We were at 47-53 and now we are at 55, 56,” said Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania and a strong supporter of Mr. Schumer. He added: “I don’t understand why that’s a conversation.”
On Thursday night, Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said he welcomed a conversation “about the path ahead,” but urged his colleagues not to draw out that process. He endorsed Mr. Schumer, whom he credited with leading the party to victory.
“We must move quickly to vote, unify, and get to work,” Mr. Schatz said.
Senator Angus King of Maine, the other independent who caucuses with Democrats, also threw his support behind Mr. Schumer in a statement, crediting him with engineering a historically successful election result.
“Chuck has outlined an aggressive plan for the new Democratic majority, which is directly responsive to the message we heard from the voters, and he has the experience and unique mastery of the Senate process to make it happen,” Mr. King said. “Why would you fire the manager when you just won the World Series?”
Mr. Van Hollen, 67, is the child of a diplomat and was elected to the House in 2002 after entering the race as an underdog in a very competitive primary while serving in the Maryland legislature.
In the House, he became a close ally to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a leading voice on budget issues. In 2008, he led the House campaign effort as Democrats expanded their majority when Barack Obama was elected president and also led the campaign team in 2010.
Mr. Van Hollen was seen as a potential future speaker in the House, but that prospect had seemed far off given Ms. Pelosi’s hold on the office. When Barbara Mikulski of Baltimore was set to retire from the Senate in 2016, he sought her seat and won. Given his experience, Senate Democrats immediately put him in charge of their campaign organization.
In the Senate, Mr. Van Hollen has focused on budget issues and foreign policy. He has been an outspoken proponent of cutting off money for the war against Iran.
On Thursday, he said Democrats’ Senate campaign arm should not take any funding from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group that many progressives have shunned in recent years.
Progressive activists have urged that Mr. Schumer, 75, face a challenge to remaining in the position. Donors and organizations including MoveOn, Indivisible and the Working Families Party are likely to back and mobilize members on behalf of Mr. Van Hollen, according to a person familiar with progressive groups’ strategy who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity. Some of the donors plan to threaten to back primary challenges against any Democratic senator running for re-election in 2028 who does not come out in support of him, the person said.
Mr. Schumer and his allies have been adamant that he has more than enough votes to hold the position. But secret ballot leadership votes can be unpredictable. Some senators have refrained from going public with their support to avoid coming under pressure from those urging that Mr. Schumer be deposed.
“Circumstances change,” Mr. Van Hollen said. “It is one thing to have someone’s support when you’re the only choice. I think a little democracy in the Senate Democratic Caucus is a good thing.”
Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
G.O.P. Leaders: Divided House Republicans elected Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio to be their leader, elevating a pugilistic firebrand who has been a close ally of President Trump. Senate Republicans re-elected Senator John Thune of South Dakota, their current leader.
Chuck Schumer: Opposition to the senator’s return as Democratic party leader burst into the open as Senator Bernie Sanders said he would not support him and other Democrats questioned whether he should remain at the top after their huge wins in the midterms.
Top Democrat Vows Oversight of C.I.A.’s Use of Covert Action
Representative Jim Himes, who will run the powerful intelligence committee in the new Congress, said he also planned to scrutinize contractor donations to President Trump’s construction projects.
Listen· 6:46 minutes
PHOTO: Representative Jim Himes’s agenda underscores how Democrats hope to use their commanding majorities in the House and Senate to act as a check on executive power. Credit: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
The reporters cover intelligence matters and are based in Washington.
November 11, 2026 New York Times
The incoming Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is promising to scrutinize the C.I.A.’s “extremely aggressive” use of covert actions since President Trump returned to office, part of a broader effort to conduct renewed oversight of American spy agencies next year.
In an interview with The New York Times, the lawmaker, Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, outlined his priorities after the new Democratic Congress is sworn in. His committee, he added, will also examine donations to Mr. Trump’s various construction projects in Washington from defense and intelligence contractors, and investigate whether intelligence analysts have been pressured to write reports that align with the objectives of senior officials in the Trump administration.
Mr. Himes’s agenda underscores how Democrats hope to use their commanding majorities in the House and Senate to act as a check on executive power after the Republican-led Congress largely abdicated that role over the past two years. Democratic leaders have indicated that they intend to investigate a wide range of matters, like the president’s cryptocurrency windfall while in office or the activities of his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Mr. Himes is likely to encounter resistance from the administration on all three of his priorities. Will Scharf, the White House counsel, has asserted that aggressive oversight by Democratic lawmakers “may cross the line into blatant criminality.”
But no matter may prove more difficult to scrutinize than the use of covert action — the secretive orders that require presidential authorization and allow for the sort of cloak-and-dagger operations that often capture the imagination of Hollywood studios and public fascination. They can include lethal missions or paramilitary deployments aimed at influencing conditions in a foreign country.
Mr. Himes said he considered it a core responsibility of his committee to review the expansion of covert actions under the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe.
Last year, Mr. Trump took the unusual step of publicly acknowledging that he had authorized covert action in Venezuela, allowing the C.I.A. to operate there clandestinely. The agency secretly installed a team in Venezuela to collect information months before the U.S. raid in January that captured Nicolás Maduro, and used a drone strike on a dock that American officials believed was being used by a gang to store narcotics in the days before the Maduro operation.
Mr. Himes said the expansion of the use of covert action was not limited to Venezuela.
“Covert action has become much more aggressive worldwide, and the committee would be massively failing at its job if it didn’t double down on oversight,” Mr. Himes said in the interview. “I don’t want the tone to be wrong here. I’ve spent a lot of time in weird places with the people who do covert action, and they absolutely want to do the right thing, and they have been very open to oversight. But it is nonetheless a very serious enterprise.”
White House findings that authorize covert action are closely guarded secrets. They are often reauthorized from administration to administration, and their precise language is rarely made public. They also constitute one of the rawest uses of executive authority. While a president can assign other agencies with a covert action, typically the C.I.A. leads such operations.
Select members of Congress, including Mr. Himes, are briefed on the authorizations, but lawmakers cannot make them public, meaning oversight of such actions is difficult. Any hearings or briefings the committee does that focus on the agency’s covert operations would almost certainly be behind closed doors.
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The C.I.A. declined to comment on Mr. Himes’s intentions.
Mr. Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman, promised that the C.I.A. under his leadership would become more aggressive. During his confirmation hearing last year, he pledged to make the spy agency less averse to risk and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president, “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”
Mr. Himes said he would also probe what prompted intelligence and defense contractors to donate millions of dollars to what he called Mr. Trump’s “vanity projects” around the District of Columbia, including the White House ballroom and a planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch.
“We’ll want to understand if they were promised anything,” Mr. Himes said. “We’ll want to understand if they were threatened.” He added that the committee could issue subpoenas to companies of interest and hold public hearings on the issue — rare for the intelligence panel.
Mr. Himes said that his worries about interference in the intelligence reports produced by spy agency analysts were most acute when Tulsi Gabbard served as the director of national intelligence, but that he continued to have concerns about political pressure across intelligence agencies. Ms. Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, resigned from her post in June.
“We’ve had some real erosion of analytic integrity inside the I.C.,” Mr. Himes said, referring to the intelligence community. He contrasted Ms. Gabbard, whom he referred to as the “dauphin of MAGA,” with her successor, Jay Clayton, or Mr. Ratcliffe. “John and I may cross swords from time to time,” Mr. Himes said, “but it is my impression that he is, inasmuch as he can, standing up for the work force.”
Ms. Gabbard declined to comment. But Alexa Henning, Ms. Gabbard’s former chief of staff, defended the former director’s work.
“The president was overwhelmingly re-elected with a mandate to root out corruption and restore trust in our government agencies,” Ms. Henning said. “That’s exactly what we did at O.D.N.I. It’s no surprise Democrats are trying to reverse that.”
Ms. Gabbard stepped down after her husband was diagnosed with bone cancer. During her tenure, she had increasingly been sidelined by the White House on significant national-security issues, including military operations in Iran and Venezuela.
Mr. Himes said the intelligence community would take time to recover from the last two years in which “storied patriots” were fired for writing reports that disagreed with the president. “Unfortunately, there’s a long list of those people.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Dustin Volz writes about cybersecurity and intelligence for The Times. He is based in Washington.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
Alina Habba Mildon: The Office of Attorney Ethics in New Jersey recommended that Mildon, the former top federal prosecutor in the state, be disciplined for her role in settling a sexual harassment complaint brought years ago by a waitress at President Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Mildon, one of Trump’s former lawyers, was fired by the family company that gave her a $50 million contract weeks before the president granted a pardon to the family’s patriarch.
Trump on ‘60 Minutes’: In his first interview since the midterm elections, President Trump said he believes that his aggressive immigration policies may have hurt Republicans, acknowledging that his approach was “too tough.”
A Murky Future After the Midterms: As Americans absorb a stunning new political reality, they face a gap between the time they effectively decided to be done with President Trump and the time he is actually done.
Trump Trots Out His Chaotic Greatest Hits to a Weary Public
As he braces for Democrats to assume legislative control in Washington, President Trump has sought to take back center stage with some discordant maneuvers.
Listen ·7:15 minutes
President Trump during an impromptu press briefing at the White House on Monday. Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
Coping with loss looks different for everyone, and President Trump has processed the country’s nearly wholesale rejection of the Republican Party in the midterm elections in his own way.
In other words, this is all unfolding exactly as expected. The news has been bad, and Mr. Trump knows it. Cue the mayhem.
“We were having a very bad press day,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday about why he suggested on social media that the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship should turn the briefing room into his personal octagon. “I said, you know, I think I’m going to get Dana White to be my new press secretary.”
Mr. Trump loves to change an unflattering headline by whipping out a diversion. But his usual tricks seem particularly discordant in the face of the urgent challenges facing the White House. There is an effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, wars in Ukraine and Iran that the president promised to resolve months or years ago, and an incoming Congress whose Democratic majority is hungry to hold administration officials to account.
But so far, Mr. Trump’s answer to the pressure has been to take an unserious approach to some of the most serious topics. In recent days, he has left the country guessing what he may do, what he may say, or even when he may show up in public.
His advisers say the president thrives on chaos. The problem is that the public may not.
“We always talk about Donald Trump as the executive producer in chief,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist. “TV shows sort of run out of steam before they get to season six. That’s a big part of where voters are. They’re just exhausted.”
This extends to Mr. Trump repeating his baseless claims about election fraud. “It’s just not a credible argument, to the point that nobody’s paying attention,” Mr. Heye added.
Indeed, after the president on Monday revived claims that the midterm vote had been manipulated, the conservative commentator Megyn Kelly had a two-word retort: “Just stop.”
Beni Rae Harmony, a White House spokeswoman, defended the president’s focus and productivity.
“President Trump never stops working, and his momentum has only increased in the past week,” she said in a statement, adding that he had held seven policy meetings, met with the Qatari prime minister and signed several bills into law, including one that designated a museum in Missouri as a national historic landmark and one that changes the bankruptcy threshold for small businesses.
One adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the environment in the White House, called this moment a “natural transition phase.”
This is a sanguine descriptor, given the abrupt departure of Susie Wiles, the chief of staff Mr. Trump replaced with Stephen Miller, a hard-line loyalist who has driven many of the policies voters rejected last week. A Republican fratricide has also been playing out on social media, where current and former Trump officials have spent the past several days blaming each other for the midterm failures, trading accusations of corruption and grift, and threatening lawsuits.
It is the Republican version of the scene in the 2004 movie “Mean Girls,” in which the main antagonist makes public a book full of private insults, unleashing bedlam inside a high school.
After spending a weekend at Mar-a-Lago golfing and delivering impromptu remarks at a conservative gathering on his property, Mr. Trump sought to distract from the bad headlines and the mounting congressional support for the impeachment of his defense secretary. On Monday, he startled reporters with an appearance in the White House briefing room.
Mr. Trump riffed about his gambit of offering the press secretary gig to Mr. White, who accompanied him to greet reporters, and then began fielding questions of national and international import.
Asked about the admission by Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, of an affair with a Chinese businesswoman U.S. officials concluded was an intelligence operative for Beijing, the president seemed unconcerned, saying he bought Mr. Huang’s explanation.
“He said, ‘I had no idea that she was a spy,’ and I really believe him,” Mr. Trump said.
The president also discussed the death toll in the Russia-Ukraine war, framing his assessment of the carnage in terms he understood: crowd sizes.
“I just think that Ukraine and Russia are tired of fighting. They’re tired of seeing dead young soldiers, mostly soldiers. Most of the people are soldiers. Think of it. They’re losing 25,000 — Dana, can you imagine 25,000? That’s like a stadium, Madison Square Garden. You have your fights, 25,000. That’s what it holds, and they’re losing that every single month, dead, young beautiful people, and it’s — it’s got to stop.”
The fun and games continued later on Monday when Mr. Trump called into the premiere of a C-SPAN show. A woman could be heard giggling in the background as the president’s call connected. The call was not on the president’s public schedule, but the cable network later said it had invited the president to join.
For eight minutes, Mimi Geerges, the host of the program, tried to press Mr. Trump about news he had made in several other interviews since the midterm elections. What about that immigration deal he had suggested he could strike with Democrats? What about amnesty for some migrant workers, as he had suggested on “60 Minutes” over the weekend?
His responses were not clarifying.
“Frankly, a big problem we had is the mental institutions being dumped into our country. Some very dangerous people were released into our country, to put it mildly. So we have not put the same, uh, pressure, obviously, and, you know, the, uh, we call them the worst of the worst,” Mr. Trump said, by way of an answer. “We haven’t put the same pressure on waitresses and, and on farm workers, et cetera. Not even close.”
Natural transition phase or not, many Republicans are worried that the White House will not be able to deliver on the request made by voters last week, which was to get serious about addressing economic concerns, an unchecked war and accusations of rampant corruption among those in Mr. Trump’s orbit.
The best-case scenario, said the G.O.P. strategist Whit Ayres, would be if the administration followed through “on Trump’s initial instinct to do something with the Democrats who are going to be running the place shortly.”
But, he added, “I think the chances of that happening are somewhere between slim and none.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.
G.O.P. Leaders in Congress: Divided House Republicans elected Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio to be their leader, elevating a pugilistic firebrand who has been a close ally of President Trump. Senate Republicans re-elected Senator John Thune of South Dakota, their current leader.
Ted Cruz’s controversial attack on Abdul El-Sayed sparked a political firestorm, but El-Sayed had a response that quickly turned the insult back on his critics. Appearing on The View, El-Sayed addressed the attacks he faced from Donald Trump, JD Vance, Ted Cruz, and other Republican figures. From questioning his faith and patriotism to making inflammatory accusations, his opponents repeatedly focused on his identity rather than the issues affecting ordinary Americans. But El-Sayed wasn't interested in playing that game. He challenged Republicans to explain why Americans are struggling with rising living costs, expensive groceries, and access to affordable healthcare. He also delivered a memorable response to Trump's demand for a special metal detector, turning the moment into another challenge directed at the president.
During the conversation, El-Sayed discussed why Democrats gained support, the frustrations facing working families, and the growing divide between people who feel excluded from American politics and those who benefit from keeping them out. One of the most revealing moments came when Sara Haines questioned him about his delayed apology following the attack on Temple Israel. Rather than avoiding the criticism, El-Sayed acknowledged his mistake and explained why he should have shown greater compassion to those who were hurting.
The discussion also raised an important question about how America responds to individuals from different religious backgrounds and whether people are judged by their own actions or unfairly treated as representatives of an entire community. And finally, El-Sayed delivered a message to Donald Trump that made his victory speech even more memorable. Watch the full breakdown of Abdul El-Sayed's appearance on The View, the controversy surrounding his campaign, and the political exchanges that made this moment so significant. Which attack crossed the line: Ted Cruz's "jihadist leprechaun" remark or Trump's special metal detector demand? Share your thoughts in the comments.
White House Threatens Congress, Saying Aggressive Investigations Could Be Crime
As Democrats prepared to begin oversight inquiries, it was not clear what legal basis could support the threat. The Constitution grants lawmakers immunity for legislative acts.
Listen · 8:51 minutes
PHOTO: Will Scharf, the White House counsel, above, and Representative Robert Garcia, below, Democrat of California. Haiyun Jiang & Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Reporting from Washington November 11, 2026 New York Times
The White House’s top lawyer has warned the Democrat in line to lead the House’s chief investigative committee that aggressive oversight of the Trump administration “may cross the line into blatant criminality,” a threat that experts called legally dubious.
In a three-page letter to Representative Robert Garcia of California, the incoming chairman of the Oversight Committee, the White House counsel, Will Scharf, said Democrats had “evinced a clear intent to transgress” constitutional limits on congressional investigations. He predicted that their inquiries would be used “to harass and aggrandize, rather than to advance any legitimate legislative end.”
The warning from the White House was dated Monday, a day after Attorney General Todd Blanche said on CNN that members of Congress had “done nothing but threaten everything that’s happening in this administration.”
“That is not governing, that is not leading, that is not oversight,” Mr. Blanche said. He, like Mr. Scharf, once represented Mr. Trump as a defense lawyer.
Taken together, their statements signal that Mr. Trump’s administration is likely to follow the playbook his first administration used after Democrats took the House in 2019. Then, Mr. Trump vowed to fight “all” subpoenas, his administration routinely refused to comply and the disputes ended up in court.
But the threat of launching criminal investigations goes even further than the stance he took in his first term. It indicates how far Mr. Trump is willing to push the Justice Department to try to protect the White House from legislative investigations.
In a statement, Mr. Garcia dismissed the letter, which his office said it had not received as of Wednesday morning. Arguing that Congress has broad authority to conduct investigations, Mr. Garcia suggested Mr. Trump had “something to hide” and accused the White House of threatening legislators.
“The Trump administration continues to weaponize the government with threats of unconstitutional attacks on Congress,” he said. “We are a coequal branch of government and will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized D.O.J. or from the president’s lawyers.”
Punchbowl News first reported the letter, which was later shared by the White House.
Peter M. Shane, who teaches public law at the New York University School of Law and is an author of a separation-of-powers casebook, criticized Mr. Scharf’s threat as legally baseless. “Our Constitution protects legislators from the threat of criminal prosecution while performing official duties as an essential bulwark to repel executive overreach and defend checks and balances,” he said.
He continued: “Congressional oversight and the issuance of subpoenas by definition cannot be the focus of legitimate criminal prosecution. It may be that an occasional subpoena may be quashed as outside the committee’s jurisdiction or for some other reason, but that is not a criminal offense.”
The portion of Mr. Scharf’s letter raising the prospect of criminality cited no precedent.
“Beyond being inconsistent with the clear, well-recognized constitutional limitations on your investigative functions, threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service, or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality,” the White House counsel wrote. “And issuing unlawful subpoenas with the intention of depriving citizens of their constitutional rights and privileges may warrant further investigation.”
Mr. Scharf’s reference to depriving people of constitutional rights and privileges appeared to be a reference to a statute that makes that a crime. It is generally invoked in the context of people who abuse coercive law enforcement power, like police officers and prison guards.
Mr. Scharf, a 2011 graduate of Harvard Law School, did not address how any attempt to investigate aggressive congressional oversight as a crime could square with the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution, which shields lawmakers from being subpoenaed or prosecuted by the executive branch over their legislative acts.
On Wednesday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic minority leader who is in line to be the next House speaker, dismissed the White House threat.
“A Democratic Congress is going to be a check and balance on an out-of-control executive branch in the face of unprecedented corruption that they’ve unleashed on the American people,” he told reporters. “And if they don’t like it, consult the Constitution.”
Much of his letter rests on legal principles courts have used to separate legitimate congressional subpoenas from ones that can be quashed: Congress may compel testimony and documents tied to a valid legislative purpose, like weighing whether new laws are needed or whether there is a basis on which to impeach an official, but not merely to harass people or invade privacy for the sake of exposure.
The first Trump administration made the same argument against congressional subpoenas, including one seeking Mr. Trump’s financial records after he had violated the norm that candidates for president release their tax returns. He said Democrats were just trying to harass him and score political points, while lawmakers maintained they had a valid legislative purpose because they were weighing whether to enact a law requiring such disclosures.
The Supreme Court set clearer limits on subpoenas for a president’s personal records, sending the case back down for further consideration and narrowing the files Congress ultimately received in a 2022 settlement. In the meantime, the litigation also helped Mr. Trump run out the clock on disclosures before the 2020 election.
Mr. Scharf’s letter follows more than a year of efforts by the Trump administration to prosecute officials who have investigated the president. For much of his second term, prosecutors in South Florida have pursued a sprawling inquiry, called the “grand conspiracy” investigation by Mr. Trump’s allies. It is examining whether former F.B.I. and intelligence officials who investigated Mr. Trump over the past decade conspired to violate his constitutional rights. But, so far, that effort has not succeeded in establishing a basis for an indictment against former officials, and several Trump loyalists who worked on the inquiry recently resigned.
Much of Mr. Scharf’s letter is a catalog of Democrats’ post-election social media posts and commentary. As election results came in last week, Mr. Garcia issued a terse statement warning Trump administration officials and others to “lawyer up.” Since the election, Democrats have promised to pass out subpoenas “like candy” or “Mardi Gras beads,” and one representative-elect said he wanted to watch Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “squirm.”
Mr. Trump has made threatening to prosecute his personal and political adversaries a hallmark of his rhetoric since his 2016 campaign, when his rallies featured “Lock her up!” chants about Hillary Clinton. In his second presidency, he has openly challenged the principle that the Justice Department and F.B.I. should make criminal investigation and charging decisions independent of White House political direction, and courts have repeatedly suppressed subpoenas and thrown out charges based on findings that they lacked a legitimate basis.
Congress has long taken an expansive view of its own investigatory authority, with lawmakers arguing that they cannot legislate properly without being able to seek information. Historically, members have asserted their right to investigate nearly any area where Congress has the power to pass legislation or appropriate funds.
The party out of power often campaigns for the midterm elections on a promise to investigate the president and his allies. When Republicans narrowly won control of the House in 2022, scores of lawmakers vowed to investigate President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s family members and their businesses, particularly his son Hunter. That year, Republican candidates across the country also campaigned on a promise to investigate Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, then the country’s top medical adviser on the coronavirus, including at least one who vowed to prosecute him. Once in office, they followed through on many of those threats.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
Jonathan Swan is a White House reporter for The Times, covering the administration of Donald J. Trump. Contact him securely on Signal: @jonathan.941
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
G.O.P. Leaders in Congress: Divided House Republicans elected Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio to be their leader, elevating a pugilistic firebrand who has been a close ally of President Trump. Senate Republicans re-elected Senator John Thune of South Dakota, their current leader.
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)
"There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. "
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society."
"A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization."
Nina Simone (1933-2003)
"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."
Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)
"Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children ....Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories..." .
Angela Davis (b. 1944)
"The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
“Jazz is the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom of musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz simply means the freedom to have many forms.”
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” --August 3, 1857
Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
“Musical categories don’t mean anything unless we talk about the actual specific acts that people go through to make music, how one speaks, dances, dresses, moves, thinks, makes love...all these things. We begin with a sound and then say, what is the function of that sound, what is determining the procedures of that sound? Then we can talk about how it motivates or regenerates itself, and that’s where we have tradition.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
"Strong people don't need strong leaders"
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
"The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
"I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good."
Miles Davis (1926-1991)
"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."
C.L.R. James (1901-1989)
"All development takes place by means of self-movement, not organization by external forces. It is within the organism itself (i.e. within the society) that there must be realized new motives, new possibilities."
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"Now, political education means opening minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence as [Aime] Cesaire said, it is 'to invent souls.' To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them."
Edward Said (1935-2003)
“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for."
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. There must be pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
