With Republican losses in the midterm elections looming, the window of opportunity for President Trump to pursue his agenda in Congress may be closing.
That could push Trump into a new phase of his presidency — one that would require him to explore the limits of his executive authority and look outside the U.S. for major achievements.
And if his party does see its House majority eroded, Trump could find himself facing the same kind of fierce congressional opposition that dogged his predecessor after 2010.
“The clock is running out on Trump in terms of getting legislation passed,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist. “If the Republicans don’t hold the House, a lot of the Trump agenda that has to be installed through legislation will be delayed.”
Trump could still make inroads on some of his proposals even without unified GOP control of government, O’Connell noted.
“It doesn’t mean that the entire Trump agenda is stalled because he’s going to have to take a page out of Barack Obama’s book by … seeing what issues, like infrastructure and immigration, that he can accomplish through executive actions,” O’Connell said.
Republicans were already bracing to lose ground in the midterm elections before House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., announced last week that he would not return to Washington for another term.
Many Republicans interpreted Ryan’s move as the clearest indication yet that the GOP will lose its House majority come November, as the speaker’s high-profile retirement was just the latest in a string of departures from Congress that has left dozens of Republican congressional districts open.
Democrats must pick up 24 seats to take back the House, a feat that most political observers agree is eminently doable; the Senate map this year leaves several red-state Democrats vulnerable and is seen as more favorable to the GOP.
Brad Blakeman, a Republican strategist and former senior aide to President George W. Bush, said Congress is unlikely to take up any significant legislation before the midterms, meaning Trump may have to wait until after the election to revisit some of his policy goals.
“It will be difficult to rule by executive orders to accomplish meaningful and sustained change,” Blakeman said. “Also, should Republicans lose a chamber of Congress, [that] will mean congressional investigations aimed at the [president], which will halt any attempt at bipartisan cooperation.”
Former President Barack Obama faced similar dynamics during his first term, when Republicans swept their way to the House majority in the 2010 midterms and quickly began obstructing his legislative agenda. Democrats lost 63 House seats that year in the face of an overwhelming GOP wave that was motivated at least in part by voters’ opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which Obama and congressional Democrats managed to pass in spring 2010.
Obama never again enjoyed majority control of both chambers of Congress, a fact that left him reliant on executive authority to pursue some of his remaining priorities. On issues ranging from the environment to social and labor policies, Obama turned to the regulatory state to provide him with the policy wins an increasingly GOP-controlled Congress denied him.
Perhaps his most controversial exercise of administrative authority came on immigration, where Obama implemented a pair of federal programs aimed at sparing from deportation young, undocumented immigrants and undocumented parents. Courts blocked the latter program, and Trump has moved to undo the former.
Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, said Trump is likely to emulate only some of what Obama did to affect change after his party was relegated to the minority in Congress.
“I’m not sure Trump is wired to do what Obama did,” Reeher said. “Certainly, he won’t be shy about using executive powers — that will be the same — but Obama also used his remaining time, especially in his second term, to exercise the rhetorical presidency.”
But Reeher suggested Trump may not be as suited to use his platform for symbolic or ideological purposes, as Obama did.
“People can debate how much difference that ultimately made, but President Trump, being more fond of Twitter and short, simple critical statements, may not see, or realize, the same opportunity for using the presidency in that way.,” Reeher said.
Trump has enjoyed limited success on Capitol Hill thus far. Although he successfully shepherded a major package of tax cuts through Congress late last year, his efforts to broker a compromise on healthcare reform had collapsed months earlier and his more recent attempt to generate interest in an immigration deal also fell flat.
On the foreign policy front, Trump has found more opportunities to move the needle amid a series of global crises. He won bipartisan accolades for approving a missile strike on Syria last spring in response to its use of chemical weapons on civilians, he embarked on several successful overseas trips, he has begun to challenge China on trade and he is poised to conduct a historic summit with the leader of North Korea by early summer.
If he loses the ability to secure legislative victories after November, Trump may turn his attention more toward his diplomatic and national security agenda, where Congress has little say.
“Going in, foreign policy was a big knock against Trump, but it’s something that he’s handled quite well despite what the media is saying,” O’Connell noted.
Trump’s foreign policy team has undergone tremendous upheaval in recent months, as the president has nominated a new secretary of state and named a new national security adviser.
That could prepare Trump to focus more aggressively on foreign policy should Republican losses largely prevent him from advancing his agenda at home.
“The president has a much stronger hand there with Congress, regardless of party control, and that may be where more of the focus goes,” Reeher said. “Perhaps look for a more sustained effort to forge some trade deals, but the terrain there so far has been rocky.”
