{"id":28156,"date":"2026-11-05T08:34:32","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T08:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/11\/05\/a-democratic-controlled-congress-will-likely-try-to-constrain-trumps-foreign-adventures-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T08:34:32","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T08:34:32","slug":"a-democratic-controlled-congress-will-likely-try-to-constrain-trumps-foreign-adventures-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/11\/05\/a-democratic-controlled-congress-will-likely-try-to-constrain-trumps-foreign-adventures-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"A Democratic-controlled Congress will likely try to constrain Trump\u2019s foreign adventures – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

But the president still has veto power, which he can wield to dictate policy over tariffs, the war in Iran or aid for Ukraine
In a rare occurrence, a US election may have actually been decided by foreign policy. Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s war in Iran and international tariffs<\/a> are seen as playing a key role in the inflationary pressures that drove so many Americans to vote against his party on Tuesday in what has been described as a \u201cgenerational wipeout\u201d for the Republicans<\/a>.
And in the coming months, the president is going to face severe headwinds on those policies as Democrats<\/a> storm back into control of Congress, threatening investigations of some of his top envoys and Pentagon contractors, big fights over budgets linked to the Iran war, and greater scrutiny of US relationships with allies such as Israel.
While Democrats plot their strategy, the civil war within the Republican party has already begun. JD Vance was early out of the gate, announcing in a postmortem on X that the Republicans\u2019 shellacking was directly linked to Trump\u2019s decision to strike Iran. \u201cThe reason we lost is the war,\u201d he said. \u201cThe president himself said so last night.\u201d Soon Donald Trump<\/a> Jr was chiming in: \u201cEvery word of this is \ud83d\udcaf\ud83d\udcaf\ud83d\udcaf.\u201d
Trump Sr partly confirmed the vice-president\u2019s analysis, admitting that the war had pushed gasoline prices up. But he added that he believed the Iran war was worth it, and that \u201cwe had to do it, we continue to do it\u201d.
\u201cLong term, it\u2019s the only answer,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.\u201d Seeing little left to lose, he may resume strikes in the upcoming months, seeking to secure his legacy with fewer concerns about voter backlash with the midterms already passed.
Democrats will hold a majority in both houses of Congress, but won\u2019t be able to override a presidential veto to force legislation into law. So the likely battles in the coming months will be focused on finding leverage to constrain the White House \u2013 most clearly through Congress\u2019s control of the budget.
\u201cThe Democrats taking control of both houses gives them unprecedented leverage \u2013 especially using the budget,\u201d said Ryan Crocker, a former career diplomat and diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute, a thinktank. \u201cWe have seen the [Pentagon] request to dramatically increase funding to support the war with Iran come into substantial criticism from Democrats, and I think that will be the first battleground.\u201d
Democrats will have an early opportunity to pressure the Trump administration<\/a> during the lame duck session of Congress in December, when funding for the government through a continuing resolution is set to expire. They could also hold hostage the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, demanding concessions on Iran or limits on Trump\u2019s authority in order to pass the Senate version of the bill that would authorise about $1.15tn in national defense spending for 2027.
One progressive foreign policy thinktank suggested inserting language into the continuing resolution that would prevent Trump from using the money authorised by Congress to fund the war in Iran, as well as in Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza. But shutting down the government could be a \u201ctwo-edged sword\u201d, said Crocker, and Democrats will have to be careful not to overplay their hand.
\u201cAmerican voters were pretty angry in this midterm election \u2013 they were voting against President Trump and his actions and policies as much as they were voting for [Democrats] \u2013 and that means that Democrats will have to be careful how they use this power.\u201d
Democrats had little success in 2019 restraining Trump from unpopular foreign policy decisions like an abrupt withdrawal from Syria that abandoned Kurdish allies or to end his support for the Saudi war in Yemen. When Congress managed to pass a bipartisan resolution that invoked the War Powers Act to end US support for Saudi Arabia in the deadly war, Trump simply vetoed it.
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Even with control of both houses of Congress, it will remain difficult for Democrats to constrain Trump\u2019s power to dictate foreign policy over tariffs, the war in Iran or aid for Ukraine<\/a> such as intelligence sharing, deliveries of desperately needed Patriot interceptors or access to the Starlink satellite internet service.
\u201cIt is worth watching how and where the new Congress chooses to convert its investigative energies into real policy constraints on the executive branch,\u201d wrote Jennifer Hendrixson White, a visiting scholar in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. \u201cCongressional investigations into the Iran war or defense contracts with Trump-linked firms could pressure or embarrass the president, but it is less clear whether a Democratic-controlled House or Senate would be able to convert those investigations into meaningful actions.\u201d
Still, the elections have upended the status quo for foreign policy in both parties, and Trump will increasingly face pressure from his own allies to end the war in Iran. Vance, in his public statement about the elections, prescribed his cure for what is ailing the Republican party: \u201c1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living\/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel.\u201d
That also marks a dangerous moment for Israel, wrote Amit Segal, a political analyst close to the Netanyahu administration, which \u201cnow faces its biggest challenge in Washington since at least the 1975 \u2018reassessment\u2019, when Ford and Kissinger froze arms deals to pressure Jerusalem,\u201d he wrote.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democrat who will be the first sitting Muslim senator next year, illustrated how far US policy has shifted in this election as he praised Trump\u2019s decision to end military aid to Israel at the end of this year. \u201cI think the president is actually right on this policy,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d also like to see us stop selling weaponry that gets used to do the worst things, including genocide and apartheid, to Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But the president still has veto power, which he can wield to dictate policy over tariffs, the war in Iran or aid for UkraineIn a rare occurrence, a US election may have actually been decided by foreign policy. Donald Trump\u2019s war in Iran and international tariffs are seen as playing a key role in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}