6 things Democrats could investigate if they win in 2026

Sen. Jon Ossoff made an argument last week that has been conspicuously absent from Democrats’ talking points.

Speaking to MSNBC, he cited alleged human rights abuses of people held by the Trump administration in immigration detention.

“There at, some point, is going to be a reckoning for all of this,” said the Georgia Democrat, who’s facing reelection next fall.

Then he got more specific.

“These folks who are working at these private prison companies who are on [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem’s staff right now,” Ossoff added. “They are at some point going to have to testify under oath about what is happening in the facilities that they’re currently running.”

The message: It might seem like anything goes under Trump, but that won’t always be the case.

That’s a talking point that Democrats could apply to a whole host of Trump administration actions that seem to flout the law and that rely upon at least the passive acquiescence of the people involved.

Such a message could be effective in two ways. One is that it could dissuade people from participating in the administration’s legally dicey actions. The other is that it tells voters: If you don’t like what’s happening right now (and there are plenty of things the American people don’t like), vote for Democrats in next year’s midterms so that someone actually investigates.

It seems more likely than not that Democrats will have at least some congressional power to investigate come 2027. The opposition party almost always picks up seats in the midterm. And while the Senate map is tough, Democrats need to flip only a handful of seats to control the House.

So what could Democrats actually investigate? There is certainly a surfeit of targets. But a few stand out.

You don’t have to be an Epstein conspiracy theorist to believe that the administration’s handling of this has been bizarre – and worth probing.

The administration promised extensive disclosure, before suddenly and abruptly reversing course – right around the time, as it happens, that Trump was told his name appeared in the files.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said multiple things about the files (even suggesting she had the so-called client list on her desk) that the administration later disowned.

There’s no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump in connection with Epstein, but his claims about the files and his ties to the late sex offender have been repeatedly shown to be false or misleading.

And then there is the unexplained transfer of Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison facility that she, as a sex offender, doesn’t appear eligible for without a waiver. It’s news that broke shortly after the deputy attorney general interviewed her last month, transcripts of which the administration released last week. But it still hasn’t provided answers for the transfer.

The GOP-controlled House is seeking some answers including issuing subpoenas for files from the Justice Department and Epstein’s estate. But it would likely take Democrats winning power to look more intensely at the Trump administration’s many curious actions, specifically.

Allegations of self-enrichment were the focus of House Republicans’ failed effort to impeach then-President Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 election. And if they won the majority next fall, House Democrats would seem to have plenty more to work with with Trump.

A thorough accounting this month by The New Yorker estimated the Trump family has profited more than $3 billion from his presidencies, through various schemes that in many cases appear designed to capitalize on his position. A Trump Organization spokeswoman told the magazine that it employs an outside ethics adviser to “avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”

Trump has also gotten progressively bolder in blurring the lines on conflicts of interest.

He has increasing intermingled his day job with his personal business interests, including holding a meeting in May with the biggest investors in his personal cryptocurrency business. (Crypto in general poses huge potential conflicts.) His administration accepted a Qatari jet that could become the new Air Force One and that Trump has said will later be transferred to his presidential library, possibly in violation of the Constitution’s “emoluments” clause. (There is also some question about whether Qatar offered it or Trump requested it.)

There are all kinds of threads to pull there.

House Republicans in the last Congress created a select committee on the “weaponization of the federal government.” It was a committee that generally turned up more innuendo about the Biden administration than actual proof of wrongdoing, and it soon petered out.

There will be plenty of pressure on Democrats to do something similar – and more serious.

There are, of course, Trump’s and his administration’s many efforts to legally target his foes. The president and his allies argue that Democrats started this by indicting them. But those efforts were generally a lot more substantiated than Trump’s, indeed, most earned convictions.

Trump and his allies have also been more blatant about their efforts, including by hyping them publicly, ignoring DOJ ethics rules and even admitting their goal is to “shame” people they can’t criminally charge.

But beyond criminal investigations, there are myriad ways in which Trump has thrown his weight around and sought to use the normally apolitical powers of government to target leftists, reward allies and leverage institutions like media companies, universities and major law firms.

The pardons would be pretty old by the time Democrats could get the power to probe them – two full years. And Democrats might not be anxious to keep reliving January 6, 2021, given it will have been six years ago, they already had formed a committee devoted to it, and it didn’t seem to matter much in the 2024 election.

But of the many things Trump has done in his second term, perhaps none has been as unpopular as his January 6 pardons. They were broadly unpopular and hugely unpopular when they involved those who committed violent acts (83% opposed), especially against police. Imagine Trump administration officials being brought up to explain why the president pardoned many dozens of people who assaulted police?

And it’s not just the pardons. There are also the many firings in the Trump administration of prosecutors who merely worked on these cases – without any evidence that they did anything wrong.

This episode – top Trump administration officials sharing highly sensitive materials on an unapproved app – might also seem old by the time Democrats could take over. It will have been nearly two full years. We’re also due to see a Pentagon inspector general report at some point here.

But that report will have been from a relatively brief investigation. And we’ve often seen much more fulsome investigations into high-profile potential mishandling of classified documents (see: Hillary Clinton’s server, Trump taking classified documents after leaving the White House, etc.). And it’s very unlikely the Trump administration itself would ever launch such a probe.

CNN and others have also reported that there’s evidence that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal messages did include classified information, despite his denials.

DOJ whistleblower Erez Reuveni’s allegations that then-top DOJ official Emil Bove floated the Trump administration ignoring court orders didn’t prevent Senate Republicans from confirming Bove to a prestigious appeals court judgeship.

The GOP didn’t seem terribly interested in getting to the bottom of all that – and inflaming Trump.

But the disclosures did highlight the many questions about Trump’s controversial deportation policies the administration has avoided directly answering.

Some of the big questions:

The deportations operations betrayed a certain fast-and-looseness to how the Trump administration has conducted business that courses through many of these actions. And that should give Democrats plenty to work with — and threaten to investigate — if they win power.