Trump froze appropriated funds and expanded tariff authority without Congress

Democrats vow oversight of corruption allegations and the Iran war

Donald Trump had unilaterally frozen and withheld funds appropriated by Congress, ignoring its constitutionally mandated “power of the purse,” and expanded the Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose wide-ranging tariffs on goods from across the world without recourse to Congress, The Guardian reported. Those moves came in a midterm election in which Democrats took control of the US House of Representatives, and the outlet said congressional Republicans had mounted scant opposition to the president even as he encroached on what have traditionally been congressional prerogatives.

Democrats on Capitol Hill had vowed a new era of oversight if they won, with a focus on allegations of corruption against the president and his family and on the Iran war, which the president launched and continues to wage without congressional approval, The Guardian reported.

The Guardian described the election as taking place against the backdrop of Trump’s “vice-like grip” on the Republican party, a grip it said extended to the party’s representatives in Congress. The outlet wrote: “Republicans, by contrast, promised more of the same.” It said what little resistance Trump faced from his own party seemed likely to diminish further after a purge of independent-minded figures in favor of loyalists.

Democrats’ control of the 435-member chamber followed a string of wins in Republican districts across North Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New Jersey that carried the party past the 218 threshold needed for a majority, The Guardian reported. The outlet described the national result as a “blue wave” of opposition to Donald Trump that swept Democratic candidates to victory in congressional districts across the country, and framed it against Trump’s historic unpopularity. Passing the 218 threshold, it said, was the minimum goal in achieving the party’s aim of reining in Trump’s presidential power.

Opinion polls had widely predicted the Democratic retake, The Guardian said, describing the Republican majority as wafer-thin. Democrats went into the election holding 214 seats and needed only a small number of gains to take control from Republicans, who themselves had 218 representatives.

The White House had been bracing for significant losses amid surveys showing public anger over inflation and cost-of-living increases, much of it linked to the war with Iran, which had increased the price of oil, The Guardian reported.

Richard Hudson, the Republican representative who chairs the House Republicans’ campaign arm, was in danger of losing his North Carolina House seat in what would be a stunning upset, The Guardian reported. He narrowly trailed his Democratic challenger on Tuesday evening.

The result was not confined to districts that had not been redrawn. The Guardian said Democrats triumphed in the face of aggressive mid-cycle gerrymandering by Republicans in several states, and that in Florida Democrats had won three of the four districts the GOP redrew in its favor this year and were leading in the fourth.

Two of the races highlighted by The Guardian remained unsettled: Hudson’s North Carolina contest and the fourth Florida district. Even so, Democrats had secured the majority they had sought, and The Guardian said taking that majority was the minimum goal in achieving the party’s aim of reining in Trump’s presidential power — the powers and the promised oversight agenda now before the chamber.