House Democrats are not wasting any time telling America what they plan to do with their new majority.
And their first moves amount to a direct effort to unwind some of President Donald Trump’s biggest policies on health care, tariffs, and the war with Iran.
According to The Associated Press, incoming House leaders are preparing early votes to boost Medicaid funding and restore the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits that expired under the Republican-controlled Congress. They also intend to push measures aimed at ending the Iran war and reversing Trump’s tariffs.
The House majority is expected to exceed 250 seats in the 435-member chamber, giving Democratic leaders plenty of room to pass bills even if some members defect. Their much harder problem will be moving those bills through a closely divided Senate and past President Trump’s veto pen.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries put it plainly: “We’re going to get out of the gate fast.”
That is a remarkable agenda. Democrats are framing it as an affordability package, but it also sets up an immediate showdown with the White House over some of the defining choices of Trump’s second term.
Jeffries’ own letter to the incoming Democratic caucus lays out the first-100-days plan in even clearer terms. He says Democrats must reverse Medicaid cuts, restore SNAP funding, extend the ACA tax credits, eliminate Trump’s tariffs, and stop what he calls the “war of choice” in Iran.
He is organizing the domestic side of that agenda around five working groups focused on housing, health care, groceries and goods, gas and utilities, and caregiving. Jeffries also promises an accountability push aimed at Trump administration spending and possible conflicts of interest, while saying Democrats will seek bipartisan ground where they can find it.
The agenda reaches far beyond one campaign message. It combines bread-and-butter benefit expansions with direct attempts to constrain Trump’s power on trade and war, all under an affordability banner Democrats believe helped return them to the majority.
The Medicaid fight alone will be enormous. Fresh data from KFF’s Medicaid enrollment tracker shows Medicaid and CHIP enrollment fell by about 5.1 million people, or 7%, between July 2025 and July 2026.
The tracker counted approximately 72.9 million enrollees in July 2026, including 65.7 million people in Medicaid and 7.2 million in CHIP. It also reports that total enrollment declined in 49 states and the District of Columbia over that one-year period.
Those are preliminary figures, and enrollment remains slightly above its pre-pandemic level. Still, Democrats will point to the broad decline as evidence that Congress needs to reverse course before new work and reporting requirements take effect in 2027.
But winning the House is not the same thing as controlling Washington.
Even with a large majority, Democrats will still face the Senate’s 60-vote threshold on most legislation and a president who can veto bills that reach his desk. Trump has already made his posture clear by posting an image of himself wearing a hat emblazoned with one word: “VETO.”
That means some of these early votes may be designed as much to force Republicans to take public positions as to produce immediate law. A House vote to revive ACA subsidies could put pressure on senators from competitive states.
A vote on Iran could reopen the constitutional fight over Congress’ war powers. And tariff legislation would test whether Republicans are willing to limit a president from their own party.
Democrats may have won the right to set the House agenda, but Trump still holds the veto pen. The opening months of the new Congress now look set to become a very public test of which side can turn its campaign promises into results.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
