--- title: "House Democrats ready a season of subpoenas should they take the chamber in November" description: "Jeffries, Raskin and the committee leaders-in-waiting have drawn their lists, and impeachment is not ruled out" author: "Arthur Wren" published: 2026-09-26T20:48:34.549Z modified: 2026-09-26T21:03:30Z url: https://rews.cc/a/house-democrats-ready-a-season-of-subpoenas-should-they-take-774c8e language: en tags: ["politics", "trump", "impeachment", "congress", "oversight", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # House Democrats ready a season of subpoenas should they take the chamber in November *Jeffries, Raskin and the committee leaders-in-waiting have drawn their lists, and impeachment is not ruled out* By Arthur Wren · September 26, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/house-democrats-ready-a-season-of-subpoenas-should-they-take-774c8e ## In brief - House Democrats are preparing a wide oversight agenda for after the midterms, should they win the chamber, the AP reports - Hakeem Jeffries, in line for speaker, vows to “hold the crooks accountable” over alleged corruption - Planned probes cover Trump family wealth, ICE operations, the Kennedy Center closing and USAID’s dismantling - Impeachment is not ruled out; Cabinet members are seen as likelier targets, and GOP Rep. Massie has filed against Hegseth - Democrats expect the White House to resist subpoenas and are weighing how to enforce their powers The Democratic Party has written its shopping list. If the November elections hand the House of Representatives back to them, its leaders intend to spend the next two years doing the thing the present House has declined to do: look closely at how President Donald Trump, his family and his administration have conducted themselves, and compel answers when answers are not volunteered. According to The Associated Press, the plan reaches across several committees and is already half-built. A majority brings bigger budgets, more staff, and the two tools that give congressional oversight its bite — the power to investigate and the power to subpoena. The stated object is what Democrats describe as widespread corruption and abuse of power. Impeachment, of the president himself or of members of his Cabinet, remains on the table. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader who would become speaker if his party wins the chamber, was plain about the purpose. “There is a cost to the American people of the out-of-control corruption,” he said. “If folks have been stealing from the American people, shortchanging the American people or screwing over the American people, we are going to hold the crooks accountable.” The word “corruption” covers a great deal of ground here, and the Democrats have been mapping it for months. The questions raised in their almost daily letters to the administration, and in court filings, now form what amounts to a road map for the inquiries to come. They want to know about the money: the wealth of Trump and his family, which has grown dramatically since he returned to the White House in January 2025. They are examining possible civil rights violations — Americans killed protesting operations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and detained immigrants shipped off to distant countries. They have contested the closing of the Kennedy Center, opened investigations into the private money behind the America at 250 celebrations, and followed the dismantling of federal bodies, among them the U.S. Agency for International Development. Fresh items keep arriving on the pile. The latest, according to the AP’s account, is the Trump family’s acknowledgment that a weekend wedding party for Donald Trump Jr. was paid for in part by a Russian oligarch reportedly close to the Kremlin. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who would take the chair of the Judiciary Committee, called the scale of it “gargantuan.” > We need to zero in quickly on the forms of systemic corruption that have cost the public huge amounts of money, and where there are legislative cures available. ## The third impeachment question Trump was impeached twice in his first term, the first president to suffer that distinction, and acquitted twice by the Senate. A third impeachment, the AP notes, may not carry the weight it once did, and the likelier targets are members of the Cabinet. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth already faces articles of impeachment from within the president’s own party — filed by Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky over his leadership at the Pentagon and his management of the Iran war. Jeffries will face pressure from his party’s left wing to move fast against the president himself. For now he keeps his options open in the manner of a man who has thought about the question. “We haven’t ruled anything out,” he said of the tools at Congress’s disposal, “and we haven’t ruled anything in.” The White House, for its part, is expected to fight. Democrats are bracing for an administration that ignores subpoenas or simply declines to hand over the papers demanded of it — which would leave Congress holding its powers and arguing about whether it may use them. The inquiry lists also reach past the administration itself, into corporations and business entities suspected of wrongdoing. ## What the chairmen-in-waiting intend The ranking Democrats who would take over the committees have begun to say aloud what they would do with the gavels. Representative Robert Garcia of California, the senior Democrat on Oversight and Government Reform, has named five priorities: the Trump family’s business dealings, the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, and ICE operations among them. He also points to the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and to broader allegations of corporate corruption. “We’re already doing work,” Garcia told the AP. Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on Foreign Affairs, plans to investigate Trump’s dealings abroad, including around the Iran war. His committee would also examine the Venezuela operations — the military strikes on what the administration calls drug boats in Caribbean and Pacific waters, and the American partnership with a private company to develop and reach that country’s oil. Representative Jared Huffman of California, of the Natural Resources Committee, has started digging into what he calls Trump’s “vanity projects” — the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make room for a ballroom, and the president’s proposed arch — as well as the Trump family’s role in various minerals deals. At that committee’s last sitting before the House recessed to campaign, Huffman said that if Democrats take charge he will call witnesses, swear them in, and go where the evidence points. His answer, when people ask what a Democratic majority would do, is short: “We’ll use those tools. We’ll act like the Congress.” All of this waits on November. If the voters keep the House in Republican hands, the lists stay in the drawer. If not, the capital can expect two years of subpoenas, and an executive branch that has already signaled it does not intend to answer them quietly.