Democrats Plan to Un-Trump America After 2028 – Can They Pull It Off?

Donald Trump said it himself during the 2016 election cycle: A presidency that lives by the pen and the phone dies by the pen and the phone. And he has issued more executive orders than any other president since Jimmy Carter – even surpassing his own first-term totals just one year into his second. Democrats are looking to return the favor in 2028, and some left-wing lawmakers are already working on legislation to curtail presidential power moving forward.

But every modern president has expanded the executive power at the expense of Congress – Republican and Democrat alike. If the White House turns blue again after 2028, will Democrats really limit their own guy’s reach? Perhaps more to the point, will they even be able to?

Democrats Have a Plan

The midterms are upon us, and Election Day is now less than a month away. But congressional Democrats are already looking to 2029 and beyond to undo whatever President Trump has accomplished or manages to accomplish by the end of 2028. The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, told The Washington Post he thinks Trump’s use of presidential power can and should be reversed, but that it will take decades to do so.

“We have a massive reconstruction task ahead of us,” Raskin explained. “Fortunately, reconstruction has a great history in our country, and when it’s allowed to work, it has been a lot more successful than either authoritarianism or revolution.” “We will have to go department by department, subject by subject, and public purpose by public purpose to determine what we salvage and what we re-create,” he added.

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Raskin and other House Democrats have already written – and, in some cases, even introduced – bills to claw back some of the power modern presidents (especially Trump) have taken from Congress. One would block presidents from entering financial settlements with their own government, inspired by the Trump-IRS settlement earlier this year. Some limit the presidential power to declare emergencies or establish tariffs. One would enforce the prohibition on presidents from receiving payments or gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval, and another aims to require a public review for any renovations to the White House.

Each of these examples draws from events in Trump’s second term, but as codified federal laws, should they pass, they would limit the powers of all presidents moving forward – well, in theory, anyway.

Presidential Power and the Congressional Conundrum

There are a few problems with the plan Democrats are working on now. First, and perhaps the most obvious: No bill they introduce right now has a chance of becoming law any time soon. Even if Democrats retake both chambers of Congress after the midterms – and/or even if a handful of Republicans sign on to push them into the majority – President Trump is almost certain to simply veto them. Once Congress passes a bill and a president vetoes it, to force it through, both chambers of Congress must hold yet another vote and pass it by a two-thirds majority. It’s not impossible, but it’s certainly a tall order – especially so long as the president’s party holds the majority.

But Trump isn’t the only one likely to resist such action. Whoever wins the White House in 2028 – Democrat or Republican – will probably want the same power or more that his or her predecessors had. Many presidents from both parties – from Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump, and including both Roosevelts, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and several others in between – have used executive orders and emergencies to grow the power of the executive branch. Where were all those authorities held previously? Congress, mostly.

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Then there’s the question of will. Should Democrats bring a trifecta of power to Washington in 2029, will they really want to limit the power of their own chosen one in the big chair, or will they suddenly find that executive overreach isn’t such a bad thing after all?

Finally, there is the question of whether any president in the future will obey the law or simply ignore it. Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all bypassed Congress's power to declare war.. What makes any of the initiatives congressional Democrats are working on now any different?

Live by the Pen, Die by the Pen

In January of 1993, a newly minted President Bill Clinton began issuing executive orders to overturn or modify several Reagan- and George H.W. Bush-era policies. George W. Bush did the same against Clinton’s policies in 2001. And the trend continued. Supporters of Barack Obama called the younger Bush’s reign an imperial presidency. Obama went into office and revoked or changed many of those policies – then went on to have what can only be described as an imperial presidency of his own. In 2014, he famously declared he had a pen and a phone.

"We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we're providing Americans the kind of help that they need," Obama told reporters before a Cabinet meeting on January 14, 2014. "I've got a pen and I've got a phone - and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions…"

Then came Trump. “Live by the pen, die by the pen” became a common expression, and sure enough, Number 45 landed in the White House with his feet already running. He issued more than a dozen actions in his first week aimed at rolling back Obama’s legacy.

When Joe Biden took office in 2021, he did the same – and, of course, when Trump returned in 2025, he did as well. Jumping immediately on erasing a predecessor’s legacy is a time-honored tradition in the White House, and it isn’t likely to end any time soon. But what power congressional Democrats really have – or are really willing to apply against even their own guy in the Oval Office – seems quite limited indeed. Will they really take back the power gradually assumed by the executive over the years? Probably not – but they’ll certainly make a lot of noise about it.