Tuesday’s sweeping wins will give House and Senate Democrats the opportunity to set an agenda for the next two years and use their committees to take on President Donald Trump.

Though he wasn’t on the ballot, Trump was on voters’ minds and helped generate significant majorities in both chambers. Democrats will have multiple targets over the coming years, but are likely to focus on a few key areas: This is what Democrats ran on. Even affordability was attached to promises of rooting out corruption and holding Trump and his associates to account.

Essentially every committee and subcommittee will use subpoena power to investigate the White House, with two committees leading the charge in the House. Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) will sit atop the Oversight and Judiciary committees respectively.

Garcia gave a strong indication Tuesday night of how the next two years would go with a two-word message: “Lawyer up!”

Raskin and Garcia have already talked with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is poised to become speaker, about their plans to keep Trump’s feet to the fire.

“There’s more than enough corruption and authoritarianism to go around for all of the oversight legislative investigators,” Raskin said. “So it’s just a question of our developing a logical assignment of rules — and there’s certainly overlap — and then we just have to figure out how we want to divide it up.”Beyond Trump’s tariffs, immigration policies, and stock trades, Raskin also said there are plans to dig into the president’s relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats didn’t run promising to impeach the president, but that option isn’t off the table either.

Garcia and Raskin will share the dais with new ranking members, as Oversight’s James Comer (R-Ky.) and Judiciary’s Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) are term-limited; Jordan is also launching a bid to be minority leader.

Democrats will have leverage to push back against Trump’s budget proposals and efforts to withhold appropriated funds.

The Appropriations committees will be led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), two staunch supporters of domestic spending who have rejected Trump’s demand for a $1.5 trillion defense budget. DeLauro’s top priority is reversing cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Democratic appropriators still have to make deals with Republicans to pass government funding bills because they’re subject to the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. Murray will have a new Republican counterpart after current Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) lost her reelection bid. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a fellow moderate, is next in line.

Lawmakers’ biggest post-election task will be reaching a deal to keep the government funded past a Dec. 11 deadline. Many want to pass funding bills to cover the rest of fiscal 2027, but doing so would require them to resolve a dispute over how much money to give the Pentagon.

Democratic appropriators will gain wide latitude to investigate how the administration has been spending money. They plan to regularly call in budget chief Russell Vought, who they’ve accused of defying Congress’ intentions for how money should be spent.

DeLauro and Murray want to add guardrails to funding bills to protect against the administration’s attempts to cut spending. They secured language in September’s stopgap funding law temporarily blocking Vought’s proposal to give political appointees more control over grant money.

Appropriators also want to probe Justice Department efforts to set up a fund to pay victims of government “weaponization,” and examine corporate and individual donations to Trump’s ballroom construction project and foreign government gifts to Trump.

It’s impossible to boil down last night’s drubbing to a single issue, but the Trump-led conflict with Iran was an anchor dragging Republicans down.

The way forward on dealing with the conflict could take several forms — the annual defense authorization and spending bills, investigations and possible impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, or a cavalcade of new war powers resolutions.

The Armed Services panels will be the primary committees to watch. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) is in line to take back the gavel in the House and will work closely with Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

The House panel could create a new oversight team to keep the pressure on the White House’s actions abroad going forward.

The ranking member positions are in flux. Rep. Mike Rogers (Ala.) is term-limited and, in addition to needing a waiver to remain atop the panel, must fend off challenges from Reps. Trent Kelly (Miss.) and Ronny Jackson (Texas).

Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.) is set to return as the top Republican on the Senate side.

Artificial intelligence companies’ warnings about the end of humanity generated a lot of concern at the end of the midterm cycle, but Congress has struggled with how to regulate the technology.

Legislation laying out guardrails is some way off, and Democrats are leaning into investigations of companies and their CEOs to bring the technology to heel.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) will likely swap places with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as chair of Senate Commerce, and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) is looking to supplant Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) as chair of Energy and Commerce, the two panels likely to take the lead on AI legislation.

Some Democrats won swing districts after campaigning to curb AI data center construction and advanced models, but the party remains divided over how to regulate the industry. Suggestions have ranged from freezing development to strict to independent vetting.

Cantwell has pushed for the latter while her more left-wing colleagues emphasize the existential dangers AI poses and prefer to slow its development as much as possible. Lawmakers have also weighed protections for workers who could be displaced by technology.

Millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours went into creating a clear framework for the future of cryptocurrency. But those efforts flamed out when senators and the White House couldn’t agree on ethics language that would have undone Trump’s lucrative personal crypto ventures.

The future of any bill resembling the Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) is murky, with fierce Democratic infighting complicating succession, particularly as Democrats ramp up probes into Trump’s crypto deals.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is the likely chairwoman, but she faces a challenge to her long tenure from Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.).

Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) will slide into the ranking member position after he won a harder-than-expected reelection battle. But crypto’s true challenge will be in the Senate.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is taking over as chair of the Banking Committee and has been an outspoken critic of crypto, especially as it pertains to the president.

She won’t be alone, with Sherrod Brown returning to the chamber after beating Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio). Brown doesn’t retain his seniority, so it’s unlikely he’ll come back with a prime gavel, but he’ll be an influential voice — and carry the distinction of surviving millions of dollars in spending against him by pro-crypto outfits.

— With assistance from Ken Tran, Roxana Tiron, Cristiano Lima-Strong, Kaustuv Basu, Maeve Sheehey and Zach C. Cohen.

To contact the reporters on this story: Max Thornberry in Washington at jthornberry@bloombergindustry.com; Sarah Babbage in Washington at sbabbage@bgov.com