The List
The AP ran a story this week on what House Democrats will do if they win the House in November. Hakeem Jeffries says the party will move fast on four things: reinstating the Affordable Care Act tax credits, reversing the Republican Medicaid cuts, holding votes against the Iran war, and undoing Trump’s tariffs. A fifth runs alongside them: sweeping investigations of Trump, his family, and his administration.
They plan to launch it in the first 100 hours.
In January I asked Do Democrats Really Have the Midterms in the Bag? and argued a Democratic House could investigate and not much else. Now the leadership has published its list.
Count how many of those promises a House majority can actually deliver.
One.
And even that one has limits, at least until 2029.
What This Piece Is Not Claiming
This is not a claim that the agenda is bad policy. It is not a claim that Democrats shouldn’t win, or a prediction that they will. It’s arithmetic: which of these promises can the office they’re running for actually deliver?
The Arithmetic
A bill becomes law when it passes the House, clears the Senate, and gets the president’s signature. Without the signature, it needs two-thirds of both chambers to override the veto.
A House majority supplies the first step. Nothing else.
The Senate needs 60 votes for most legislation. Democrats would need a net gain of four seats just to hold the gavel, and no plausible outcome gets them to 60. No plausible outcome gets anyone to two-thirds.
The AP gets around to this in its last few paragraphs. Trump has the final say, with a veto pen.
The Scorecard
Reinstate ACA tax credits. Needs a new law: the Senate plus Trump’s signature. Deliverable: No.
Reverse Medicaid cuts. Needs a new law: the Senate plus Trump’s signature. Deliverable: No.
Undo the tariffs. Needs a new law: the Senate plus Trump’s signature. Deliverable: No.
Vote against the Iran war. Needs a House floor vote. Deliverable: No. The vote happens; the war goes on.
Investigate Trump. Needs committee gavels and subpoenas. Deliverable: Yes, with limits.
The tariffs are the odd case, because the courts already did most of the undoing anyone is going to get. The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs on February 20, 2026. The Section 122 replacement expired on July 24. What’s left rests on Section 232 and Section 301, standing authority Congress handed the president decades ago. Taking it back is a new law. New laws need his signature.
That’s the ratchet nobody mentions. Congress needed only a simple majority and a president’s signature to give the president tariff power. Taking it back takes two-thirds, because the president it’s taken from holds the veto.
The ACA credits have already been tried the hard way. In the fall 2025 shutdown, the longest in history, Senate Democrats held out for them. They got a promise of a vote. On December 11 it failed 51-48. Four Republicans crossed over, and it was still nine short of 60. The credits expired on December 31.
Iran: A Roll Call, Not an Exit
Read the Iran line closely. The healthcare promises use verbs like reinstate and reverse. The Iran promise, as the AP describes it, is holding votes against the war. The agenda isn’t promising to end it. It’s promising a roll call.
That’s the honest version, and I’ve already covered why. In Does Winning Congress Give Democrats an Iran-War Off Switch?, the problem was money: the Pentagon can cover most of this war out of existing appropriations, so the power of the purse is aimed at nothing. In What Does Iran Think Will Happen If Democrats Win the Midterms?, the problem was incentive: Democrats want credit for opposing the war, not responsibility for ending it.
There’s a precedent for a war powers resolution that actually reaches Trump’s desk. In 2020 a Democratic House and a Republican Senate both passed Tim Kaine’s Iran resolution. Trump vetoed it. The Senate override failed 49-44, far short of two-thirds.
The One They Can Deliver
Investigations. Committee chairs get gavels, and gavels come with subpoenas. Jeffries already has the ranking Democrats on Oversight and Judiciary preparing them. That promise is real.
But a subpoena is only as good as its enforcement, and enforcement runs through the Justice Department being investigated, or through courts that take years.
Criminal contempt goes to the Justice Department. In 2019 the House voted 230-198 to hold Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt. Trump’s DOJ declined to prosecute, citing its standing policy of not charging officials who withhold information under a presidential privilege claim. Obama’s DOJ had done the same for Eric Holder. The recent prosecutions, of Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, happened because the other party’s DOJ took the referrals.
The civil route is slower. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed White House counsel Don McGahn in 2019. He testified after nearly two years of litigation, behind closed doors, on a narrowed scope. By then Trump was out of office.
So: hearings, yes. Witnesses who want to show up, yes. Testimony and documents the White House wants withheld, maybe sometime after 2028.
And If They Win the Senate Too?
Then the bills reach Trump’s desk instead of dying in the Senate, and he vetoes them himself. That’s a better campaign ad, not a law. Reconciliation gets around the filibuster, not the veto.
A Senate majority does buy something real: control over nominations, meaning judges, cabinet replacements, and possibly a Supreme Court seat. That’s genuine leverage.
It’s also not on the list.
Where This Could Break
The funding fight. Government funding has to pass the House. A Democratic majority can refuse to fund the government without the ACA credits attached. If Democrats hold both chambers, the shutdown becomes Trump vetoing a funding bill rather than Democrats blocking one, and the blame moves. That is the one real path to any promise on this list. But Trump treats shutdowns as leverage, and 2025 showed how a shutdown over these credits ended.
Trump signs something. He could put his name on a renamed health credit or a tariff deal. Then a promise gets kept, but it’s his.
Veto-proof defections. An override takes 290 House votes and 67 Senate votes. Nothing in the last two years suggests either exists for anything Trump opposes.
A Democratic president in 2029. This is where all of it starts to matter. The record the investigations build doesn’t expire with Trump’s term. It becomes material a Democratic Justice Department can act on, the way Bannon and Navarro were prosecuted only once the other party held the DOJ. The bills the House passes become a ready-made agenda for a president who would sign them. None of that keeps a promise in 2027. It banks one for 2029, assuming Democrats win it. They’ve lost two of the last three.
The First 100 Hours
Here is what will actually happen in those 100 hours. The House will pass bills. That part of the promise is true.
Then the bills go to the Senate, and to a president with a pen.
Five promises. One they can deliver. And that one comes with an asterisk.
Sources: AP: House Democrats plan a first 100-days agenda · CRS: Active Presidential Tariff Actions in 2026 · NPR: Senate ACA votes fail, Dec 11, 2025 · Roll Call: Senate fails to override Iran veto, 2020 · Fox News: DOJ declines Barr/Ross prosecution · NPR: McGahn agrees to testify after two years