Inside Democrats’ oversight playbook for Trump’s final 2 years

After two years operating from the sidelines, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are planning to conduct ambitious investigations into President Trump and his administration if the lower chamber changes hands in next month’s elections.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who’s in line to chair the powerful committee if Democrats win the gavels, is readying a host of probes across a range of topics, including Trump’s ties to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal; changes in vaccine policy under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and the killing of U.S. citizens by federal immigration officers.

Garcia is also promising intense scrutiny of Trump’s personal and family finances, which have grown enormously over the past two years with help from Trump’s official actions from the White House.

“There’s so much to look at,” Garcia told reporters in Washington, just before the preelection recess.

The Oversight probes are by no means the only investigations Democrats are planning next year. Nearly every other committee is also eyeing designs to scrutinize some aspect of Trump’s actions, which have been left virtually unchecked while Republicans have controlled Congress.

But the Oversight Committee will play a leading role in that process. And in the majority, Democrats would have extensive new authorities, including the power of subpoena to seek documents and call witnesses, setting the stage for explosive hearings through the final two years of Trump’s presidency.

Here are the five areas where Oversight Democrats say they’ll focus their attention.

On the campaign trail, Trump had supported the release of all the federal files related to Epstein, the convicted sex offender. But after taking office, the president reversed course amid mounting evidence that his personal ties to Epstein were much closer than previously known.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has released millions of files over the last year, in response to a law mandating that disclosure, and DOJ says it has nothing more to share. But Democrats and Epstein victims say the administration is still shielding the names of other Epstein associates who might have committed crimes with minors but were never charged.

“We are absolutely going to be aggressive,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), an Oversight member, told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo this month. “We are going to enforce our subpoenas. We are going to issue subpoenas to people who have evaded our questions.”

Some of the individuals who have testified before the committee include former President Bill Clinton, former Epstein assistant Sarah Kellen and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Subramanyam noted that most of the interviews were voluntary and not done under oath.

“Some of the witnesses decided not to answer certain questions or hand over certain documents, so we’re only scraping the surface of the investigation that we could be doing,” he said.

Under Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), the Oversight Committee has also sought information from Leon Black, a billionaire investor. In September, the House voted unanimously to hold Black in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena, and Garcia said he’ll keep pressing next year.

“He did not produce what’s been asked for by the subpoena,” Garcia said.

Trump’s personal wealth has soared to $6.6 billion over the last two years, up from $2.4 billion in 2024, according to Forbes .

Much of the gains come from Trump’s meme coin and his family’s broader interests in cryptocurrency, an industry that’s thrived as Trump has relaxed regulations and gutted enforcement by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Trump’s GOP allies say it’s just another example of Trump’s business savvy. But Democrats say it’s open corruption, accusing the president of using his powers to enrich himself.

Their investigations will explore not only Trump’s personal interests, but those of his close associates, his sons and other family members. That includes Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who is serving as a lead negotiator in the effort to end the Russia-Ukraine War. The effort is reportedly poised to benefit a wealthy Trump donor and Middle Eastern businessmen with ties to Kushner and Steve Witkoff, a longtime Trump associate.

“It’s going to be Jared Kushner, it’s going to be the Trump sons,” Garcia said.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a senior member of the Oversight Committee, is also the top Democrat on the special House committee overseeing China policy. He said he’s ready to dive into the details of another deal that led the United Arab Emirates to invest billions of dollars in the crypto enterprise run by the Trump and Witkoff families, which came just as the White House approved the sale of valuable computer chips to the UAE.

“On the China Committee, as ranking member, I will be looking at the Trump family’s crypto corruption that could have led to the export of chips to UAE and we will aggressively ensure that Chinese companies don’t take our auto market and that we protect American farmers, workers, manufacturers, and unions,” Khanna said in a statement. “I will also look at whether there has been pay to play, including allegations of getting waivers or favorable policies regarding China from companies who supported the Trump ballroom or the administration.”

For two years, Democrats have bashed Trump’s health policies under Kennedy, the nation’s most prominent vaccine skeptic and secretary of the Health and Human Services Department (HHS).

Next year, given the chance, they’re vowing to dig deeper into Kennedy’s most controversial decisions, including the purge of a leading immunization advisory board and revisions to vaccine schedules that defy the official recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Democrats suspect that conservative, anti-vax interest groups are driving those decisions, and they’re likely to subpoena any communications between those groups and the administration.

“RFK Jr. is working to destroy our health system in this country,” Garcia said.

From atop the HHS, Kennedy has promoted the idea that vaccines cause autism, a conspiracy theory that has no basis in medical science. He’s championed a vast reduction in funding for the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other subagencies overseeing public health research and outreach. And he also dismissed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing them with a new slate of handpicked panelists, many of whom share his views on vaccines.

The Democratic scrutiny may extend to international health concerns as well. In January, responding to a Trump executive order, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization after 78 years. In doing so, the administration said the group had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that benefited China.

Democrats have been clamoring for an overhaul of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol following the deaths of multiple U.S. citizens and immigrants at the hands of federal immigration officers across the country.

Just this year, the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse and U.S. citizen, by a Border Patrol agent and the death of Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, by an ICE official led Democrats to oppose any new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding until immigration reforms were made, causing the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history.

Republicans ultimately passed ICE and Border Patrol funding through the reconciliation process, which bypasses the Senate filibuster. But Democrats want accountability for those deaths, and they’re likely to demand testimony from those directly involved.

During a press conference Monday, Garcia highlighted the poor conditions of immigrants at ICE detention centers, including reports of people being denied their medications and served inedible food, as well as the deportation of people to countries they’ve never been to.

“We have documented over 1000 instances of credible, verifiable abuse by federal immigration agents, and though that documentation is going to lead our work moving forward, I want to make it very clear that in these upcoming elections, the stakes are high, and one issue is whether we’re going to have checks and balances in our government,” Garcia said.

Garcia added that the Oversight Committee will look into the serious allegations of “pay-to-play by people like Corey Lewandowski and Kristi Noem, where we know that human beings are being used to line the pockets of the wealthiest corporations, private companies, where they make a profit off every person that is being picked up off of our streets.”

Garcia wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in May demanding information on why Noem, the former DHS secretary, was still living in a Coast Guard residence months after Trump ousted her from the role.

House Democrats are seeking to use their oversight powers to scrutinize companies’ pricing practices and their role in driving up costs for consumers.

Garcia had sent a letter to Chris Rogers, the CEO of Instacart, last year requesting documents and information after a Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative, and More Perfect Union investigation found that Instacart used technology that charged shoppers different prices for the same products.

“At a time when families are struggling to put food on the table, it is unconscionable for companies to squeeze even more money out of people, especially if they’re doing so with secretive and predatory algorithms,” Garcia said in a statement at the time.

The issue is expected to draw bipartisan support on the panel.

Comer, for instance, opened an investigation this year into big companies’ use of artificial intelligence to facilitate surveillance pricing, in which companies set individualized prices for consumers based on their personal data.

A Democratic aide said any corporations using “their algorithms making things more expensive” could be subject to investigation next year.

Democrats could also revisit scrutiny of pharmaceutical manufacturers and oil and gas companies, including those involved in the takeover of Venezuela’s petroleum industries. But investigations alone would not ensure that companies suffer penalties. Those decisions would likely be left up to the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department.