Tech is about to get hammered in Congress

Tech CEO hearings. Tougher AI and data center guardrails. Investigations of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. The gates are open for Democrats once they regain control of committee gavels come January after a historic win of majorities in both the House and Senate on Tuesday. “LAWYER UP,” the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee wrote on X in a message aimed at the Trump administration as well as “corporate corruption” shortly after networks like NBC News projected Democratic control of the House. “Subpoenas,” Senate Finance Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR) posted. It’s clear tech executives will also be caught in Democrats’ crosshairs. “They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) posted in response to a comment that asked, “Live televised trials of Big Tech executives when?” Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and an Oversight member, made clear that AI companies are well within his sights. “AI company CEOs should be called to testify under oath,” he said in a statement. “The revolt against data centers was one of the top issues of the 2026 election, and in a few years we will look back on it as just the early tremor of a much bigger AI earthquake upending American politics.” Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the clearinghouse for tech policy issues ranging from digital privacy to kids online safety to AI, pledged to advance policies that “protect consumers and the environment, prioritize clean energy, and rein in Big Tech.” Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna said taxing billionaires should be among Democrats’ top goals. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called to “PAUSE AI NOW.” Democrats have already used their position in the minority to signal what would be at the top of their committee agendas. House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD), for example, held a “shadow” hearing earlier this year after the Trump administration’s Justice Department settled its Live Nation-Ticketmaster antitrust trial, which state attorneys general who continued to litigate went on to win. At the time, Raskin told reporters that it was important to get a head start on administration oversight. “The corruption permeates the administration so much that we have to start building the record because it’s such an overwhelming task,” he said. “We will be using the products of all of these shadow hearings to figure out where to go.” More recently, Raskin demanded information from Amazon, Google, Meta, and Oracle about nondisclosure agreements for public officials considering data center proposals. Democrats are also itching to investigate Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk over all manner of issues. Musk spent record-breaking amounts trying to elect Republicans this cycle and held an unprecedented role in the second Trump administration as the public face of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), responsible for slashing federal jobs and eliminating the country’s soft diplomacy arm, USAID. Powerful Democratic lawmakers recently told Politico they’re eyeing issues like Musk’s role in DOGE, his alleged conflicts of interest, and his role in reportedly disrupting Starlink service to Ukraine. Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-CA), a lawmaker from Silicon Valley who just won reelection, says while he’s all for probing things like DOGE, he also doesn’t want his party to get lost in endless calls for tech CEOs to testify without significant legislating to back it up. “I think what is imperative for Democrats is to come to the table with solutions, not with slogans. Not with a lot of performative ranting, but actual solutions,” Liccardo tells The Verge in an interview. With full control of Congress by a significant margin, Democrats may be able to push forward legislation that would have otherwise been difficult to pass under current Republican leadership. They will still likely run into vetoes by President Donald Trump over things like more heavy-handed AI safeguards that the president has resisted. TD Cowen’s Washington Research Group wrote in a note Wednesday that it still firmly believes Trump “will veto any AI safety bill passed by Congress that would slow the AI model releases cycle.” The group also anticipates that Democrats will take another stab at tech antitrust legislation, which has been more or less on hold for years, but suspects those efforts will either stop short of a floor vote or get vetoed. Liccardo thinks AI safety rules should be at the top of Democrats’ tech agenda, followed closely by data centers and AI’s impact on jobs. Despite Trump’s aversion to many AI safeguards, he says Congress may be able to get Trump’s signature if they can muster enough bipartisan support. “Pushing Trump out of the way requires that we show strength,” Liccardo says. “We saw that in the past with, for example, the Epstein files.” When some Republicans broke away from him, Liccardo says, Trump realized “that he had to get out of the way of the train because he was not going to stop it.” Trump told The New York Times on election night he’d at least aim to work with Democrats, which could indicate a potential path for measures with a broad coalition of bipartisan support. The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), for example, passed overwhelmingly in the Senate in 2024, but was blocked by Republican leadership in the House. While Trump has not endorsed the Kids Online Safety Act, which was cosponsored by his ally Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), it’s conceivable it could pass the House if given the floor time, and Trump could consider signing it should it pass both chambers. “Big Tech’s lawless disregard for our children and our communities will be among my top priorities this Congress,” KOSA cosponsor Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in a statement. “Whether it’s the industry trading kids’ lives for greater profits or its wealthiest leaders trying to buy influence from a corrupt Trump Administration, Big Tech’s reign of impunity must come to an end. Frankly, this issue has always been bipartisan, and I’m hopeful that I’ll have strong partners on both sides of the aisle as we pursue a strong oversight agenda.” Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) says Democrats should pass bills like those he’s introduced to make app stores responsible for imposing age requirements and keep kids under 16 off of social media to give parents back a sense of control. “Democrats should give voice to parents who feel powerless against social media corporations that treat their children like free labor for the dopamine economy,” he says in a statement. Data center developers are also likely to hit obstacles and have to slow their breakneck pace. “For tech investors the big focus is will these mid-term elections slow the pace of the planned 800 to 1,000 datacenters across the US fueling the AI Revolution…the answer in our view is a clear YES,” Yorkville Ives analysts wrote in a note on Wednesday. “There is no way to sugarcoat that Democrats taking control especially over the Senate will create some major hurdles for AI and tech legislation in the Beltway over the next 2 years. While Trump will likely veto any major draconian AI safety or regulatory laws, this will force the tech industry (Big Tech CEOs) to the negotiating table to try to come up with compromises around legislation in Congress surrounding AI related legislation.” Center-left tech policy coalition Chamber of Progress is already warning Democrats not to “confuse an anti-Trump wave with an anti-tech mandate,” with CEO Adam Kovacevich saying that Democratic governor candidates who opposed data center bans won at higher rates than supporters. Liccardo says “it’s not a secret that data centers poll about as well as measles, mumps, and rubella, but I don’t think that’s what suddenly drove the midterms.” He hopes to leverage the data center buildout to make developers pay for needed investments in the energy grid. One company that could get a slightly warmer welcome in Congress may be Anthropic, which notably stood up to the Trump administration when the Pentagon demanded it agree to let it use Anthropic’s AI for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The company is still likely to face many of the same questions and skepticism about its AI safety proposals as other leading AI companies, but its positioning over the past several months may help differentiate it from peers. Democrats’ recent messaging has promised a Big Tech and AI crackdown. Between 2020 and 2024, the party spent about $2 million to run six political ads that referenced keywords relating to the tech industry, according to public policy group Reset Tech; between 2025 and 2026, they ran 387, spending more than $100 million to do so. If the results from Tuesday are any indication, the rewards for following through with that message could be high.