PolicyMarket noteThursday 5 November 2026, 09:53 UTC
Trump is a lame duck president: barred from a third term and facing a Democratic Congress from January. What he can no longer do, and what history says.
Donald Trump is a lame duck president. The 22nd Amendment bars him from a third term, and on 3 November Democrats won both the House and the Senate, CBS News projects. From 3 January 2027, he faces a Congress run by the other party for the last two years of a term that ends on 20 January 2029, 807 days from today. Five presidents since 1945 spent their last two years that way, and their record shows what he keeps and what he loses.
A lame duck is an official whose time in office is running out and whose successor is, or soon will be, chosen. For a president the term is used from the moment he cannot run again. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, says that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”. Trump won in 2016 and 2024, so he has been a lame duck in the strict sense since his second inauguration.
What changed on 3 November is the power behind the label. In his first two years back, Republicans held both chambers, and a president with his own party in charge of Congress can still pass laws. A president facing an opposition Congress mostly cannot. He keeps his veto, and Congress needs two-thirds of both chambers to override it, under Article I of the Constitution. That is rarely reached.
As we reported on 4 November, the Democrats’ win lifted bonds and hit AI shares on the night. Its longer effect on money runs through these limits.
New laws. Bills start in Congress. From January, Democrats decide which ones come to a vote, and Trump’s priorities will need their support. In the Senate most bills also need 60 votes to end debate, so the minority keeps a block of its own.
Money. No dollar leaves the Treasury unless a law provides it, and that is where an opposition Congress has most leverage, as we set out in the power of the purse. The government is funded only “through December 11, 2026”, the White House says. And the debt limit is close: on 3 November the debt subject to it was $40.35tn against a limit of $41.10tn, by the Daily Treasury Statement, $753.8bn of room. Raising it will take Democratic votes.
People. Cabinet members, judges and ambassadors need the Senate’s “Advice and Consent”, under Article II. So do the governors of the Federal Reserve, who are “nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate”, the Fed says. One Fed term begins every two years, on 1 February of even-numbered years; the next starts in 2028, and a Democratic Senate will decide who fills it.
Oversight. The House has “the sole Power of Impeachment”, and a conviction needs two-thirds of the senators present, under Article I. Short of that, House committees can hold hearings, demand documents and call officials. Treaties need two-thirds of the Senate as well.
A great deal. The veto is the strongest tool a lame duck has, because the other side rarely musters two-thirds. Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden vetoed 206 bills, and Congress overrode 18 of them, by the count of the House’s historians.
He also keeps the powers that need no Congress: executive orders, pardons (“Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States”, in Article II), command of the armed forces and the conduct of foreign policy.
And he keeps most of his tariffs. In February the Supreme Court ruled that the emergency-powers law Trump had used does not allow him to impose tariffs. Since July, tariffs of 10% or 12.5% apply to imports from 60 economies under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the Trade Representative’s office says. Customs duties brought in $173.2bn in fiscal 2026, by Treasury’s monthly statement. Ending those tariffs would take a new law, and Trump can veto it.
Five presidents since 1945 served their last two years with the other party in charge of both chambers of Congress. The record of their Congresses is in the Brookings Institution’s Vital Statistics on Congress, the veto counts from the House.
Our reading: the pattern is gridlock, not reversal. Opposition Congresses rarely overturn a lame-duck president; they block his bills and his nominees, and he blocks theirs. The fights move to the deadlines that neither side can skip: spending and the debt limit.
Trump has been here before. In his first term Democrats won the House in 2018, taking it 235 to 199, by the House’s count, and the lame-duck Congress that followed could not agree on funding. Money for seven of the 12 spending bills lapsed on 22 December 2018, and the shutdown lasted 34 full days, into the new Congress, the Congressional Research Service records. In that term Trump vetoed 10 bills, and Congress overrode one.
The new Congress does not sit until 3 January 2027, the date the 20th Amendment sets. Until then the old one, with its Republican majorities, holds a lame duck session, as Congress has after every election since 2000, CRS says. Members who lost on Tuesday still vote.
Its first job is the 11 December funding deadline. The record gives no firm guide: the lame duck sessions from 1994 to 2024 passed 49 of the 184 regular spending bills for their fiscal years, CRS counts, and often left the rest to the new Congress. A full-year bill now would settle funding before the Democrats take over; another short stopgap would hand the fight to them.
This is analysis and opinion, not investment advice.
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EquitiesMarket noteThursday 5 November 2026, 22:29 UTC
Why did the stock market fall? The S&P 500 lost 4.4%, its worst day since April 2025, as AI chip stocks crashed after the Democrats’ sweep. SanDisk fell 22%.
The fall wiped out Wednesday’s gain, the market’s best day in three months, and more. The Nasdaq now stands 11.9% below its record of last month, which puts it in a correction, a fall of more than 10%. Nvidia, down 9.3%, was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500, AP says.
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The lek has not bought so many euros since at least 1995, when Eurostat’s records begin. In September 2026 a euro cost 91.85 lek on average, the lowest monthly figure in those records. In 2019 it cost 123.01. Put the other way round, the lek now buys 33.9% more euros than it did in 2019, and 37.7% more dollars.
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