President Donald Trump listens to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, September 28, 2026.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
President Donald Trump is expected to face a wave of investigations when Democrats take control of Congress in January. His high-profile energy negotiations are likely to become a priority.
Democrats have been pressuring the White House for months over the legality of its intervention in Venezuela’s oil sector and its cancellation of renewable energy projects funded by the Biden administration. They have raised conflict of interest concerns regarding many transactions in the mining sector.
But until now, the opposition party could do little more than send strongly worded letters to administration officials. When the next Congress convenes in January, Democrats will exercise the subpoena power that comes with oversight of committees, giving them the power to demand testimony and disclosure of documents.
In the next Congress, the House Energy and Commerce Committee intends to pursue an aggressive oversight program to root out corruption, Rep. Frank Pallone, the New Jersey Democrat who will likely chair the committee, said in a statement.
With comfortable majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats will likely pass a war powers resolution demanding an end to the conflict, which has led to rising fuel prices in the United States and around the world.
1. Iranian War
Crude oil prices fell sharply on Wednesday as the market expected the election defeat to push Trump to strike a deal with Iran. Vice President JD Vance directly blamed the Republican defeat on the war, raising the question of whether there is support within the administration for continuing the conflict.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who will likely take over as House speaker in January, said Wednesday that Democrats would “end this reckless and costly war of choice that has sent gasoline prices skyrocketing across the country.”
The new Congress will try to rein in the administration by passing legislation to end the conflict, said Rep. Ted Lieu, vice chairman of the Democratic caucus. Jeffries said Democrats would pass a war powers resolution, although Trump would almost certainly veto it. It’s unclear whether Democrats will also try to restrict war funding.
Still, falling crude prices could push gasoline below $4 a gallon next week and diesel below $6 by Thanksgiving, Patrick De Haan, head of oil analysis at GasBuddy, said in a social media post Wednesday.
But the odds remain favorable for military escalation in the Middle East, warned Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy and former energy adviser to President George W. Bush.
“Iran is hardened in its intransigent stance,” McNally said. “Trump, who has now paid a huge price for his determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, is unlikely to abandon this legacy goal and walk away.”
2. Venezuelan oil
Democratic lawmakers have pressured the Trump administration for months to provide Congress with an accounting of how Venezuela’s oil revenues were spent — to no avail.
Washington took control of Venezuela’s oil exports in January after toppling former President Nicolás Maduro in a military raid. The Pentagon has taken a stake in an obscure oil company, North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, intended to develop Venezuela’s oil reserves. The deal is supposed to give the United States control of 65 billion barrels of oil.
Tankers are docked and loaded at the Bajo Grande oil terminal on Lake Maracaibo in San Francisco, Zulia state, Venezuela, September 1, 2026. Sea loading operations continued following the announcement of a 25-year bilateral agreement regarding Venezuelan oil reserves signed during the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Jose Isaac Bula | Anadolu | Getty Images
In January, Democratic members of the House of Representatives warned the oil industry that reaching a deal with the United States on Venezuelan oil could expose the industry to “legal risks, including civil liability from creditors who hold nearly $200 billion in debt to Venezuela and their various state-owned entities.”
Democratic senators then sent a letter in September to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright questioning the legal basis of the agreement between the U.S. government and NABEP.
Energy industry analysts warned when the NABEP deal was announced in August that it might not survive if Democrats took power in Washington.
3. Critical Minerals Deals
Democrats have also raised conflict of interest concerns over the Trump administration’s series of deals in the critical minerals sector.
The White House has justified the deals, which often involve government stakes in private companies, as necessary to support a segment of the mining industry critical to U.S. national security and that has been undermined by Chinese competitors.
But Democratic senators pointed to Cantor Fitzgerald’s involvement in a number of those deals as a cause for concern. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick led Cantor before joining the Trump administration. He personally divested himself of Cantor after joining the Cabinet and turned control over to his sons.
Democratic senators demanded in a July letter that the federal government preserve all records related to transactions involving 14 companies.
For his part, the Commerce Secretary rejected these allegations. “If the Democrats send me letters, I will respond to those letters, but it doesn’t matter, since when you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t worry and you don’t worry about it,” Lutnick told CNBC in a September interview.
“You just answer their stupid questions and move on,” Lutnick said. “It’s a waste of time trying to create something that doesn’t exist.”
Others are less cavalier. Rare Earth from the United Statesone of the companies named in the senators’ letter, warned investors that its deal making the U.S. government one of its shareholders had little precedent.
As a result, the company could face litigation, political scrutiny and a shift in federal priorities, it said in a March filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
4. Canceled energy projects
The Trump administration has favored fossil fuels and has waged a relentless campaign against renewable energy, particularly wind power, since taking office.
Dominion Energy wind turbines located 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach in the Atlantic Ocean, July 17, 2023.
Kendall Warner | Virginian Pilot | Getty Images
Democrats are unlikely to restore the tax credits phased out by Trump’s tax bill due to the president’s veto. But they are certain to pressure the administration over the nearly $8 billion in energy projects it has canceled in states that supported Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Congress the projects were not canceled for political reasons. Several House Democrats have accused Wright of giving false testimony, an allegation the Energy Department has denied.
Democrats are also scrutinizing the administration’s efforts to eliminate offshore wind power in the United States. The Interior Ministry has attempted to buy out the leases of several such projects, e.g. TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to cancel an offshore wind project and stop investing in similar projects in the United States in the future. Total has agreed to invest in natural gas.
Reps. Jared Huffman and Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrats on the Natural Resources and Judiciary committees, respectively, called the deal with TotalEnergies illegal and opened an investigation in April.
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