Democrats are charting their political future and warning they will use their oversight powers against the Trump administration after seizing control of Congress with sweeping midterm election wins. The party's rising figures and its rivals will fan out across the Sunday talk shows this weekend.
Additional races were called in Democrats' favor this week in Mississippi and Colorado. The Alaska Senate race remained uncalled as of Saturday afternoon, but new ballot counts showed Democrat Mary Peltola nearly four points ahead of incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan.
Sen.-elect Scott Colom, who will be the first Black senator from Mississippi since 1881, is set to appear on NBC News's "Meet the Press" and CNN's "State of the Union" following his historic victory.
The party is already grappling with internal divisions over who will lead it in the 120th Congress. In the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is working to overcome pushback from a growing coalition of Democratic lawmakers to his majority leader bid. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) entered the contest Thursday with backing from progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-Mich.). The leadership vote is a closed-door process set for after the new Congress is sworn in in January. Van Hollen will appear on CNN's "State of the Union," "Fox News Sunday" and ABC's "This Week."
The House leadership race arrives sooner, with the election scheduled for next week. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is widely expected to succeed in his bid to become the next House speaker. New York Rep.-elect Cait Conley, who has voiced support for Jeffries, will appear on "This Week" on Sunday morning.
Republicans, meanwhile, are strategizing for life in the minority in both chambers. House Republicans elected Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as minority leader on Tuesday, upsetting outgoing Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). Jordan is booked on Fox News's "Sunday Morning Futures" to discuss the party's path forward, while outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) will join CBS's "Face the Nation" to talk about what he hopes the GOP can accomplish in the lame duck session.
House Democrats also stumbled this week over attendance at a floor vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Eleven Democrats missed the vote, handing Republicans the numbers they needed to table the measure. Outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) had introduced eight impeachment articles against the Pentagon chief on Monday. Democrats have vowed to revive the effort in the next Congress, and Rep.-elect JoAnna Mendoza (D-Ariz.) told CNN's Laura Coates she would "100 percent" vote to impeach the secretary. "I mean, he has blood on his hands," she said, referring to the ongoing Iran war. Mendoza is scheduled to join "This Week" on Sunday.
Democrats are also pledging to investigate the Trump administration and corporate giants once they take control in January. After Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned this week amid an affair scandal involving an alleged Chinese spy, the top Democrats on the House and Senate trade committees asked the Commerce Department on Thursday to preserve records on President Trump's decision last year to greenlight Nvidia's sale of its powerful H200 chips to China. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the lawmakers raised concerns that the department had failed to engage in "basic due diligence." Axios reported last week that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pressed Lutnick over Commerce's omission of Nvidia customer Megaspeed from its list of companies posing national security concerns; Alice Huang, the alleged spy with whom Huang admitted having an affair, was a Megaspeed employee. Bessent will appear on "Sunday Morning Futures," while Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Jim Himes (D-Conn.) will discuss the national security implications on "Face the Nation."
Democrats are also vowing investigations into SpaceX's Elon Musk after Ukraine reported a slowdown in the company's Starlink satellite services in mid-October. The services were ultimately restored to normal operating speeds, but Democrats continue to press for answers about the incident and Musk's influence in global affairs, and Democratic senators asked the tech mogul and close Trump ally this week to preserve all records related to the slowdown.
Trump administration officials must also answer for Friday's nationwide Federal Aviation Administration ground stop, which brought airport travel across the country to a halt for more than four hours. At a Saturday press conference, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a wire switch may have caused the telecommunications outage but that the investigation was still ongoing. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said his agency had uncovered "zero evidence of anything nefarious," describing it as likely "an equipment issue" rather than a cyberattack. Duffy will appear on CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News on Sunday. Separately, Microsoft users struggled to access platforms including Outlook, Teams and Copilot during a global outage that began Thursday morning; the company said its services were fully restored on Saturday.
