Chuck Schumer is already vowing to slam the Supreme Court’s door on any judge Donald Trump picks.
Senate Republicans left town before the election with the President’s top priority still gathering dust.
And Donald Trump just answered both of them with a new nickname.
Trump Hung a New Nameplate Over the Resolute Desk
President Trump posted a black-and-white photo to Truth Social showing himself leaning over his desk in the Oval Office, with Mr Veto splashed across the image.
He posted it the same night he stood on an airport tarmac after a NASA event in Florida and unloaded on the one chamber of Congress his own party still controls.
A reporter asked what he wanted done before the new Congress takes its seats in January. Trump didn’t bother with a wish list. “The Senate has to act. The Senate is getting nothing passed, and it’s just killing our country,” he said.
And he didn’t spare either party.
“So the Democrats vote in a block. We could have the best bill in the world for our country. They vote in a block, and we always have a few Republicans that obstruct,” Trump said.
Then came the line that should sting every Republican senator who spent the fall at home. “The biggest problem we have, it’s a roadblock,” Trump said. “It’s you send things to the senate when you want it to die.”
The liberal outlet Mediaite thought it caught the President in a gaffe, gleefully pointing out that the Senate isn’t even in session. But that’s the whole complaint. Senators packed up at the end of September, sat out the entire stretch run of the campaign, and won’t wander back to Washington, DC, until November 9 for a lame-duck session.
Some gotcha.
Trump floated the Mr Veto label before Election Day on Miranda Devine’s New York Post podcast, warning what a Democrat Congress could expect from him. He left the door cracked, too. “And then at some point we’ll probably make deals, that’s what’s happened,” he told her.
By the day after the election, a red ball cap with VETO stitched across the front was sitting on the Resolute Desk.
Thune’s Senate Let the SAVE America Act Wither on the Vine
The SAVE America Act would require proof of citizenship to register for federal elections. It’s about as commonsense as legislation gets: only American citizens should decide American elections.
The House passed it in February. Then it hit the Senate and stopped cold.
Democrats blocked it every time it came up, and the Senate held at least five votes on the bill or major pieces of it without breaking the 60-vote filibuster. US Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) joined every Democrat in opposing one effort to tuck it into a budget bill.
Trump saw the stall coming months ago. “It must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed,” he wrote on Truth Social in March.
US Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) begged leadership to force a talking filibuster and make Democrats hold the floor to block it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) wouldn’t touch the idea.
“I don’t see how you get to 60 votes on it, and I say that as someone who supports the House-passed version of the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship so that only Americans vote in American elections,” Thune said. When Trump demanded the Senate skip its summer recess until the bill passed, Thune brushed him off. “We could stay here until Christmas,” he said.
That’s the Thune routine in a nutshell. He applauds the President’s agenda for the cameras and then explains why nothing can be done about it. Over and over. Public cheerleading, private brake pedal.
Trump drew a straight line from that stall to the ballot box. “We had a bad election because of a few things. One thing was not getting things approved in the Senate,” he said.
Now, a voter ID bill didn’t decide the midterms by itself. The war the neoconservatives spent months pushing carried most of that load, and Trump called it “largely true” that the fallout cost Republicans. NBC News exit pollsters asked voters to grade the decision to take military action against Iran, and only 37 percent called it the right call. Democrats scooped up 83 percent of the 63 percent who called it wrong, while 15 percent of that unhappy crowd still voted Republican.
But a Senate majority that couldn’t move the most popular item on the President’s agenda gave plenty of voters one more reason to wonder what Republicans did with the power they already had.
Trump called Thune a “good man” who has “got to get things done.” Asked whether Thune should stay in charge, he kept his distance. “It’s going to be up to the Republicans. They choose, I don’t choose,” Trump said.
US Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) wants his colleagues to slow down before handing out leadership jobs again. “There’s no reason to rush into the elections, particularly after stunning defeat,” Johnson said.
Chuck Schumer Is Already Stringing Razor Wire Around the Court
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) hasn’t even moved into the majority leader’s office, and he’s already announcing which Americans won’t be allowed on the Supreme Court.
“The bottom line is we’re not going to allow a right-winger on the court,” Schumer told the Associated Press. He added that Democrats are “not going to allow any crappy nominees” to the lower courts or the Cabinet, either.
Schumer refused to say whether he’d hold a vacancy open until after the next presidential election. He also refused to say whether he’d kill the filibuster, which he tried and failed to do the last time Democrats ran the Senate under Joe Biden.
He did spell out the plan for the rest of Trump’s term. “Whenever Trump defies the will of the American people or the law, we will launch investigations, take him to court, and entangle him in legislative razor wire,” Schumer said.
So a President elected in a landslide in 2024 now gets to fill the highest court in the land only with judges Chuck Schumer approves.
Newly empowered Democrats are also dusting off their old court “reform” talk, which is polite Washington language for packing the Supreme Court. Democrats can’t win control of the Court by playing by the rules, so they want to add seats until they own a majority. Expand the bench to 13, and the conservative wins on abortion, affirmative action, and racial gerrymandering go on the chopping block first. Gun rights, free speech, and protections against warrantless spying wouldn’t be far behind.
The White House saw it coming. “Extreme Democrats have a history of politicizing the Supreme Court, even entertaining plans to pack the Court with liberal justices,” the White House said.
And the filibuster Thune guarded so jealously? Schumer already tried to tear it down once. He’ll try again the minute it stands between him and court packing, amnesty, or statehood for Washington, DC.
The Veto Pen Has One Big Blind Spot
The Mr Veto strategy carries real muscle. Overriding a veto takes two-thirds of both chambers. Democrats will hold somewhere between 54 and 56 Senate seats, well short of 67, and roughly 256 House seats, well short of 290.
That means the Democrat wish list of amnesty, tax hikes, and gun grabs dies on Trump’s desk unless a pack of Republicans jumps ship to help.
But a veto only stops things. It can’t confirm a judge. It can’t pass the SAVE America Act. It can’t fill a Cabinet post. Every one of those runs through the Senate, and come January, every one of them runs through Schumer.
Trump knows the calendar. He acknowledged to ABC News that any new Cabinet pick has an easier path before the Democrat majority takes over.
From November 9 to January 3, Republicans still hold the gavel. Every judicial vacancy left open on January 3 could sit empty for two full years under Schumer’s new rules.
Maybe the votes still aren’t there for everything Trump wants. Maybe they never were. But nobody finds out from a Senate that isn’t even in the building.
A Lame-Duck Senate Once Knew How to Spend Its Final Weeks
In 1800, voters threw John Adams and his Federalists out of power. The outgoing Congress didn’t sulk. It passed the Judiciary Act of 1801 in February, creating 16 new circuit judgeships, and Adams kept signing commissions late into the night on March 3, his last full day in office.
Thomas Jefferson’s party repealed the whole law the next year and threw those judges out of work. Washington’s power players have been running the court-rearranging playbook for a long time.
One appointment stuck, though. In January 1801, a lame-duck Senate took one week to confirm John Marshall as Chief Justice, and he served 34 years. The Republican Senate of 2026 went home at the end of September.
Sources: Mediaite; CBS News; Associated Press; The Hill; Fox News; NPR; Democracy Docket; Britannica; HistoryNet; Manhattan Contrarian; Supreme Court Historical Society