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The White House Counsel’s Office is reportedly briefing political appointees on how to handle congressional investigations as Democrats look poised to retake Congress in November.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, midterm elections almost always go badly for the party in power, with the president’s party typically losing seats in both chambers six months into a term. Democrats need to net just three seats to flip the House and four to take the Senate. It’s no secret that Trump’s approval rating is currently in the shitter, with 62% of Americans disapproving of him in an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll published last Friday. Our own Instagram poll found that 82% of our followers are unsatisfied with his performance after two years in office, with 67% of respondents saying they voted for him in the last election.

What’s going on now: First reported by the Washington Post, citing two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity, attorneys at the White House Counsel’s Office have been running roughly 30-minute sessions for political appointees that walk them through a PowerPoint deck on how oversight actually works and how to handle it when it comes their way. Political appointees have also been advised to watch what they put down on paper and to keep responses to congressional inquiries moving quickly.

A White House official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, downplayed the briefings to the Post, saying the counsel’s office “has provided guidance to relevant stakeholders to ensure oversight compliance and that best practices are followed since January 2025” and that “this is nothing new.” But the two people who spoke to the Post said the recent briefings (some of which have happened over the past month) have had “a strong overtone” of the midterms and have been treated by some staffers as preparation for worst-case scenarios.

Trump himself has publicly conceded GOP vulnerability and connected the midterms directly to his own political survival, telling supporters in January, “You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”

This all comes as the Supreme Court last week took the axe to a major Voting Rights Act protection, ruling that states no longer have to factor racial data into how they draw their House districts. At least eight states have already pushed through new maps before the midterms, tilting the field slightly toward Republicans.

In response, Democrats are weighing whether to play the same game right back, eyeing roughly 22 districts they could carve out for themselves across blue states to balance out the 19 they could lose on the GOP side of the map.