Democrats plot 100-hour blitz on costs, plus a Trump corruption crackdown

Democrats aren't waiting for the gavels to warm up. Fresh off a midterm sweep that handed them the House and Senate, the incoming majorities are lining up a burst of bills for their first days in power next January — and bracing for a fight with President Donald Trump, CNBC has learned.

The opening act is a 100-hour sprint. House Democrats plan to floor bills that restore the enhanced health insurance subsidies that lapsed under Republican control and roll back the Medicaid cuts Trump signed into law last year. They'll also push legislation to scrap Trump's sweeping tariffs and claw back Congress' power over import taxes, plus another vote on ending the Iran war or forcing Trump to get congressional sign-off to keep it running. Expect Hakeem Jeffries to hold the Speaker's gavel — the New York Democrat is in line to become the first Black Speaker in U.S. history. Some of the blueprint was previously reported by the New York Times.

But the legislative wish list has to share the stage with something Democrats are just as hungry for: investigations. Jeffries told CNBC on Wednesday that targets haven't been picked yet, with those calls coming in the next couple of weeks. He framed the whole project around voters' wallets. Capitalism, he said, is broken the way working- and middle-class Americans experience it, and Democrats need to build a free market economy that works for everyday people.

The affordability-vs-accountability split is already drawing sharp elbows. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on Senate Finance, promised the panel's priorities would be 'affordability for us, accountability for them' — vowing to press billionaires on taxes, take on what he called a corporate chokehold on health care, and target special interests that got cozy with Trump. He named names: banks that helped cover up Epstein's crimes, insurers that delay and deny care to churn profit, and pharma CEOs he says price gouge while banking Trump's windfalls.

Over in House Oversight, Rep. Robert Garcia of California has his own list — Trump's family, corporate corruption, DHS and ICE overreach, and the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. As results tipped Democratic on Tuesday night, he fired off a two-word warning: 'Lawyer up.' Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington told CNBC she'd aim at Elon Musk and cabinet figures including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Attorney General Todd Blanche — while cautioning that a sprawling target list could bog down an ideologically diverse caucus. Better to pick one or two cases that best exemplify the worst of it, she said.

There's also an ethics push brewing. Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island wants a ban on stock trading for Congress, the executive branch and beyond, wrapped into a bigger package that could bar government officials from prediction markets, ban gerrymandering federally and cap super PAC spending. First, though, Democrats have to govern a caucus with plenty of opinions — and an opponent in the White House with no plans to make it easy.