Midterm elections are often tough for the party that controls the White House. That’s especially true for Republicans this year, with inflation up and Trump’s poll numbers way down. Signs of a potential blue wave are evident in the generic ballot and projections for key races. Five weeks from Election Day, betting markets predict that Democrats will claim both houses of Congress. Last week, Nate Silver marveled, “Polls for Republicans are just getting worse by the day in a way that isn’t actually all that common in midterms.”

Republican senator John Kennedy recently visited Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa to fundraise for GOP candidates, grumbling, “If you told me six months ago I was going to be having to spend my time in those three states, I wouldn’t have believed you. Those ought to be fat guy layups for us.” The New Republic has observed, “Trump’s super PAC and its cutout organizations are spending big money in at least 17 districts that Trump carried in 2024 by over five points.” Latino voters who helped fuel the GOP’s 2024 gains are exhibiting buyer’s remorse.

Some Republicans insist they’ll still prevail, pointing to the GOP’s money advantage or the shaky performance of polling in recent elections. It’s possible; time will tell. But odds favor a good November for the blue team, and I’ve been fielding a lot of queries about what that could mean for education. I figured I’d share a few thoughts.

Expect oversight with a vengeance. Remember how House Republicans put the screws to Hunter Biden and Claudine Gay? You ain’t seen nothing yet. The Trump White House has been flagrant in its norm-breaking and unapologetic about its self-dealing. Democrats are itching to launch investigations and start imposing some accountability-cum-payback.

With so many potential targets for Democratic investigations, the presumptive majority will have to pick and choose what deserves scrutiny. For those who don’t spend a lot of time noodling on such things, The Dispatch’s Kevin Williamson last week offered up a partial accounting of Trump’s second-term “excesses”:

The enrichment of the president and his family and his cronies; the campaign of wanton murder on the high seas; the illegal war against Iran; the illegal war against Venezuela; continued attempts to undermine confidence in our elections and to meddle with their administration; the illegal imposition of a new national system of taxation in the form of unconstitutional tariffs; . . . the attacks on allies undertaken while the president enabled actual literal enemies of the United States of America, including the Vladimir Putin junta in Moscow and the Kim Jong Un cult in North Korea; financial arrangements that run from the shady to the illegal and that stretch from Caracas to Doha.

You’ll notice what’s missing from the list. It’s unlikely much of the recent education turbulence will make the cut. Democratic leadership will want to focus on the things they judge most likely to resonate while avoiding narrative overload. What’s that mean for education? I’d guess that Democrats would take a hard look at DOGE’s cuts to education contracts and staff, the push to dismantle the Department of Education, the legal settlements with elite universities, and the way the administration has approached civil rights enforcement. If the Democrats take both chambers, they’ll have added bandwidth for more such investigations.

While the savvier hands in the Department of Ed have probably been careful about their paper trail, Democrats are likely to surface a treasure trove of incriminating missives from DOGE’s amateurs and Trump’s White House apparatchiks. Fielding oversight requests would become a huge time-suck and distraction for the executive branch. The pace of Trump 2.0’s education efforts would slow markedly.

The DSA isn’t likely to loom large for education. A lot of political conversation this year has focused on the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America. While their numbers will be small in the new Congress, DSA-aligned members will argue that they represent grassroots energy on the left.

Tensions between the DSA and establishment Democrats may loom large for healthcare or our relationship with Israel, but it’s less likely to shape education policy. It’s notable that DSA candidates have embraced hugely expensive measures like Medicare for All, free childcare, and a national rent freeze but have had little to say about schools. Indeed, the DSA platform’s education agenda is limited to universal pre-K, free college, and loan forgiveness. There’ll likely be some noise about Dems exploring a deal to boost early childhood funding, but it’s a good bet that the Democrats’ direction on education will be determined more by the familiar tug-and-pull of unions and centrists than by the priorities of the AOC-Mamdani camp.

Choice will dodge a bullet. The effects of a potential blue wave on Congress are obviously significant, but so are the potential consequences beyond the Beltway. DSA candidates who reject “privatization” and champion government-run healthcare have been oddly quiet about their hostility to school choice. It just hasn’t been a big target for them. Heck, New York City’s democratic socialist mayor hasn’t even really gone after charter schools.

What’s going on? Well, these programs are popular with core Democratic constituencies. Low-income and minority parents with lousy neighborhood schools like having the choice to send their children to better ones, and, in cities like Los Angeles or D.C., many now take choice programs for granted. In Wisconsin and Arizona, Democratic governors have been reluctant to square off against established choice programs. The easier path is to cap, regulate, and quietly stifle them. The Biden administration, for instance, would insist that it wasn’t “anti”-charter school even as it pursued federal funding rules that made it tougher for new charters to open.

While a blue wave would strengthen the hand of choice skeptics, the popularity of education options and the energy behind the “abundance” movement is likely to constrain them. This may be especially true in the case of the new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit. Even if Democrats capture the governor’s mansion in Ohio or Georgia, for instance, they may hesitate to overturn their predecessors’ decisions to opt in—choosing to treat the issue as a fait accompli.

Techlash will accelerate. Opposition to data centers, worries about social media, and support for school cell phone bans are bipartisan, so it’s not likely that a big blue wave would fundamentally alter the ed tech picture. That said, Trump’s embrace of TikTok, AI, and Big Tech has limited what Republicans are willing to say or do against the industry. A blue wave could change the dynamics in Congress while triggering hearings designed to surface plenty of embarrassing revelations about Big Tech and its relationship with the White House. That would only embolden tech skeptics in blue states and school districts. The AI pauses adopted by the school systems in New York City and L.A. could spread, especially if pushing back against AI becomes seen as a blow against the Trump agenda.

Higher ed will get a respite, but only a modest one. Colleges and universities have been in the crosshairs during Trump 2.0. As regular readers know, I think the scrutiny was richly deserved. But it has also featured a considerable amount of bullying and dubious conduct. If Democrats win big, much of that may abate. Congressional oversight will distract Trump’s higher ed team, and the change in power will provide allies and air cover for beleaguered campus leaders. The pressure on higher ed will ease (even if an aggrieved, isolated Trump tries to lash out with a new spate of directives).

But the relief won’t be as palpable as campus leaders might anticipate. There’s a good chance congressional Democrats will dig into the deals that some colleges struck with the Trump administration—putting college presidents in the hot seat and uncovering negotiations that they’d thought would stay secret. And then there are the new limits on lending and the new higher ed accountability system legislated by Congress last year. These measures are now the law of the land and enjoy some support on the left from officials concerned about college costs and completion. Even a massive Democratic win wouldn’t send things back to status quo ante.

Of course, nothing is permanent in American politics. Nowadays, we tend to approach every election as epochal. But the truth is that wins and losses are temporary. By Christmas, the pundits will be handicapping the 2028 primaries.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”