McCarthy Predicts Democratic House Win, Warns of Expanding Presidential Power at IOP Forum

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday that President Donald Trump wields more power than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, arguing that the executive branch has effectively absorbed Congress’s legislative authority.

“Trump has more power than Reagan,” McCarthy said at an Institute of Politics forum. “We haven’t seen a president like this on either party since Roosevelt.”

McCarthy, a spring 2026 IOP visiting fellow, said Trump now controls the levers of power that typically belong to congressional leaders — setting the legislative agenda, whipping votes, and raising money for candidates. The result, he said, is an erosion of Congress’s constitutional role.

“He’s the whip, and the speaker, the president is right now,” McCarthy said. “If you watch Article One, Article Two, Article Three — remember Article One, the first thing is the power of Congress. Well, that’s kind of getting usurped right now.”

The remarks came during a wide-ranging conversation with HKS Professor Graham T. Allison ’62 at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, touching on midterm elections, the Iran conflict, and the state of the Republican Party.

McCarthy gave Democrats an 85 percent chance of retaking the House in the 2026 midterms, a figure in line with current prediction markets and up from the roughly 75 percent he estimated at a similar IOP forum last November.

But he predicted the flip would be modest, constrained by redistricting that has narrowed the number of competitive seats.

“I don’t think it’s going to be like 2010 or 2018,” he said. “In 2010, when we flipped the House, we beat 63 Democrats. There’s not 63 competitive races today. It’s going to be like 30.”

McCarthy attributed part of the Republican vulnerability to a record number of retirements from GOP incumbents, a pattern he said he recognized from 2018, the last time Democrats took the House.

“You know when it’s coming,” he said. “We knew 2018 — that’s the last time we had a high number of retirements.”

He said the shrinking diversity of the Republican caucus was another warning sign, noting that the most recent freshman class included more members named Mike than women.

“That’s not a good sign,” he said.

He predicted Republicans would hold the Senate but with a thinner margin than their current majority, projecting 51 seats instead of 53.

Asked what advice he would give Democrats running in the midterms, McCarthy recommended a “check and balance” campaign rather than a direct referendum on Trump.

He said Democrats should concede ground on the border and spending and instead cast the election as a question of whether voters want a legislative counterweight to the executive.

“You already got a Republican in the executive,” he said. “If you thought the President went too far, the current member didn’t say anything. I will.”

McCarthy also addressed the Trump administration’s military strikes against Iran and the two-week ceasefire announced Tuesday night. He described the strikes as a response to Iran’s accelerating nuclear development, pushing back on the suggestion that the operation was intended to produce regime change.

“I don’t really quite think that’s true — regime change,” he said. “I don’t believe that’s why it was. It was purely the development.”

He said the administration had avoided targeting civilian infrastructure because it wanted any future Iranian government to be able to function.

“This is different than Venezuela,” he said. “This isn’t like a dictator. This is more religion. The people who live there in oppression, they don’t have guns. This whole leadership is designed to oppress people.”

On the ceasefire, McCarthy urged patience.

“Is the peace plan fragile? All peace plans at the beginning are fragile,” he said. “You can’t really judge it until a little duration out.”

McCarthy called the deficit “the greatest threat” facing the country and argued that structural reform is needed to end the ongoing partial government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history.

“I’m a big believer in structure dictates behavior,” he said. “The only time you get out is when you feel the pressure. And normally the pressure is when the troops don’t get paid. But we paid the troops, so it went on longer.”

Despite the political turbulence, McCarthy said he remained optimistic about the country’s trajectory.

“You could always count on Americans to do what’s right after they exhausted every other option,” he said. “So we’re pretty much there.”

But he warned that the country’s political culture has frayed in ways that should concern both parties.

“The concern I have is we’re losing respect for other people’s opinion,” he said. “That’s a mistake on our side, and here we are at the 250th anniversary of America. This would be a great time to renew.”

—Staff writer Sophia E. Alcacer can be reached at [email protected] and Signal at sophiaalcacer.88. Follow her on X at @sophiaalcacer.