Lame-duck Trump has nearly a 50% chance of vetoing the bill, and former chief of staff urges Democrats to legislate a ban on officials trading stocks.

According to monitoring by PolyBeats, after the U.S. midterm elections confirmed that Democrats won both the Senate and the House, Trump, who can no longer run for re-election, was called a "lame duck" by multiple media outlets. Today, Polymarket opened "Will Trump veto a bill before February 1, 2027," with "Yes" currently at about 47%; in addition, a new market, "Trump impeached and removed before 2028," has a probability of 24%.

Trump himself has also described the veto power as an open card. CNBC, citing his interview with Fox News, said that vetoing is one of the president's "rather strong powers," and that Democrats "will send over outrageous things, and I'll veto them"; in a New York Post podcast, he said even earlier: if Republicans cannot win, "I'll veto everything" and "will probably become Mr. Veto."

On November 4, former White House Chief of Staff and former Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel urged Democrats to pass in 2027 a comprehensive ethics bill covering the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, banning officials from trading individual stocks, and advocated prohibiting officials from betting in prediction markets. Rhode Island Democratic Representative Seth Magaziner told CNBC the same day that he expected Democrats, after becoming the majority, to pass a strong bill banning stock trading covering Congress, the executive branch, and a broader scope, as part of a larger ethics reform package.

This contrasts with the path in the summer of 2026: in July, the House passed the Stop Insider Trading Act, which mainly restricts members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children, while the president himself was not covered; Senate Democrats blocked it in September on grounds including that it was "not strong enough" and opposition to bundling provisions such as voter ID, and argued that the ban should extend to the president, vice president, and spouses.

Bloomberg statistics show that Trump conducted about 28,700 securities transactions in about 17 months, exceeding the roughly 22,200 combined by all members of Congress; if Democrats send over a version that "bans all three branches together," it will directly collide with his earlier support for the House version that "limits Congress only and does not include the president," and his criticism of extending the ban to the president, and also constitutes one of the most frequently cited ethics scenarios in discussions of the veto probability.