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Midterms success gives party potent leverage over Trump – expect tough campaigns of investigating and lawmaking “Costs, chaos, corruption”: after almost two years spent relentlessly criticizing Donald Trump for failing to address those three, broad political concerns, Democrats won a monumental return to power in Tuesday’s midterm elections that will give them potent new leverage over the president. Now the question becomes: what will they do with it? Continue reading...
President claimed to have ushered in a ‘golden age’ even as prices soared and war dragged on – and midterm voters did not buy his looking-glass narrative A new “golden age of America” is under way, Donald Trump repeatedly declared in his final pitch to voters before the US midterm elections. The war in Iran was not really a war, because “we’ve done very little fighting”, the US president stressed. The stock market had hit 88 all-time highs. “They’re saying,” he said, that on his watch the US has become “the hottest country anywhere in the world”. Continue reading...
President Donald Trump said that he’d offered the job of White House press secretary to the CEO and president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Dana White.
The uMkhonto weSizwe Party has established a national negotiating team to guide post-election coalition talks, maintaining that it will not compromise its principles to enter government.
Democratic and Republican lawyers and groups trade sharp legal letters about procedures for counting ballots in tight race Democrat Scott Colom is on the verge of winning a Senate seat in Mississippi in a stunning upset, but ballots are still being counted in a close race where Colom holds a lead of just under 2,000 votes over Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. Losing ruby-red Mississippi would be the final straw for Republicans after a midterm sweep by Democrats that turned Texas and South Carolina blue. A possible legal fight is also brewing, as both sides trade sharp legal letters about the procedures for counting remaining ballots. National voting groups and attorneys have descended upon the magnolia state, joining the local groups that worked to mobilize voters. Democratic and Republican groups, including Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and Democratic election attorneys from the Elias Law Group, have deployed hundreds of volunteers and lawyers to all the state’s 82 counties to oversee the final rounds of counting. Continue reading...
Imagine, for a moment, that the US midterm elections had not delivered Democratic wins at a generational scale, but merely a trickle of flipped seats—enough, perhaps, to change control of the House of Representatives but not enough for a Senate majority. Is there any doubt that President Donald Trump would embrace such results as a good-enough validation of his often lawless and brutal administration? Would it not now be doubling down, striving to cast the polls as an imprimatur for its excesses? Instead, American democracy skirted a disabling blow. Yet it would be a grave mistake to take a further step by concluding that voters’ overwhelming rejection of Trump and his Republican Party marks a full-throated public re-embrace of democracy. The election was a disaster averted, but it was only an opening to assess and fix the damage caused by two years of a rogue administration acting without congressional oversight. The Democrats’ landslide victory could set America’s now clearly imperfect democracy on the difficult path of repair and improvement. But this opportunity could slip away unless seized swiftly. Conventional wisdom about the midterm results is already resurrecting James Carville’s old adage: “It’s the economy, stupid.” There is, indeed, a kernel of truth to this. The Associated Press exit poll conducted on election day flagged economic discontent as voters’ top concern. Likewise, a Gallup poll from a week beforehand also found voters ranking inflation and health care as the most important issues. Against this backdrop, the bizarre optics of Trump’s midterm campaigning—Look at my reflecting pool! My beautiful ballroom! What about Jon Husted’s great butt!—underscore Trump’s surreal detachment from everyday voters’ woes. So potent is this story that most influential media outlets are offering inflation and affordability as catch-all explanations for the Democrats’ sweep through states Republicans had held for decades. And it is easy to see this simple story becoming a guiding light for anti-Trump figures, including among Republicans, for the next two years. This emerging consensus captures an important part of the story, but also overlooks an important finding. According to the AP exit poll, almost one-third of voters named the health of democracy as their top concern—just six points behind the economy—while the Gallup poll appears not to have asked respondents about the issue at all. Concerns over democracy and the rule of law also help explain the massive swings among Hispanic and Black voters. A UnidosUS survey of Hispanics found that immigration “overreach”—that is, flagrant disregard for the rule of law—was a leading concern. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Black turnout was driven by anger at the dismantling of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act—that is, by outrage at right-wing judges’ frontal assault on multiracial democracy. The affordability narrative risks overshadowing this strong public demand for democracy and even erasing it from the shared public memory of this election. That understanding of history creates a trap for Democrats, leaving the new House and Senate majorities a hostage to fortune, or worse. While control of the House and the Senate offers them a few policy tools with which to address inflation and affordability, those tools may not work quickly, and Trump retains broad control over trade policy and war-making. Indeed, because Trump can still make things worse, it is reasonable to think that there will be scant improvement in economic sentiment two years from now. No doubt, the Republican presidential nominee in 2028 will pin the blame on the Democrats. At a minimum, the picture will be muddy. Despite this risk, the affordability narrative is seductive to many Democrats, because it means they don’t need to think about the structural problems with American democracy. Consider here rampant electoral gerrymandering, the Senate’s malapportionment favoring rural populations, and the egregious inflation of judicial power. This time, the size of the Democratic wave overcame those barriers. But it would be reckless to count on that in the future, particularly as Trump retains powerful tools to erode democratic norms further. The Democrats, then, would be wise to lean into the democracy message by pressing for more structural change—not only because it is the principled thing to do, but also because it is in their political interest. This does not mean simply focusing on the Trump family’s venality. Highlighting corruption can be politically effective, as the midterm results showed. But unless the strong linkage between corruption and a weakening of democracy is made explicit—how the scramble for spoils overcomes representation of voters and their interests—scandalous revelations can also breed disabling cynicism and even voter apathy. The US midterm election results are an opportunity and an invitation. Voters’ demand for the rule of law and democracy has helped destroy Trump’s MAGA movement. That demand must not be forgotten or suppressed. The Democrats have opportunities, in Congress and also in newly-won state capitals, to show voters they understand that only democracy will be responsive on the economic front. Affordability may rank first, but addressing it depends on the quality of democratic institutions. Americans have given the Democrats the chance to show why that is true. They must not squander it. This article was originally published on Project Syndicate and has been reproduced here with permission.
After midterm wins, Democratics plan comeback for when new Congress is sworn in, including pushback against Trump and his policies Donald Trump will be blocked from putting a “rightwinger” on the US supreme court, according to Chuck Schumer, the soon-to-be Senate majority leader, in remarks that were a preview of how Democrats intend to wield their power come January. In an interview with the Associated Press, Schumer said Democrats would not confirm “any crappy nominees” to the supreme court, lower courts or Trump’s cabinet. Continue reading...
President Donald Trump announced Friday that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles will step down this week, with Stephen Miller replacing her. “I am pleased to announce that Mr.
Jason Reding Quiñones, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, abruptly resigned, marking another high-profile departure from a DOJ inquiry plagued by internal disputes.
The successful Democratic contender for a Michigan Senate seat parried the many insinuations lobbed by Republicans Abdul El-Sayed said he did not expect to be “a main character of this midterms”, but the first Muslim elected to the US Senate in history will take his seat in January after a vitriolic campaign that cast him as the central villain of the president and his party. By October he told the Associated Press he was “not shying away” from those rightwing fixations. “What are you implying?” El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, replied when a town hall attender asked if he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, in a now-viral exchange. Continue reading...
Democrats won over rural voters from Maga in the midterms by focusing more on working people and less on culture wars Long before Jamie Ager entered politics, he was making a name for himself in a very different place: the meat counter of a grocery store in Boone, North Carolina. It was the early 2000s, and Ager owned and operated Hickory Nut Gap, a regenerative farm near Asheville. Over the next 20 years, he helped build a regional food system that delivered healthier food to thousands of people, improved land stewardship and made farming a bit more profitable. Continue reading...
Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Thursday that he says will prevent future administrations from changing his design of the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, spaces he declared to be national monuments that should be preserved. Since returning to office, the US president has transformed the Oval Office with gold accents and statuettes, portraits of famous Americans pulled from storage and a copy of the Declaration of Independence that hangs on the wall. The redesign has drawn criticism, including from the former president Barack Obama, who recently joked that 'he’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.' Trump signs proclamation to try to prevent changes to gold-covered Oval Office Continue reading...
Bills have soared in rural state buffeted by tariffs and war in Iran – and Democrat Adam Hamilton’s stunning upset shows how deep economic frustrations run Linda Olson always does her homework before voting – a trait she inherited from a family invested, and interested, in politics. Her father was a photographer who took portraits of political leaders in Washington, while her grandparents were farmers who cared deeply about their industry. In 2024, Olson’s research led her to Donald Trump. She trusted that the then-former president would improve their economic realities in Junction City, Kansas – where she was born and raised – if he returned to the White House. Continue reading...
Urban planner and outsider who bested Karen Bass has close ties to Hollywood progressives – and a complicated relationship with the DSA Nithya Raman on Thursday unseated Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass after a neck-and-neck race for the leadership for the US’s second largest city. The young progressive’s victory means that the two largest cities in the US, as well the nation’s capital, Washington DC, have now all elected democratic socialist mayors. Continue reading...
Democrats swept top statewide offices in Texas during the 2026 midterms, ousting Governor Greg Abbott and flipping a U.S. Senate seat amid widespread voter discontent over household costs.
Voters in Nevada, Virginia, Missouri and Idaho passed or strengthened protections for women’s reproductive freedom Reproductive rights were on the ballot on Tuesday night as voters weighed in on several abortion-related measures, delivering a largely successful night for reproductive rights advocates encompassed by a historic blue wave. In Nevada, voters approved an amendment enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution, permanently protecting access to abortion through the second trimester after a second referendum on the measure. Continue reading...
