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Democracy Dies in Darkness

RE V1 V2 V3 V4

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2026 · \$4

Parties reckon with new era

Democrats

54 34 not up for election

As of Nov. 4, 8:00 PM

SENATE

50

Two sitting independent senators caucus with Democrats.

Republicans 44 31 not up for election

Democrats

237

As of Nov. 4, 8:00 PM

HOUSE

218

Previous balance

Republicans

147

Democrats face a choice: Confront or compromise

Leaders say party must improve voters' lives or risk losing power again

BY ALEXEI KOSEFF,

ANNA LISS-ROY,

MARIANA ALFARO

AND DAN MERICA

Once the euphoria fades from Tuesday night, when Democrats decisively won back both the House and Senate, their new majorities face a sobering task: figuring out how to wield their power in the final two years of President Donald Trump's tenure.

With committee gavels in hand, Democrats will be empowered to investigate Trump — and many have already made clear they plan to probe all manner of alleged corruption by the president, his administration, his family and his corporate allies.

But Democrats also argue they cannot — and will not — only be the anti-Trump party when they take control of both chambers in January with majorities larger and more ideologically diverse than anticipated. They have repeatedly stated they must materially improve the lives of voters or risk quickly losing Congress again.

"The American people have chosen House Democrats because they want to see a dramatic change in direction," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), who is likely to become the nation's first Black speaker, said Wednesday at a news conference with his leadership team. "That's exactly what House Democrats will deliver."

The party's policy agenda remains vague. Though Democrats pledged on the campaign trail to tackle affordability, they have been light on legislative specifics, floating broad plans to reverse Trump's cuts to health care funding, roll back his sweeping tariff regime and block his ability to wage war in Iran.

As long as Trump is still in the White House, most anything Democrats might hope to accomplish is dead on arrival without the president's buy-in, setting the stage for an awkward dance in which Democratic leaders are stuck negotiating with the same man for whom they are publicly

SEE DEMOCRATS ON A12

Note: Arrows depict the percentage-point change in margin between the 2024 presidential race and the 2026 Senate races, in counties with at least 35 percent of the estimated vote counted. Senate races where state Democrats have coalesced behind the independent candidate are shown as a two-party contest.

The GOP missteps that helped lay the groundwork for a historic rebuke

This article is by Liz Goodwin, Natalie Allison, Theodoric Meyer, Isaac Arnsdorf, Nancy Cook and Katherine Doyle

Earlier this year, as President Donald Trump and his top advisers stared down increasingly grim polling for Republicans, they devised a strategy for staving off losses in the midterm elections: Put Trump front and center.

The president appeared in taxpayer-funded campaign ads that showed him and U.S. forces in the Iran war, created a new midterm convention to star in, and crisscrossed 20 states to appear in 30 rallies in the campaign's final weeks.

Democrats would make the elections about him anyway, his advisers reasoned, and at least

Milestone: A record number of Black governors elected. A6

this way the president could motivate his core supporters to get to the polls in a way no other Republican could.

“We turned the typical midterm scenario on its head,” said Chris LaCivita, a co-manager of Trump’s 2024 campaign, in an interview shortly before Election Day. “Instead of running to the middle or running away, we decided to just run right into it.”

They ran into a wall of voters' anger.

Trump — who entered his second term last year with some of his highest approval ratings on record and optimism from an expanded electorate that believed he could lower prices — led his party to generational losses, including a Senate seat in Kansas that hadn't gone blue in nearly a

A big U-turn for majority-Latino counties that had flipped for Trump

SEE REPUBLICANS ON A8

The Take: A road map for the left, and risks for the right. A7

BY ARELIS R. HERNÁNDEZ,

TEO ARMUS

AND LYDIA SIDHOM

SAN ANTONIO — Two years ago, Democrats suffered the sting of a sweeping repudiation from Latino voters who voted by the millions for President Donald Trump and the GOP. On Tuesday, those same voters delivered a rebuke just as brutal to Republicans.

That dramatic turnaround — fueled by frustration over high prices and anger at Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown

— helped Democratic candidates on Tuesday achieve historic national gains in states long out of reach.

Democrats in some states made up some of their losses from 2024 with Hispanic voters,

Johnson out: House speaker won't seek minority leader job. A11 a rapidly growing demographic group that accounts for 1 in 6 eligible voters nationwide, according to the Pew Research Center. In other cases, they surpassed the party's high-water marks from 2018, gaining new ground among first-time voters or those unlikely to turn out.

Meatpacking hubs in south-west Kansas and majority-Hispanic counties in Florida that voted for Republicans by wide margins two years ago flipped blue after years of moving rightward. And in Texas, an even sharper shift to the left fueled decisive Democratic victories by James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa, who were running for Senate and governor, respectively.

"Latinos very specifically said, 'Basta, enough,' to Trump and SEE LATINOS ON A11

Musk: He spent a fortune to be handed a stunning defeat. A12

Trump joins some in GOP in blaming Iran war

BY NANCY COOK

AND KATHERINE DOYLE

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday blamed Republicans' stunning midterm losses on the administration's unpopular war with Iran, though Trump said he had no choice but to launch the conflict and would do it again.

"It's largely true because it drove the gasoline [prices] up a little bit," the president said Wednesday afternoon on the site of his half-finished White House ballroom, his first public appearance since voters handed Democrats significant majorities in the House and Senate.

"At the same time, if I had to do it again, I'd have to do it again," Trump said of the war, before directing the attention of his aides and reporters to the helipad he had installed on the White House lawn in September. "You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon."

Though Trump himself made the decision to go to war with Iran — egged on by powerful outside advisers and some aides, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — Trump continued Wednesday to distance himself from the GOP's losses. Late Tuesday, he insisted that "if I was on the ballot, we would have won." On Wednesday, he noted that "thousands" of people packed his rallies in competitive states in the final month of the campaign.

"There was such love at those rallies. It was incredible," Trump said. "We weren't able to transfer the love to candidates."

Trump's acknowledgment of the war's role in Tuesday's Democratic landslide came after Vance posted lengthy remarks on social media saying voters wanted Trump to end the war, focus on the cost of living and inflation, put America first and "change our relationship to Israel."

"The reason we lost is the war," said Vance, who opposed the conflict and is considering a run for president in two years.

Vance's post echoed the recriminations among many other Republicans, who blamed Trump for their party's historic midterm rout. In private calls and texts through the night and into the morning, Republicans lamented political strategies — like an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting gambit in southern states — that failed to make up

SEE MIDTERMS ON A10

After rout, Trump returns to ballroom, his ‘safest place’

He brushes aside criticism that he's too focused on construction projects flooring of his new ballroom.

BY CAT ZAKRZEWSKI AND DAN DIAMOND

A day after voters dealt his presidency a historic blow, President Donald Trump retreated to what he called “the safest place in Washington”: his ballroom construction site.

With Democrats having just seized control of Congress, Trump had more pressing matters on his mind: Corinthian columns, heavy steel beams and a “special vein” in the marble

At an event marking the installation of the final beam in the ballroom, Trump spent more than 20 minutes extolling the finer points of his latest Washington renovation projects before addressing the election results in his first public appearance since the Republicans' losses.

He brushed aside criticism that he was spending too much time on the ballroom as Americans grappled with rising prices and the consequences of the war.

“Well, first of all, it’s very little time,” Trump said, at his second event in three days focused on his renovation efforts. “Second of all, I like it. It’s good for me. It’s relaxing. For somebody else, it’s the opposite. But for me, it’s SEE BALLROOM ON A10

President Donald Trump talks to reporters Wednesday during a tour of White House ballroom construction.

ALEX BRANDON/AP

D.C. gets ready for its first democratic socialist mayor

Label may have little to do with the challenges of managing the capital

BY PAUL SCHWARTZMAN

As a mayoral candidate, Janeese Lewis George drew attention identifying as a democratic socialist who vowed to resist President Donald Trump and make D.C. more affordable, a message that propelled her to victory under the same political banner as the mayors of New York and Seattle.

What remains to be seen is how the DSA branding that Lewis George touted during the campaign will shape her governance. A bit more than 45 percent of the electorate did not vote for her in the Democratic primary, which, in a deep blue city, still ensured her triumph in Tuesday's general election.

During her victory speech, the mayor-elect made only a glancing reference to the DSA, thanking her “comrades” for their support and otherwise repeating familiar pledges to fight for D.C. statehood, protect immigrant rights and preside over a government that works “as hard as” working Washingtonians.

Lewis George's ascendance is especially noteworthy in a city SEE D.C. ON A13

Next steps: Mayor-elect begins transition, police chief search. B14

IN THE NEWS

Peanut allergy A new study concludes that many children who were diagnosed with the condition should be tested later on – and are likely not to have an allergy after all. A2

THE NATION

A former federal

prosecutor will lead the

inquiry into an alleged

gang rape at Cornell. A2

THE WORLD

The president's foes abroad question whether losses will weaken or embolden him. A14

THE ECONOMY

Voters in at least 38 jurisdictions across the country passed bans or restrictions on data centers, reflecting the widespread public aversion to the facilities. A16

STYLE

If there was a defining scene from the mid-terms, it came when Trump stood at the Reflecting Pool and struggled to give coherence to his second term. B1

THE REGION

An immigration judge denied a bond request for a D.C.-area baseball coach whose arrest last month by immigration agents prompted a community outcry. B14

OPINION PAGES......A17

LOCAL LIVING......INSERT

CONTENT © 2026

The Washington Post

Year 149, No. 54756

CORRECTIONS

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Call: 202-334-6000, and ask to be connected to the desk involved — National, Foreign, Metro, Style, Sports, Business or any of the weekly sections.

Many diagnosed with peanut allergy may not have it anymore

A new study suggests that fewer young children than previously thought have long-lasting peanut allergies. The findings could change how doctors make diagnoses and determine treatment.

ISTOCK

Findings from a new

study could change

early-childhood treatment

BY ELIJAH WOLFSON

Peanuts, and peanut butter in particular, are some of the most ubiquitous elements of a child's diet, and so when a kid is allergic to them, it can be a unique vexation for parents. It means no PB&Js for lunch — but also an endless list of logistics, from having to check in with the parents any time their kid goes over to a friend's house to communicating with school officials.

It turns out that for many kids thought to have peanut allergies, much of that vigilance may not be necessary.

A new peer-reviewed study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, suggests that fewer young children than previously thought have long-lasting peanut allergies. The findings could change how we make early-childhood allergy diagnoses and how to think about treating allergies moving forward.

The research included nearly 800 Australian infants, all around the age of 13 months and all of whom had previously been diagnosed as allergic to peanuts, based on a reaction they had at home and then either a skin or blood test, usually between the ages of 7 to 10 months.

Historically, that combination meant that the child would be considered allergic to peanuts, and likely their parents would try to ensure they never encountered peanuts again.

However, in this study, all 778 of the babies got something of a second chance at adapting to peanuts. And for many of them, that second chance worked.

They all underwent an “oral food challenge” — essentially, they were given increasing doses of peanut butter in 15 minute intervals. It starts at 1/64th of a teaspoon and then keeps doubling until the last dose, a full teaspoon 90 minutes later. That was enough evidence to determine that those infants that had no reaction — 271 of them, or about 35 percent — were, in fact, no longer allergic to peanuts.

The researchers were surprised by that rate. “We thought some would pass the food challenges and not react, but we didn’t expect this many children to get through,” said Tim Brettig, a pediatric allergist and immunologist, and a senior research clinician at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

Brettig said that means many parents who think their children have lifelong allergies to peanut butter might want to reexamine the matter carefully. "If you've had a clear reaction, I would be less inclined to accept a peanut allergy diagnosis," said Brettig, one of the lead researchers on the new study. "I'd want to continue that work-up. I think food challenges should play a greater role in the allergy assessment of children. Give them a chance to prove that they're not allergic."

The key is a controlled environment, such as a doctor's office, for checking again, Brettig said. About 12 percent of the babies given the oral food challenge did experience anaphylaxis, the whole-body and sometimes life-threatening reaction that is the most severe response to an allergen. But because they were in an environment with medical professionals to administer care, no long-term harm came to any of the children. "It's not necessarily something that I'd be doing in a community setting," said Brettig. "You'd want it to be done with specialists that are skilled in performing these food challenges."

Previous research suggested that 10 to 20 percent of children who are born allergic to peanuts would recover by around the age of 4 or 5. Many experts today agree that those who do become able to eat peanut products are able to because of some sort of exposure in their early years that enables their immune systems to stop treating peanuts as dangerous.

"Our advice for these families that pass a food challenge is go home, keep having peanuts in the diet," said Brettig. "We're not prescriptive about how much. We're just trying to normalize that back into the diet to say, 'Look, this is food.'"

Maria Garcia-Lloret, a pediatric allergy and immunology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and the co-founder of the university's food allergy program, argued that the study suggests the benefits of retesting for peanut butter allergies outweighs the risks. She was not involved in the study.

“All the children are alive,” said Garcia-Lloret, “and many were delabeled” — that is, recognized as no longer allergic to peanuts — “and ... the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Scientists have been revising their views on the best approach to peanut butter allergies for the past decade. In 2015, a major study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that flipped conventional wisdom on its head: Previously, the assumption was that exposing an infant to peanut butter too early was a sure path to a lifelong allergy. The new data suggested the opposite. By 2017, the U.S. National Institutes of Health changed its recommendations for parents of young children, saying that the best path forward was to try out peanut butter on their babies.

“Up until like 10 years ago, pediatricians would tell the mothers, ‘Don’t give them peanuts until they’re 3,’” said Garcia-Lloret. “Today, pediatricians are convincing parents, ‘You need to introduce peanuts early.’”

The results have been staggering. By 2025, there was a 43 percent decrease in peanut allergy incidences in the country, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Pediatrics.

This most recent study suggests there are other opportunities to bring those numbers down further, saving money for parents, schools and the health care system — and saving kids from the challenge and frustration of having to deal with an allergy to a ubiquitous childhood ingredient.

That, said Brettig, is one of his next steps. "We're investigating as to whether the up-front cost of doing these food challenges

... could actually save us money down the track, because they won't need to be seen again in clinic and followed up every few years as they get older with their peanut allergy," he said.

Brettig is working in the Australian health care system, but Garcia-Lloret noted that implementing the food challenge approach for infants who might

— or might not — be allergic to peanuts could be a financial boon to the U.S. system, too.

"It would, in the long run, save money for the system because then the ones that you de-label, they don't have to buy EpiPens, or whatever else Blue Shield doesn't have to pay for," said Garcia-Lloret. "They won't clog the doctors' offices."

And for the kids, the earlier the better.

“Whether it’s in behavior or in immunology or in speech, or teaching them piano, those first 1,000 days of life are important,” said Garcia-Lloret. “And this is what the study is showing you here.”

Ex-federal prosecutor to lead investigation into alleged gang rape at Cornell

The outside counsel will report to N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James

BY SUSAN SVRLUGA AND TIM CRAIG

A former federal prosecutor will lead the criminal investigation into the alleged rape at Cornell University, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) said Wednesday.

Jacqueline Kelly, a former civil rights unit chief for the criminal division of the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of

New York, will serve as outside counsel. She will lead a team from the attorney general's office and Boies Schiller Flexner, the law firm where Kelly is a partner. Kelly, a graduate of Cornell and of Columbia University's law school, will report to James's office.

James began the search for an outside counsel on Oct. 1, the day New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed her as special prosecutor in the case, which has drawn intense scrutiny to the issue of sexual assault on college campuses.

Attorneys for a defendant in the case who have raised concerns about James's ability to fairly investigate the allegations said Wednesday that it is not

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"Wisdom begins in Wonder." -Socrates clear from the announcement whether James still controls the investigation.

Earlier this fall, a former Cornell student, known as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit against the university and multiple defendants, alleging that she was the victim of a gang rape in October 2024. None of the men accused in the case faced criminal charges, and the lawsuit prompted outrage and questions about the university, and the law enforcement response to the claims.

The men accused in the case faced a range of sanctions, including expulsion, after the university conducted a Title IX investigation, but protests at Cornell and on other campuses called for more to be done for Jane Doe and for other people reporting sexual assault.

Faculty senators are voting this week on a resolution expressing no confidence in the school's central administration's ability to address "the ongoing crisis of sexual assault" at Cornell. The school's leaders have announced multiple changes in recent weeks, including appointing a former deputy U.S. attorney general to lead an independent review of the university's response.

Attorneys for one of the men accused in the case have asked the court to remove James as special prosecutor, saying she displayed prejudice before being appointed special prosecutor when she posted on X, "What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable.

"I'm holding her in my heart and in my prayers," James wrote on Sept. 28. "To her, and to all survivors: you're not alone. We stand with you."

James has not stepped down or been removed.

At a hearing last week in Sullivan County, New York, Kaitlin Vigars, an assistant attorney general representing James and Hochul in the matter, said that it was premature to say James had shown bias.

Judge James R. Farrell questioned Vigars about the social media post, which had been seen by more than half a million people, but also asked if it would be fair to remove her from the case if the other men accused in the case had not joined the petition.

On Wednesday, Andrew Miltenberg, an attorney for a defendant who asked for James to be removed, said they welcome Kelly's appointment and view it as a significant development, but the governor's executive order still designates James as special prosecutor. The announcement does not state that James "has recused herself, relinquished supervisory authority, surrendered charging authority, or agreed not to participate in substantive prosecutorial decisions," he wrote in an email.

That distinction is critical, Miltenberg said, because an outside lawyer can lead an investigative team while ultimate authority remains with the attorney general. "If Ms. Kelly has independent authority over investigative and charging decisions, without Attorney General James directing, approving, rejecting or overriding those judgments," Miltenberg said, "that could substantially narrow — and potentially resolve — our concerns."

A spokesperson for James did not immediately respond to questions about the issues raised by the defendant's attorneys Wednesday.

On Wednesday, James said in a news release that her office is committed to a thorough investigation “guided only by the facts, the evidence, and the law. Jacqueline Kelly is a seasoned prosecutor who has overseen numerous cases from investigation through trial. With her criminal legal expertise, commitment to public service, and judicial experience, I am confident that she will lead a fair and comprehensive investigation.”

Kelly was part of the Southern District of New York team that prosecuted music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. Combs was convicted last year on two prostitution-related charges. He was acquitted of three more serious counts of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.

911 tape from Oregon school shooting is released

Kaylub Giamanco fatally shot a school gunman in Bend, Oregon.

‘I will shoot them,’ frantic dad with daughters in class said in recording

BY CASEY PARKS

In a frantic call to 911 minutes before a mass shooting in Bend, Oregon, last month, a father told the dispatcher he saw a gunman going into his daughters' elementary school.

“Someone’s at the school with a — at my daughters’ school — with a gun,” he said. “I have a gun, and I will shoot them right now.”

On Tuesday, Deschutes County officials released the 911 call that Kaylub Giamanco, 36, made before he followed the teenager into the school and shot him to death.

Giamanco was on his way home to eat lunch when he saw a “man in black” fire twice at a red pickup truck, then once more at a woman mowing the lawn at Silver Rail Elementary

School, the school his 5- and 10-year-old daughters attend.

Giamanco called 911 as he pulled up to the school and immediately told the dispatcher he was going after the gunman.

"Don't do anything," the Deschutes County dispatcher said. "Let me get an officer there, okay?"

Giamanco sounded as if he was increasingly frustrated as the dispatcher spoke over him, asking him for details about who the shooter was and where he was located.

“This is my daughters’ school,” Giamanco said. “I’m about to go kill this kid.”

Giamanco later told Oregon Public Broadcasting he pulled his own .40 caliber handgun from his truck's center console, then followed the teenager into the school. He told OPB he was in “full panic.”

“I see him now,” Giamanco told the dispatcher. “He’s in the school.”

“Where? Where?” the dispatcher asked. “Where is the person at in the school?”

“They’re on the south side entering the building right now,” Giamanco said. “They’re f—shooting people, c’mon.”

The dispatcher asked Giamanco whether the shooter was White, Black or Hispanic, but Giamanco didn't answer.

The 16-year-old killed three children and a teacher and wounded two others. Moments later, Giamanco found the teenager in a special-education classroom wrestling with a teacher who was trying to gain control of his shotgun. Giamanco shot and killed the boy.

When he felt it was safe, Giamanco walked out of the classroom, laid his handgun on the ground, then held his hands up as police arrived.

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[THE NATION] Interference fears unfounded on a mostly smooth night

An election monitor, right, watches a voter at a polling location open for early voting Monday in Los Angeles.

CHRIS PIZZELLO/AP

Trump says he'll accept the results after priming voters to doubt them

BY LAURA MECKLER AND PATRICK MARLEY

Amid palpable anxiety that the Trump administration would interfere with the midterms, Tuesday's elections unfolded smoothly, with mostly minor, standard-issue hiccups.

The Justice Department sent more than 900 monitors to polling locations across the country, a historically large deployment. But fears that they would interfere with the day's operations — or that troops or ICE agents would be deployed — proved unfounded.

With sweeping wins for Democrats in both the House and the Senate, President Donald Trump told the New York Times late Tuesday night that he would accept the results. And across the country, losing candidates conceded their races to their opponents rather than suggesting any form of malfeasance.

More tests may arrive over the coming days and weeks as states complete their ballot counts and close contests are flyspecked. The Trump administration has already signaled plans in recent days to question results in California based on unproven allegations that noncitizens could vote, and in Alaska, based on Democratic maneuvering to facilitate the candidacy of a man whose name was quite similar to the incumbent GOP senator's.

But experts, buoyed by Tuesday's smooth operations, said American democracy had passed a critical test in the face of enormous pressure.

“Today was an absolute massive success for voters, election workers and everyone who cares about democracy,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO at Common Cause, a voting rights and civil liberties group. She noted isolated reports of long lines, inadequate signage at polling stations, problems with voting machines and, in Florida, flooding. But she said these are “things we see every election and that our election officials are prepared to solve.”

Much of the pre-Election Day anxiety among Democrats surrounded the possibility that Trump would send troops or immigration agents to the polls as an intimidation technique, something some officials had declined to rule out in advance. But at the White House on Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that he did not send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and there were no reports of troops, either. "It was smooth," said Trey Grayson, a Republican who previously oversaw elections as Kentucky's secretary of state. "Some of the concerns about ICE and troops and election monitors and AI and hacking and all this — it doesn't appear to have happened."

With Trump saying he would accept the results and Republican candidates conceding across the country, wide-ranging challenges to the elections are unlikely, said Stephen Richer, a Republican who previously administered elections for Arizona's Maricopa County.

"This movement takes its marching orders from the president," he said of the election deniers loyal to Trump. "Without the president beating the drum, you're not going to have the amount of political pressure that's needed to really make it significant."

As with any election, there were pockets of trouble, but of the normal variety. More than 20 polling locations in Florida had to be relocated because of flooding. Five polling sites in North Carolina stayed open an extra 25 to 45 minutes because of delays earlier in the day. A polling site outside Kansas City turned away dozens of voters in the morning after the county's elections office mistakenly delivered 100 ballots instead of 1,000 ballots to that precinct.

And in some pockets of the country, improperly programmed voting machines caused various hiccups. For instance, a programming error in New York's Westchester County prevented ballots from being scanned until the machines could be updated. Rep. Mike Lawler (R), the incumbent in the House race there, said he was confident the votes would be counted, but conservatives seized on the situation to suggest malfeasance.

"This is how the Left steals elections," podcaster Katie Miller, who is married to White House adviser Stephen Miller, wrote on X. Conservative influencers including Laura Loomer and Scott Presler made similar claims.

Trump and his allies had primed his supporters for much more. Ahead of Tuesday's voting, they injected a relentless stream of doubt about the legitimacy of the election, with posts and commentary priming supporters to question results if Republicans lose. Those posts ramped up in the final week.

Last week, Trump promised a \$1 million bounty to anyone who reports voter fraud that leads to conviction, but he gave no indication of how someone could apply for a payment. On the eve of the election, Attorney General Todd Blanche urged people on X to report “illegal conduct,” including noncitizen voting and ballot-box stuffing, to the FBI. And late on Election Day, as voters continued to cast ballots, Mullin warned that illegal voting could lead to five years in prison and \$250,000 fines.

In recent weeks, the Justice Department has lodged cases against more than 200 people for noncitizen voting, a tiny fraction of the tens of millions of voters who participated in Tuesday's election.

Democrats said they remained braced for interference in the coming days. The top election official in Los Angeles County said Tuesday that officials have “contingency plans in place” for any federal efforts to stop vote counting early. “I am on guard and on the lookout for this administration trying to essentially discard or reject or not accept the results if it doesn't go their way," Reyna Walters-Morgan, the Democratic National Committee vice chair for voter participation, said late Tuesday.

Some of the most widespread apprehensions ahead of Tuesday revolved around the Justice Department's plans to deploy a record number of election monitors, a standard practice that critics worried would morph into interference.

On Tuesday, the agency sent more than 900 monitors to some 120 jurisdictions in all 50 states in a quest to ensure election integrity. Nearly two-thirds of the jurisdictions chosen have consistently voted for Democrats in recent elections, according to a Washington Post analysis. That was not much different from the partisan breakdown during the Biden administration.

Despite the concerns, no major incidents were reported. In Michigan, officials said they fielded reports that monitors had stepped beyond their bounds by asking poll workers about their training or for copies of their training material. In New Mexico, officials said they had verified reports that monitors were asking “unusual”

questions.

There were also reports about “concerning” monitor activity in St. Louis, with some voters reporting that the monitors had asked whether the “voters felt pressured into voting a particular way and whether they feel coerced in any way,” said Denise Lieberman, the director and general counsel of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, a nonpartisan election protection program.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Tuesday that his state had deployed 1,000 election monitors to watch the federal government's monitors and to "hold the line against Trump's goons," as he put it on X.

But none of this amounted to much, and a Justice Department spokesperson said they were following their ordinary practices.

“It has, knock on wood ... turned out to be a normal Election Day in Minnesota,” said Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera, state director of Common Cause Minnesota. “The temperature’s really come down.”

Jeremy Roebuck, Annie Gowen, Hannah Knowles and Brady Dennis contributed to this report.

A ‘total wipeout’ for Republicans in North Carolina, now bluer than ever

and corruption in Washington.

North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley speaks Tuesday night in Gastonia.

CHRIS CARLSON/AP

BY GREGORY S. SCHNEIDER

As bad as things were for Republicans nationally on election night, they were arguably worse in North Carolina — ground zero for a repudiation of President Donald Trump's attempts to strong-arm GOP control of government that left this formerly red Southern state bluer than ever.

The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee — the organization working to keep GOP control of the House — lost his seat to a Democrat. The former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Whatley, lost his Senate race by a wide margin to former governor Roy Cooper.

The Republican state legislature's redistricting effort, designed to reduce Democratic representation to just three of North Carolina's 14 House seats, backfired. Democrats appeared to have flipped six seats, which would turn the previous 10-4 split favoring Republicans into a 10-4 split favoring Democrats. Some races were still very close Wednesday morning.

At one point during election night, Democrats led in every district, and Rep. Don Davis (D) won reelection to the 1st District seat that had been redrawn in an attempt to guarantee a GOP win.

But the wave went even further.

Democrats won control of the North Carolina House of Representatives for the first time in 16 years and broke the Republican supermajority in the state Senate.

“It’s a total wipeout across the board,” NRCC spokesman Mike Marinelli said via text message. “Don’t think it has much to do with the quality of candidates on either side. We're losing Mississippi. Last night was a total referendum on the president and voters being livid about the prices, the war and immigration."

North Carolina was a microcosm of Tuesday's wave election, a once solid-red Southern state that went blue because of a combination of zealous gerrymandering, an underperforming GOP Senate candidate and a Democratic message that appeared to resonate by emphasizing themes of economic struggle

“Hard to know where to begin,” the left-leaning think tank Carolina Forward posted on X. “This was a generational election. Absolutely insane.”

“We knew that for too many people in North Carolina, the middle class was feeling like a distant dream,” Cooper, a popular and centrist former two-term governor, told supporters at his victory rally. “We knew that the Washington, D.C., insiders and the richest Americans were getting unimaginable wealth at our expense. We knew that the chaos and corruption in Washington were hurting our people. Today you said this has to stop.”

Cooper's lead in polls throughout the summer in his race against Whatley had caused national Republicans to withdraw funding from the state weeks before the election.

Democrats performed well with a combination of demographic groups, and turnout was up particularly in areas with a high concentration of Black voters. The state as a whole shifted toward Democrats by 23 percentage points compared with its 2024 presidential vote.

A Washington Post analysis of the vote showed Democrats performing better with voters across the regions of North Carolina, including with rural voters in a state that was already trending more urban and highly educated and blue. The blue shift, which happened even in areas with high concentrations of non-college-educated White voters, suggests that Democrats have the potential for more durable gains as the state continues to change.

Trump's tariffs were especially potent with farmers, who have faced the double whammy of high diesel prices arising from the war in Iran and Republican cuts to Medicaid, which also contributed to declines for the GOP among lower-income groups.

NRCC chairman Rep. Richard Hudson (R), who first won election in 2013, lost in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District to Democrat Richard Ojeda, a retired Army major. The central North Carolina seat had been in Republican control since 1963.

Some Republicans lamented that they were overcome by a movement for change that affected every state.

"A lot of this at the state level is out of our control," Republican state Rep. Erin Paré told Raleigh TV station WRAL. "There's a national sentiment that's devastating to Republicans downballot."

In the 11th Congressional District in the mountainous region around Asheville, Republican Jennifer Balkcom, who lost to Democrat Jamie Ager, called it “one of the worst political environments in modern history.”

But in her statement on social media, Balkcom vowed that “our campaign is not over. I look forward to running again — and taking this seat back — in 2028.”

The Worst Year on Record for Chesapeake Bay Ospreys. The warning is clear. It's time to act.

More than 5,000 Osprey chicks starved to death in 2026, signaling that the Chesapeake Bay's food web is in trouble. Reducing the industrial harvest of menhaden – the Osprey's main food – is the most immediate way to address this crisis.

Governors Moore and Spanberger: Please take swift action to further reduce commercial menhaden quotas to protect Ospreys, menhaden, and the coastal ecosystem upon which so many Maryland and Virginia communities depend.

American Bird Conservancy

More information about Ospreys and menhaden can be found at: abcbirds.org/ProtectOspreys

A starving young Osprey stands next to its deceased sibling in a nest this summer. Photo courtesy of American Bird Conservancy.

U.S. voters elect a record number of Black governors

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore at a get-out-the-vote rally in Silver Spring last month.

FINN GOMEZ/GETTY IMAGES

Republican Byron Donalds, who was elected governor in Florida on Tuesday, at a rally last month.

ANDREW HARNIK/GETTY IMAGES

Feat made possible by blue wave sweeping Democrats into office

BY JARRELL DILLARD

Next year, for the first time in U.S. history, there will be five Black governors serving simultaneously — the most ever.

Maryland's Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (D), all won their races. And in Nevada, Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford triumphed over the incumbent governor.

"It was never lost on me that I'm the only Black governor in this country, and that's a title that I never wanted," Moore said in an interview before the election.

The record number of Black governors-elect marks a significant milestone, made possible by the blue wave that swept Democrats into office nationwide. Until Tuesday's midterm elections, only three Black politicians had ever been elected by voters to serve as governors, all in different election cycles.

However, more have served as governors because of appointments. To date, besides Moore, P.B.S. Pinchback (Louisiana), L. Douglas Wilder (Virginia), Deval Patrick (Massachusetts) and David Paterson (New York) have held office. Pinchback and Paterson were not elected but ascended from the role of lieutenant governor to complete the term of governors who resigned or were removed.

Only two of those served at the same time: Patrick and Paterson. In 2008, when New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned, Paterson, who served as his lieutenant governor, stepped into the role.

While Black politicians have made strides at local legislative levels, major-party nominations for statewide and national races have historically been elusive. And general-election victories are rare.

A large part of that is due to historic biases and discrimination, Nadia Brown, a professor of government at Georgetown University, said in an interview.

"It's really difficult for minoritized communities, people from marginalized communities, to build a national statewide coalition in order to get elected," said Brown. "And that has to do with historic legacies of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia."

At the local level, candidates often have an easier time building trust with voters who know them, their families or their work in the community, Brown said. Statewide candidates, meanwhile, must put together broader coalitions and contend with stereotypes about what issues they are qualified to handle. For example, Black candidates may be viewed as knowledgeable about civil rights but less competent on issues such as environmental policy, she said.

But Brown said this year's field stood out not just for the number of Black candidates who clinched major-party nominations, but for their qualifications and experience. The eight Black major-party gubernatorial nominees included Democrats and Republicans, reflecting a range of political backgrounds and policy priorities.

Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, also pointed to the candidates' governing records as a reason they were successful in winning their nominations. Johnson cited Ford's work as Nevada's attorney general and Bottoms's tenure as Atlanta's mayor.

The milestone comes against a backdrop of heightened racial tensions in the nation. The friction has been fueled by pushback against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, alongside long-standing race-conscious policies.

Johnson said that the current climate makes the moment even more significant.

“No one should be forced to suppress their identity for political expediency or anyone else's comfort,” Johnson said. “We are a diverse democracy. We have been for a while. And as a nation we will be doing ourselves a disservice if we try to fit ourselves into a 1950s segregated box.”

For Moore in Maryland, the prospect of a coalition of Black governors carries significance beyond the historical milestone. He said he learned that being the first Black person to occupy the role in Maryland did not necessarily make the job different, though it did shape how others perceived him sometimes.

“Anytime you're walking into a space that no one has walked in before, there is kind of the nerve-racking nature of it all,” Moore said. “When people see you they don't often see the governor, because there hasn't been a governor that's looked like you before.”

‘Pretend I’m on the ballot,’ Trump said before worst GOP rout in 50 years

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday.

CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/AP

A bold dare for a president whose approval ratings had reached historic lows

BY NATALIE ALLISON

President Donald Trump spent two months urging Americans to pretend he was on the ballot. On Tuesday, they did just that.

Voters delivered a stunning rebuke to Trump's party that rivaled anything Republicans had suffered in 50 years, defeats on ruby-red turf that Trump won handily just two years ago, where he has dominated politics for nearly a decade and against candidates he had in some cases handpicked.

Not only did Democrats flip Senate and governor seats in red states, but at times by eye-popping margins.

"The message is very clear and very simple here. It was a complete repudiation of the party as defined by Donald Trump," said Mike Murphy, a Los Angeles-based Republican consultant who worked for candidates in the pre-Trump GOP, including Jeb Bush and John McCain.

"We have a little saying in show business, ‘box office poison,’ and that’s what Donald Trump has become."

More than 41 times in recent weeks, The Washington Post found, Trump told voters to act this November as if the midterms were a referendum on him — a bold dare for a president whose approval ratings had reached historic lows as a growing number of Americans reported opposing his policies and his behavior in office.

In just two years since Trump's remarkable presidential victory campaign, in which he vowed to lower consumer prices, he has generated deep resentment of his policies. Voters blamed his decision to go to war against Iran and his tariff policies for raising prices, instead.

Trump left himself no hedge against being held responsible for voter unhappiness because he had molded the GOP into his image over the last decade. He demanded complete loyalty from Republicans and sought to cast out those who opposed him. Then he made himself the face of the party's midterm messaging, not only calling for his advisers to feature him in midterm television advertisements but demanding that the GOP host a first-of-its-kind midterm convention to tout his policies.

Trump “brought a Chernobyl-level disaster to the Republican Party,” Murphy said, “the worst beating the party has taken since ’74, after Watergate.”

That year, Democrats gained 49 seats in the House and four in the Senate, on the heels of newly installed President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard M. Nixon and amid a spike in gas prices and overall inflation.

So far this year, with some races left to be called, Democrats have flipped seven Senate seats and at least 25 in a House with far fewer competitive seats. They also flipped several governorships and state legislative chambers.

In Texas on Tuesday, James Talarico's double-digit lead over Trump's chosen Senate candidate Ken Paxton was particularly symbolic, taking place in a state long seen as the heartland of the conservative movement.

In North Carolina, a state Trump won three times, Democrat Roy Cooper not only flipped a Senate seat but was leading early Wednesday by nearly 20 percentage points. Democrats snatched Senate seats in other deeply red states, including South Carolina and Kansas.

In Pennsylvania, the swing state that sealed Trump's comeback victory, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was winning re-election by 22 points with nearly all the vote counted.

For months, Trump's advisers insisted that he was the key to Republicans' being able to defy poor expectations in the midterms. Trump, they argued, could rally Republicans to the polls like no other and was responsible for assembling a coalition that included young and diverse voters that the GOP had never dreamed of winning.

Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters dubbed the September GOP midterm convention in Dallas as “Trumpapalooza.”

"Everything that the president has done regarding the economy, regarding the average American worker, I think will lead to votes in November," Gruters told Newsmax later that month.

The votes went toward Dem-

ocrats.

“Midterm elections are about anger management and failed expectations. They drive the math of turnout,” said Paul Shumaker, a Republican strategist in North Carolina, where Democrats flipped the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis.

“Clearly, Trump failed to meet the economic expectations and also fueled the anger in doing so,” he said.

By mid-October, Trump's standing with voters had fallen to levels not seen since Harry S. Truman. In a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, the share of U.S. adults who approved of his overall job performance fell to 33 percent, with 66 percent disapproving; 52 percent said they disapproved strongly. Only 28 percent said they approved of his handling of the economy and 27 percent approved of his handling of “the situation with Iran.”

An even smaller share, 28 percent, said they approved of Trump's MAGA movement. By more than 2 to 1, Americans said they felt Trump had “gone beyond his authority” as president.

The poll found that registered voters, 58 percent to 39 percent, said they would rather have a Democratic-led Congress acting as a check on Trump than a Republican one to support his agenda. That margin was roughly double what it had been a year earlier.

Unlike notable midterm defeats in 1994 and 2006, when President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush publicly accepted blame for their parties' defeats and committed to changing course in governing, Trump did no such thing.

"I don't like to consider it a defeat for me. I wasn't on the ballot," Trump told Fox News late Tuesday night, a message that was the opposite of what he spent weeks saying on the campaign trail.

"There was a mood in the air, I guess," he continued. "I shouldn't feel guilty because ... no matter how good the president is, you lose" in the midterms.

Like Trump, White House advisers blamed the losses entirely on the Republican candidates, insisting that rather than being a rebuke of Trump, the outcome was merely a function of his not being on the ballot. The White House distributed a statement Tuesday night arguing Trump “did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates themselves.”

“Bloodbath doesn’t even begin to describe” voters’ reaction to Republicans, said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. It was “a complete and total repudiation of one man and his policies,” he said, by “an electorate that is upset with being told by President Trump that they are doing better than they are.”

"It didn't work for Joe Biden, and Tuesday showed it was the absolute worst strategy Donald Trump could deploy."

The president had failed to explain some of his policies to the public, said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina), who lost a primary to Sen. Darline Graham, the Trump-endorsed candidate who lost on Tuesday.

"The Iran war — he needs to explain," Norman said. "When I heard him say, 'The war will end when I say it's going to end,' I'm sorry, that's prideful."

‘Pretend I’m on the ballot,’ Trump said before worst GOP rout in 50 years

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday.

CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/AP

A bold dare for a president whose approval ratings had reached historic lows

BY NATALIE ALLISON

President Donald Trump spent two months urging Americans to pretend he was on the ballot. On Tuesday, they did just that.

Voters delivered a stunning rebuke to Trump's party that rivaled anything Republicans had suffered in 50 years, defeats on ruby-red turf that Trump won handily just two years ago, where he has dominated politics for nearly a decade and against candidates he had in some cases handpicked.

Not only did Democrats flip Senate and governor seats in red states, but at times by eye-popping margins.

"The message is very clear and very simple here. It was a complete repudiation of the party as defined by Donald Trump," said Mike Murphy, a Los Angeles-based Republican consultant who worked for candidates in the pre-Trump GOP, including Jeb Bush and John McCain.

"We have a little saying in show business, ‘box office poison,’ and that’s what Donald Trump has become."

More than 41 times in recent weeks, The Washington Post found, Trump told voters to act this November as if the midterms were a referendum on him — a bold dare for a president whose approval ratings had reached historic lows as a growing number of Americans reported opposing his policies and his behavior in office.

In just two years since Trump's remarkable presidential victory campaign, in which he vowed to lower consumer prices, he has generated deep resentment of his policies. Voters blamed his decision to go to war against Iran and his tariff policies for raising prices, instead.

Trump left himself no hedge against being held responsible for voter unhappiness because he had molded the GOP into his image over the last decade. He demanded complete loyalty from Republicans and sought to cast out those who opposed him. Then he made himself the face of the party's midterm messaging, not only calling for his advisers to feature him in midterm television advertisements but demanding that the GOP host a first-of-its-kind midterm convention to tout his policies.

Trump “brought a Chernobyl-level disaster to the Republican Party,” Murphy said, “the worst beating the party has taken since ’74, after Watergate.”

That year, Democrats gained 49 seats in the House and four in the Senate, on the heels of newly installed President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard M. Nixon and amid a spike in gas prices and overall inflation.

So far this year, with some races left to be called, Democrats have flipped seven Senate seats and at least 25 in a House with far fewer competitive seats. They also flipped several governorships and state legislative chambers.

In Texas on Tuesday, James Talarico's double-digit lead over Trump's chosen Senate candidate Ken Paxton was particularly symbolic, taking place in a state long seen as the heartland of the conservative movement.

In North Carolina, a state Trump won three times, Democrat Roy Cooper not only flipped a Senate seat but was leading early Wednesday by nearly 20 percentage points. Democrats snatched Senate seats in other deeply red states, including South Carolina and Kansas.

In Pennsylvania, the swing state that sealed Trump's comeback victory, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was winning re-election by 22 points with nearly all the vote counted.

For months, Trump's advisers insisted that he was the key to Republicans' being able to defy poor expectations in the midterms. Trump, they argued, could rally Republicans to the polls like no other and was responsible for assembling a coalition that included young and diverse voters that the GOP had never dreamed of winning.

Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters dubbed the September GOP midterm convention in Dallas as “Trumpapalooza.”

"Everything that the president has done regarding the economy, regarding the average American worker, I think will lead to votes in November," Gruters told Newsmax later that month.

The votes went toward Dem-

ocrats.

“Midterm elections are about anger management and failed expectations. They drive the math of turnout,” said Paul Shumaker, a Republican strategist in North Carolina, where Democrats flipped the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis.

“Clearly, Trump failed to meet the economic expectations and also fueled the anger in doing so,” he said.

By mid-October, Trump's standing with voters had fallen to levels not seen since Harry S. Truman. In a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, the share of U.S. adults who approved of his overall job performance fell to 33 percent, with 66 percent disapproving; 52 percent said they disapproved strongly. Only 28 percent said they approved of his handling of the economy and 27 percent approved of his handling of “the situation with Iran.”

An even smaller share, 28 percent, said they approved of Trump's MAGA movement. By more than 2 to 1, Americans said they felt Trump had “gone beyond his authority” as president.

The poll found that registered voters, 58 percent to 39 percent, said they would rather have a Democratic-led Congress acting as a check on Trump than a Republican one to support his agenda. That margin was roughly double what it had been a year earlier.

Unlike notable midterm defeats in 1994 and 2006, when President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush publicly accepted blame for their parties' defeats and committed to changing course in governing, Trump did no such thing.

"I don't like to consider it a defeat for me. I wasn't on the ballot," Trump told Fox News late Tuesday night, a message that was the opposite of what he spent weeks saying on the campaign trail.

"There was a mood in the air, I guess," he continued. "I shouldn't feel guilty because ... no matter how good the president is, you lose" in the midterms.

Like Trump, White House advisers blamed the losses entirely on the Republican candidates, insisting that rather than being a rebuke of Trump, the outcome was merely a function of his not being on the ballot. The White House distributed a statement Tuesday night arguing Trump “did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates themselves.”

“Bloodbath doesn’t even begin to describe” voters’ reaction to Republicans, said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. It was “a complete and total repudiation of one man and his policies,” he said, by “an electorate that is upset with being told by President Trump that they are doing better than they are.”

"It didn't work for Joe Biden, and Tuesday showed it was the absolute worst strategy Donald Trump could deploy."

The president had failed to explain some of his policies to the public, said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina), who lost a primary to Sen. Darline Graham, the Trump-endorsed candidate who lost on Tuesday.

"The Iran war — he needs to explain," Norman said. "When I heard him say, 'The war will end when I say it's going to end,' I'm sorry, that's prideful."

Midterms offer a road map for Democrats and highlight risks for Republicans

From left, Reps. Katherine Clark (D-Massachusetts), Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) and Suzan DelBene (D-Washington) on Wednesday.

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP

The 2026 mid-term election has dealt the country a political realignment beyond even the rosiest hopes that had been building for Democrats in the pre-election polls.

Karen Tumulty

THE TAKE

President Donald Trump's unpopular policies, erraticism and misalignment with the priorities of the voters have brought a return of divided government in Washington, where Democrats will have bigger-than-expected majorities in the House and Senate.

The election carried lessons for Democrats in how to win and laid bare the stakes — and risks, particularly for Republicans — in the 2028 presidential race, which effectively will get underway almost immediately.

It opens possibilities for newly empowered Democrats to investigate the Trump administration and take action at both the state and federal level on unpopular GOP policies, from housing to health care to energy to the Iran war.

Ballots are still being counted, and two Senate races had yet to be called as of midmorning Wednesday. But Democrats have picked up seven seats in that chamber, giving them at least 54. In the House, their numbers grew by more than two dozen, to reach upward of the 225 that party leaders had said they considered their most optimistic scenario.

For the first time since 2010, Democrats will also hold most of the nation's governorships. And the party picked up hundreds of seats in state legislatures across the map, flipping some – including both houses in the critical swing state of Wisconsin, where Democrats will have full control of the government for the first time in nearly two decades.

Those significant Democratic gains came in what had been deep-red territory, which also saw a shattering of the 2024 coalition that carried Trump into the White House for a second time. Groups that had

moved rightward two years ago — among them, rural voters, Latinos, Black men, younger Americans — went the other direction. Where Trump won voters without college degrees and men by double digits, they narrowly sided with Democrats this year.

With the starting gun for the 2028 presidential contest about to go off, those are auspicious signs for Democrats. The result could also be read as a sign — albeit a tentative one — that the intense polarization that has defined the nation's politics for more than a decade is loosening its grip.

“Investments in swing states like North Carolina, as exurban and rural as it is, go a long way,” said Jeff Allen, campaign manager for former governor and Sen.-elect Roy Cooper (D), who won by nearly 20 percentage points in a state where no Democrat has been elected to statewide federal office in nearly two decades. “You can’t just run up the score in urban areas and hope turnout carries the day.”

In North Carolina's General Assembly, Democrats gained control of the House and narrowed the GOP majority in the 50-member state Senate from 10 to just two.

There remain significant obstacles as to how much newly empowered Washington Democrats can get done during Trump's remaining two years in office. In the Senate, Democrats still have fewer than the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. And in neither chamber will they have the two-thirds supermajority needed to overcome Trump's veto, which he has said he will be aggressive about using.

No doubt, after an election in which voters cited corruption as a top concern, congressional Democrats will use their new subpoena power to launch investigations of Trump, his family and his administration. "LAWYER UP," Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California), who is expected to become chairman of the House Oversight Committee, wrote on social media.

But they also will be called upon to do something about the cost of living, which more than any other issue drove the election result, and the unpopular Iran war, to which Trump has remained committed, despite its having sent fuel prices soaring.

Speaker-in-waiting Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) has appointed task forces to look at various aspects of the affordability conundrum.

In the near term, Democrats expect to take up a number of measures that have already passed the House. Among them: extending expired tax credits that made coverage under the Affordable Care Act more affordable, revoking tariffs that Trump placed on Canada, restoring temporary protected status for Haitian migrants, and wiping out the president's executive order terminating collective bargaining for federal employees.

The comfortable size of Jeffries's Democratic caucus will be such that he will have more room than the current speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), does to negotiate the ideological divisions and competing agendas within the GOP's paper-thin majority.

Trump had told voters to pretend he was on the ballot, and they apparently did. Nonetheless, he tried to deflect blame for his party's punishment by the electorate.

“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he posted on his Truth Social account late Tuesday.

But Trump, using his out-size influence in his party, had personally cleared the way and taken credit for many of what turned out to be the party's weakest nominees — among them, Ken Paxton in Texas, Darline Graham in South Carolina, Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio, Michael Whatley in North Carolina.

So will there be a Republican reckoning? Not likely, said GOP pollster Whit Ayres: “Trump is going to maintain a strangle-hold on a significant part of the party, no matter how you cut it.”

Ayres also noted that in modern history, an unpopular president's party has always been thrown out of the White House in the next election. "Maybe you just let JD Vance have it and be the sacrificial lamb," he said of the 2028 GOP nomination.

While the battle over Congress has consumed most of the nation's attention, some of the most profound change is likely to take place on the state level. "Last night was the most significant night for state legislatures since the seismic GOP wave in 2010," said Mandara Meyers, executive director of the States Project, a progressive organization.

Governors and legislators will preside over the reapportionment that will take place after the 2030 Census — and probably sooner in some states, should they choose to repeat this year's arms race of mid-decade redistricting. With the Sun Belt population growing, the census is expected to allocate more congressional and electoral votes to states such as Texas, which flipped to blue after three decades in which Democrats did not win a single statewide office.

In other words, over the longer run, the road to the White House will take a new turn, into territory that no longer looks uninhabitable for Democrats.

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Voter anger over Trump's agenda results in historic GOP losses

REPUBLICANS FROM A1

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party thought they had a plan to survive a midterms backlash.

SAMUEL CORUM/POOL/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

JIM VONDRUSKA/GETTY IMAGES

Supporters of Adam Hamilton, the Democratic Senate candidate in Kansas, celebrate during an election night watch party in Overland Park. Hamilton defeated Sen. Roger Marshall (R) in an upset.

century.

He underestimated how angry voters had grown at his handling of the economy, tariffs and the war he launched in Iran this year, alienating key segments of the coalition Trump built in his historic 2024 win, including young men, Black men and Hispanics. He leaves the future of the party reshaped by him unclear.

Republicans began the campaign with a favorable Senate map, aggressive plans to redraw House districts and access to enormous sums of money. They ended up losing at least seven Senate seats, most of them in states Trump carried by double-digit margins just two years ago, as well as control of both chambers of Congress.

On the eve of the election, standing in front of the newly renovated Reflecting Pool, Trump offered a historical explanation for his party's predicament.

“For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” he said. “But we gave this a very strong shot.”

But Tuesday's steep losses point to more than the usual political pendulum swings. The president drove down his own popularity, squandered his trust with voters on the economy and created an impossible environment for many incumbents. He started a war that spiked fuel prices, failed to focus on affordability while seeming preoccupied with White House renovations, and backed candidates whose liabilities required expensive interventions.

As the political environment deteriorated and the map expanded, weak incumbents who had rarely faced competitive races in their lifetimes faltered in deep-red states, compounding their troubles.

Democrats, despite their own fissures, took advantage of the mess: They recruited established candidates in some key races and attacked Republicans over the costs of Trump's second term. Republicans significantly out-raised Democrats overall as Elon Musk and other big donors poured hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs and other groups, but Democratic candidates nonetheless out-raised Republican candidates, helping make up the gap.

In the end, Republicans outspent Democrats in competitive midterm races \$2.6 billion to \$1.8 billion, a Washington Post analysis of AdImpact data found. It didn't matter.

This account of how Republicans lost their majorities is based on interviews with dozens of people in both parties involved in the races, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations.

The early bet

Republicans began the campaign season believing they had a plan to survive the usual backlash against a president's party.

Their Senate majority stood at 53 seats, and all but one of the GOP-held seats up for election were in states Trump had won in 2024. The House, where the margin has hovered around five seats, was more vulnerable, but party leaders hoped a mid-decade redistricting effort would strengthen their position.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) scored early wins working with Trump to shape the field. In hours-long Oval Office meetings, Johnson secured endorsements for his preferred House candidates. Thune and Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, persuaded Trump to back Mike Rogers, a former congressman, in Michigan and Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa, avoiding potentially divisive primaries with two polished candidates who had extensive experience.

Democrats focused early on recruiting candidates who had won in red states before: former governor Roy Cooper in North Carolina, former congresswoman Mary Peltola in Alaska and former senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Even so, few Democrats initially believed that they could retake the Senate this year. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, predicted shortly after Trump's 2024 win that it would take “at least two cycles” to recapture the chamber.

"When I first talked about taking back the Senate in 2025, people rolled their eyes," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) told reporters just before midnight on Election Day.

But by late 2025, Trump's approval rating had fallen to around 40 percent. His tariffs, announced earlier that year, had driven up the prices of some goods, and the president often defended them in ways that could sound insensitive.

“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,” he said at an April Cabinet meeting.

Much of the year had also been consumed by the push to release files on disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which a House committee voted to subpoena from the federal government that July, over Trump's prolonged objections.

Senior White House officials, including Vice President JD Vance and chief of staff Susie Wiles, arranged meetings with outside pollsters and analysts tracking Trump's losses among newer members of his coalition, according to three people involved.

One pollster, Mark Mitchell, urged Trump over lunch in November to refocus on affordability. Mitchell, whom Vance had invited, said the president seemed more interested in discussing golf than how to regain support among working-class voters.

Trump's advisers urged him to travel the country to demonstrate his attention to the cost of living. In December, they privately described plans for near-weekly rallies throughout 2026. That schedule failed to materialize until the campaign's final weeks.

Several of the president's political advisers also worried that top White House adviser Stephen Miller's emboldened army of immigration agents and the mass-deportation agenda was hurting them, especially after agents shot and killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in separate incidents in Minneapolis in January.

Republicans, knowing the challenge they faced selling themselves on the economy, instead settled on a contrast message that they believed would disqualify Democrats to voters.

"It's a contrast between common sense and crazy," Johnson said at a recent Iowa event, crediting former House speaker Newt Gingrich with coining the slogan.

They also planned to push the sweeping tax cut legislation the GOP passed in 2025, emphasizing provisions including no taxes on tips and investment accounts for children intended to appeal to middle- and lower-income voters.

But Trump's attention was often on foreign affairs, as he authorized an unorthodox strike on Venezuela and bombed Iran's nuclear facilities.

On Feb. 28, Trump launched coordinated strikes with Israel against Iran. Iran then closed the Strait of Hormuz, driving up fuel prices and adding a new burden on voters already frustrated by high prices.

The action violated Trump's pledge not to start wars, and his top advisers were divided on its wisdom. But Republican lawmakers and strategists believed that the war would not necessarily doom them in November, provided gasoline prices fell by late July or August, before voters fully turned their attention to the campaign.

The administration's mid-June memorandum of understanding with Iran offered hope that gas price relief was coming. But many Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), criticized the deal as soft on Iran.

"We think if we can get a 2 in as the first number in the price of gas nationally, that this whole thing blows wide open," Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said in late June on the sidelines of his group's annual convention. The average price of gas at the time was about \$3.92 per gallon nationally, and by Election Day it had climbed to more than \$4.

Democrats, still wary of the GOP's financial edge, began to hope that their party would prevail as Republicans turned to attacking their candidates on transgender issues.

"Our bet was the economy is going to outweigh culture war fights," said Mike Smith, the president of House Democrats' super PAC, the House Majority PAC.

Still, Democrats faced their own challenges. Schumer's top recruit in Maine's Senate contest, Gov. Janet Mills (D), dropped out of the race in April, clearing the field for Graham Platner, a scandal-plagued political novice who had excited grassroots Democrats in the state in their bid to take out Republican Sen. Susan Collins. The primary in Michigan, where Schumer had been unable to recruit Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg into the race, became a messy three-way battle that often revolved around the issue of Israel, which divided Democrats.