Democrats won their largest congressional victory since the 1976 Watergate election—overwhelmingly flipping both the House and Senate. And while the dance music is still playing, a debate has already burst forward over whether those election results were merely a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s failures, and whether it was progressives or moderates who produced the secret recipe for Democrats’ success.

These are the wrong questions. Anyone seeking to understand the midterm’s lessons should start here: Democrats won by being populist economic fighters who were unafraid to call out the corrupt politicians and corporate interests who have rigged the system at the expense of everyone else.

Now, Democrats must deliver. Yes, even with Donald Trump in the White House.

In 2024, Trump swept back into power, declaring he would cut costs on “day one” and bragging he would “end inflation and make America affordable again.” Instead, Trump and Republicans took a wrecking ball to the economy, cutting health care to finance tax breaks for rich people and giant corporations, imposing chaotic tariffs, and launching a war with Iran. With astonishing brazenness, Trump has attempted to reengineer the federal government into a corruption machine designed to rake in profits for himself, his family, and his cronies.

In the most competitive 2026 races, in blue, purple, and red states, including places like Texas and South Carolina that have not elected Democrats statewide for decades, Democrats won by recognizing Americans’ economic pain, denouncing Washington corruption that has made a rigged economy worse by favoring giant corporations over working people, and by pledging to upend this system.

Democrats relentlessly and rightfully criticized Trump’s economy, but we also made a much deeper point—and it struck home. The first Democratic Governor of Texas in 30 years, Gina Hinojosa, said, “The one fight in this country is about economic power.” Red-state winners like Sherrod Brown, James Talarico, and Jon Ossoff called out a “rigged” system. In South Carolina, Annie Andrews pledged to take on “big insurance, big tech, big pharma, and the utility monopolies.” Josh Turek promised to fight for Iowans, “not for billionaires and large corporations.” Chris Pappas declared to New Hampshire voters in his victory speech: “Tonight’s results are a wake-up call for the corporate special interests and billionaires who have been rigging the economy.”

Just campaign rhetoric? Nope. Across the country, Democrats stood up for big policy changes like increasing the federal minimum wage, expanding child care, reining in Big Tech, data centers, and AI, and reforming health care. We came with plans—specific policies to dismantle a rigged system and beat back concentrated corporate power. 

From Mary Peltola in Alaska to Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Democrats called for blocking grocery store mergers that drive up prices. Both Iowa’s Josh Turek and Texas’ James Talarico promised to break up vertical integration between insurance companies, pharmacy benefit managers, and pharmacies. Maine’s Troy Jackson and Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed beat Republicans by proudly campaigning for Medicare for All. And plenty more Democrats like Lindsay James (IA), Zach Dembo (KY), Denise Powell (NE), and Jamie Ager (NC) flipped Republican seats after demanding a public insurance option that is available to all Americans. Not long ago, trying to flip a seat from red to blue by promising to raise taxes on the rich was considered unthinkable. But Democrats did just that—and won.

None of this happened without Democrats putting in the work to earn the trust of voters. Our new housing affordability law—that Donald Trump refused to sign—was a critical proof point. And in races from Kentucky to Indiana to South Carolina, candidates loudly proclaimed their support for blocking private equity from gobbling up housing. Andrews and Kansas’s Adam Hamilton specifically campaigned on cracking down further on Wall Street ownership of single-family homes than the historic provisions that passed Congress this summer.

Now it’s time to act. Donald Trump says he wants to work with Democrats. We should force him to do that on the affordability and corruption issues that drove this election—or call his bluff. I’m ready to team up with any Republican who is listening to the American people. But if Congressional Republicans won’t join us to deliver relief for working families, Democrats will do it without them. 

Some Democrats have already argued that it’s wasted energy to send bold policy changes to the Trump White House. I think that’s just plain wrong. It would be a breach of faith with the people from South Carolina to Texas, who voted for us to address costs and corruption, to spend the next two years waiting for some future Democratic trifecta to hopefully deliver meaningful change. Trump says he welcomes the nickname “Mr. Veto.” Well, let’s test that out by passing legislation the American people support to make life more affordable and our government less corrupt.

First, stop Trump’s war. Second, cut costs. Democrats have power on spending bills that require our votes, and we should use it. No more funding for a forever war with Iran. Cancel the looming cuts to health insurance and nutrition benefits put in place by Republicans last summer. The reconciliation budget process also allows us to pass big chunks of legislation without a single Republican vote, so we should reverse Republican health care cuts, expand health care coverage, and fund universal child care. Third, pay for it by putting a little fairness back in the system. We can start with canceling the tax breaks Trump and the Republicans handed out to corporations, ultra-millionaires, and billionaires. 

Next, where Democrats agree reconciliation is not an option, like with bills to ban stock trading by federal officials or crack down on Trump’s corruption in plain sight, Democrats should put the bills up for a vote. Let the Republicans decide if they want to stay tied to such corruption and, if they do, then let’s clear away Senate filibuster rules and pass the laws anyway.

Finally, accountability. Congress has the power to hold Donald Trump and his cronies accountable for ripping off the American people to make themselves richer. Big Tech CEOs, Wall Street executives, and giant corporations should prepare to answer tough questions and face meaningful consequences if they have broken the law. 

Democrats won this election by claiming we are on the side of working people, and working people are counting on us to deliver. 

Americans need Democrats to deliver now, not in two years. 

Emily Hanford is an education journalist whose reporting, especially the podcast Sold a Story, has been a catalyst for a wholesale change in the way reading is taught in schools in the U.S. Since her earliest reports in 2017, dozens of states have introduced legislation mandating reading curricula that align with the science of reading, a phrase she helped popularize. In the podcast’s second season she pulls back the lens even further and examines direct instruction, a teacher-led style of education, and in particular the teaching program developed in the 1960s by Siegfried (Zig) Engelmann, a former marketing executive, which bears the brand name Direct Instruction. Most schools use a different, more inquiry-based and student-led approach, where teachers act more as guides than instructors, even though some studies suggest it’s less effective. Hanford discussed the huge changes she helped engineer in schools, what makes a great teacher, and why Engelmann’s style of teaching is so controversial. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How do you feel about the changes that you've helped bring about in the way the U.S. teaches reading?

Let's see. How do I want to say this? I don't think you can plan to have that kind of impact. Making meaningful changes in education seems to take a combination of top-down and bottom-up movement. People listened to the first season of the podcast, including many lawmakers, and thought, “We need a new law,” and I think some of those laws are well-intended and have good results, but passing a law isn't enough and sometimes has unintended consequences. So I have mixed feelings about it all. At least 26 states have made some legislative or policy change around reading instruction since the podcast came out in the fall of 2022, but they are also part of a more than decade-long series of changes in laws and policies related to reading instruction.

Are the laws making a difference in the schools?

There are states where there has been some measurable change in reading outcomes–Mississippi is the one that people point to immediately. Alabama is another—a big report on that came out last week. Legislation is almost always part of the story, never the whole story. One of the reasons we are trying to get inside the question of direct instruction in Season Two is that instruction does matter, and matters maybe more than some people think.

Did you receive a lot of pushback for Season One?

In some ways the field maybe was ready for it. There was a group of parents and teachers pushing for change. Reading instruction was on a lot of people's radar. But one of the remarkable things was particular people, who were very critical of me at first, changing their minds, and writing later to say, "Oh, I didn't know. I understand this differently now." I mean, I still have plenty of critics out there.

One of the things that is surprising about this subject is how politically divisive it is. To what do you attribute that?

Education has always had surprising politics. A lot of the kind of holistic, big reforms in reading have come in more conservative states, more Southern states, states that were further toward the bottom of the reading scale. Maybe they had more pressure on them to make changes. And some of the states that do better in education haven't had as much pressure on them—although changes have been happening in states like Massachusetts and California as well.

I think it was very surprising for some people that this stuff about phonics instruction came from public media—something they perceived as middle left. Explicit instruction has been associated with a more conservative point of view and been embraced by some high-profile politicians, including President George W. Bush. But when you talk to the researchers, or the people who are doing the work in schools, many of them are as left as left can be. And most teachers just want to do stuff that works. I actually understand why education is political, because it matters a lot. The stakes are high.

The new season of your podcast is about a teaching technique known as direct instruction. Would you say it is what some people call rote learning?

I don't think that’s what it is. If you look at the work of someone like Zig Engelmann, he was very much trying to understand what it takes to get kids to understand a concept. Everyone wants the same thing: we want kids to know stuff and we want kids to be able to think for themselves. But the question is, how do you get there? In education sometimes we confuse the ends and the means. What we want is kids to be curious and sitting in a nook reading a book. We know from many, many years of research and from cognitive science that that's not where you start. You don't put a bunch of 5-year-olds in a cozy nook reading books to just mimic that behavior.

One way of describing this season is that it is another resurrection of an old-fashioned technique. Is that accurate?

I don’t think so. Engelmann wasn't resurrecting something old-fashioned. He was trying to create something new.

But he was doing it in the ‘60s, so it's not new now.

What's interesting is that many of the things he did have turned out to line up really well with what cognitive science has been investigating and figuring out for the past 60 years. A lot of people think direct instruction is lecturing, a teacher standing at the front of the room explaining things, maybe droning on and on, like in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And what's tricky about this is Direct Instruction, the version invented by Zig, is the opposite of lecturing. It's more like a game of catch. A teacher's at the front of the classroom. They're asking a question. They pause first, for a brief second. They give a signal, and they ask all the kids to respond in unison, and then the teacher will ask another question.

How else does it differ from other teaching methods?

There are five elements of Direct Instruction: choral response is one of them. It's cold-calling too–students can be called on at any time. It means they're always paying attention. They can't just zone out. So it's call-and-response, it's individual turns, it's a correction procedure, it's repetition. There's definitely a lot of repetition; it's about getting basic facts into kids' heads. And the other thing that you will see is scripted lessons. Teachers will have a script in their hand, and it tells them what to say and the order in which to teach things. That is the absolutely 100% most controversial part of Direct Instruction. DI is not unique in being scripted; lots of teachers are being handed scripts, and there are clearly bad scripts out there. The thing that's different about Zig's Direct Instruction programs is that those lessons have gone through tons of field testing, and Direct Instruction itself has been rigorously studied many, many, many times, and it consistently works. So the Direct Instruction scripts are worth teaching. That's actually what a lot of teachers will say.

Are the political battle lines drawn in a similar way?

It is certainly true that the indirect approach—discovery and student-led learning—has roots that go back to the progressive education movement, and back even further than that, with ideas that you would associate more with the political left.

You unearth a huge study, Project Follow Through, that looked at 350,000 students and 22 different programs, and found that on average Direct Instruction worked best in nearly all measures. Why was that not the end of the story?

I don't think that the takeaway from Project Follow Through should have been that we all should do direct instruction. It was clear that it was a big, messy experiment, as so much education research is. But we don't get that many examples of such large, long education studies. I don't think there was enough evidence to say everyone should adopt this approach, but in 1977, it offered some clues. If these are the things we care about–kids doing well academically, and kids feeling good about school and themselves, and being able to think for themselves and solve problems–there was one program that stood out above the rest, not just by a little bit. We should have looked at that and been like, "Huh, that seems like a direction maybe we want to go," and that is not the direction we went.

Is Direct Instruction right for every teacher? If you are a very effective teacher, might you not object to having your autonomy and hard-won skills be replaced by this very scripted technique?

We interviewed a lot of teachers, highly skilled, really good teachers who do Direct Instruction and aren't trying to graduate from it. Many of them are like, “This works, and I want to keep doing this.” I think it works well when you do it school-wide, in part because the kids understand the routine. One of the reasons why I think there's so much resistance to Direct Instruction is that we have an idea in the United States that the ideal teacher designs their own lessons. We expect teachers to be like the Beatles or Taylor Swift, singer-songwriters who can do it all. So Direct Instruction is an affront. It’s essentially saying we have a different definition of being a good teacher. You don't design the lessons; the lesson design is done, and that has actually been a really long process that's taken a lot of trial and error over many years. Your job is to teach the lessons, and your job is to focus on the kids. It allows them to look at the kids and see who's not getting it. There are nearly 4 million teachers in the United States, so this is a job that lots of people need to be able to do well. 

Would you want to teach like that?

I thought about being a teacher in my early 20s and I had a friend who was teaching in New Orleans, and a bunch of her third graders couldn't read, and she was supposed to design all of her own lessons. And I thought to myself, where would you even start? It was such a stressful job. It was basically impossible, and she eventually quit teaching, as a lot of people do, because we make this job too hard. The Direct Instruction teachers say, “I teach these lessons, and I know these lessons are really good. And I don’t have to stay up late lesson-planning. I can have a life.” 

Are there students who do better with Direct Instruction than others?

This whole issue is tricky. There's a fairly high percentage of kids who are fine no matter what type of teaching they have, which leads people to theorize that maybe instruction doesn't matter that much. Jean Stockard's big meta-analysis of Direct Instruction found that it does work for lots of different kinds of kids. You are more likely to find teachers who were specializing in special education to have heard of Direct Instruction. Those are the kids that Zig was most concerned about. But the way that he saw it is, if he can make something that works for the most struggling kids, then it'll work for the higher performers too. The higher performers just get through it faster. It's not that kids need different things, it's that they learn at different speeds. Cognitive science has been telling us this: we don't all have dramatically different brains. Sure, there are differences around the edges, but for the most part, we all need to learn the same things and learn in basically the same ways, and some of us just don't need a whole lot of practice or instruction.

But how would that work practically? If it's call-and-response, it's throwing the ball back. Eventually, the child who's getting it quicker is going to tune out.

It's a mastery-based program. You group kids by their skill level, and when it's reading-instruction time, you change the groups, and the kids who are reading at a third-grade level are all learning together, and the kids who are at a second-grade level are learning together.

Fewer than 200 schools in America are DI schools at the moment. That's not many. Why don't schools stick with it?

Direct Instruction is so different from the status quo in America that it just has a really hard time surviving if it doesn't have a champion or multiple champions at the top. It falls apart if you don't make good investments in the training. And the status quo is some combination of lecturing and a sort of discovery experience-based approach, with some direct instruction for the kids who are struggling the most, and the teachers doing a lot of things on their own, and trying to make use of programs and curriculum that they're constantly being handed by the people above them.

What should a parent do if they hear your podcast and are very persuaded by it? Would you go so far as to encourage them to change schools?

Most parents don't know that much about what's going on in their kids' schools, unless and until there's a problem. My best answer for parents is to say you're not alone. There are other parents in your school who have the same questions you do and you should try to find them because you can learn from each other and there's power in numbers.

If Season Two were to have an effect akin to the first season, what would you like it to be?

It would be people starting to ask questions about why we can't agree on some more basic things about teaching and learning. There is a body of evidence in education. It's out there. Established professions—medicine and accounting and nursing and aviation—have a body of knowledge that they agree on. Why don't we have that in teaching and learning? I just don't think we're going to get very far until we have that. 

I was 13 years old and in the middle of one of the Jonas Brothers’ first tours when I knew something was wrong. In just two weeks, I’d lost nearly 25 pounds. I was constantly thirsty, going to the bathroom, getting regular cramps, and my attitude had become more than that of an irritable teenager. While I didn’t know what was wrong, I knew I needed to see a doctor.

Fast forward, I was sitting with the pediatrician and heard the words “You have type 1 diabetes.”

Immediately, I saw my future flash before my eyes: Will I be able to perform again? Am I going to die? This certainly wasn’t what anybody predicted.

I wasn’t just scared for myself; I was scared for my family. As a kid, you think your parents have everything figured out. Seeing mine just as confused and distraught as I was terrified me.

For years, I accepted that my diagnosis was something no one could have anticipated. But now, more than 20 years later, I understand something I couldn't at 13: my diagnosis may have come out of nowhere, but my type 1 diabetes didn't.

What most people don’t know is that 90% of people diagnosed with type 1 diabetes have no family history. Because of this, many families—mine included—have a massive blind spot. We assume we’ll know if we’re at risk. We assume diabetes will give us a warning. Too often, we don’t think about our health at all until something is already very wrong.

But today, we know more. We can identify the early stages of type 1 diabetes months or even years before symptoms appear. For families, that early detection can provide something that I think about often: time. 

I think about what more time could have meant for my own family. While early detection wouldn’t have changed my diagnosis, it could have changed how and when we learned about it. Maybe my parents wouldn’t have had their diabetes “crash course” at the same time their 13-year-old son was sitting in a hospital bed. Maybe my brothers wouldn’t have been scared that they were going to lose their sibling. Maybe I could have known what was happening with my body rather than feeling out of control. Maybe we could have been more prepared. 

And my family’s experience is far from unique. For too many people, the first time they learn about type 1 diabetes is in crisis. Research shows that up to 40% of young people in the U.S. with the condition arrive at diagnosis in diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA, a serious, life-threatening complication of diabetes.

For years, I thought stories like mine were just how diabetes happened. You got sick. You found out. You figured out how to live with it. But science has changed, and our understanding of diabetes has changed. I’m just not sure the public understanding of diabetes has changed.

That matters because misconceptions about diabetes are everywhere, and they aren’t just about what life looks like after a diagnosis. They also shape whether we recognize our risk in the first place.

I’ve seen the impact of those misconceptions firsthand. It’s one of the reasons I co-founded the nonprofit Beyond Type 1 in 2015: to change the way diabetes is seen and understood, build a community where people don’t have to face it alone, and help create a world where diabetes doesn’t limit a person’s life or possibilities.

And this blind spot isn’t unique to type 1 diabetes. Millions of Americans are living with type 2 diabetes, while millions more have prediabetes and don’t even realize it. But our assumptions about age, weight, lifestyle, and family history shape who we think is at risk. Those assumptions create stigma, which can discourage people from getting tested and finding the support they need. Diabetes is hard. Shame makes it harder.

A diabetes diagnosis is not a personal failing. There should be no shame in understanding your risk and seeking care if needed.

The tools for detecting type 1 and type 2 diabetes are different. But the principle remains the same: knowing you have diabetes sooner gives you more time to act. It’s not about living in fear or trying to predict the future, but about recognizing that we have information today that many families, including mine, didn’t have when I was diagnosed.

If there’s one truth I want to yell out loud, it’s this: you don’t have to wait for diabetes to announce itself. A simple blood test can detect type 1 diabetes before symptoms appear by looking for autoantibodies. For type 2 diabetes, regular blood sugar checks, including an A1C test, can help catch high blood sugar early on. 

So, what's the first step? Just talk to your doctor. Find out if you're at risk and what signs to look out for. Ask about screening options that make sense for you and your family. And if you’re unsure where to start, you can learn more about diabetes risk, screening, and early detection here. 

Now that I’m a dad, I understand my parents’ fear now in a way I couldn’t then. I think about what it must have felt like to watch their child lose nearly 25 pounds, only to learn that he had a lifelong condition that would change his life—and theirs—forever. It's a really tough thing for a parent to go through, and I can see now that it wasn't just about me, it was about all of us.

This also rings true for the physical and mental toll type 1 diabetes takes, not just on the person diagnosed, but on the entire family. From constant monitoring and planning ahead to food calculations and technology management, diabetes burnout is real. My diabetes management tests my resilience daily, and while I’ve been living with type 1 for over 20 years, I know the emotional demands on my parents, my siblings, and, now, my spouse don’t just go away; they evolve.

Whether it’s you or a loved one who’s been diagnosed, the right guidance can make all the difference. 

I wish my family's experience with my diagnosis could have been different, but hopefully, others will be better equipped to handle a diagnosis. While there's a lot about diabetes that's unpredictable, that doesn't mean we can't be prepared for what's to come.

Iranian leaders hailed the Democratic landslide in the U.S. midterms on Tuesday as a rejection of President Donald Trump’s war against Iran.

“The Iranian nation handed Trump a strategic defeat on the battlefield,” Mohsen Rezaei, head of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, posted on social media Wednesday. “The process of the US’s collapse has accelerated,” Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei posted.

Democrats will take control of both chambers of Congress in January, giving them new leverage to challenge the U.S. and Israeli war effort. Some Republicans had already broken ranks in the months before Election Day to call for an end to the war. Now many have blamed the party’s midterm losses on the war, which drove up energy prices around the world and became increasingly unpopular with Americans.

Read More: Inside the Democrats’ Plans to Take On Trump

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vice President J.D. Vance posted on X on Wednesday. 

While some like Rezaei took credit for Trump’s “POLITICAL DEFEAT,” other Iranian leaders cast the midterm results as a repudiation of his war by Americans.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammed-Baqer Qalibaf, the country’s chief negotiator, posted, “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.” He characterized potential further attacks on Iran as a betrayal of the American public.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had appealed directly to the American people in a letter last month, urging them to vote against their government. Trump had previously accused Iran of prolonging the war in an effort to damage Republican midterm prospects.

Esmaeil Baqaei, the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, addressed Trump directly on Wednesday, accusing him of dragging the U.S. into “an unlawful and atrocious war against Iran.”

“Your calculations failed, your assumptions collapsed, and your strategic misjudgments became painfully evident,” he wrote.

“The American people have now sent you a clear message,” Baqaei continued. “Yet, if you continue to disregard reality, dismiss the lessons of history, and persist in this dangerous course, the consequences of this grave miscalculation will extend far beyond what you have already witnessed.”

Republicans blame war for losses

The sweeping Republican defeat has sharpened divisions over the Iran War.

Some lawmakers reportedly want to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was an early advocate for the war. Rep. Thomas Massie (R, Ky.) told CNN that he intends to force a vote when Congress returns next week on his effort to impeach Hegseth. Massie has been a vocal intraparty critic of Trump and his Administration and lost his GOP primary race in May.

“There are Republicans who would support impeaching Hegseth who might not support doing it to Trump,” Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told TIME last week.

“If the President is serious about anyone taking responsibility for [the midterm losses], it’s Pete Hegseth,” a Republican close to the White House told CNN. “Pete has been either dishonest or incorrect—neither of which are acceptable—about [Iran War] timelines, goals and objectives since the beginning.”

Hegseth, however, may be forced out of his job before Congress steps in. Trump has reportedly spoken to advisers about whether the Defense Secretary should be replaced, CBS reported on Wednesday, citing multiple sources. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican whose gubernatorial term expires Jan. 5, has been floated as a possible replacement for Hegseth, one source told CBS.

Trump told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that Hegseth would be “very popular” if he was appointed to fill the seat that will be vacated by Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who will take office as the state’s governor, although he said he had not heard any talk of the idea from others “at all.”

Still, Trump has publicly backed the Pentagon’s top official, who has been discussed as a possible 2028 Republican presidential candidate, and denied plans to fire him.

“I think he’s doing a very good job,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

Where the war could go from here

Democratic leaders have vowed to push for an end to the war following their midterm victory.

“We are going to end the war,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday, citing Congress’s power over federal spending. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries urged Trump to end the war before the new Congress convenes, describing the electoral outcome as a message from Americans that they are opposed to the war.

Their majorities in Congress will give Democrats greater leverage to restrict military spending on Iran and the ability to advance legislation directing an end to hostilities, although they would still need substantial Republican support in the Senate to override a Trump veto. Democrats could also withhold new funding, and put further pressure on the Administration through congressional investigations and hearings scrutinizing the Pentagon’s strategy, spending, and conduct of the war. White House spokesperson Lauren Bis described the potential Democratic approach as “sham investigations and radical left policies” in a statement to CNN.

Read More: Welcome to Trump’s Lame-Duck Era

Some Democrats are also seeking to reduce U.S. military aid to Israel. Abdul El-Sayed, who was elected as Michigan’s senator, said in his victory speech, “We don’t want our money sent to do apartheid, or genocide, or war.” In July, 103 House Democrats supported an unsuccessful amendment by Massie to eliminate $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel. Separately, Rep. Ro Khanna (D, Calif.) and Massie sought to strip a provision from the annual defense authorization bill that would deepen U.S.-Israeli cooperation on military technology, research, and weapons production, although the House ultimately passed the bill with the provision intact.

But the midterm results do not offer a guarantee of a quick resolution to the war.

Iran may harden its stance in negotiations and press for U.S. concessions. “If there are still those who entertain the slightest hope that the hegemonic system may change behavior or shifts in its political parties may bring about change, or that by making concessions to the US, they can persuade it to abandon its hostility, they’re gravely mistaken,” Khamenei wrote in another post on Wednesday.

This week, Iran unveiled a massive billboard in Tehran’s Enqelab Square depicting the U.S. President behind bars, with the words “We Will Kill Trump.” A crowd gathered in the square on Wednesday, as U.S. election results came in, for a rally marking the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy. Rallygoers held up signs with the same words and set fire to a poster depicting Trump, Vance, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

William Figueroa, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Groningen, tells TIME that “the Iranian government has far more reason to seek [nuclear] deterrence and far less reason to trust negotiations” due to the war, which has further “entrenched” the theocratic government by damaging the country’s opposition movement and wrecking its economy.

Although Trump has repeatedly said he expects the war to end shortly after the midterms, the President has also left open the possibility of renewed military action. Last month, Trump said he was considering additional military action against Iran, including a strike on its Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility, while Hegseth reportedly met with Netanyahu to discuss the possibility of attacking Iran. Despite Trump’s October pledge not to attack Iran before the midterms, U.S. forces struck Qeshm Island on Monday. American officials described the operation as a limited defensive response to Iranian forces firing at a U.S. aircraft.

“Trump has accepted the criticism of the cost,” says Figueroa. “But not the premise.” Figueroa adds that the U.S. President “has little else to lose should he decide to pursue another escalation.”

Israel’s ongoing coalition negotiations add further uncertainty after Netanyahu’s Likud party lost its parliamentary majority in Israel’s Oct. 27 election.

On Wednesday, Trump defended his decision to go to war despite its political cost: “If I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again.”

As Democrats are celebrating a historic blue wave, eyes are on the Senate race in deep-red Mississippi, where the Democratic candidate led the Republican incumbent by a razor-thin margin of 1,138 votes as of Wednesday evening.

The Associated Press has not yet called the race because it is so close, with Democratic challenger Scott Colom ahead by about 0.1%—he has so far earned 49% of the vote compared to Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith’s 48.9%, with 96% of votes counted. It’s a stunning nail-biter of a race that, in the weeks leading up to Election Day, polls had suggested would likely be won by the Republican incumbent by a narrow margin.

“I can’t recall the last time it’s been this close for a statewide Senate contest—or a statewide election in general,” says Aaron Hitefield, an assistant professor of political science at Mississippi State University. “It’s unprecedented for [Mississippi] to be this competitive for Democrats particularly, certainly in the last 40 years.”

Read More: What Democrats’ Midterm Gains Reveal About Trump’s Voter Coalition

Political experts say it could take a few days before the outcome of the race becomes clear.

If Colom, a district attorney, wins the race, it would be the first time that Mississippi voters have elected a Democrat to represent them in the U.S. Senate since 1982. A Democratic victory would also be a remarkable shift in a state that President Donald Trump won by a nearly 23-point margin just two years ago. 

Such an upset would cap off a string of staggering victories for Democrats, who have so far flipped seven seats in the upper chamber in this year’s midterm elections, including in other staunchly red states like Texas and South Carolina.

Both candidates appeared to be optimistic that the election would ultimately go their way, though they also acknowledged that the race is still too close to call. Colom said in a statement early Wednesday morning, “I am confident we will ultimately flip this seat.”

“The results are all trending in our direction,” Colom said in a speech to his supporters on Election Night. “The reality is, though, we’re not going to get the results tonight. I’m excited about our momentum, I’m excited about where we are.”

Speaking to a crowd of her supporters on Election Night, Hyde-Smith said she was confident that she would hold her seat in the upper chamber.

“We still don’t have all the votes in, so we’re not calling all of it tonight, but we’re in a very good lead and I assure you, I will continue to be your U.S. Senator,” she said.

When asked about Hyde-Smith’s speech at a press conference on Wednesday, Colom replied, “Bless her heart.”

When will we know who won the Mississippi Senate race?

It is possible that the winner of the Senate contest may not be determined until the end of the week—or even next week. 

The state has five business days after Election Day to count affidavit ballots. An individual would turn in such a ballot, which is also called a provisional ballot, in a situation in which they believe they’re eligible and registered to vote but are unable to cast a standard ballot—for instance, if their name is not in their local polling place’s records. These votes are only counted once election workers verify the individual’s information. Mississippi also permits mail-in ballots that arrive within five days after Election Day, so long as they were postmarked by Election Day, to be counted.

All this means that it’s possible the race may not be called until a week after Election Day, says Emily Ommundsen, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Mississippi.

“Because of the razor-thin margins we currently see, I don’t expect any results to be called before then,” Ommundsen says.

How did the Mississippi Senate race become such a tight contest?

The tight race in Mississippi is one of many that illustrate the extremely challenging political environment Republicans have faced this year. 

Historically, the party in the White House loses seats in midterm elections, and that pressure on Republicans was compounded in this election cycle because of historically low approval for Trump driven in large part by the economy, as well as the war in Iran.

Ommundsen says that, while ballots are still being counted, the result in Mississippi, so far, “is consistent with trends that we saw nationally.”

“Nearly all counties that had a Senate election on the ballot moved towards the left compared to how they voted in 2024,” she says, though she notes that there are some exceptions. “Mississippi just happens to be one of those elections that was closer and perhaps more ripe for a flip.”

Hitefield likens this year’s midterms to “a referendum on the President,” adding that “Democrats were turning out to oppose the President and to oppose the President’s policies.”

But he cautions that the close contest in Mississippi is not necessarily a sign that the deep-red state is turning blue or even purple. It’s possible, he says, that Republican voters didn’t cast their ballots for a Democrat, and instead stayed home.

“I wouldn’t necessarily read in, long story short, to Mississippi becoming a Georgia—you know, being a fully competitive every election state,” Hitefield says. “But I think it’s certainly moving toward a state that you shouldn’t sleep on when it comes to electoral competitiveness.”

Hitefield also says that there’s a lot of “voter apathy” within the Republican party with regards to Hyde-Smith, and she hasn’t performed as well as Mississippi’s other Republican Senator, Roger Wicker, in past elections. Wicker won his re-election bid in 2024 by a more than 25-point margin. Hyde-Smith, meanwhile, won her re-election fight in 2020 by about 10 points.

Hitefield adds that Hyde-Smith had some “gaffes” during the campaign, when she made some remarks about the rising cost of living that some voters felt were dismissive. For instance, when asked about soaring costs, including beef prices, during an interview with WLOX in February, Hyde-Smith applauded the passing of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill and went on to say, “It is on everybody’s mind. It is certainly me at my house. And you know, you have so many proteins to choose from. And all commodities go through peaks and valleys.”

National polling ahead of Election Day indicated that an overwhelming majority of American voters felt that the economy was a crucial issue for them heading into this year’s midterms.

Colom’s campaign jumped on Hyde-Smith’s remark, releasing an ad in which people objected to Hyde-Smith’s comment, including one who said in the video, “Pick another protein? Sh**, I’d rather pick another Senator instead.” The ad racked up more than 7.5 million views on Colom’s X account.

Ommundsen points out that Hyde-Smith didn’t make many public campaign appearances in this year’s election cycle; one of the few appearances the Senator made was last week, when she gave very brief remarks at a rally the President held for her in Mississippi.

Hitefield says Hyde-Smith didn’t “do the groundwork necessary to run a successful campaign” in this election cycle.

“I think that it was a real mistake by her campaign, regardless of what the outcome looks like at the end of this,” Hitefield says. “Even if she does win, she didn’t do, really, what she needed to win with any sort of safety. I think that’s something [where] if she does win, she’ll need to think about, moving forward, how to strategize more effectively.”

Colom, on the other hand, ran a “successful campaign” and generated “so much voter excitement,” Hitefield says—so much so that it stirred “this groundswell of hopes within the Democratic party that this seat could be flipped.”

If Colom wins, he would also become the first Black Senator from Mississippi since the 19th century—the last time the state sent a Black lawmaker to the upper chamber was during Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War.

“It would be an unprecedented outcome when it comes to the history of Mississippi,” Hitefield says.

In what is widely being referred to as a “blue tsunami,” the Democratic Party won control of both the House and Senate in the midterm elections, gaining ground in deep-red and battleground states. The sweeping victory will reshape the final two years of President Donald Trump’s presidency and could have a significant impact on the 2028 presidential map.

In formerly reliably Republican Texas, James Talarico defeated the Trump-backed Ken Paxton and became the first Democrat to be elected Senator by Texans since 1988. Texas state representative Gina Hinojosa pulled off a similar victory, defeating three-term governor Greg Abbott. She will be the state’s first ever Latina governor. Kansas, which Trump won by a margin of 16 points in 2024, elected Adam Hamilton, welcoming its first Democratic senator since 1932.

Seth Masket, a professor of political science at the University of Denver, describes the election as “a pretty stunning rebuke of Trump and the Republicans,” one that has given Democrats “a lot more confidence” heading into 2028.

With momentum now behind the party, Democrats are already setting their sights on a return to the White House. “Over the next two years, Democrats will show up where Republicans have failed and work every single day to bring down costs. Up next: the White House,” vowed Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin.

Yet despite their strong showing at the polls, Democrats still lack a clear leader heading into 2028, setting the stage for what could be a hard-fought primary. There are Democratic heavyweights who often appear on presidential contender lists, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris. However, the Democrats’ midterm victories are a reminder that the party’s rising stars should not be ignored, as they will undoubtedly play an important role in shaping what the 2028 race will look like. 

Here’s who you need to be aware of as the Democrats prepare to reset Washington:

James Talarico

Talarico’s midterm victory was made even more significant by the margin. He won the state by 12 points, just two years after Trump carried Texas by 14 points, marking a stunning 26-point swing in the Democratic candidate's favor.

His victory may well shape how many Democrats run their campaigns in the future.

Talarico, 37, a Presbyterian minister-in-training, frequently drew on his Christianity and liberal principles in his speeches, while also touting his record of working alongside Republicans as a Texas state representative. Throughout his campaign, he sought to frame the political divide as top versus bottom, rather than along traditional party lines.

“We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love,” Talarico said in his victory speech in Austin, standing behind a podium that read “Love Thy Neighbour”—a reference to the biblical commandment.

“A lot of Democrats will be turning to his example, to the way he ran, the particular style he used,” Masket says, pointing to Talarico's use of liberal Christianity and his emphasis on bipartisanship. “He's definitely on the bench for Democrats in future cycles.”

Jon Ossoff

Jon Ossoff, delivered one of the strongest Democratic victories in a battleground state, winning re-election and holding the Georgia Senate seat for Democrats, seeing off his Republican challenger Mike Collins. 

Masket notes how Ossoff, 39, ran a “very national campaign over this past year” by taking his re-election pitch to younger voters through various podcast appearances. He discussed health care and the importance of young people being engaged in politics with Georgia rapper Killer Mike in September and appeared on comedy podcast The 85 South Show in October, where he addressed the key issues facing Atlanta. His strong criticisms of Trump and his Administration have often gone viral on social media. He also made sure to include appearances on mainstream media in the months leading up to his campaign. In a February appearance on Stephen Colbert’s now-defunct late-night show, Ossoff discussed "The Epstein Class," a phrase he uses to refer to the ultra-wealthy and political elites who, he says, are operating as if the rules don't apply to them. 

“He is seen as having turned Georgia, which was considered a very red state until pretty recently, to become competitive, and now he had a very strong Democratic result here with his election,” says Masket, who believes the victory strengthens Ossoff's standing as a potential presidential contender in 2028.

A national polling average from Race to the White House places Ossoff fifth among potential Democratic nominees, at 10.8%. Meanwhile, betting site Polymarket places him first in its market for the party's nomination, giving him a 24% chance of winning.

Ossoff, however, had earlier this year ruled out the possibility of a run for the White House, stating: “I am not running for President in 2028. I have no interest in running for President in 2028.” Even if he doesn’t hold presidential ambitions of his own, his impact on the party and its direction will surely be felt as it chooses its contender for the White House.

Abdul El-Sayed

Abdul El-Sayed, 42, won the Senate race in Michigan against Republican Mike Rogers, becoming the first Muslim Senator in U.S. history.

His election was critical to the Democrats’ flipping control of the Senate and his campaign was hard-fought as he encountered a barrage of personal and Islamophobic attacks from Trump, who baselessly described El-Sayed as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood—an Islamist political movement—and repeatedly ridiculed his name.

“Donald, look, I know you struggled with my name, so after [Vice President] J.D. [Vance] swears me in in January, you could just go on and call me ‘Senator,’” El-Sayed said in his victory speech.

El-Sayed also faced an eleventh-hour setback when Haley Stevens, his Democratic primary opponent, endorsed Rogers the weekend before Election Day. The move was strongly criticized by members of the Democratic Party, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies putting his full support behind El-Sayed, who he described as a candidate that “will always put the American people first.” 

Despite those challenges, El-Sayed won Michigan, a state Trump had also carried in 2024, by seven points. He ran an unapologetically progressive and anti-establishment campaign, focusing in part on criticism of America's involvement in the Middle East and U.S. support for Israel.

Masket argues that El-Sayed’s influence could make an impact ahead of the 2028 presidential race, particularly in the Midwest.

“He could be a real kingmaker in the Midwest, and an influential person in the Democratic nomination, whose endorsement will matter a lot for a Democrat who wants to win Michigan,” he says.

Keisha Lance Bottoms

Keisha Lance Bottoms, 56, made history after defeating Republican Rick Jackson in the race to succeed term-limited Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. She will become the state's first Black governor and first woman governor, as well as the first Black woman to serve as governor of any U.S. state.

Bottoms served as mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, before taking on several roles in former President Joe Biden's Administration, including as a senior adviser and head of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

As the governor of the Peach State, Bottoms’ influence may prove vital for any candidate running for President, with Georgia being hard fought between Democrats and Republicans. 

Georgia backed Trump during his first run to the White House in 2016, but then pivoted to former President Joe Biden in 2020, only to return to Trump in 2024—turning into a bellwether state for the last three cycles.

Bottoms’ victory returns the governor’s office to a Democrat for the first time in over two decades, and will provide the party with a powerful platform in a presidential battleground.

Josh Shapiro

Josh Shapiro, 53, comfortably won re-election as Pennsylvania governor against Republican Stacy Garrity by a margin of more than 20 points in the midterms. 

He had a tall task heading into Election Day, with the goal of flipping four congressional seats in the House and retaining a majority in the state House. This was more than achieved with the party flipping four GOP-held seats in the House of Representatives and increasing their majority in the state legislature to at least 111 seats. The party also managed to flip at least three seats of the state Senate, giving them a majority and allowing them to hold a trifecta in the commonwealth state.

Shapiro’s victory further strengthens his standing as the Democrats make plans for 2028, and he is already considered to be a potential contender.

“Shapiro wins [in Pennsylvania] statewide multiple times by very large margins, and that gives him an argument for winning the nomination,” says Masket. “It's an argument for his electability that not a lot of other candidates can claim.”

Shapiro was previously considered a potential running mate for Harris in 2024, but she ultimately selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Still, the fact Shapiro was considered for the role underscored his importance in the Democratic Party and his leading influence in one of the country’s most competitive swing states. 

Rob Sand

Rob Sand, 44, defeated Republican Zach Lahn in Iowa's open gubernatorial race, succeeding Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and becoming the first Democrat elected governor of the state since 2006.

His campaign emphasized his rural roots and his career as state auditor, instead honing in on local issues rather than close identification with the national Democratic Party.

Sand's influence heading into 2028 could come from demonstrating how Democrats can compete beyond their strongest metropolitan areas, as well as from his governing record in a politically divided state.

“Iowa is a state that Democrats had largely written off until pretty recently, as it swung hard toward Trump in the last decade,” Masket explains. “Democrats may be making a real play for trying to win Iowa [in 2028], Sand will be key for that, and they'll be listening to his advice.”

Gina Hinojosa

Gina Hinojosa, 52, is another Democrat who made history Tuesday after defeating three-term Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas.

She will become the first Latina governor of Texas and its first Democratic governor since Ann Richards, who took office in 1991.

Alongside Talarico, Hinojosa could play an important role in Democrats' efforts to make further gains in Texas by helping to mobilize voters. 

Masket says “a lot of Democratic candidates will be seeking her out for her advice on how to mobilize voters and how to get people to show up for women and for Latinas.”

Adam Hamilton

Hamilton is the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Kansas in 94 years, ending a long dry spell for the Democratic Party. Deep-red Kansas emerged as an unexpected Senate battleground ahead of the midterms, as Hamilton went head-to-head with Trump-backed Republican incumbent Roger Marshall.

In a major upset to the GOP, Hamilton secured 50.9% of the vote to Marshall’s 46.1%, flipping the crucial Senate seat for the Democrats. 

Hamilton, the founding and senior pastor of one of the largest United Methodist churches in the U.S., has described himself as both a “liberal” and a “conservative.” He was a Republican for “most” of his life, and has identified with both parties during the past.

“I became a Democrat during the Obama Administration, when he was running, and so for eight years I was a Democrat… I served in his Administration for a couple years, but then I went back to being a Republican,” he told ABC News last month, adding that he’s now proud to be a Democrat once more.

“What matters to me more than the letter behind your name is who you are, what you stand for, your character, and I think there’s a lot of people like that in our state,” he said.

Hamilton, 62, notably won endorsements from two of Kansas’ former GOP governors, Mike Hayden and Bill Graves ahead of the midterms.

Hamilton’s more moderate approach and his eagerness to engage with voters across party aisles could make him a dependable figure for the Democratic Party as it attempts to build on its current momentum. 

Pete Buttigieg

Despite not being on the ballot during this midterm cycle, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was a fixture on the campaign trail ahead of the midterms, making valuable allies as he stumped for candidates across the country.

Buttigieg, 44, has built a reputation as one of the party's most effective communicators, both on the campaign trail and through media appearances. Ahead of the 2024 election, he appeared on Jubilee’s Surrounded debate series, where he made the case for the Democratic Party's achievements to 25 undecided voters.

In 2020, Buttigieg became the first openly gay candidate in history to win a presidential primary. He later suspended his presidential campaign to endorse Biden, but he has since kept the door open to another bid.

“I don’t have any news to make about that right now,” he told WNDU in October, when asked if he plans to run again. He nevertheless remains a prominent figure in early Democratic nomination polling averages.

Tuesday’s Blue Wave was powered by voters of color.

That’s a key takeaway strategists in both parties are clocking as they pore through the results. In a memo obtained exclusively by TIME on Wednesday and soon to circulate among the Democratic National Committee’s bigwigs, two of the Democratic Party’s veteran strategists argue that the blowout would not have been possible without that crucial realignment, one that has enormous consequences for 2028’s presidential field. 

“Hispanic and Black voters not only turned out at a massive rate, but also swung back towards Democrats in terms of support levels, relative to the 2024 presidential election,” Tom Bonier and Simon Rosenberg wrote in Wednesday’s memo.

To be clear, every major demographic group shifted left in these midterms, offering a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump and his brand of the Republican Party. “The final popular vote margin for the House will take weeks to determine, but at this point Democrats are on track to have the largest popular vote margin in a midterm election since 1974,” Bonier and Rosenberg write. “Voters of color were the driving force behind the blue tsunami.”

But the shift in voters of color proved pivotal in many cases. Hispanic voters had a 28-point move leftward from 2024’s presidential levels, according to a New York Times analysis. Black voters moved nine points. Asian American voters? They moved 17 points. 

The party’s base “came home,” in the words of one Democratic strategist on Wednesday. “Back to normal” was the verdict of another.
Hispanic voters proved particularly enthusiastic to cast their ballots. A Bonier-Rosenberg analysis of early-vote data showed Hispanic turnout easily surpassing 2022’s midterms, and potentially topping even the 2024 presidential numbers, before Election Day. 

This shift will have big implications for the candidates mulling presidential runs, but also for the party’s decision last year to rearrange its primary calendar. The DNC’s choice to elevate South Carolina’s presidential primary to lead-off position for 2028 drew some second-guessing from within the party. That decision now looks even more prescient, as it further empowers the true spine of the Democratic Party. A full 26% of South Carolina voters on Tuesday were voters of color, according to exit polls. That’s a far cry from Iowa and New Hampshire—the traditional starting pistols in the presidential race, where less than 10% were voters of color, per exit polls.

Democrats spent much of this cycle courting voters of color they had lost in 2024 by arguing that Trump’s economy had left them behind. Tuesday’s results appeared to prove the wisdom of that effort, Bonier and Rosenberg argue in their memo, pointing to Texas’ Webb County as a prime example. Comparing Trump’s 2024 tally with Sen.-elect James Talarico’s win, the Hispanic vote there swung a full 50 points away from Republicans. “To be clear, 50-point swings don’t happen on turnout alone. In fact, a huge component of this result was clearly due to Trump voters crossing over to support Democrats in this election,” the Democratic strategists wrote to other insiders. 

“Voters of color took a stand in this election, a stand to protect their future,” the memo reads. “Democrats now have the opportunity to deliver where Republicans have failed.”

Following two years of anti-climate legislation from Washington, Tuesday’s blue tidal wave—giving Democrats control of both the Senate and the House—could provide an opportunity to change course.

Following his 2024 reelection, President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, rolled back the landmark endangerment finding, and leased public lands for oil and gas drilling—with Democrats unable to do much about it. 

The next two years likely won’t bring aggressive climate policy, nonetheless a shift is expected as a result of the midterms. “Are we going to see ambitious climate action? The answer is no,” says Ken Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics at the Yale School of the Environment. “We still have an executive branch with a veto power controlled by President Trump, and so anything that is done would have to make it through the veto.” 

But while Democrats might be unable to reverse many of the rollbacks, the midterms now give them, “a stronger hand to play,” says Geoffrey Henderson, assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of Michigan. 

One priority might be to reinstate billions of dollars in climate funding that President Trump has withheld. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat who won reelection in Maine, serves on the House Appropriations Committee and has said that she plans to force the administration to spend climate money. 

Democrats also have the power to focus on bulking up the permitting reform bill, which aims to overhaul the permit process to speed up energy projects. The bill appeared likely to pass even before the election, but was filled with concessions. “Prior to the election, the bill included a number of provisions to weaken core environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act,” says Henderson. “What Democrats can now do is basically ask for a better deal.”

Increased support for domestic battery manufacturing is also likely—which could be a key part in meeting clean energy targets. “There would be an appetite for domestic onshoring of some of the supply chain that goes into electric vehicles, and I think that this is pretty bipartisan,” says Gillingham. 

Gillingham also notes that we could see Democrats pursue “all of the above” climate policies, which often include oil and gas concessions along with clean energy growth. 

“There's just not going to be an appetite among a whole set of members of the Democratic Caucus for ambitious climate action, even if they may be sympathetic to climate action, they don't have the political backing to do it from where they are sitting,” he notes. “But they do have the political backing to do all of the above energy policies.”

Democrats also achieved trifectas—controlling the House, Senate, and governorship—in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. In Pennsylvania, for example, this opens the floodgates to pass legislation to regulate data centers, allow community solar, and to require utilities to store excess electricity. 

This election—in which energy affordability took center stage—also proved that climate change isn’t the taboo subject many have made it out to be. 

“The results create new opportunities and give some breathing room to bring climate back into the energy discussion, especially if those discussions can deliver both economic benefits and emissions reductions, particularly around electricity affordability, grid infrastructure, and clean-energy investment,” Bethany Patten, executive director of the  MIT Climate Policy Center, said in an email. 

Florida Democrat Kathy Castor, and Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat, are both candidates who did not give in to the “climate hushing” many other Democrats fell victim to. “Their victory suggests that being a vocal advocate for climate action is consistent with winning tough races, even in red states,” says Henderson. “Going forward, I think candidates should feel more empowered to talk about the issue.” 

The Democratic victors in the midterm elections included people who have spent their careers treating patients, studying viruses, and solving equations. Among the winners: a pediatrician in South Carolina, a microbiologist in Georgia, and a mathematician in Illinois—all bringing experience in health and science to government. Several are joining Congress. One is the next Governor of Ohio. 

Working in medicine, in particular, provides an opportunity to connect to voters, says Erik Polyak, executive director of 314 Action, a political organization that recruits and supports Democratic candidates with scientific and medical backgrounds. “You go into the ER and your doctor doesn’t ask what party you are,” he says. Doctors, nurses, and others who work in health care may have heard patients describe their struggles and might have personally fought insurance companies to get treatment covered.

Still, having health credentials alone does not guarantee that someone will craft good policy, cautions Brian Castrucci, an epidemiologist and president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, which works to strengthen public health through funding, training, and research. What matters is how they use their training. “Congress needs people who know how to weigh evidence, ask hard questions, and admit what we do not yet know,” he says.

Here’s what to know about some of the health and science professionals who won political seats in the midterms.

Dr. Annie Andrews

The pediatrician is South Carolina’s incoming U.S. senator. She has researched childhood asthma and the aftermath of gunshot wounds, and helped teach young doctors how to talk to parents about storing firearms safely. Now, she’s taking those concerns to the Senate after unseating Republican Sen. Darline Graham in one of the night’s biggest upsets. South Carolina hadn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1998.

Andrews previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022. This time, she had a particular motivator: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she has called her “professional arch-nemesis.” She said his nomination to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services convinced her to run for Senate.

Polyak points to her proposals to end prior authorization for routine and emergency care and prohibit private-equity firms from owning hospitals as examples of how doctors could bring their clinical experience into policymaking. Andrews’ campaign agenda also includes keeping rural hospitals open, lowering prescription prices, and strengthening vaccine access. “Everyone deserves the peace of mind that if they or their child get sick, they can see a doctor without going broke,” she writes.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, who leads the American Public Health Association (APHA), hasn’t worked directly with Andrews, but her approach to firearm safety has caught his attention. By emphasizing children’s safety, he says, she has found a way to discuss the issue with strong gun-rights supporters. He hopes that approach can help lawmakers have “an intelligent conversation” about protecting children and communities from firearm violence.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

As a medical student, El-Sayed—Michigan’s incoming U.S. senator—helped take care of a woman who had fallen and hit her head. He pushed to have her admitted to the hospital, where further examination revealed serious underlying illnesses, and arranged for her to enter a rehabilitation facility. Instead, she said she would go home with her daughter. Two weeks later, he found her sleeping on the subway, he recalled in a 2016 interview with Columbia Medicine magazine. The encounter helped convince him to withdraw his residency application and pursue public health. “I realized that I was a lot more interested in what happens before a patient gets to the door than what happens in the hospital,” he said at the time.

El-Sayed went on to lead health departments in Detroit and Wayne County. Now, after defeating Republican Mike Rogers for Michigan’s open Senate seat, he’s headed to Washington as the nation’s first Muslim senator.

His health-care platform supports Medicare for All, reversing Medicaid cuts, and increasing support for local health departments. He also wants stronger protections against political interference in federal health agencies.

“He’s brilliant. He’s thoughtful,” says Benjamin, who knows El-Sayed through APHA meetings. “He’s respectful, and he follows the evidence wherever it goes.”

Jasmine Clark

Clark, who won an open seat for Congress in Georgia, is used to explaining things people don’t immediately understand. “Being a professor, the whole job is explaining difficult concepts to people who are hearing it for the first time,” says Clark, who teaches biology at Emory University, in an interview with TIME. Ideally, her students leave understanding the material well enough to explain it to someone else.

The microbiologist earned her doctorate at Emory in 2013 studying retroviral particles with live-cell imaging. She directed Atlanta’s March for Science in 2017 and won a seat in the Georgia legislature a year later. After a decade teaching at Emory’s nursing school, she joined its biology department in 2024..

One early priority for her is scientific research funding. Clark says she wants to use the federal budget process to restore support for research and reverse what she describes as damage done by Elon Musk’s efforts to overhaul government spending. “That’s very top of mind for me,” she says.

She expects her teaching experience to help fellow lawmakers make sense of complicated science. “I look forward to bringing that to the caucus,” she says.

Elaine Luria

Luria has operated nuclear reactors and helped build a business around plaster mermaids. The Naval Academy graduate spent 20 years in the Navy, earning a master’s degree in engineering management while serving and operating reactors aboard the USS Enterprise. She and her husband also opened Mermaid Factory, where customers can paint and decorate plaster mermaids.

Politics came next. Luria served two terms in Congress and helped investigate the Jan. 6 attack before losing her seat to Republican Jen Kiggans in 2022. This year, she won back Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District seat.

Her health-care plan includes restoring enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, expanding prescription-drug negotiations, and simplifying insurance paperwork and prior authorization. She also wants to expand telehealth and help recruit doctors and nurses to rural communities.

Dr. Amy Acton

Ohioans got to know Acton during the early months of the COVID pandemic. As the state’s health director, she appeared alongside Republican Gov. Mike DeWine at near-daily briefings, explaining an unfolding crisis to people watching from home. Polyak remembers her as “Ohio’s caring doctor,” someone who told residents exactly what was happening. “She led with the facts and compassion,” he says.

That visibility also brought a backlash, including protests outside her home; she resigned in June 2020. Now, she’s returning to state government with a different title. Acton defeated biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to become Ohio’s first elected female governor and its first Democratic gubernatorial winner in 20 years. Her proposals include medical-debt relief and an Ohio prescription-drug program.

Benjamin describes Acton as an extraordinary public-health practitioner with a skill that could prove particularly useful as governor: “She’s got the ability to talk to both sides of the political aisle,” he says. Polyak puts it this way: “She is kind. But not weak.”

Mitchell Berman

Berman, the incoming representative for Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, is an emergency-room nurse who, according to his campaign website, still works night shifts. He’s spent 23 years in health care, including a decade caring for veterans at the VA. “I've watched patients ration medication they can't afford and families lose everything because they got sick,” he writes.

Berman grew up in rural Wisconsin, with a father who ran a roofing business and a mother who worked in a foundry. According to his campaign biography, he earned a nursing-assistant license by age 17 and worked three jobs while becoming the first person in his family to graduate from college.

He defeated Republican Rep. Bryan Steil in an upset in Wisconsin’s 1st District. His priorities include a public insurance option, lower prescription costs, and faster answers to prior-authorization requests. He also wants protections against violence toward health-care workers—and for bedside nurses to help determine staffing standards.

Christina Bohannan

Bohannan is the incoming representative for Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. Her interest in health care is personal: Her father, a construction worker, developed emphysema and lost his insurance, she recounts in her campaign biography. With a pre-existing condition, he couldn’t obtain another policy. The family struggled to pay for groceries, bills, and the care needed to keep him alive. “We lost everything trying to save him,” she writes.

Bohannan grew up in a mobile home in a town of 700 people, became the first in her family to attend college, and studied environmental engineering. She worked on water quality before attending law school and beginning a 26-year teaching career at the University of Iowa.

Her congressional breakthrough took persistence: She defeated Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks on her third attempt, after losing the 2024 race by just 799 votes. 

Her goals include expanding Medicare’s ability to negotiate prescription prices and capping insulin at $35 a month for everyone. She also supports expanding clean energy and lowering families’ living costs.

Daniel Biss

Biss, who will succeed longtime Rep. Jan Schakowsky in Illinois’ 9th District, has a résumé that includes a doctorate in mathematics from MIT, a stint on the University of Chicago faculty, and more than a decade in elected office. He served in the Illinois House and Senate before becoming Evanston’s mayor in 2021.

His math background taught him to question the information put in front of him. “A lot of people come to policymakers with information that is maybe self-interested or reflects only one point of view,” he says in an interview with TIME. He says his training helps him figure out what else to ask before making a decision.

As mayor, Biss helped establish a program that sends social workers and other responders to certain low-risk calls, including mental-health needs, according to his campaign. His record also includes work on reducing building emissions, supporting abortion rights, and strengthening technology privacy.

In Congress, he wants to reverse federal health-care cuts, expand prescription-drug negotiations, and establish Medicare for All. He’s also eager to work on legislation addressing AI’s implications for jobs, democracy, energy use, climate, and safety. “Artificial intelligence is changing the world right now,” he says.

Dr. Adam Hamawy

In 2004, Hamawy helped save the life of a soldier whose helicopter had been shot down in Iraq: future Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Two decades later, Duckworth advocated for his evacuation when the surgeon became trapped in Gaza during a humanitarian medical mission. Now, they’ll both serve in Congress.

Hamawy, who won New Jersey’s 12th District, is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Army veteran, and medical-practice owner. According to his campaign biography, he began volunteering on humanitarian medical missions more than three decades ago, when he traveled to Bosnia as a medical student. He also describes treating victims and responders at Ground Zero during residency and later establishing a practice in Princeton.

His frustration with insurance barriers helped motivate him to run for office: surgeries delayed while awaiting approval, patients struggling to afford care, and rising premiums for his own employees. “For a doctor this isn’t abstract. We see it every single day,” he says. “People who can’t afford their medications, people who can’t get appointments, you know, the care being denied, we’re dealing with it. So I think having that experience in Washington gives a different perspective.”

His platform supports Medicare for All and argues for spending more federal resources on health care and communities. He plans to co-sponsor Medicare for All when he takes office. “The problem isn’t in our offices, the problem’s in Washington, and that’s where we need to go fix it,” he says. “That’s gonna be an easy signature for me.”

Dr. Richard Pan

Pan, who just won California’s 6th District in his U.S. House bid, says he ran in part because he wanted to question Robert F. Kennedy Jr. under oath. The pediatrician and former California state senator had already spent years fighting over vaccine policy. “He’s gone toe-to-toe with Kennedy multiple times already in California,” Polyak says.

In 2015, Pan helped pass a California law eliminating personal-belief exemptions from vaccination requirements for schoolchildren. Four years later, he pushed to tighten oversight of medical exemptions. That triggered backlash: Threats intensified in 2019, and he needed a restraining order and a personal security detail. He was also physically assaulted.

Pan continued treating low-income children during his 12 years in the legislature, which ended in 2022. His more than 35 years in medicine, public health, and health policy have included training pediatricians, chairing legislative health committees, and overseeing health-budget decisions.

His campaign priorities include protecting federal health agencies, lowering prescription costs, and limiting insurers’ interference with physician-prescribed care. “I am running for office because medical decisions must be guided by scientific research, not ideology,” he said in a campaign statement.

Jacqui Irwin

Before winning election to the House in California’s 26th Congressional District, Irwin was an engineer. A systems-engineering graduate of UC San Diego, she worked at Teledyne Systems and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory before serving on the Thousand Oaks City Council and in the California Assembly.

Her record includes a significant investment in mental-health care: She authored the behavioral-health bond legislation included in California’s Proposition 1, approved by voters in 2024. The measure authorized approximately $6.4 billion in bonds for treatment facilities and housing connected to behavioral-health needs. She has also worked to remove barriers to mental-health services for military members.

Irwin told KCLU that her congressional priorities include holding the Trump Administration accountable and addressing living costs. Her approach, she says, is simple: “My degree is in systems engineering. My approach to issues is very logical, and I always try to solve problems.”

The 2026 midterm elections saw historic gains for Democrats, who won control of both chambers of Congress and flipped key seats in states like Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina. The electorate’s leftward swing was diverse and widespread, but three demographics showed notable shifts that helped support Democrats on Tuesday.

Distinct gains came from young, rural, and Hispanic voters—all of whom were key to President Donald Trump’s victory in 2024. National polling on how these groups voted in House races offers a broad measure of their support for Democrats, while Senate contests reveal how those trends played out in key states. Experts weigh in on what may have prompted the shifts.

Read more: Inside the Democrats' Plans to Take On Trump

Young voters

Young people overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates this election cycle.

According to the AP Voter Poll, which was conducted Oct. 19 through Nov. 3, about 7 in 10 voters ages 18 to 29 said they supported the Democratic candidate in their local House races, while about 3 in 10 said they voted Republican. 

Although Trump was not on the ballot, the poll found that 60% of young voters said their House vote was intended to “express opposition to Donald Trump.” 

This marks a sharp change from the presidential election in 2024, when Trump won an estimated 39% of young voters, making historic gains among the demographic. But the Republican Party was unable to capitalize on those gains just two years later.

Outside of commentary on the President, 43% of young voters said that their top issue was the economy. 

Santiago Meyer, the executive director of Voters of Tomorrow, tells TIME that young people felt “betrayed” by Trump’s economic policies.

“Young people trusted Donald Trump to bring prices down and work on affordability,” the 24-year-old explains. “He betrayed everything that he told us: He made prices higher with tariffs, he did not work on housing, and he started an illegal war.”

Meyer says that while it's undeniable that Trump won over young men in 2024, he did so at the time with a $1.2 billion investment in youth in the five years preceding 2024, outspending the left 10 to 1.

“The difference this year is that the money just didn’t cut it, there was a misread by Republicans of what drove young people toward them in 2024,” he says, claiming that Trump had targeted young men at a time when they felt particularly “left behind.” This year, it was the opposition that was able to best speak to those sentiments. 

If Democrats are to retain the support they won in this election, however, Meyer says they will need to deliver in Congress.

“Democrats got the trust of young people this time, so they need to deliver, or else they might swing again, or stay on the couch for the next election,” he says, pointing out that the latest data, which is still being tallied, already shows that Gen Z is on track to either match or exceed its record turnout in 2018, the first year for which the generation was eligible to vote. 

“Young people need to be able to afford the lives they were promised by older generations,” he says. 

Hispanic voters

About 6 in 10 Hispanic voters said they chose the Democratic candidate in their local House race in 2026, according to the AP Voter Poll.

In Texas, they were particularly instrumental in flipping the open Senate seat. Roughly 6 in 10 Hispanic voters in the Texas Senate race supported Democrat James Talarico, compared to just 3 in 10 who supported Trump-endorsed Republican Ken Paxton.

Stephanie Valencia, a co-founder of Equis Research, tells TIME that one of the big takeaways from Tuesday’s midterms was how consequential the Hispanic vote has become in America.

“Key takeaway from last night is that Latinos are the key swing voter,” she says. “People love to call the Latino vote the ‘sleeping giant,’ but we are the swinging giant.”

The latest swing was largely informed by two areas of discontent, according to recent polls: Trump’s presidency overall and, specifically, his handling of the economy.

Trump’s approval rating among Latino voters dropped from 38% in February 2025 to 24% in September and October, according to a Pew Research Center poll from last month. Of those who backed him in 2024, the decline was even greater, with approval down from 93% in 2025 to 57% in October. 

A survey by BSP Research and the African American Research Collaborative found that specific economic grievances included the cost of living and inflation. More than 7 in 10 Latino voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to an AP-NORC poll from October.

Valencia says that Tuesday’s vote was a “middle finger to Trump and Republicans and their misplaced promises” from the Hispanic community. It’s the same way they showed dissatisfaction toward Democrats when they supported Trump in 2024, she says, and therefore it should be noted that “while the shifts and the gains are real, they are not necessarily permanent.”

“The lesson for Democrats is not to interpret their opponents' loss as their victory,” she says. “The worst they could do is see 2024 as a blip and not see how they are in a probationary period with Latinos.”

In 2024, when Trump drew near even with his opponent Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters, Valencia said that the demographic was driven by the same priorities they have expressed in 2026: cost of living, inflation, and immigration.

“For both Biden and Trump, the common thread is rising costs and not rising wages,” Valencia says. The challenge for a Democratic-controlled Congress, now, is to figure out how to work with Trump and provide “clear delivery” to Latino voters, she adds.

Rural voters

Traditionally, there is a large party divide between urban voters and rural voters—with the former overwhelmingly voting for Democrats and the latter more often voting for Republicans.

The Pew Research Center shows a pronounced gap in 2024, with nearly 70% of validated voters who described their communities as rural voting for Trump, and 29% voting for Harris.

Rural voters still favored Republican candidates in 2026, according to the AP Voter Poll, but the demographic shifted significantly to the left: 57% of rural voters opted for the Republican candidate in the House, versus 41% opting for the Democratic candidate.

The shift influenced several key battleground states. In Kansas, for example, Democrat Adam Hamilton was elected to the Senate—the first Democrat sent to the upper chamber from the state in almost 100 years. 

According to a New York Times analysis of Senate votes in Kansas, every single county—even the rural counties in the northwest of the state, which Trump won in a landslide in 2024—shifted toward Democrats.

Hamilton also notably flipped three rural counties in the southwest of the state: Finney, Ford, and Seward counties. According to Alexandra Middlewood, an associate professor of political science at Wichita State University, this flip can at least in part be attributed to unannounced immigration enforcement operations at meatpacking plants in all three of these counties in September. It may have soured locals on the leadership of the Republican Party, she observes.

“If we look at those counties, their voter registration increased in the month of September, and that was when those ICE raids were happening,” Middlewood tells TIME. “The correlation is there.”

Democrats also flipped 20 seats in the Kansas House of Representatives, which Middlewood calls “insane.”

She notes that economic issues are also hitting rural voters in Kansas and across the U.S. in unique ways that might be driving dissatisfaction with the Trump Administration.

An AP/KFF poll released in September found that about half of rural American voters believe the economy is worse off than when Trump first returned to office.

“I think part of that is just they're paying more for gas because they have to drive cars to travel everywhere,” Middlewood says, pointing to the trend of rising gas prices since the war in Iran began in February. “A lot of those rural areas have farmers and cattle ranchers, and they are paying more for harvest season. So, in general, rural Kansans have been particularly impacted by these economic policies coming out of the Trump Administration.”

We counted, and this midterm election cycle, there were just seven major-party candidates for Congress who had working-class jobs when they first got into politics. The last ballots are still being totaled, but many of the politicians from working-class backgrounds who ran won, or seem poised to win. 

During national elections, we often hear a lot about the rare candidates who had working-class jobs. If you follow politics, you’re likely to know that Maine’s newly elected Senator Troy Jackson was a logger, or that New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a bartender. But these candidates are the exceptions to an often-unspoken rule of U.S. politics: the working class doesn’t govern.

Our research shows that people in working-class positions—manual labor jobs like construction worker, service industry jobs like restaurant server, and clerical jobs like receptionist—almost never go on to hold elected office. Working-class jobs make up over half of our labor force, but historically, the share of members of Congress who last had a working-class job has never cracked 3%. The same pattern holds in state and local politics: as of 2024, in the average state legislature, less than 2% of members have, or last had, a working-class job.

This kind of polarized inequality has real consequences. Research from across multiple countries shows that when politicians from working-class jobs are scarce, people tend to trust their governments less. Studies from the U.S. and elsewhere show clearly that a shortage of politicians from the working class tilts economic policy against the concerns and priorities of working people—and in favor of the wishes of the well-off. As the old saying goes, in politics, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.

What keeps working-class Americans out of office then? It isn’t that they run and lose, or that voters dislike them—it’s that they so rarely run in the first place. 

How candidates with working-class roots performed in the midterms

Yesterday’s midterms were a case in point. According to our tallies, there were 933 Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress, but the two major parties ran just seven candidates in the general election whose campaign websites listed a working-class job as their most recent non-elected occupations: Tim Rogers, a delivery driver (Wisconsin-4), Brian Poindexter, an iron worker (Ohio-7), Sam Forstag, a smoke jumper (Montana-1), Ray Pooley, a machinist (Michigan-9), Christopher Reichard, an electrician (Missouri-8), Rebecca Cooke, a waitress (Wisconsin-3), and Troy Jackson, a logger (Maine Senate). These seven candidates—so few you could easily write all of their names on a Post-It note—have recent experience in the kinds of jobs that most working Americans go to every day.

Studies generally find that when working-class candidates run, they tend to do about as well as other candidates—and the 2026 midterms were no exception. The one major-party Senate candidate from the working class, Troy Jackson, unseated incumbent Republican Susan Collins; she trounced her Democratic opponent 51-42 when she last ran in 2020. In the House, the six major-party candidates from the working class all ran for seats their party had lost in 2024; so far, two have been declared winners (Poindexter and Cooke) and a third is leading as the final votes are counted (Forstag). 

As the vote totals stand now, we estimate that the Democratic House candidates from the working class performed about 9.3 percentage points better than the Democrats who ran in their districts in 2024; nationally, the average Democratic House candidate is doing about 8.8 percentage points better than in 2024. The one Republican House candidate, Tim Rogers, performed 5 percentage points worse than in 2024; nationally, Republicans are down about 7 percentage points.

The candidate class divide

In short, where workers ran, they won votes and flipped seats at reasonable rates. Why, then, didn’t more workers run?

We’ve spent the last 15 years trying to understand this thorny problem in the U.S. and in democracies around the world. We’ve chased down explanations that turned out to be wrong, like the idea that working-class people are less qualified or less interested in running (there’s no real evidence for either claim). We’ve considered explanations that don’t take us very far, like the idea that things were better back when labor unions were stronger, and elections were less expensive (they weren’t).

What we’ve learned suggests that workers rarely hold office because, like this year, they rarely run. And they rarely run because of what it means to run for office in our current political system.

Running for office means taking on significant personal burdens, like taking time off work, giving up control over your day-to-day life, and taking massive risks with your reputation and future. Working-class people are less likely to be able to shoulder those burdens. In our research, we consistently find that qualified people in working-class jobs are more likely to express basic concerns about running. As Representative-elect Brian Poindexter said in the opening words of his acceptance speech on Tuesday night, “Who would have thought we’d put a worker in Congress?”

Political powerbrokers know exactly how hard it is to put a worker in office. Party leaders, interest groups, and sitting politicians are constantly recruiting the next generation of political candidates, sometimes with splashy candidate schools and recruitment programs, and sometimes with routine encouragement and quiet offers of support and resources. None of the leaders who do this work have infinite resources; most pass over qualified workers in favor of qualified professionals who they think will have an easier time running. Workers almost never hold office because they face more obstacles, and the people who could help them will usually prioritize candidates who have an easier time running.

How to boost working-class political representation

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. There are successful models for recruiting working-class candidates, like the New Jersey AFL-CIO Labor Candidates School, which identifies, recruits, trains, and supports candidates every election cycle and boasts a 75% win rate. There are also models of how political parties can create deep institutional partnerships with unions and other pro-worker organizations to create a pipeline of working-class candidates, like the British Labour Party did at the start of the 20th century. And there are ways to modify elections, like reserving seats for underrepresented groups or making campaigns shorter. There are also ways to sidestep elections entirely, like the randomly selected citizen assemblies that are used all over the world to advise elected leaders about the viewpoints of ordinary citizens.

Working-class people rarely hold office in the U.S., but the results of yesterday’s midterms remind us that it doesn’t have to be this way. The obstacles keeping working-class people out of office are built into our elections. But every year, a handful of working-class people manage to beat the odds, overcome the barriers, and get into office. If parties and interest groups get serious about supporting them, more will run next time.

When Bobby Pulido, a well-known Tejano singer, decided to run for Congress in Texas’ 15th congressional district, many dismissed his candidacy as a long shot. When he decided to make playing at quinceañeras a cornerstone of his campaign’s voter outreach strategy, there were many naysayers. 

On Tuesday, Texas voters proved them wrong. Pulido won about 62% of the vote, shifting the recently-redrawn 15th congressional district 42 points toward Democrats compared with the 2024 presidential election, and unseating incumbent Trump ally, Rep. Monica De La Cruz. 

During her campaign, De La Cruz dismissed Pulido’s background, saying "this isn't about who you would want to perform at your niece's quinceañera." Pulido flipped the attack on its head, proudly stating he had performed at 75 quinceañeras while on the trail. When speaking to voters, he kept a tight focus on the economy, healthcare, and immigration. 

Pulido’s overwhelming victory on election night suggests that meeting voters where they’re at and engaging with them at cultural events that are deeply meaningful is an excellent way for politicians to connect with and mobilize Latino voters across the political spectrum. 

An estimated 75% of voters in the district Pulido won were unknown voters, and his strategy was effective because it made people feel seen. That is what we have been hearing from Latinos in focus groups for a number of years now—they are struggling daily to make ends meet, and no one seems to care enough to do anything about it. Latino opinions in this regard are not all that different from those of other Americans. What is different is the degree of economic hardship Latinos are facing and the extent to which those struggles, along with concerns about immigration enforcement, may have moved Latinos away from the Republican Party.

The economic pain is real

Since 2020, polling has consistently shown that affordability—concerns about prices for basic necessities, housing, and stagnant wages—are what concern Latinos most. In a 2025 Equis poll Latinos surveyed reported high levels of economic precarity, with 29% reporting they had “trouble meeting expenses” and 32% that they “could just meet expenses with nothing left over.”

Similarly, an October 2025 Pew Research poll found that 48% of Latino respondents had struggled to pay for groceries, medical care, or their housing costs in the past year. Latinos who worked full time were just as likely as those who were unemployed to say they have struggled to pay for food, medical care, and housing. Given that, it is not surprising that 61% of Latino poll respondents said that their economic situation had worsened since President Donald Trump took office in 2024.

Immigrant connections

When asked by pollsters what their top concerns are, Latino respondents rarely include immigration on that list, but this misconstrues the fact that immigration is a key Latino concern. 

The truth is that Latinos are much more likely to be connected to the immigration experience than other Americans. Forty-four percent of Latino adults in the United States are immigrants. The October 2025 Pew Latino survey found that 52% of Latino respondents said they worry a lot or some that they, a family member, or a close friend might be deported. Fifty-nine percent said that they had seen or heard of ICE raids in their communities over the past six months. 

The violence around immigration enforcement has left its mark on many Latino communities. One of the most powerful images to come out of Texas on Election Day was the hundreds of “I Voted” stickers affixed to the shrine in honor of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who was killed by ICE on July 7, 2026. In addition to the stickers, people wrote statements, saying they were voting for Lorenzo, for a better future, and a future without hate.

No political home

According to Equis Research, from 2016 to 2024, Latinos shifted more in favor of Trump than any other U.S. racial group: a 16-point gain. It is important not to over-interpret those changes. It seems clear that there were aspects of Trump’s message that resonated in important ways with Latino voters. But there is much political discontent in the community. In the 2025 Pew survey, 68% of respondents said that Latinos’ situation in the U.S. was worse than a year ago. This was the first time in over two decades of Pew surveys that a majority of Latinos said their situation had worsened. Among those who voted to give Trump a chance in 2024, polling suggests that many have lost faith in President Trump’s promises, particularly around economic issues. 

The election results from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley suggest another shift may have happened, back to the Democrats. Over 90% of the valley is Latino, and Democrats swept all Congressional districts, including those that had been drawn to favor Republicans. Again, overinterpretation is a danger, particularly the assumption that electoral shifts of this type will be durable. That remains to be seen. Latino poll respondents have long indicated that they do not trust either party; the fastest-growing party identification among Latinos is no party preference. Few candidates or party operatives, in either political party, invest the time needed to authentically engage targeted Latino voters around what matters to them. As a result, either outreach does not happen or, in the rare cases that it does, it is symbolic rather than substantive. Latino voters can tell the difference. 

It seems like every electoral cycle, the question is whether the Latino vote will “swing.” This framing is reductive. It suggests that Latino voters are not voting based on their substantive concerns, but rather that they can be won over by one Spanish-language advertisement. But the polling makes clear that the stakes are real. 

Latino families are struggling every day to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. They are trying to ensure that they have access to medical care when they are sick. And they are worried their loved ones might be deported at any moment. These are grave concerns, with potentially dire consequences for families and the community if they are not addressed. Until political candidates begin to take these issues seriously and find solutions, Latino voters will continue to search for a stable and supportive political home. To build that home, the parties have a great deal of work to do.

Cheryl Groskopf, a marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles, once lived next door to a very loud little dog. It barked for hours at a time, including as she worked from home and tried to sleep at night. She initially chalked up the barking to puppyhood, but it kept getting worse. “The tiniest little jingle of the keys would set it off,” she says. 

Eventually, she stopped barbecuing in her backyard—her favorite pastime—because her presence there triggered the dog. But then she realized the absurdity of the situation. “Wait, no,” she recalls thinking. “I should be outside.” She finally texted her neighbor to ask if everything was OK. Her neighbor’s response: “Oh my God, I didn’t know it was this bad.”

By then, Groskopf had developed a less charitable explanation. “She doesn’t care about her dog,” she recalls thinking. “She doesn’t care about her neighbors.” Having a therapist’s tools hadn’t made her immune to resentment—and it didn’t make the prospect of speaking up any less awkward. “You want to maintain a relationship with someone you have to see regularly,” she says.

So how do you ask for quiet without making every subsequent encounter uncomfortable? We asked experts what to say—and how to follow up if the barking continues.

How to talk to your neighbor about their barking dog

If you decide it’s worth speaking up, choose a calm moment. (Not an afternoon when you’re fired up from a constant soundtrack of barking.) Enter the conversation with an open mind. Your neighbor might not have any idea how much of their dog’s day you’re hearing—or how much it’s disrupting yours.

That can feel like a particularly generous interpretation when you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep all week. “You’re exhausted, you’re frustrated, and there’s 15 arguments in your head about why this person sucks,” Groskopf says. Before sending that pivotal text, she poured her unfiltered feelings into her Notes app first—cuss words included—then waited an hour before drafting something she could actually send.

If you’re going the face-to-face route, ask if it’s an OK time for a conversation before launching into a complaint, advises Sarah Gershman, an executive speech coach who teaches communication at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University. She likes this wording: “I was hoping we could talk about something that’s been bothering me. I’d love to share my perspective, hear yours, and see if we can figure out a solution together.”

Then explain what’s happening on your side of the wall or fence. Gershman suggests: “I’ve been waking up at night because of your dog barking, and it’s been hard to get back to sleep. I realize you may not even know this is happening. I’m wondering if we can figure something out together.” Ask whether they’ve noticed the barking and what might be setting it off. “You don’t know what their intent is,” she says, “but you do know the impact it’s having on your life.”

A few specifics can help keep everyone from barking up the wrong tree. Instead of complaining that the chihuahua next door howls “all day,” provide exact times and durations, suggests Kate LaSala, a dog trainer and behavior consultant in New York who specializes in fear, aggression, and separation anxiety. Perhaps the dog barked from 9 to 9:42 a.m., then again from 10:10 to 10:20. Those details can help the owner connect the noise to a delivery, a visitor, or being left alone.

If you’re concerned about the dog, say so. LaSala suggests explaining that “your dog sounds like they might be in distress or panicked.” You’re giving the owner information they can use to help their pet, which could improve life on both sides of the fence.

What to say if your neighbor gets defensive

Your neighbor might have a simple retort to your complaint: “Dogs bark.” Resist the urge to bark back. Before explaining why this particular barking is a problem, show them that you understand their perspective, Gershman suggests. If you live in a pet-friendly building, for example, acknowledge that they’re allowed to have a dog and that some barking is inevitable. “They’re more likely to listen because they feel understood,” she says.

Then bring the conversation back to what you need. Groskopf suggests saying: “Of course, I completely understand that dogs bark, and I’m not expecting total silence. I’m just hoping we can figure out something that helps with the barking in the mornings because it’s really affecting my sleep.” You can be understanding without downplaying how much it’s bothering you.

If the exchange keeps getting heated, give yourself permission to end it. “This might not be the best time,” Gershman suggests saying. Offer to revisit the conversation later, when you both have a better chance of hearing each other.

What to do if your neighbor’s dog keeps barking

Maybe your neighbor was apologetic and promised to work on it, and you returned home feeling hopeful. A week later, you’re still getting an unsolicited 6 a.m. wake-up call. Follow up without assuming they’ve forgotten—or decided your sleep is expendable. Groskopf suggests: “Hey, I really appreciated you talking with me about this last week. The barking is still happening around the same time, so I wanted to check in about what else we could try.”

If the owner is working with a trainer or veterinarian, allow time for progress. The cause of the barking matters, LaSala says: A dog reacting to deliveries needs different help from one who panics when left alone. “Behavior change takes time,” she says. Ask what they’re trying, and talk about what might reduce the disruption in the meantime. Depending on the situation, that could mean keeping the dog inside during early-morning hours or finding someone to stay with them while the owner is out. 

Resist the urge to bang on the ceiling to make your point. Doing so can startle the dog and make the barking worse, LaSala says. If repeated conversations get you nowhere, bring your record of barking times to your landlord, building manager, or homeowners association, LaSala suggests. If you don’t have one, check which local office handles noise complaints. You can also use earplugs or a white-noise machine for some immediate relief while you pursue a solution.

And remember that being considerate doesn’t require giving up ordinary pleasures in your own home. Groskopf eventually moved, after the initial improvement following her conversation gave way to more problems. Only afterward did she recognize how much she’d been adjusting her life around the neighbor’s dog. These days, she reads on her porch every day. “Just having that back is everything,” she says.

On the eve of an election that threatened to upend his presidency, Donald Trump went to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where he had overseen a multimillion-dollar renovation that went awry when its new coating peeled and algae turned the water green. Aides hoped the President would focus on the concerns weighing on ordinary Americans: soaring gas prices, expensive groceries, a new war in the Middle East. Instead, Trump spent much of his 53-minute speech talking about construction projects rather than the struggles of the nation he had been elected to serve.

It was a bewildering capstone to a strange campaign. Allies marveled at Trump’s inability to stay on message as he crisscrossed the country. He boasted that oil companies were making a fortune as Americans struggled with energy costs. He claimed New Yorkers were no longer allowed to call their mothers “mom,” suggested renaming New Mexico “New America,” and repeatedly mimicked a Democratic Senate candidate vomiting at the sight of meat. Time and again, he veered into bizarre digressions about men's physiques. As one Trump aide put: “It’s hard to reach voters who can’t afford gas when your candidate keeps talking about Arnold Palmer’s endowment and Jon Husted’s ass.”

The scale of the Democrats’ victory was staggering. They seized control of both the House and Senate with ease. They captured governorships and Senate seats by commanding margins in traditionally Republican states, and prevailed in House districts gerrymandered to favor the GOP. The wipeout was a clear repudiation of Trump. Across the country, the President’s handpicked candidates went down to resounding defeats, including scandal-plagued Ken Paxton in Texas and Darlene Graham, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, in South Carolina—nominees he had elevated over the objections of party leaders who believed other Republicans stood a better chance. By night's end, Trump acknowledged the opposition's victory and recognized that the war in Iran was a factor in his loss. "We actually have the greatest economy," Trump told Fox News. "But because of the gasoline prices people don't see it as much as they would have without it. And the gasoline was caused by Iran." 

Trump’s confidantes often remarked that he cared little about the outcome of the midterms. He regarded his party's loss of seats in Congress as an inescapable historical pattern. He had a point: Barack Obama's Democrats took a beating in consecutive midterms, and George W. Bush's Republicans were drubbed in 2006. Trump himself oversaw the loss of dozens of House seats in 2018. Advisers tried convincing the President that he had some agency over the election’s trajectory, but “he had trouble getting past the history,” one of Trump's top advisers says. He grew resigned to the gridlocked slugfest ahead and dismissive of the investigations and potential impeachment proceedings Democrats could embark upon. “They’ll probably go after me,” he told TIME in late September, “and I’ll go after them.”

For more than a decade, Trump has commanded a degree of loyalty from Republicans unmatched in modern politics, bending lawmakers to his will and making dissent a career-ending proposition. The trouncing the GOP suffered on Nov. 3, coupled with the growing perception that Trump has become a political liability, could usher in a very different final two years for a lame-duck President, causing his grip on the GOP to finally slacken. An NBC News exit poll on Tuesday revealed that 43% of voters said they cast their votes to express disapproval of Trump. 

Presidents in the final two years of their second terms often pivot toward foreign policy, where they can exercise executive power with fewer constraints from Congress or the courts. Trump was already signaling his readiness to resume military strikes against Iran. Another senior Administration official says Trump plans to concentrate even more heavily on the Western Hemisphere in the final years of his presidency, where a succession of pro-Trump heads of state have risen to power and where he and his allies see an intensifying competition with China and Iran for regional influence. “It's such an opportunity to align,” says one senior Administration official. “There'll be an expanded focus there.” 

But after two years wielding executive authority freely, there will be new checks on Trump’s power. He will struggle to secure confirmation for his nominees. Aides anticipate Supreme Court battles over his expected reliance on officials serving in an acting capacity in positions that ordinarily require Senate confirmation. And yet those closest to Trump insist he will be anything but constrained. They predict him to grow more brazen, more defiant, and more determined to fight at any cost. “Don’t expect a kinder, gentler Trump,” one close ally says. “This may be the end of one chapter of Trump’s presidency, but it’s also the beginning of another. ”

With the midterms ramping up in late September, Trump's aides thought he seemed more checked out than usual. He had yet to dip significantly into the $400 million war chest of his allied super PAC. Republicans were pleading with him to pour money into one particularly desperate contest: the fight to defend Ken Paxton in ruby-red Texas. Trump eventually authorized the two men he had tapped to oversee his outside political operation, Chris LaCivita and James Blair, to begin spending heavily to preserve Republicans' chances of maintaining control of the Senate and limit their losses in the House.

Chief of staff Susie Wiles and other advisers urged Trump to hit the campaign trail, appealing to him as a savior. He planned an ambitious campaign sprint to help Republicans stave off a midterm disaster: 32 competitive congressional districts in a single month, a rush of the trademark rallies that had powered his political rise. But even as Trump returned to the trail with renewed intensity, he repeatedly veered off message, generating the kinds of controversies his advisers hoped he would avoid. At a rally in South Carolina, he praised a supporter who appeared to punch a protester, comparing him to former heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield. He even seemed to mock the unquestioning loyalty of his own supporters. “I could say the stupidest things and you’d clap me,” he told one crowd in Clarksville, Tenn. 

Trump tried to recreate a strategy from his 2024 campaign, seeking to reach low-propensity voters through nonpolitical channels and the alternative media platforms that Americans were increasingly consuming. Aides enlisted professional athletes and other celebrity validators who could lend local appeal at campaign stops. They brought Baltimore Ravens players to an event in Maryland and University of Georgia football legend Todd Gurley to a rally in the Peach State. They brought the boxer Jake Paul to another in Youngstown, Ohio. They brought Nicki Minaj, the best-selling female rapper of all time, onto the campaign trail in Michigan, where Trump praised her for having “one hell of a beautiful ass” that was “hard to miss.” Later, aides mischievously floated the prospect of Minaj serving as Trump’s next White House press secretary.

Throughout the midterm cycle, Trump’s political instincts seemed increasingly out of step. He promised Americans $5,000 checks if they kept Republicans in control of Congress, drawing condemnation from ethics watchdogs who likened the offer to an attempt to buy votes. He replaced White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt with Katie Zacharia; the untested Newsmax personality who lasted just five days after a disastrous press conference and revelations that she had presented herself as a lawyer despite having passed the bar in China but not the United States. Against the advice of advisers, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for re-election, despite the Israeli leader’s unpopularity among Americans. The endorsement came only after two of Netanyahu’s staunchest American allies—U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Fox News host Mark Levin—personally urged Trump to intervene, according to a source familiar with the matter. (Huckabee and Levin did not immediately reply to requests for comment.) Trump joked about withholding disaster aid from states that failed to elect Republican senators. As often as not, his interventions compounded his political troubles. A Washington Post–Ipsos poll found that 67% of Americans believed he did not carefully consider important decisions. 

The dismal performance of Republicans closely aligned with Trump, despite his personal interventions and nearly half a billion dollars in spending by Elon Musk, offered a stark measure of the backlash against his aAdministration. Voters were grappling with record-high gas prices, an unpopular war in the Middle East, and persistent economic hardship as the Administration faced scrutiny over its handling of the Epstein files and allegations that Trump and his allies had profited from their positions of power. The discontent extended beyond the cost of living. An October Fox News poll found that 60% of registered voters were extremely concerned about government corruption, surpassing even concerns about inflation and high prices.

As the returns rolled in on Tuesday night, allies at the White House knew they were witnessing the end of one period of Trump's radical, norm-shattering second presidency. But they also understood that another, potentially more perilous phase was beginning. The voters had rendered their verdict on Trump and the party that had enabled him for the past two years, delivering a resounding demand for change. 

Read more: Inside the Democrats' Plans to Take On Trump

But those closest to him expected the President to grow only more ferocious and less conciliatory in the face of Democratic oversight. Advisers suggest Democrats will overplay their hand, allowing him to recast himself as the victim of political persecution rather than the architect of his own predicament. “Historically, he has always done well when he’s the target,” says one aide. “He knows better than anyone how to use that to his advantage.”

Aides are bracing for a wave of staff turnover, a combination of attrition and Trump dispensing with officials who have frustrated him. The result could be a further retreat into an insular circle of loyalists who are unable or unwilling to deliver bad news or curb his impulses. Inside the White House, advisers have been contemplating the implications of divided government. “His natural inclination is to work with Democrats or Independents or whatever,” says another senior aide. “But he’s aware of the investigations and the games the other side will play, and he’s prepared to fight back.” Already, the Democratic wave had already emboldened the party’s leaders. The expected incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee delivered a succinct warning on X: “LAWYER UP.”

But the road ahead will be unlike any Trump has traveled before. Constitutionally barred from seeking another term, the President may find that Republicans face a new political calculus as they begin contemplating a post-Trump future. As the 2028 presidential race takes shape, Vice President J.D. Vance will confront the delicate task of forging an identity independent of Trump without alienating the man whose endorsement he may still need. Those tensions could strain not only their relationship but the broader coalition Trump has spent a decade assembling—one already showing signs of fracture as once-loyal allies like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene have turned against him. The question is whether the fear and loyalty that have sustained Trump's dominance of the GOP will endure as his party begins looking beyond him.

When Hakeem Jeffries took the stage at an election-night celebration just south of the U.S. Capitol, well before midnight, the crowd was already chanting “Speaker Jeffries! Speaker Jeffries!” The Brooklyn Democrat emerged to the strains of “Unbelievable” by the Notorious B.I.G., then looked straight into the camera and declared, “America is back.” He paused, breaking into a broad grin as he savored the moment. 

After nearly two years in the minority, Jeffries is likely to become the first Black Speaker of the House, his party riding a stunning wave of victories that swept Republicans from power on Capitol Hill. “I learned very early on that a setback was nothing more than a setup for a comeback,” he told the jubilant crowd. “Today begins the great American comeback.” Minutes later, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer had his own victory to celebrate a few blocks away: “We have five words for the American people: Relief is on the way,” he told campaign staff.

It was a coast-to-coast rout that exceeded the Democrats’ high expectations. As of Wednesday morning, the party had flipped at least 29 House seats, including victories in swing districts in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Virginia, while Senate victories in deep red states like Texas, South Carolina, Kansas, and Iowa gave them control of the upper chamber. The results were a decisive rebuke of a President whose handling of the economy, rising prices, and the war with Iran had fueled widespread discontent, and who spent the closing days of the campaign musing about candidates’ anatomy and dismissing Americans’ concerns over their bottom line.

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For the first time since Trump returned to Washington, Democrats will be empowered to do more than stomp and shout. They will be able to set the legislative agenda in both chambers of Congress, compel testimony from Administration officials, investigate allegations of corruption, force Republicans to take difficult votes, and block new Cabinet nominees or federal judges. Party leaders see an opportunity to turn the public's discontent with Trump into a sustained argument for returning Democrats to the White House in 2028. “This feels like 2018 on steroids,” says Representative Ted Lieu of California, vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, referring to the election during Trump’s first term when Democrats won control of the House. The ensuing two years were marked by a lengthy government shutdown and two impeachments.

The next two should be similarly contentious. Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic leaders, strategists, and members of Congress in the days before the election revealed a party itching to fight on nearly every front the President has opened. “LAWYER UP,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, who is in line to chair the powerful Oversight Committee, posted on social media as returns came in. Democrats are preparing a legislative offensive aimed at reversing some of the Administration's most unpopular policies, including cuts to Medicaid, the expiration of federal health insurance subsidies, Trump's sweeping tariffs, and the war in Iran. They plan to advance proposals to lower the costs of housing and health care while pursuing aggressive investigations into the President's Administration and business interests. Some party officials are already looking beyond the next two years, hoping to develop a more expansive economic agenda that could define the next presidential campaign.

After two years in which Republican majorities on the Hill deferred to Trump, Democrats are poised to reassert Congress’s role as a coequal branch of government. They know much of their agenda stands little chance of becoming law; already, Trump has embraced the moniker “Mr. Veto.” But members believe they can make political gains even when they cannot achieve legislative victories. By advocating for policies that command broad public support, party leaders hope to expose divisions among Republicans, force Trump to defend unpopular decisions, and demonstrate what a government fully led by Democrats would prioritize. 

But when the midterm victory laps conclude, the Democrats’ challenges will be waiting for them. Even leading up to their commanding win, surveys showed the party remained unpopular. Its leaders are divided over how far left to move, what kind of economic message will win back the voters who abandoned them in 2024, and how aggressively to confront Trump. Democrats are split on how seriously to pursue a third Trump impeachment, a path that many party leaders see as a political dead end. “If we make Donald Trump the center of our focus, we will lose this moment in history,” says Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. “We need to deal with the American people’s problems.”

There’s also a risk that Democrats have raised expectations they cannot meet. After campaigning on promises to lower prices, restore government accountability, and rein in a President they portray as dangerously unconstrained, they now have to demonstrate their governance can make a tangible difference in Americans' lives. The temptation to interpret the election as a sweeping mandate could be especially perilous for a party whose recent victories have owed as much to dissatisfaction with Republicans as to enthusiasm for its own leadership. 

“I'm really worried that we're going to misread victory as an endorsement of us or America falling in love with Democrats,” says Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee. “We need to remember that we have been asked to audition for a role in which the party has failed.” The warning hangs over the plans Democrats are preparing to put into motion. The next two years in Washington are likely to be defined by confrontation and gridlock. Now Democrats have the task of convincing Americans that this is what victory looks like. 

In mid-September, House Democrats gathered in a basement conference room in the U.S. Capitol to discuss strategy. National polling predicted a blue wave and Democrats were giddy about the prospect of making gains across the country. But they had yet to settle on a message for the final weeks of the campaign. Members swapped tales from the campaign trail that revealed dueling frustrations among the electorate. In competitive districts, constituents were furious about soaring gasoline and diesel prices. In Democratic strongholds, voters were obsessed with corruption, expressing the belief that Trump and his inner circle appeared to be profiting off the presidency. 

Then Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland spoke up, offering a formulation that crystallized the party’s closing argument. “We're talking about the same thing,” Raskin told colleagues. “Accountability and affordability are not a fork in the road for us politically. They are two sides of the same coin.” Candidates in swing districts began hammering the idea that corruption in the federal government and a cost-of-living crisis were intertwined. 

Their agenda will be guided by the same concept. Democrats are preparing a flurry of investigations into Trump and his allies, with the goal of exposing alleged abuses of power and putting the President's financial dealings under public scrutiny. The idea is to tie as many of these probes as possible to Americans’ economic stress. Joshua Miller, director of Congress Watch at Public Citizen, a progressive think tank, says members of his organization have been meeting with Democratic officials for months to discuss how to hold hearings Americans will see as meaningful, not merely performative. “This is the first step to actually auditioning for what a significant reform agenda would look like if Democrats were given unified control in 2029,” Miller says. “It’s also the first step to regaining the American people's trust.”

In the Senate, the Judiciary Committee, expected to be chaired by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, under Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, are preparing to play central roles in the investigative offensive. Their House counterparts on the Judiciary and Oversight committees are gearing up for an equally aggressive push. Raskin, a Maryland progressive and former constitutional law professor who led Trump’s second impeachment prosecution, is likely to become House Judiciary Chair, while Garcia is expected to take the helm of Oversight. Both committees have been hiring, recruiting several dozen additional lawyers and staff. 

According to staffers familiar with the committees’ plans, the committees intend to probe Trump’s cryptocurrency dealings; Truth Social’s sale of faster access to his market-moving posts, a service that could give paying trading firms an edge over other investors; the luxury presidential aircraft donated by the Qataris; and allegations that wealthy and well-connected donors and allies secured tariff exemptions or other government favors in exchange for contributions to Trump pet projects like the White House ballroom or Trump-aligned PACs. They’re also demanding records of Trump’s AI chatbot usage, citing a TIME report that the President consulted Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok before launching the January raid that captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. 

Democrats are keen to scrutinize Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, over alleged conflicts of interest (which Kushner has denied) stemming from his central role in Middle East peace negotiations and his investment firm’s ties to Gulf states. Democrats also want to investigate whether 1789 Capital, an investment firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, profited from political connections or advanced knowledge of federal funding decisions affecting companies in its portfolio. Among them is Vulcan Elements, which secured a $620 million Pentagon loan months after 1789 invested. (1789 denies wrongdoing and says Trump Jr. does not participate in its investment decisions.) “You have endless amounts of grift coming out of the White House from the entire family,” Garcia alleges. “It’s like watching The Sopranos,” adds Raskin. (In a statement, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said “there are no conflicts of interest” and insisted that “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public—which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses.”)

Looming over these investigations is the question of whether to try to impeach Trump for a third time. Jeffries, who declined an interview for this story, isn’t tipping his hand, saying only that Democrats “haven't ruled anything out.” But many Democrats are wary about another impeachment. Senator Adam Schiff of California, an impeachment manager in Trump’s first term, says his party needs to be clear-eyed about public sentiment. “We're going to need to see where the country is,” he says. But voter appetite alone would not set them up for success; Democrats know there would be little chance to obtain the two-thirds supermajority in the Senate required to convict and remove Trump from office.

The hesitancy surrounding a Trump impeachment could fade. In 2018, Democratic leaders talked down the prospects of impeachment, only to start proceedings a year later. The lawmakers already in favor of impeachment hearings call it a matter of historical precedent and public duty. “The base will also demand it,” says Representative Ro Khanna of California, who is exploring a run for president in 2028. Voters themselves are torn on impeaching Trump again, with a slight majority of those polled in an October NBC News Decision Desk Poll supporting it. 

For now, according to conversations with more than two dozen lawmakers, Democrats are coalescing around a compromise option: targeting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for impeachment instead. A resolution was introduced earlier this fall to impeach Hegseth for allegations of unauthorized military operations in Iran, Yemen, the Caribbean, and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Additional articles allege extrajudicial killings, ignoring laws to minimize civilian casualties, and the unauthorized capture of Maduro. Representative Adam Smith of Washington, who is positioned for a second round as chair of the House Armed Services Committee, says by targeting Hegseth instead of Trump, Democrats believe they may be able to draw enough Senate Republicans to join them. “It's got a bigger chance of getting a stronger bipartisan vote, and sort of building momentum,” Smith says.

With ten days to go until the midterm election, Bob Harvie, the Democrat running against Representative Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania’s 1st District, stood before an auditorium of prospective voters to take their questions. Sarah McBride, a 43-year-old single mom and self-described independent, approached the microphone in the newly renovated school. She sounded tired and a little nervous. “I guess what I’ve been left wondering is like, are you a fighter?” she asked. “The last thing we need in Congress is another wallflower Democrat who is going to be too afraid to make a move and do anything.”

Harvie, who unseated Fitzpatrick, hopes to show voters like McBride that he and nearly 30 newly- elected colleagues in the House can turn their campaign trail rhetoric into legislation that can improve their lives. In the first week of the new Congress, according to lawmakers and aides, House Democrats plan to advance legislation to rescind Trump’s tariffs, restore expired Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, and reverse $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts. They also plan to put forth a resolution to require Trump to either end the war in Iran or obtain congressional authorization to continue it. Senate leaders have been less clear about their immediate agenda, though members echoed many of the same priorities as House Democrats. 

Democrats see repealing the tariffs and ending the war as their two biggest opportunities to address the country’s economic downturn. “If we are able to reverse at least one or both of those things, that would be massive,” says Representative Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, who is in line to become the next chair of the House Budget Committee. “I look at that as basically the whole ballgame.”

It’s not clear how they intend to win it. Senate Democrats may look to a process known as budget reconciliation as a way to pass tax and spending legislation with simple majorities, bypassing the 60-vote filibuster threshold. But those bills would still need to get through Trump. Democrats will need Republican support in the Senate to override presidential vetoes. Congress has already passed nonbinding measures under the War Powers Resolution to end military action in Iran, which Trump has rejected and ignored. “We don’t have an off switch,” Smith says. The party could also attempt to block Iran war funds through appropriations, or threaten a shutdown over the issue. But that would require members, including those in competitive districts, risk being accused of withholding support from troops in the field. Their best option may be ramping up pressure through messaging votes. But many in the party, especially the progressive wing, see value in picking fights that force Trump to defend unpopular decisions, illustrating for voters what a Democratic government would prioritize. “We need to demonstrate to Americans that we’re willing to take shots,” says Representative Summer Lee of Pennsylvania. “I think that that is going to be just as important as making them.”

Some Democrats fear looking feckless if they pursue an agenda that’s laser-focused on fighting the Trump Administration and gets nowhere. Many are keen to maintain the emphasis on affordability that helped lift them to power. One slate of proposals, authored by the center-left New Democrats caucus, urges the party to focus on five areas: the costs of groceries, housing, health care, energy, and family care. A separate agenda from the Congressional Progressive Caucus includes bills to fund expanded affordable child care, another to provide downpayment assistance for first-time homeowners, and to raise federal overtime pay. "Every single week we should be passing clear, bold policy that would reduce prices and increase paychecks,” says Representative Greg Casar of Texas, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Other priorities include measures tackling AI regulation, data centers, and reproductive health. 

Even if none of these become law, party strategists see upside to forcing Trump to veto popular bills. “We’re telling the country that these are our priorities,” says Schiff, “and if you give us the White House in two years, then we’ll be able to more fully deliver.” It’s an approach that echoes the party’s strategy a generation ago. When Democrats seized control of Congress under an unpopular Republican president in 2006, they used the ensuing gridlock to build their case for gaining more power. “We got a lot done in Congress,” says former Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, “but it was all vetoed and stalled by George W. Bush, and then we hung that obstruction around the necks of the Republican Party going into ’08.”

Democrats could find opportunities to send Trump bills he would actually sign, particularly on pocketbook issues where their proposals overlap with his promises, such as lowering prescription drug prices or expanding the housing supply. The president has signaled some willingness to cut deals. “What happens is I veto everything,” Trump told reporters in October of the possibility of a Democratic-controlled Congress. “You veto, veto, veto, and then they come and they say, ‘How do we get it done?’”

As Democrats take power, a central question is how well they can work together to wield it. The first test will come as both chambers choose their leaders. The Senate victory puts Schumer in a strong position to return as majority leader, several Senate Democrats and strategists tell TIME. It marks a turnaround from March 2025, when his decision to help advance a Republican funding bill to avert a government shutdown prompted calls for him to step aside. “If you bring home the bacon and you bring us to victory, then you deserve to stay,” says Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who credited Schumer with recruiting candidates who flipped Republican-held seats this cycle and largely holding the caucus together against Medicaid cuts last year. Danny Weiss, a onetime chief of staff to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, noted the 75-year-old Schumer could be challenged in a moment when there’s an appetite for younger leadership. “But usually,” he notes, “you get rewarded for pulling off a miraculous win.”

Within the incoming House Democratic caucus, support for Jeffries to be Speaker is wide, but not necessarily deep. Allies describe him as a politically savvy but cautious leader. Interviews with a wide range of current and incoming members suggest he is well positioned to become Speaker when the caucus convenes to elect one on Jan. 3. But some members see his caution as a liability in a moment when Democrats need to show their strength. A handful of progressive members have not committed to backing him. The incoming freshmen include democratic socialists like Darializa Avila Chevalier and Chris Rabb who won their races in part by running against the party establishment. “Is Jeffries willing to meet us halfway?” Rabb asks. 

Unlike Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Jeffries appears poised to lead a majority large enough to pass legislation without unanimous support from either wing of his caucus. But vocal dissenters could still undermine his efforts to project party unity. The five incoming socialist lawmakers have been quietly coordinating their strategy since the summer, holding meetings in person and over Zoom and exchanging messages in a group chat as they weigh how to advocate for progressive causes. They have discussed what concessions they might extract for support on pivotal votes, which procedural tools could give them greater influence, and whether they could enlist other lawmakers dissatisfied with the party's direction. The group is slightly larger than the so-called Squad, the group of legislators that has been pushing Democrats to take far-left positions for the better part of a decade, and it’s yet to settle on a formal list of demands, let alone a name for the nascent socialist wing of the party. “Every piece of leverage needs to be on the table,” says incoming Representative Claire Valdez of New York, a member of the group, who refers to her comrades as “the bloc” for now.  

The newcomers, in coordination with progressives already in Congress, may call for votes on Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and blocking weapons sales to Israel. “If they start pushing Medicare for All, that causes a lot of political problems within the caucus,” says Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, a moderate democrat. “To ensure we actually win the White House, it would be smart for us to put out a practical agenda.” Israel may be an even dicier issue for Jeffries, a longtime supporter of the Jewish state whose Brooklyn district includes an Orthodox community. Over the past year, nearly half of House Democrats voted to cut off aid to Israel. The public falling-out between Michigan Senate candidates Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens over Israel policy offered a reminder of the divisions bubbling beneath the surface. 

How Jeffries enforces consensus is an open question. After two centrist Democrats, Representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, broke with their party on a procedural vote in September, Democratic leaders discussed establishing guardrails to limit dissent within the ranks. One idea, proposed by Jeffries’ leadership team, was to penalize members who voted against the party’s own procedural rules governing legislation, potentially costing them coveted committee assignments or leadership positions. Another idea tied a member’s ability to advance within the caucus to their financial contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The suggestions sparked quick backlash from progressives, who saw the proposals as an attempt to consolidate power just as a new generation of left-wing lawmakers was preparing to enter Congress. “I think it's ludicrous,” says incoming Representative Melat Kiros, a DSA-backed progressive from Denver. “For them to be punishing other members for not meeting their agenda goes in direct conflict with what the American people want.” 

Some of these disagreements go to the heart of a question Democrats have struggled to answer since their defeat in 2024: whether their path back to national power lies in embracing the economic populism championed by their ascendant left wing or rebuilding the more ideologically diverse coalition that once made them more competitive nationally. Both factions believe the election vindicated their approach. Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, who helped recruit Democratic candidates in competitive districts, says the party has just started bringing back voters in working-class and rural communities and can’t squander that. “The Democratic Party has to be very honest that we have fallen short in the past,” Crow says, adding that people want a government “that can respond to how quickly the world and Americans' lives are changing." 

The midterm election may have proven that Americans sought a check on Trump in Congress. But it offered no clear answer about the kind of Democratic Party voters would be willing to send back to the White House. The next two years will offer an opportunity to shape that conversation, and the candidates who emerge in 2028 will have to navigate the divisions that Democrats have yet to resolve. “If we mess up,” says Gallego, “those voters will swing right back to Republicans in 2028, and we'll lose the next election.”

For the past year, a faction of the AI industry bent on unfettered development looked poised to use its wealth to tip the 2026 midterms in its favor. But on Nov. 3, that accelerationist wing could hardly have had a worse night.

An NBC exit poll found that 56% of voters said that AI and data centers were a “crucial or major factor” in their vote for Congress. Democrats spent more than $100 million on broadcast ads casting their Republican opponents as being overly cozy with Big Tech and data centers—and decisively won in many of those races, including Ohio, Kansas, and Iowa. 

Data center bans or moratoriums passed in counties across the country, from Edgewater, Fla., to Bloomington, Ill., while the mayors of Piqua, Ohio and Yukon, Oklahoma were recalled for their previous support of data center projects. 

Data center and accelerationist super PACs failed to make a major dent in influencing elections through spending. One of the key candidates they spent money on, Darline Graham, lost to Annie Andrews, who nicknamed Graham “Data Center Darline” and called for a two-year moratorium on new projects. The accelerationists' ineffectiveness opened a pathway for “pro-safety” PACs to outspend them in key races. Several candidates backed by those groups, including Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and Colorado’s Manny Rutinel, won.

Don’t expect sweeping federal AI regulation soon. Even with both chambers, Democrats need substantial Republican support to pass over a potential Presidential veto. 

But this election served as the stunning capstone in a year of mounting anti-AI populism, during which Donald Trump has spurred on the industry and said that opponents of data centers “want to end up being backwards and poor.” Now, Congress could haul executives before committees to answer questions and undo Republican efforts to block state-level laws. 

Even without law change, politicians may think twice before siding with the AI industry. “Voters had their say tonight: they are overwhelmingly in support of AI safety and security, and very much against data centers and flock cameras,” says Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist and the CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI. “The AI industry is going to have to get ready to deal with it because I think there's a big deluge of bills at the state and federal level coming their way.”

Data centers became a political liability

Americans would rather live near a prison, methadone clinic, or a nuclear power plant than an AI data center, according to comparative polling done by progressive research firm Blue Rose Research. Existential concerns about AI have grown, says Ali Mortell, the firm’s director of research, but data centers’ concrete local impacts—including higher energy bills, noise, and environmental concerns—were far more salient.

Accordingly, Democratic candidates who opposed data centers more strongly than their opponents won in many races. In Ohio, Senator-elect Sherrod Brown ran millions of dollars of ads calling Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio." Brown won by five percentage points. The National Republican Senatorial Committee even acknowledged that Husted’s ties to the industry were a problem, writing in an August memo that “more than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.”

In Kansas, Cindy Holscher led in the governor’s race on Wednesday morning after running an ad calling for a pause on data centers until Kansas set guardrails to protect its communities, farms, jobs, and budgets. Her opponent Ty Masterson had received $1.5 million from a data center super PAC. 

In Arizona, Democrat Amish Shah, who pledged to “stop data centers from being built,” led Jay Feely, who said American data centers were necessary to beat China in the global AI race, on Wednesday morning.

Comparisons suggesting that U.S. data centers use less water than the nation’s golf courses have done little to reassure voters. Developers’ promises to cover higher energy bills soften opposition but win few supporters. Trust in institutions is low, so when tech companies and politicians offer reassurance, Mortell says, “voters are not positioned to believe that's true.”

An October Politico poll found that nearly half of Americans identify Republicans as the party most eager to build data centers. But Democrats could find themselves on the other side of the backlash. In Wisconsin, Republican Tom Tiffany derisively called his opponent “Data Center David Crowley.” Crowley shifted toward tighter restrictions in October—and won.

“There's not a clear divide between Democratic voters and Republican voters on how they're thinking about [data centers]. Opinion has soured with everyone,” Mortell says.

AI money backed both sides

AI accelerationists also struggled to translate their considerable campaign contributions into electoral victories.

The super PAC Leading the Future was created with more than $100 million in funding to support pro-AI candidates in August 2025. But because public skepticism of the AI industry has become so widespread, the PAC's financial contributions were met with backlash, creating headaches for candidates who received the money. 

According to one survey, three-quarters of likely voters said that they would be less likely to vote for a candidate if they found out they had accepted a donation from an AI super PAC. As the general election approached, big donors like OpenAI’s Greg Brockman and Ron Conway backed away from previously promised donations, and Leading the Future mostly kept their powder dry. 

Elon Musk didn’t fare well either. The AI leader was the biggest donor in this cycle at $446 million, $168 million of which effectively went to supporting Ken Paxton in Texas. But Paxton was crushed by James Talarico, who has called for the ending of "sweetheart tax deals" for Big Tech and other guardrails.

Leading the Future and associated PACs were far outspent by pro-safety PACs designed specifically to counter their influence. Those pro-safety groups had a wealthy supporter of their own. Anthropic contributed more than $40 million to Public First Action, which advocates for stronger safeguards. That money was restricted from election activities, though Anthropic employees separately donated another $5 million to support campaign efforts.

Pro-safety PACs notched wins in Michigan (Thomas More Barrett faced $896,250 in opposition funding); Colorado (Manny Rutinel, who has called for a conditional moratorium, received $1.5 million from pro-safety groups); and Wisconsin (where Rebecca Cooke defeated Derrick Van Orden after a pro-safety group spent more than $880,000 opposing him). 

But neither side's cash proved decisive. The largest spending battle of the cycle among AI-focused super PACs was a New York congressional primary. Pro-safety groups spent $21.3 million supporting Alex Bores, while accelerationists spent $8.2 million opposing him. Bores lost—but the winner, Micah Lasher, had co-sponsored the same AI safety law that made Bores an industry target.

What about AI misinformation?

Another major worry from AI critics was that AI deepfakes would spread misinformation about candidates. While AI deepfakes were circulated, they do not appear to have had an outsize impact in many races. 

For instance, deepfaked videos of Maine Senator-elect Troy Jackson appearing to threaten his campaign staff circulated the week before the election, but Jackson went on to win by more than seven percentage points. In Wisconsin, Van Orden posted several deepfake videos on social media of Cooke saying things she never said. Van Orden lost.

AI could become a bigger election issue

After two years of a pro-acceleration agenda, the AI industry is now preparing for a harsher political climate. OpenAI plans to launch a policy and PR offensive, Axios reports, including an effort to rebrand data centers as “AI compute campuses.” Meanwhile, Meta is reportedly building a bipartisan team to strengthen its relationship with Democrats, while maintaining its ties with Republicans. “There's going to be a lot more questions from Congress,” says Steinhauser, whose Alliance for Secure AI Action is a bipartisan nonprofit that advocates for guardrails.

With Trump in the White House, sweeping federal AI legislation would likely require either his signature or enough bipartisan support to overcome a veto. With anti-AI sentiment crossing party lines, cross-party collaboration isn’t out of the question. “I think this is a good chance for Trump to have a bipartisan win,” Steinhauser says. 

"I also think you're going to see more movement at the state level," Steinhauser says. Democrats in Congress might not be able to pass sweeping federal regulation, but the ban on state AI regulation Republicans have sought will be harder to enact. “If Congress is gridlocked, what happens in California will govern AI for the U.S. and the world,” says Scott Singer, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who was a lead writer of a report commissioned by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which informed SB-53—the first U.S. law governing frontier AI systems.

Blue Rose’s polling finds AI is ranked 29th out of 39 issues. But in the last year, its salience has risen more than any other issue, including war in the Middle East. As AI advances, its effects on jobs and people’s safety could make for a very different political debate in 2028, Mortell says. “This was the first cycle where AI showed up in the political discourse, and it’s arguably the least important that it will ever be again.”

Every so often, I taste something that reminds me of the cherry-flavored lollipops my local bank used to give to children who came in with their parents. I never liked the taste, but I ate the candy anyway. I was a kid, dragged along on my parents’ chores, and it was a treat in an otherwise boring stretch of adult obligations.

I assumed this would one day be part of my life, too: regular trips to deposit checks, buy groceries, fill prescriptions, pay for photo prints, return rented videos, and occasionally compare screw sizes in the hardware store. But in my high-tech adulthood, I can do all of these chores from home. Banking happens in an app. Groceries and just about anything else can be delivered. Video stores and photo labs are practically extinct in the age of camera phones and streaming. 

On the whole, I’m glad to give up balancing a checkbook and waiting in several lines every week. But as my conveniences pile up and tasks turn into taps on a screen, I increasingly feel like I’m missing something other than a treacly lollipop. 

Errands were a burden, sure, but they were a reason to leave the house. Without the obligation to go places, it’s easy to spend all day alone, switching from paying bills on my phone to watching videos on my phone to passively scrolling on my phone, ignoring the outside world and the people in it. Even the indulgences running errands allowed—a gourmet coffee or a fast-food combo meal—can be ordered ahead or dropped off.

Some of these high-tech offerings let us do our errands from anywhere, while others insist we stay home. Miss a grocery delivery, and you risk warm yogurt or potential theft. 

For nonperishable deliveries, a doorbell camera lets you avoid going to the door to greet a stranger. You can stare through a virtual peephole all day, monitoring when packages arrive and clandestinely recording any passersby who look at them. 

These replacements are sometimes easier, but not always better. Many meals don’t travel well, and even the most reliable personal shopper might not pick out the same fruit you would’ve chosen. For a delivery devotee, what was once a series of social interactions is now a chain of one-tap transactions, which can reshape how we see other people: not as human beings occupying a shared space, but as hirable servants in a world made just for us. 

“It gives us this false sense of control and individuality if we’re just staying in our little box and having things come to us,” says Dr. Gillian Sandstrom, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Sussex and the author of Once Upon a Stranger, a book on the value of small interactions. Sandstrom cites research showing that people who have a wider variety of encounters—a polite nod with a stranger, a short conversation with a clerk, or a deep chat with a friend—tend to be happier. 

Like everything else, many of these small social interactions have gone online, and again, replacement doesn’t mean improvement. I can see hundreds of strangers in a short scroll through TikTok or Instagram. But I see them on a curated feed that’s mine and mine alone. And unless I also make content, they don’t see me as anything more than a metric: a like or a view. Parasocial relationships with influencers or podcast hosts may have some value, but the socialization remains one-way.

Outings also give us a chance to practice how we interact with the world. There’s a reason they’re called social “skills,” Sandstrom notes. “How are you going to make a new friend? How are you going to go to a job interview?” she asks. “It feels like a really horrible idea to not have all these little opportunities to practice.”

The smartphone has undoubtedly made it easier than ever to stay in touch with our real-life friends. But here, too, the interaction has changed. Texting gives me a drip of connection throughout the day, which maintains a feeling of socialization without giving me the full experience of hearing someone’s voice or seeing their body language. Virtual hangouts are like the grocery delivery order that’s just-about right: good enough, yet still a little disappointing. 

Errands could be a time for deeper socializing: an opportunity to catch up with a friend who had to do the same chores or who was bored at home and might come along. The places where we did chores and the pit stops in between served as de facto “third places.” As patronage drops, these centers of casual social interaction can’t stay open. Big box megastores and, later, e-commerce have led to empty storefronts in many towns’ main streets. High urban rents and a more isolated population make the business model for third places increasingly precarious. 

The places that do remain are built more for people who aren’t in them. With the rise of delivery and online ordering, coffee shops and fast casual restaurants increasingly serve mobile customers. The result: workers are slammed even when there’s no physical line, takeout orders pile up, and a constant stream of people pass in and out. 

Now, the in-person customer is often secondary to the virtual one. Sometimes the in-person customer becomes a virtual one, as businesses push visitors to order from digital kiosks. Some commercial restaurant space has been taken over by ghost kitchens—restaurants that only serve customers who order online and get their food delivered.

Yes, errands were boring. I’m sure I told my mom this about 100 times as we went from store to store, aisle to aisle. But I’m not less bored now, I’m just bored in a different way. 

I’m tempted to spend the time I save with digital errands watching TV or a movie. But as producers increasingly make “second-screen” content designed for people to watch while they also look at their phones, it can feel like there is no escape from a phone-centric life. The two-screen experience is just distracting enough to keep me from thinking about what else I could do with my time. 

There was more excitement and novelty out in the real world: an odd interaction with a stranger, an overheard conversation in an aisle, or any of the little dramas of daily life that play out in public. 

It’s a little dystopian to imagine using every replacement for errands at once—streaming and scrolling while waiting for groceries and a fast-food delivery; sitting alone and being waited on by gig workers and digital assistants. 

Not everything needs to be done in-person, but as technology advances, the analog alternatives become harder to find, and we’re pushed to predictable interactions on screens instead of the softly social and occasionally surprising world outside. 

The upside of digitization, perhaps, is that without the need to run as many physical errands, we could devote more time to activities that are more rewarding. That’s if we can find a place for them and if we can recognize what we need, instead of just getting whatever we want.

Here’s what to know

• Democrats won the House and Senate, flipping key Senate seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. A day after the polls closed, the Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi remain too close to call.

• Vice President J.D. Vance blamed the Republican Party's heavy midterm losses on the Iran war.

• Speaker Mike Johnson won’t seek re-election as House Republican leader, his team confirmed to TIME.

• Democratic lawmakers have hinted at the political and legal challenges they plan to launch against Trump and his Administration.

• TIME’s Election Day live updates, below, have concluded. Read our latest coverage at time.com.

Mississippi and Alaska Senate races still too close to call

Nov 4, 7:35 PM

A day after polls around the country began closing on Election Day, two hard-fought Senate races remain too close to call.

Democrats have already secured control of the upper chamber in the next Congress, so far flipping seven Senate seats as part of a sweeping blue wave. The size of the party's new majority, however, is not yet clear, with the outcomes of the contests for the Republican-held seats in Mississippi and Alaska still up in the air.

It may be days before the winners are determined in the races, both of which are extremely closely divided in the current vote counts. With 96% of votes counted in the Mississippi contest as of Wednesday evening, Democrat Scott Colom is leading Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by 1138 votes, according to the Associated Press. The margin is smaller still in Alaska, with 74% of votes counted, per the AP: Democrat Mary Peltola there leads incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan by 626 votes.

Elsewhere, Democrats have added to their string of victories on Wednesday, securing a growing number of House seats and flipping key state-level positions, including attorney general offices in multiple red states. The party has also newly gained control of several state legislative chambers—among them, Texas’s state House. — Annika Neklason

The Democratic rising stars who could shape 2028

Nov 4, 7:02 PM

With momentum now behind the party following what is widely being referred to as a “blue tsunami,” Democrats are already setting their sights on a return to the White House. “Over the next two years, Democrats will show up where Republicans have failed and work every single day to bring down costs. Up next: the White House,” vowed Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin.

Yet despite their strong showing at the polls, Democrats still lack a clear leader heading into 2028, setting the stage for what could be a hard-fought primary. There are Democratic heavyweights who often appear on presidential contender lists, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris. However, the Democrats’ midterm victories are a reminder that the party’s rising stars should not be ignored, as they will undoubtedly play an important role in shaping what the 2028 race will look like.

Read more here about the names you should be aware of as Democrats prepare to reset Washington. — Tiago Ventura

What will the blue wave in the midterms mean for climate action?

Nov 4, 6:22 PM

Following two years of anti-climate legislation from Washington, Tuesday’s blue tidal wave—giving Democrats control of both the Senate and the House—could provide an opportunity to change course.

Following his 2024 reelection, President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, rolled back the landmark endangerment finding, and leased public lands for oil and gas drilling—with Democrats unable to do much about it. 

The next two years likely won’t bring aggressive climate policy, nonetheless a shift is expected as a result of the midterms. “Are we going to see ambitious climate action? The answer is no,” says Ken Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics at the Yale School of the Environment. “We still have an executive branch with a veto power controlled by President Trump, and so anything that is done would have to make it through the veto.” 

But while Democrats might be unable to reverse many of the rollbacks, the midterms now give them, “a stronger hand to play,” says Geoffrey Henderson, assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of Michigan. 

Read the full article here. — Simmone Shah

The doctors and scientists who won political seats in the midterms

Nov 4, 5:49 PM

The Democratic victors in the midterm elections included people who have spent their careers treating patients, studying viruses, and solving equations. Among the winners: a pediatrician in South Carolina, a microbiologist in Georgia, and a mathematician in Illinois—all bringing experience in health and science to government. Several are joining Congress. One is the next Governor of Ohio. 

Working in medicine, in particular, provides an opportunity to connect to voters, says Erik Polyak, executive director of 314 Action, a political organization that recruits and supports Democratic candidates with scientific and medical backgrounds. “You go into the ER and your doctor doesn’t ask what party you are,” he says. Doctors, nurses, and others who work in health care may have heard patients describe their struggles and might have personally fought insurance companies to get treatment covered.

Still, having health credentials alone does not guarantee that someone will craft good policy, cautions Brian Castrucci, an epidemiologist and president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, which works to strengthen public health through funding, training, and research. What matters is how they use their training. “Congress needs people who know how to weigh evidence, ask hard questions, and admit what we do not yet know,” he says.

Read more about some of the health and science professionals who won political seats in the midterms here. — Angela Haupt

Key strategists see voters of color as ‘driving force’ behind Democrats' midterm rout

Nov 4, 5:16 PM

Tuesday’s Blue Wave was powered by voters of color.

That’s a key takeaway strategists in both parties are clocking as they pore through the results. In a memo obtained exclusively by TIME on Wednesday and soon to circulate among the Democratic National Committee’s bigwigs, two of the Democratic Party’s veteran strategists argue that the blowout would not have been possible without that crucial realignment, one that has enormous consequences for 2028’s presidential field. 

“Hispanic and Black voters not only turned out at a massive rate, but also swung back towards Democrats in terms of support levels, relative to the 2024 presidential election,” Tom Bonier and Simon Rosenberg wrote in Wednesday’s memo.

Read the full article here. — Philip Elliott

3 demographic shifts that fueled Democrats’ midterm gains

Nov 4, 4:13 PM

Democrats made massive gains with key demographic groups in the 2026 midterms—most notably with young voters, Hispanic voters, and rural voters.

Young people overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates this election cycle. According to the AP Voter Poll, about 7 in 10 voters ages 18 to 29 said they supported the Democratic candidate in their local House races, while about 3 in 10 said they voted Republican. This follows Trump’s historic gains with young voters in 2024.

“Young people trusted Donald Trump to bring prices down and work on affordability,” Santiago Meyer, the executive director of Voters of Tomorrow, tells TIME. “He betrayed everything that he told us: He made prices higher with tariffs, he did not work on housing, and he started an illegal war.”

Hispanic voters were also instrumental in flipping seats—particularly in Texas, where roughly 6 in 10 Hispanic voters supported Democrat James Talarico for the Senate, compared to just 3 in 10 who supported Trump-endorsed Republican Ken Paxton.

“Key takeaway from last night is that Latinos are the key swing voter,” Stephanie Valencia, a co-founder of Equis Research, tells TIME. “People love to call the Latino vote the ‘sleeping giant,’ but we are the swinging giant.”

Rural voters still favored Republican candidates in 2026, according to the AP Voter Poll, but the demographic shifted significantly to the left: 57% of rural voters opted for the Republican candidate in the House, versus 41% opting for the Democratic candidate. In 2024, nearly 70% of validated voters who described their communities as rural voted for Trump, and 29% voted for Harris.

The rural shift influenced several key battleground states. In Kansas, for example, it helped elect Adam Hamilton to the Senate—the first Democrat sent to the upper chamber from the state in almost 100 years.

Read the full piece here. — Rebecca Schneid

Top Republican campaign chair concedes in stunning defeat

Nov 4, 3:50 PM

Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, chairman of House Republicans campaign committee, has conceded on Wednesday in an unexpected defeat.

Hudson, who has been serving in Congress since 2013, said in a statement that he has called his Democratic opponent Richard Ojeda to congratulate him and looks forward to ensuring a smooth transition.

“In the words of Ronald Reagan: we lost a skirmish, but the battle goes on,” Hudson added.

Hudson’s loss marks the first time that the Chair of National Republican Congressional Committee has lost to a Democrat in a general election. Trump carried Hudson’s district by about 16 points in the 2024 presidential election. — Philip Wang

Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan launch bids to lead GOP after midterm losses

Nov 4, 2:47 PM

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Rep. Jim Jordan have announced that they will seek the top position in the Republican minority in the next Congress after Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday morning that he will not run for the position.

“The socialists are coming to Washington with a radical agenda that threatens the America we hold dear. They will stop at nothing to undo the progress we’ve made alongside President Trump over the last two years,” Scalise, who has served as the No. 2 or No. 3 Republican in the House for more than a decade, wrote in a letter to colleagues on Wednesday following the GOP’s sweeping losses in the midterms.

“The House Republican Conference must be the first line of defense in this crucial battle, and we must fight like our way of life depends on it—because it does,” he continued, going on to pitch himself as a leader “ready to lead on day one and chart our path back to the majority.”

Jordan, a hard-line conservative who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, also announced a run for minority leader in a letter to colleagues earlier on Wednesday.

“In these next two years, our job cannot be merely to spotlight how radical this new Democrat party is—offense, not defense, wins elections. Republican policies prioritize making Americans’ neighborhoods safer, keeping more money in their pockets, and protecting enduring American values and freedoms. To restore our majority, we must restore voters’ faith in our ability to deliver on these principles,” he wrote.

“That,” he continued, “is why I am running to serve as Republican Leader in the 120th Congress.”

Both Scalise and Jordan previously mounted bids for Speaker in 2023, after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster from the position. Scalise beat out Jordan for the internal Republican nomination to lead the conference, but later withdrew his candidacy after failing to secure the votes needed to win the gavel. Johnson went on to be elected to the role following a long and contentious process. — Annika Neklason

Schumer vows to work “with or without” Trump as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress

Nov 4, 12:45 PM

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that Democrats are determined to “get the American people’s cost of living down”—a task he said he's willing to do "with or without the President."

When asked how this could work, considering President Donald Trump’s ability to veto congressional legislation, Schumer told reporters: “Just watch.” He did not respond when asked if he plans to impeach Trump.

Schumer is in the running to become the next Senate Majority Leader, after Democrats won 54 Senate seats in the midterms, with two seats still up for grabs as of early Wednesday afternoon.

Trump had previously suggested he would veto Democrat-led bills, but in the wake of the election losses he expressed a willingness “to work with the Democrats to make sure things go well for our country.” He added: “I don’t just want to be sitting there for two years vetoing everything.” —Callum Sutherland.

Vance blames Iran war for GOP’s midterm losses

Nov 4, 12:01 PM

Vice President J.D. Vance blamed the Republican Party's heavy midterm losses on the Iran war, citing the months-long conflict as the reason why some former Trump voters had opted not to support a GOP candidate.

“The reason we lost is the war. The President himself said so last night,” Vance said in a lengthy social media post on Wednesday. “If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest."

Vance said a conversation with a pollster about pre-election data showed "how a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats."

In addition to the ongoing war, he listed the cost-of-living crisis, calls for an "America first" approach, and the desire for a change in the U.S.-Israel relationship as other concerns among Republican voters.

Vance’s assessment is a stark criticism of the conflict, which is now in its ninth month with no clear end in sight, as recent indirect negotiations with Tehran have yielded no tangible results.

Trump has, for the most part, stood by the war, insisting it will pay off for Americans in the long-run. He told POLITICO on Tuesday: “I am totally convinced that my decision on Iran for the long term good of our country and the world was an absolutely correct one and it continues to be.” 

The Iran war is estimated to have cost American taxpayers around $47.1 billion so far. Furthermore, Americans have had to shoulder soaring energy prices as a direct result of the unrest—a point many Democratic candidates mentioned in their campaigns leading up to the midterms. —Callum Sutherland.

Exclusive: Democrats send volunteers, lawyers to Mississippi following close Senate race

Nov 4, 11:19 AM

Democrats are sending volunteers and lawyers to Mississippi on Wednesday following a closely watched Senate race with a razor-thin margin, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

The Magnolia State has become an unlikely battleground for the Senate race, as Democratic candidate and District Attorney Scott Colom is currently leading incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by a razor-thin margin, with more than 96% of the votes counted. News organizations have yet to make a projection on the race.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), along with Democratic attorney Marc Elias’ law firm, will be on the ground leading the effort to ensure all lawful votes are counted, according to a DSCC spokesperson.

At least one Democratic Senator, Maria Cantwell of Washington state, is in Mississippi with her Senate staffer in advance of potential litigation arising from the ballot counting process, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The state of Mississippi does not have an automatic recount following the election or a recount request procedure set up. The only way that a recount can be requested is through the court system, where candidates can sue the state’s top election office and ask for a remedy. —Philip Wang

House Speaker Mike Johnson won’t run for minority leader after GOP losses

Nov 4, 10:22 AM

Speaker Mike Johnson has told his staff he will not stay on as Republican leader in the new Congress, his office confirmed to TIME Wednesday morning.

The announcement comes a day after Democrats won control of both the House and Senate.

Johnson, who secured his own re-election in Louisiana's 4th district, had earlier voiced his disappointment over the GOP's losses, but vowed to have a "firewall of House Republicans" standing in the way of Democrats if the next two years become about "retribution."

Johnson has served two terms as House Speaker since he replaced ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy in 2023.

Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, the current House Minority Leader, is widely expected to take over the gavel when Democrats assume control in January.
In the meantime, Johnson has vowed to “continue pressing forward with our agenda of common sense, and our vision to make America great again” in hopes of the GOP regaining control in 2028. —Olivia-Anne Cleary and Callum Sutherland

How AI Backlash Shaped the 2026 Midterms

Nov 4, 9:41 AM

For the past year, a faction of the AI industry bent on unfettered development looked poised to use its wealth to tip the 2026 midterms in its favor. But on Nov. 3, that accelerationist wing could hardly have had a worse night.

An NBC exit poll found that 56% of voters said that AI and data centers were a “crucial or major factor” in their vote for Congress. Democrats spent more than $100 million on broadcast ads casting their Republican opponents as being overly cozy with Big Tech and data centers—and decisively won in many of those races, including Ohio, Kansas, and Iowa. 

Data center bans or moratoriums passed in counties across the country, from Edgewater, Fla., to Bloomington, Ill., while the mayors of Piqua, Ohio and Yukon, Oklahoma were recalled for their previous support of data center projects. 

Data center and accelerationist super PACs failed to make a major dent in influencing elections through spending. One of the key candidates they spent money on, Darline Graham, lost to Annie Andrews, who nicknamed Graham “Data Center Darline” and called for a two-year moratorium on new projects. The accelerationists' ineffectiveness opened a pathway for “pro-safety” PACs to outspend them in key races. Several candidates backed by those groups, including Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and Colorado’s Manny Rutinel, won.

The election served as the stunning capstone in a year of mounting anti-AI populism.

Read the full story here. —Andrew R. Chow and Harry Booth

James Talarico says his Texas win sends a message to "corrupt political system"

Nov 4, 9:04 AM

James Talarico's stunning victory in the Texas Senate race was one of the biggest midterm accomplishments for Democrats, marking a significant shift in a state that has not elected a Democratic Senator since 1988.

Speaking on the TODAY show Wednesday morning, Talarico said his win was a clear “message to this corrupt political system” that Texans “are ready for change.”
He went on to frame his victory in the Lone Star State as a call for voters to come together across party lines.

“The real fight in this country is not left versus right; it's top versus bottom, because all of us are getting screwed,” he said. “Last night, the people of Texas sent a crystal clear message that they want change and they expect change.”
Looking ahead, Talarico, who defeated Trump-backed Republican Ken Paxton, also vowed to hold the executive branch to task.
“We have to establish checks and balances. We have to hold the executive branch accountable,” he said.

Opening the door for collaboration, Talarico emphasized his willingness to “work with President [Donald] Trump to deliver for working people across Texas and across this country.” —Tiago Ventura

Republican leaders issue defiant response and say they "will not stand idly by"

Nov 4, 8:01 AM

After the expected blue wave turned into more of a tsunami, Republican leaders are reflecting on the results, and making vows for the future, as they prepare for the reality of losing control over both chambers of Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Thune touted what he views to be successful hallmarks of President Donald Trump’s first two years, citing border security and tax hike prevention’s. 

Looking ahead to the next two years, Thune insisted that Republicans “will not stand idly by as the far-left, socialist wing of the Democrat Party attempts to unwind everything we’ve done” Hailing Trump’s presence in the White House, he said the party will work with the President “to stop the worst impulses of Democrat extremism,” arguing that “we cannot let their fringe positions become the mainstream.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson was equally defiant in his response to the Democrats’ overwhelming gains. He admitted he was “disappointed” by the results, but vowed to battle on against what he called an “insurgent socialist movement.”

“I’m not going to exaggerate when I tell you that there’s not a single American, not a single American family anywhere, that’s going to be made better off if Democrats turn Congress into a circus,” Johnson said in the early hours. “If they make the next two years about retribution and lawfare and partisan games, every American will suffer by that. And I tell you what we will do. We will put a firewall of House Republicans standing in their way to ensure that doesn’t happen."

Despite the significant setback, Johnson expressed hope for the future of Republicans in the House.

“We will continue pressing forward with our agenda of common sense and our vision to make America great again. And come 2028, we will take back the House, and we will finish this job,” he vowed.

Johnson will likely be handing over his gavel to Hakeem Jeffries, the current House Minority Leader, who heralded the election gains for his party as “not a blue moment,” but rather “a red, white, and blue moment.”

With control of the House secured, Democrats warn Trump Administration to "lawyer up"

Nov 4, 7:05 AM

With their newly-acquired majority, Democrats are prepping to take control of the House committees. This will give them a new subpoena power and the ability to conduct oversight investigations of Trump’s Administration, family and business ventures, immigration enforcement, and more.

California Rep. Robert Garcia, who is set to become the next chair of the Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives, shared a two-word warning for Republicans as the results came in Tuesday night. “Lawyer up,” he said.

The Oversight Committee’s primary function is to hold the federal government to account. It will serve as the core body for lawmakers to mount legal challenges against the Trump Administration.

Garcia previously said that, if Democrats were to win, he would lead investigations into the Trump family’s business dealings, the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. He also vowed to look into Elon Musk’s former role in the “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).”

Elsewhere, the X account belonging to Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee told Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “clear” his calendar.

Homeland Security operations under the Trump Administration have come under fierce condemnation by Democrats, who have raised the alarm over fatal shootings carried out by federal agents in Trump’s second term.

The Trump Administration is also set to face challenges within the Senate now that Democrats have retaken the chamber. Sen. Rob Wyden of Oregon, a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, hinted at future investigations when he shared a one-word statement overnight, simply saying: “Subpoenas." —Callum Sutherland

Europe hails Democrats’ midterms victory as a rebuke of Trump's policies

Nov 4, 6:23 AM

The Democrats’ sweeping victories in the midterm elections are being viewed by some European leaders as a rebuke of President Donald Trump and his Administration’s policies.

“American society voted against the policies that only impoverish. Against hate. Against machismo. Against climate denialism and against the privileges of the elites,” said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has previously clashed with Trump.

Others viewed the Democrats’ reclaiming of both chambers of Congress as an opportunity to improve U.S.-Europe relations, which have faltered significantly since Trump returned to office, with divides over the Iran war, NATO spending, and tariffs proving especially damaging. 

Christel Schaldemose, vice president of the European Parliament, said she was “cautiously optimistic on Europe's behalf, not because everything now changes for the better, but because it could benefit the support for Ukraine, the green transition, and relations with the rest of the world.”

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre viewed the results as “a powerful political signal about a change of course among American voters.” In a statement to Reuters, he said that “voices are now emerging in American politics that are closer to us than the President and the Administration have stood for,” citing environmental matters and foreign policy as two such examples. 

Outside of Europe, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf argued that the results were a reflection of Americans’ rebuke of war. “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” he said.

The Iran war, which started on Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iranian targets, is currently in its ninth month and remains deeply unpopular with Americans, who have had to shoulder soaring diesel prices and other financial ramifications as a direct result of the conflict. —Tiago Ventura

The results in Texas could reshape the road to the White House in 2028

Nov 4, 5:39 AM

On an Election Day when national Democrats had monumental momentum, the results in Texas were a breed apart and could redefine the path to the White House in 2028.

Both James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa broke the Republican Party’s hold in deep-red Texas. But the losses didn’t stop there. When all the ballots are counted, Texas Republicans may be on the receiving end of something approaching a wipeout. It’s a stunning turn that proves in one fell swoop that years of Democrats’ optimism in someday flipping Texas were not foolhardy. Even Texas Republicans gifted last-minute gerrymandered districts in U.S. House races were not immune to the national mood.

For Democrats, it was a dividend long invested. Year after year, Democrats kept insisting that this would be the cycle that would break the Republican fever in the state. And year after year, they woke up the day after Election Day feeling like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football.

Still, Democrats have long insisted that Texas is not a state of Republican voters. It’s a state of non-voters. Tuesday’s results finally proved that thesis.

The shift could have seismic consequences for the 2028 presidential map. Texas has 40 votes in the Electoral College, or roughly 15% of the haul needed to win the White House. If Democrats can sustain their success in Texas, that suddenly means other traditional swing states could prove optional. And both parties may find themselves having to invest heavily in the massive and pricey state to pin down Texas’ electoral votes every four years.

Read the full story here. —Philip Elliott

Nevada AG Aaron Ford beats Republican incumbent to become state's first Black governor

Nov 4, 5:07 AM

Nevada’s Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, has won the hotly-contested race for governor, defeating Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo to become the state’s first Black governor, the AP called.

With Nevada set to play a pivotal role in the next presidential election, Ford's win is a significant boost for the Democrats.

As the campaign race heated up over the summer, Ford's team criticized Lombardo after police body camera footage showed him dropping his own name during a traffic stop in Las Vegas and avoiding a ticket.

On the eve of the midterm election, Ford honed in on his criticism of Lombardo, linking him to the affordability crisis concerning many Americans.

"Joe Lombardo and Donald Trump have been working together to raise your gas, groceries, housing, and health care costs," he argued, advising people to "vote like your wallet depends on it." —Olivia-Anne Cleary

The midterm historymakers

Nov 4, 4:30 AM

Several election-winners on Tuesday have broken historic identity barriers for the U.S.

New Hampshire Democrat Chris Pappas will be the first openly gay male Senator. Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed will be the first Muslim U.S. Senator. Minnesota Democrat Peggy Flanagan will be the first Native American female Senator. Georgia Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms will be the first Black female governor. New Mexico Democrat Deb Haaland will be the first Native American female governor. And Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, could become the first Black Speaker of the House.

Read the full story here. — Chad de Guzman

Progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed wins battleground Michigan Senate race

Nov 4, 2:40 AM

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat with a background in public health, has defeated Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan’s open Senate race on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, making him the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate.

The election of El-Sayed, 42, the son of Egyptian immigrants who was born and raised in suburban Detroit, represents a milestone in American politics and a potentially consequential shift within the Democratic Party. An outspoken critic of Israel who has championed an ambitious progressive agenda, he joins a growing contingent of left-wing Democrats who have prevailed in elections this year.

Read the full story here. — Nik Popli

Elon Musk reacts to midterm election results

Nov 4, 2:25 AM

"Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time," Elon Musk, the world's richest man, posted on his platform X early Wednesday.

The on-and-off ally of President Donald Trump poured a tremendous amount of money into the Republican effort to retain their congressional majorities: The New York Times previously reported that Musk contributed some $474 million into the midterms, making him the single largest disclosed donor in modern American politics.

In a separate post, Musk, who is the CEO and part-owner of companies Tesla and SpaceX, wrote: "Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now." Democrats, who will take control of both chambers of Congress, have made the AI boom and data centers a key campaign issue. — Chad de Guzman

Trump on blue wave: 'I don't view it as a hit on me'

Nov 4, 1:25 AM

The AP has called the House majority for Democrats, having already called the Senate majority for the same party. Moments earlier, President Trump congratulated Democrats on their Election Day success in a phone interview with Fox News, but he went on to say that he didn't think the blue wave was a rebuke of his presidency.

"They did a good job. They’ve been looking for this one for 11 years, and they finally got it," Trump said about Democrats. "But I don’t view it as a hit on me. I think we’ve done ... We’ve had the greatest two years in the history of the presidency.”

This year's midterm election has been described by many politicians and political experts as a referendum on the Trump Administration. About a month before Election Day, Trump's approval rating fell to a historic low of 30%, according to the Pew Research Center. — Chantelle Lee

Incumbent GOP Rep. Max Miller loses amid domestic violence allegations

Nov 4, 1:25 AM

Democrat Brian Poindexter has defeated two-term incumbent Republican Rep. Max Miller, whose campaign was roiled by domestic violence allegations from his ex-wife and former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, whom he worked and shared a romantic relationship with during Trump's first term. Miller has denied all wrongdoing.

Both Ohio Senators, including Miller's former father-in-law, urged Miller to exit the race. The House Ethics Committee announced in August it was actively reviewing allegations against Miller.

Poindexter, a union worker and local councilman, appealed to working-class voters and centered his campaign around lowering the minimum age to qualify for Medicare, regulating data centers, and limiting funding for the war in Iran. — Connor Greene

GOP Sen. Susan Collins concedes to Democratic challenger

Nov 4, 1:10 AM

Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who has represented Maine in the U.S. Senate for nearly three decades, lost her re-election bid to her Democratic challenger Troy Jackson, the AP has called—the latest stunning result in a midterm election that has become a blue wave.

AP reported that Collins conceded the race to Jackson before the news outlet had officially called it. Jackson, a logger and former president of the Maine Senate, posted a victory statement on social media early Wednesday morning, before the race was officially called by AP.

"Maine, I owe you everything," he said. "I’m ready to get to work for Mainers in the U.S. Senate, and I promise you this: I’ll never forget where I came from or who I’m fighting for. Thank you. Let’s go build a government that works for all of us."

A victory by Jackson would not just be remarkable because he's unseating a five-term Senator but also because he entered the race relatively late, after Graham Platner, who won the Democratic primary, withdrew from the race in July amid allegations of sexual assault, which he denied. — Chantelle Lee

Read the full story of Jackson's victory here.

All polls have closed

Nov 4, 1:00 AM

All polls in the U.S. have closed. Polls in Alaska and Hawaii were the last to close, at 1 a.m. and midnight EST, respectively. — Connor Greene

Trump rages against blue wave

Nov 4, 12:15 AM

The President railed against Democrats' victories in the midterms on Tuesday evening in a series of Truth Social posts.

Shortly before midnight, Trump posted a photo of a red hat reminiscent of the ones often worn by MAGA supporters and by the President himself—but this one had the word "Veto" printed on it. The image appears to be a threat that the President will use his veto power against the House and the Senate, the latter of which AP called for Democrats on Tuesday evening. AP has not yet called control of the House, but other news outlets have projected that Democrats will win the majority in the lower chamber as well.

In another social media post, Trump levied an attack against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who lost his re-election bid to Democratic candidate Gina Hinojosa on Tuesday evening—a stunning result in a state that has not elected a Democrat governor since 1990.

Trump had endorsed Abbott in the race. But after Abbott's loss on Tuesday, the President accused the Texas governor of being a "RINO," which stands for "Republican In Name Only."

"If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost," Trump said in a Truth Social post. "He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!"

A few minutes later, the President posted again, saying, "I’m going to become a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost!" — Chantelle Lee

Democrats have won the Senate, AP calls

Nov 4, 12:00 AM

AP called the Senate for Democrats shortly before midnight, in a stunning rebuke of the Trump Administration and the Republican Party.

As of Tuesday evening, AP has called 51 seats in the upper chamber for Democrats and 39 for Republicans. AP has yet to call 10 races for the upper chamber. The news outlet hasn’t yet called the House majority for Democrats, but others, including CNN, have projected that Democrats will win control of the lower chamber. Democrats capturing both chambers of Congress would mark only the fifth time since World War II that a political party was able to flip both the Senate and the House in a midterm election. — Chantelle Lee

Read the full story here.

House Democrats celebrate election gains

Nov 3, 11:50 PM

House Democrats are rejoicing over their election victories, including projections from CNN and NBC that they have regained control of the chamber. The AP has not yet called the majority.

In Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ election-night headquarters just south of the Capitol, a crowd of roughly 100 people erupted in cheers when CNN announced the projection. Supporters broke into chants of “Jeffries! Jeffries! Jeffries!”

Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington state, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in the headquarters: “The American people have spoken decisively all across the country. They have had enough of the broken promises from house Republicans, and they are ready for new leadership in Congress, and they're going to get it.” — Chad de Guzman with reporting contributed by Nik Popli

Democrat Josh Turek wins key Senate pick-up in Iowa

Nov 3, 11:45 PM

Democratic state representative Josh Turek has been elected as U.S. Senator for Iowa, the AP called, beating Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson to take the seat to be vacated by GOP Sen. Joni Ernst, who is retiring after two terms.

Turek, a paralympian gold medalist, is the first Democrat Iowa has sent to the Senate since Tom Harkin was re-elected in 2008. — Chad de Guzman

House Democratic Leader hails ‘great American comeback’

Nov 3, 11:40 PM

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hailed a "great American comeback" in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday night after several outlets projected that Democrats had won back the lower chamber.

"America is back...I learned very early on that a setback was nothing more than a setup for a comeback. Today begins the great American comeback," he said. "This is not a partisan moment. This is a patriotic one. This is not a blue moment or a red moment. It's a red, white, and blue moment because America has won tonight." — Connor Greene

Adam Hamilton becomes first Kansas Democrat elected to Senate in nearly a century

Nov 3, 11:35 PM

For the first time since 1932, voters in Kansas have elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate.

Democrat Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist pastor, has won the Senate race, AP called on Tuesday evening, defeating the Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall. Marshall, who had been seeking a second term, had been backed by the President. He is among several GOP Senate candidates, including Sen. Darline Graham, who received Trump's endorsement in this midterm cycle—but were still toppled by their Democratic opponents on Tuesday evening.

Read the full story here. — Chantelle Lee

Texas Governor Greg Abbott loses to Democrat Gina Hinojosa

Nov 3, 11:25 PM

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been defeated by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, the AP has called.

Abbott’s stunning defeat marks the end of a long streak of Republican governorship since 1995, including George W. Bush who governed Texas from 1995 to 2000 before becoming President.

Abbott, who has been governor of Texas for three terms, previously spent more than two decades in the Texas judicial system. In 1995, then-Governor Bush appointed Abbott to the Texas Supreme Court. He was then re-elected twice in the late 90s. In 2014, he ran for Texas governor and won by more than 20 points against state senator Wendy Davis. — Philip Wang

Democrat James Talarico flips Texas Senate seat

Nov 3, 11:10 PM

John Cornyn, the outgoing Republican senior Senator for Texas, congratulated Democratic candidate James Talarico, the state representative who defeated GOP nominee Ken Paxton for Cornyn’s seat.

“The voters have spoken, and I want to extend my congratulations to James Talarico on his election to the U.S. Senate,” Cornyn posted on X, before the AP had called the race, though it did less than an hour later. “I look forward to meeting him and offering my assistance with his transition as he prepares to serve Texans in the U.S. Senate.”

Talarico is the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas since 1994 and is also the first Democrat to be elected Senator by Texans since 1988. — Chad de Guzman

Read the full story here.

Trump tells Times that he will accept election results

Nov 3, 11:05 PM

The President told the New York Times on Election Night that he will accept the results of the midterms.
"I am absolutely willing to accept those results," he told the news outlet. "We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out." — Chantelle Lee

All 48 states in the contiguous U.S. close, leaving Alaska and Hawaii polls still open

Nov 3, 11:00 PM

Polls in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington have closed, leaving only those outside of the contiguous U.S. in Alaska and Hawaii.

California’s 22nd district, a toss up race between incumbent Republican Rep. David Valadao and Democrat Randy Villegas, presents a pick-up opportunity for Democrats. The state’s 48 district is also leaning towards Democrats flipping an open Republican-held seat.

Oregon’s gubernatorial race, where Tina Kotek seeks reelection, is also a competitive race, and leans Democratic. — Connor Greene

Democrat Amy Acton wins Ohio governor’s race

Nov 3, 10:55 PM

Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton will be Ohio’s next governor, the AP called, defeating the Trump-backed Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in a heated race.

The race entered the national spotlight in the lead-up to Election Day after Ramaswamy’s campaign released a controversial attack ad against Acton that featured her estranged mother. While the President and Vice President defended Ramaswamy amid backlash generated by the ad, other members of the Republican Party slammed the campaign for the move.

Acton’s win is a stunning result in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the governor’s residence in 20 years.

Read the full story here. — Chantelle Lee

Trump rails against election results

Nov 3, 10:50 PM

The President seemed to express his frustration with the results coming in on Election Night.

"I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!" he said in a Truth Social post.

The midterms have largely been viewed as a referendum on Trump’s presidency, which faces record-low approval ratings. — Chantelle Lee

Democrat Annie Andrews flips South Carolina Senate seat in stunning upset

Nov 3, 10:45 PM

In South Carolina, Democratic Dr. Annie Andrews will defeat Republican Sen. Darline Graham for a seat in the U.S. Senate race, the AP has called—a stunning upset in a staunchly red state that has not elected a Democrat to the upper chamber this century.

The race for the seat, was upended after longtime Sen. Lindsey Graham died unexpectedly in July. His sister, Darline Graham, was appointed by the South Carolina governor to finish out the rest of her brother's term. At the urging of the President, Darline Graham later announced her intention to run for a full term in the midterms.

But polls leading up to Election Day showed that the race was a much closer fight than it was before Lindsey Graham's death, when he was running for re-election. Andrews, a pediatrician, received widespread support from the Democratic party and even secured bipartisan endorsements, while Darline Graham faced criticisms from within her own party over her minimal political background.

Read the full story here. — Chantelle Lee

Voters in Virginia pass abortion rights amendment

Nov 3, 10:15 PM

Voters in Virginia passed an amendment to the state’s constitution that creates multiple protections for reproductive health.

The amendment constitutionally protects abortions taking place during the first two trimesters of pregnancy and provides protections for pregnant women’s health later in their pregnancies, among other rights regarding fertility health.

“Every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” the amendment says, including decisions related to “prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.”

Two other abortion rights protection measures are on the ballots in Idaho and Nevada, while another measure in Missouri would repeal abortion rights protections voted for in 2024. — Connor Greene

Polls begin to close in the West

Nov 3, 10:00 PM

Polls have closed in Montana, Nevada, and Utah, with some but not yet all in Idaho and Oregon.

Montana and Nevada are home to closely watched House races. Republican Aaron Flint is facing off against Democrat Sam Forstag in Montana’s first district, where Democrats have a chance to flip a seat being vacated by Republican Ryan Zinke in a race deemed a toss up. In Nevada’s second district, Republican David Flippo and Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson are competing for retiring Republican Rep. Mark Amodei’s position in a race favoring Republicans.

Also in Nevada, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo faces Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford in a toss up. Lombardo had come under fire during his campaign after video showed him using his name in a traffic stop before being let go without a ticket. — Connor Greene

New polls show major shift to Democrats among young voters, Latinos

Nov 3, 9:45 PM

New polls conducted in all 50 states show that the Democratic Party is expanding its lead among young voters and Latino voters.

The polls, conducted by SSRS in partnership with a consortium of media outlets, show a sharp Democratic shift among young voters: 71% of those ages 18 to 29 identify as Democrats, compared with 25% as Republicans. In 2024, Democrats led Republicans among that age group by 54% to 43%.

Latino voters have also shifted toward Democrats, with 60% identifying as Democrats and 35% as Republicans. That 25-point advantage is up from a five-point lead in 2024, when the split was 51% to 46%.

The poll surveyed more than 100,000 at voting locations, online, and by telephone. — Philip Wang

Keisha Lance Bottoms elected governor of Georgia

Nov 3, 9:30 PM

Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms has won the Georgia gubernatorial race, beating Republican billionaire Rick Jackson to replace the term-limited GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.

The Associated Press called the race at 9:24 p.m. ET. Bottoms’ victory also flips the state, marking the first time Georgia has had a Democratic governor since 2003.

A former mayor of Atlanta and a former Biden Administration official, Bottoms’ election makes her the state’s first Black and first female governor, as well as the U.S.’s first Black female governor. — Chad de Guzman

Several more polls close in the final hours of Election Day

Nov 3, 9:00 PM

The latest polls have now closed in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Iowa marks another key Senate race to replace outgoing Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. In one of the tightest races this midterm cycle, Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, a former broadcast journalist, is facing off against Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek, a paralympic gold medalist.

Trump won Iowa by 13 points in 2024, but the race is considered a toss up.

Other key Senate races are taking place in Nebraska, which leans Republican, and in Minnesota, which leans Democratic. — Connor Greene

Republican Ashley Moody secures full Senate term in Florida, defeating state Rep. Angie Nixon

Nov 3, 8:58 PM

Incumbent Republican Sen. Ashley Moody has defeated democratic socialist state Rep. Angie Nixon in Florida’s special Senate election.

The Associated Press called the race for Moody, who entered the Senate last year after being appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to replace Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he left the position to join the Trump Administration in Washington.

Moody was forecasted to win by the Cook Political Report, which categorized the race as “likely Republican.”

Nixon had called for Moody to be arrested during the campaign over accusations that she mishandled taxpayer funds as the state’s attorney general. Moody has denied wrongdoing. — Connor Green

Florida Democrats win in two House districts redrawn in Republicans’ favor

Nov 3, 8:43 PM

Two Florida Democrats have won in House districts that were recently redrawn in Republicans’ favor, The Associated Press has called.

Rep. Kathy Castor has won more than 51% of the vote, with 97% of votes counted by Tuesday evening, AP reported, successfully securing an 11th term in Florida’s 14th District. Republican Mike Beltran, who was previously a state legislator and attorney, has earned less than 46% of the vote.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz has won more than 51% of the vote in Florida’s 25th District, defeating his Republican opponent Scott Singer, a previous mayor of Boca Raton who earned less than 47% of the vote, AP reported, with 96% of the vote counted. Moskowitz currently represents the 23rd Congressional District in the House. —  Chantelle Lee

Democrat Roy Cooper flips Senate seat in North Carolina

Nov 3, 8:37 PM

Democrat Roy Cooper has flipped a key Senate seat in North Carolina, defeating Republican Michael Whatley to claim the open seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. 

Cooper's win marks a key pick up for his party in its fight to wrest back control of the upper chamber from Republicans.

Cooper, a former governor and state attorney general, will succeed Tillis, who decided not to seek reelection.

The Associated Press called the race just after 8:20 p.m. EST. — Connor Greene

Polls close in Arkansas

Nov 3, 8:30 PM

Polls have closed in Arkansas, with more—but not yet all—also now closed in Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas.

In Arkansas, a solid red state, Republicans are favored in every congressional and gubernatorial race. The Cook Political Report ranks all races across the Senate and House, as well as the contest for Governor, as “solid Republican,” among the seats it deems least likely to flip, with the exception of one ranked as “likely Republican” in the state’s second district. — Connor Greene

Chris Pappas wins in New Hampshire, becomes first openly gay man elected to the U.S. Senate

Nov 3, 8:29 PM

Four-term Rep. Chris Pappas has become the first openly gay man to be elected in to the U.S. Senate after defeating former Sen. John Sununu in New Hampshire.

The Associated Press called the race for Pappas, whose opponent is a well-known name in the state. Sununu’s brother served as governor until last year and his father was also governor.

New Hampshire marked another possible opportunity for Republicans to pick up an open seat, that of long-time Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. — Connor Greene

Voting is still underway, with sporadic technical glitches

Nov 3, 8:10 PM

Most polls on the East Coast have closed. Throughout the day, there have been sporadic reports of technical difficulties, but the Election Day vote has been running smoothly by and large.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters on Tuesday that ICE has not been deployed to the polls today. Earlier in the day, ICE posted on X that it would “track down” any illegal voting.

Election officials in Fulton County, Georgia, said that more than 1,000 ballots cast in Fulton County may need to be rescanned as a result of two ballot scanners malfunctioning. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that the scanner issues would not delay election results.

Polls will close at 9 p.m. as scheduled in Westchester County, New York, where a technical failure has led to polling stations across the county to switch to emergency ballots. The tabulation will be delayed because of this failure, which will affect a close-fought House race. — Philip Wang

Democrat Jon Ossoff wins re-election in Georgia

Nov 3, 8:02 PM

Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has won reelection in Georgia against Republican Rep. Mike Collins, in another victory for Democrats in their effort to win back control the upper chamber.

The Associated Press called the race less than an hour after polls closed in the state on Tuesday.

Georgia marked a potential opportunity for Republicans to pick up a Senate seat in a state that Trump won by a slim margin in 2024. Ossoff consistently led in polling leading up to Election Day, however, and also had a serious cash advantage over his opponent throughout the campaign. — Connor Greene

Polls close in several key toss-up races

Nov 3, 8:00 PM

Polls have closed in several more pivotal battleground races, including in Maine, Kansas, Texas, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and more.

In perhaps the most closely watched midterm contest, James Talarico, who is vying to become Texas’ first Democratic Senator since 1993, is facing off against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in a toss-up race. 

Another tight race in the state’s fifteenth district is testing the GOP’s support among Hispanic voters, with whom Trump made gains in the 2024 presidential election. Republican Monica De La Cruz, who flipped the district in 2022, is seeking to keep her seat against Democrat Bobby Pulido, a popular Latin Grammy-winning Tejano musician.

Other toss-up races are playing out in Kansas, where incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall is defending his seat against Democrat Adam Hamilton, and Maine, where Republican Sen. Susan Collins is seeking her sixth term. Collin’s opponent, Democrat Troy Jackson, became the party’s nominee after Graham Platner, who won the primary, dropped out of the race amid sexual assault allegations, which he has denied.

Michigan’s Senate race is also closely watched, with the Cook Political Report rating it as “lean Democratic” in favor of progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who is facing off against Republican Mike Rogers. 

In Michigan’s seventh district, meanwhile, Republican Rep. Tom Barrett is facing off against progressive William Lawrence in a toss-up race that ranks as one of the most expensive House races in the country.

Another toss-up is taking place in Pennsylvania’s first district, where incumbent Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick is going head-to-head with Democrat Bob Harvie. — Connor Greene

Democrats notch the night's first Senate win

Nov 3, 7:42 PM

Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner has been reelected to a fourth term, defeating Republican challenger Bert Mizusawa.

The AP called the race for Warner, whose seat was considered among the safest in the country this midterm cycle, just minutes after polls closed in Virginia at 7 p.m. EST. It marked the first call of the night in the closely watched battle for control of the Senate.

Votes are now being counted in multiple states with more tightly contested Senate races where polls have closed, including Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina. — Annika Neklason

Polls close in Ohio and North Carolina, home to multiple closely watched congressional races

Nov 3, 7:30 PM

Polls have closed in Ohio and West Virginia. Most polls have also closed in North Carolina, where some precincts received an extension due to minor technical issues at certain localities.

Ohio and North Carolina are home to a handful of closely watched Senate and House races.

In an Ohio toss-up, former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is seeking to unseat Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to replace Vice President JD Vance when Vance went to the White House in 2025. North Carolina is now ranked “likely Democrat” by the Cook Political Report in what was considered a much more competitive race before Republicans pulled out to focus on other contests.

In Ohio’s seventh district, meanwhile, Democrat Brian Poindexter could have a chance to flip incumbent Republican Rep. Max Miller’s seat. The race has received outsized national attention amid domestic abuse allegations against Miller, who has denied all wrongdoing.

A House toss-up is also playing out in North Carolina’s first district, where incumbent Democratic Rep. Don Davis is being challenged by Laurie Buckhout, who he beat by only a slim margin in 2024. — Connor Greene

More polls close across the country, including in battleground states

Nov 3, 7:00 PM

All polls have now closed in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia, while some have closed in Florida and New Hampshire. In some of those states, key races could help determine which party will control the House and the Senate.

In deep-red South Carolina, Darline Graham, the sister of late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, is running against Annie Andrews in a Senate race The Cook Political Report ranks as “lean Republican,” just one step removed from a toss-up. In another closely watched Senate race, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is facing Republican Mike Collins in Georgia, which has been rated “likely Democratic.”

A handful of toss-up House races are also playing out in some of those states, including in Virginia and South Carolina’s first districts and Florida’s fourteenth.

In Virginia’s first district, Democrat Shannon Taylor has the chance to oust a longtime Republican incumbent, Rep. Rob Wittman. An open Republican-held seat is meanwhile up for grabs in South Carolina’s first district, which is being vacated by Rep. Nancy Mace. Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt and Democrat Nancy Lacore are vying for the spot. And in Florida’s fourteenth district, incumbent Democrat Rep. Kathy Castor is fighting to retain her seat against Republican Mike Beltran after new electoral maps changed the district’s composition.

More polls are expected to close every half hour until 9 p.m. EST, and then every hour until 1 a.m. — Connor Greene

FBI debunks claims of “fraudulent ballot seizure” in Houston

Nov 3, 6:21 PM

The FBI on Tuesday debunked a claim that it has uncovered more than 20,000 fraudulent ballots in favor of Democratic candidates at a warehouse in Houston, Texas, on Monday night.

In a statement, the FBI said no election-related operation occurred in Houston and that information is false.

The unproven claim of an raid first began to surface on Tuesday afternoon and was quickly shared among conservative online users. The post also features three photos purported to show the scene of raid. Fact-checking outlet PolitiFact reported that the three images were taken in three different states and none of them were related to a FBI raid in Houston. — Philip Wang

Heading into the midterms, Trump's approval rating dropped to a historic low

Nov 3, 6:17 PM

President Donald Trump’s approval rating reached a historic low in the weeks leading up to Election Day: According to the Pew Research Center, his approval rating dropped to 30% at the beginning of October. The last time a sitting President’s approval rating fell to a comparable level that close to a midterm election was when Harry Truman was in the Oval Office in 1946.

Surveys show that the public’s dissatisfaction with the President stems largely from the economy; about 26% of adults in the country approve of how Trump has been dealing with the issue, according to polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research last month. And the Pew Research Center’s survey revealed that 84% of registered voters felt that the economy was a “very important issue” for them in this election.

Midterms already tend to be difficult for the party in control of the White House, which historically loses seats in these elections. But political experts have told TIME that this year’s midterms are an especially challenging environment for Republicans. Many generic ballot polls have indicated that voters backed Democrats over Republicans heading into Tuesday's elections, and even polling in deep red states has suggested that GOP candidates have experienced trouble keeping leads over their Democratic opponents.

“I think we can expect Republicans to be facing an uphill battle at the polls,” Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, previously told TIME. “We can expect that they will likely lose seats in the House and also the Senate. And the question is will they lose enough seats to lose the majority in either or both those chambers. That is entirely within the realm of possibility. And that has to do both with Trump’s relatively low approval rating, historically speaking, but also the constellation of candidates in the mix.”

Read the full story here. — Chantelle Lee

First polls close in parts of Kentucky and Indiana

Nov 3, 6:00 PM

The first polls of the 2026 midterm elections have closed in parts of Kentucky and Indiana.

In a couple districts in those areas, tight House races could provide initial glimpses into how Democrats and Republicans are faring in the fight for Congress. The Cook Political Report rates Kentucky’s sixth district, where Republican Ralph Alvarado faces off against Democrat Zach Dembo, a toss-up. And in a race considered slightly less close, it ranks Indiana’s fifth district, where Democrat JD Ford is challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz, lean Republican.

Polls across the rest of the country will close in the coming hours. At 7 p.m., polls will close in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Florida, and New Hampshire. — Connor Greene

What time do the polls close—and when will we know the election results?

Nov 3, 5:27 PM

Most polls around the country close around 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. local time. Because the U.S. is divided across several time zones, however, those closures are spread over several hours on Election Day.

Here is when the latest polls close in each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in Eastern Standard Time.

• 7 p.m. EST: Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia.
• 7:30 p.m. EST: Ohio and West Virginia. North Carolina also typically closes its final polls at this time, but due to minor technical issues reported in some localities on Tuesday—which have since been resolved—the state’s board of elections has extended voting hours in some precincts.
• 8 p.m. EST: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C. In Pennsylvania, most polling sites will close at 8 p.m., but in three precincts they will stay open for an additional half hour “due to machine set-up issues” that delayed the opening of those polls this morning, according to Chester County officials.
• 8:30 p.m. EST: Arkansas.
• 9 p.m. EST: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
• 10 p.m. EST: Montana, Nevada, and Utah.
• 11 p.m. EST: California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington state.
• Midnight EST: Hawaii.
• 1 a.m. EST: Alaska

Some races are likely to be called on Tuesday night, while in other, tighter contests it could take multiple days—if not longer—to determine a winner. It all comes down to the states, which the U.S. Constitution empowers to establish the times, places, and manners of holding elections and counting ballots.

“There are all these differences, both in process and deadlines, and geography, and who the voters are, and who the candidates are, that make a difference in what this looks like,” Mitchell Brown, a professor of political science at Auburn University and the author of “How We Vote: Innovations in American Elections,” tells TIME.

Read the full story here. — Connor Greene

Candidates in toss-up House race urge calm after ballot scanner failures in Westchester County, New York

Nov 3, 5:24 PM

Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York and Democrat Cait Conley, who are facing off in a close-fought House race, have both called on Tuesday for voters to stay in line after ballot scanners failed at polling locations in Westchester County, New York.

During a press conference, Lawler said both parties are working with the county and New York State board of elections to come to a solution.

“Do not leave the polling place without voting,” Lawler added. “Every vote is going to be counted, and is going to be counted tonight.”

Conley also addressed the technical issues at polling locations in a social media post and said, “don't be dissuaded and have your voice heard.”

According to New York State Board of Elections, because the ballot scanners across Westchester County are unable to scan ballots immediately, the ballots need to be temporarily placed in orange bags which will be transported by local police to a secure location. The ballots will then be scanned under supervision of attorneys from both sides and it will take several hours to scan them all in, which could delay the results of a competitive congressional district. County Executive Ken Jenkins said the machines were not hacked and there was nothing of that nature wrong with the voting process. — Philip Wang

ICE threatens arrests over illegal voting, drawing rebuke from Newsom

Nov 3, 4:45 PM

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday threatened to arrest people who vote illegally in the midterms.

“If you vote illegally, we will find you. We will track you down, arrest you, and prosecute you,” the agency wrote on X. “There will be no escape.”

The post quickly drew a rebuke from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who threw the same threats back at the agency, echoing the agency’s language: “If YOU show up to the polls illegally, we will find you. We will track you down, arrest you, and prosecute you. There will be no escape.”

Newsom in a later post issued another warning to “DONALD TRUMP’S THUGS: If you violate California’s laws, if you interfere with the vote, you will be prosecuted.” 

Trump last month threatened California election officials with jail time amid his administration’s push to set aside ballots from voters it identified as possible noncitizens.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin also said Tuesday that “only American citizens should be deciding American elections.” The Department of Justice and Homeland Security Investigations added to the chorus, touting arrests of people accused of voting illegally.

The comments fall in line with Trump’s repeated claims of widespread noncitizen voting, though research has found it to be exceedingly rare. — Connor Greene

DOJ can continue asking states to set aside mail-in ballots, appeals court rules

Nov 3, 4:14 PM

A federal appeals court on Tuesday made a stunning reversal and allowed the Department of Justice to continue its pressure campaign telling state governments to not count mail-in ballots from noncitizens.

In a 6-5 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump Administration can continue asking state election officials to set aside from voters it identified as possible noncitizens. It also said the DOJ can continue warning state election officials that knowingly counting unlawful ballots could result in federal prosecution. 

On Monday, the same appeals court blocked the move.

The court's decision, which is separate from the legal saga between the DOJ and the state of California, will not affect states’ tabulation and certification processes, given that states are not legally required to comply with the department’s request, according to Jonathan Diaz, the Director of Voting Advocacy and Partnerships at Campaign Legal Center. — Philip Wang

Oklahoma man charged with mailing white powder to public officials

Nov 3, 4:14 PM

An Oklahoma City resident faces charges of conveying false or misleading information and hoaxes and mailing threatening communications, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.

The unsealed records show that Robin Martin was arrested Monday for allegedly sending threatening letters containing white powder ahead of the 2024 and 2026 elections, with investigators linking more than 700 mailings to him this fall alone.

According to the court filings, the white powder that has been tested so far was determined to be nonhazardous—likely either yeast or flour—but the accompanying messages included references to treason. One envelope back in 2024 had the return address of “U.S.T.E.A., United States Traitor Elimination Army, Takoma Park, MD.”

The affidavit alleges that in 2024, Martin “described perceived issues with the 2020 election” in his letters, claiming “that President Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and voiced concerns regarding some of the same issues recurring in the then-upcoming 2024 election.”

The letters also threatened election officials, including one that told the Oklahoma State Election Board to “stay on the right side of history your life might depend on it!”

The arrest comes less than a month after the FBI announced its investigation into letters with “suspicious substances” that had been mailed to congressional and election offices. In October, NBC News reported state election offices in Louisiana, Ohio, and Oklahoma were sent packages containing mysterious powders.

Martin was expected to make an appearance in the U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City on Tuesday. — Rebecca Schneid

Political heavyweights make final push to turn out voters

Nov 3, 4:02 PM

Major political figures ranging from President Donald Trump to former President Bill Clinton appealed to Americans on Tuesday: Go vote.

Trump posted frequently to Truth Social throughout Election Day, urging voters to cast their ballots for GOP candidates in a number of states, including Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, and California. 

The day before, Trump said that if his base voted on Election Day, Republicans “will win in a landslide.” He went on to say: “Now, that doesn’t happen because usually, whoever the sitting President is, Republican or Democrat, good or bad, good President, great President, bad, for some reason, the sitting President doesn’t win the midterms. But we gave this a very strong shot.”

Vice President JD Vance also posted encouragement to the Republican Party on X on Tuesday.

“Today’s the day America. Get out there and send a message to the radical left that we don’t want their bulls—,” he wrote, adding: “We have an amazing slate of Republican candidates nationwide, it’s your job now to make sure they get elected.”

Former Presidents also urged voters to turn up to the polls on Tuesday.

“You deserve a government that works as hard for you as you do for your family,” Clinton said in a social media post. “Democrats will lower costs, protect health care, end senseless wars, and stop tariffs that make life more expensive. If you haven’t already, I hope you vote today. It’s high time we put people first again!”

Former President Barack Obama, who has endorsed several Democratic candidates in this midterm election cycle, encouraged people to look up their polling place at IWillVote.com.

“This Election Day, you have the power to change the direction of this country, but only if you vote,” he said in a post on X. “Reach out to your family and friends to make sure they vote today, too.” — Chantelle Lee

Gas prices remain above $4 on Election Day—a historic high

Nov 3, 3:06 PM

According to AAA tracking, the national average for regular unleaded gasoline stood at $4.15 per gallon on Nov. 3—the highest ever on an Election Day.

Prices for unleaded gas are up 46% since the start of the year, and up almost 40% since the start of the war in Iran. Soon after the U.S. and Israel first launched an aerial attack on Iran on Feb. 28, Iran’s leadership restricted access to the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil once passed.

Americans saw a similar spike when Russia invaded Ukraine and sent gas prices soaring to $5.02 per gallon in June 2022. By Election Day that year, however, gas had dropped down to an average of around $3.80 per gallon.

Republicans worry that high prices at the pump could translate to voter frustration. A Pew Research Center study released in early October found that 74% of U.S. adults were very concerned about gasoline and energy prices, up more than 30% from January.

Lowering costs was one of Trump’s major campaign promises when he ran for a second term in 2024. In the weeks leading up to the midterms, he has homed in on fuel prices. In early October, he pushed for the Group of Seven countries to release 100 million barrels of oil and fuel products in the coming months; he signed an executive order on Oct. 5 to temporarily permit highway use of red-dyed diesel; and on Oct. 13, he announced a surprise agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to supply millions of tons of Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets.

For Republicans, the question is whether those efforts will be enough—or whether higher prices at the pump will cost the party at the polls. — Rebecca Schneid

California deploys its own election observers after DOJ sends monitors

Nov 3, 2:59 PM

California is sending its own election observers to polling locations across the state as the Department of Justice deploys election monitors to all 50 states.

In a post on X, state Attorney General Rob Bonta says that state election observers are being sent to key polling locations to ensure that “no one was discouraged from casting a ballot.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the DOJ announced in a press release that it is sending election monitors to all 50 states for the first time. In California, the department is monitoring voting in Los Angeles, Alameda, Sacramento, and San Diego. Federal law prohibits DOJ employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on duty or using their official authority to influence an election’s outcome.

The Trump Administration sought to require California to set aside ballots from roughly 20,000 registered voters it identified as possible noncitizens until their citizenship could be verified, despite concerns from state officials about errors in the list. On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected the DOJ’s emergency request, leaving lower-court decisions denying the requested intervention in place. — Philip Wang

Acton says Ramaswamy ad featuring her estranged mother 'crossed the line'

Nov 3, 12:39 PM

Democratic candidate for Ohio governor Amy Acton told reporters that an ad released by her Republican rival Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign "crossed a line."

“I have felt all along that there's no low he won't go to. I think he is out of touch. He's out for himself,” she said, after casting her ballot at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

The ad featured Acton’s mother, who has not spoken to her daughter since 1978 when she defended Acton’s stepfather who was indicted for raping Acton as a child.

The campaigning move sparked controversy and condemnation across both sides of the political aisle.

Ramaswamy has doubled down on the ad, receiving the support of President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. However, other Republicans, including Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, who is facing a tight re-election bid against Democrat Sherrod Brown, said they would not have run the ad.

The race to succeed Gov. Mike DeWine, who is barred from seeking another term, has become unexpectedly competitive in Ohio, a state Trump won by double digits in 2024.

Polling ahead of the midterms suggested a tight race, with Acton holding a slight lead. If she wins, it would be the first time in 20 years that Ohio voters had elected a Democrat as governor. — Tiago Ventura 

What early voting data can show about the midterms

Nov 3, 12:30 PM

As Election Day unfolds, Americans are beginning to wait in line at their polling centers. But tens of millions already cast their ballots during their states' early voting periods, and those responses offer a preview into how the midterm elections may play out.

Nearly 60 million people have voted since early voting windows opened in some states over a month ago, according to tracking by the University of Florida’s Election Lab. Around half of those votes have been cast in person, while the other half were submitted by mail. 

That figure already represents close to half of the roughly 122 million Americans who voted in the 2022 midterms.

Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida who runs the Election Lab, stresses to TIME that early voting data cannot in and of itself be relied on to predict the outcome of the elections. But he says it can reveal other informative aspects of voting behavior.

“Once you start seeing consistency across multiple days of voting and across multiple states, it starts giving us more confidence that whatever we're seeing in terms of relative engagement, that's likely going to carry through to election day,” McDonald says.

Read the full story here. — Connor Greene

Haley Stevens doubles down on split from Abdul El-Sayed

Nov 3, 11:50 AM

Rep. Haley Stevens is standing by her last-minute move to endorse Republican candidate Mike Rogers instead of Abdul El-Sayed, whom she lost the Michigan Democrats' Senate primary to in August.

When asked if her decision was worth all of the backlash she has received, Stephens told NewsNation: “Absolutely, voting is always worth it.”

“It’s the people’s day, I’ve told this to our next Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries, its ‘majority maker’s’ day,” she said, pointing to her confidence that the Democrats can flip the House.

Stevens has been widely criticised by fellow Democrats since she announced her shock endorsement over the weekend. House Minority Leader Jeffries led the support for El-Sayed, championing the candidate as someone who “will always put the American people first and fight hard to lower the high cost of living.”

Jeffries went on to describe Rogers as “a partisan hack who represents more of the same MAGA extremism.”

The final set of New York Times/Siena polls released on Nov. 1 showed El-Sayed leading 53% to Rogers’ 42% among likely voters. 

While Democrats have labeled Stevens’ move a “betrayal,” Republicans have celebrated it, with President Donald Trump even inviting the Congresswoman to join the GOP. — Callum Sutherland

Trump says U.S. will stop $4 billion in aid to Israel by year-end

Nov 3, 11:20 AM

President Donald Trump said the U.S. is cutting off aid to Israel, citing a deal he reached “months ago” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Dialling into Fox News Tuesday morning, as voters across America headed to the polls, Trump said: “We've already agreed that by the end of this year, we ⁠won't be paying Israel. Now we'll help Israel ‌if they need it."

It was not immediately clear which funding Trump was referring to or how the Administration planned to halt it, given that the existing Memorandum of Understanding provides for $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel through 2028. Netanyahu earlier in the year said he was eager to "draw down" U.S. financial support for Israel "to zero.”

U.S. aid to Israel and Washington's conflict in the Middle East have been among the most contentious issues leading up to the midterms. Trump's announcement on election day comes amid continued debate over the country's support for Israel.

The Iran war—which started on Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iranian targets—is currently in its ninth month and remains deeply unpopular with Americans.

The conflict is estimated to have cost American taxpayers around $47.1 billion so far. Furthermore, Americans have had to shoulder the gasoline prices ⁠that have soared as a result of the unrest—a point many Democratic candidates mentioned in their campaigns leading up to the midterms.

Asked for his final message to voters heading to the polls, Trump touted his record on immigration and crime while insisting that Americans “have to keep America great.” — Tiago Ventura

Democrats “nauseously optimistic” about retaking Senate, says Schumer

Nov 3, 10:50 AM

After casting his vote in Brooklyn, New York, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters he was "optimistic that when the polls close tonight, there will be a new Democratic majority in the United States Senate."

Emphasizing a need for caution, Schumer said he would characterize the party's mood as “nauseously optimistic” and noted that a year ago, “no one thought we’d be even close to taking the Senate back."

Democrats are in a strong position to secure a majority in the House and the Senate is also up for grabs. Although polls point to a blue wave, Republicans say they’re wrong. Here's why. — Olivia-Anne Clearly

How Trump could interfere with the midterms after Election Day

Nov 3, 10:15 AM

As polling stations close Tuesday evening, local election officials and voting rights groups are bracing for the prospect of federal officials possibly seizing election materials and voting machines.

In January, the FBI raided the Fulton County election office in Georgia and seized election materials in connection with the 2020 election. In May, a federal judge ruled that the federal government could continue to retain the ballots. The FBI has not announced any wrongdoing stemming from the investigation.

“The lesson of Fulton County was that you have to be ready to be in court literally in minutes,” Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Action, tells TIME. Eisen has been working closely with voting rights groups as well as local and state election officials in multiple states to prepare for any federal interference in next week’s elections. That includes being ready to immediately file lawsuits as soon as any federal officials try to seize any ballots or voting machines.

Other legal scholars are also encouraging judges to consider alternative solutions if federal authorities seek to retain election materials. Rick Hasen, a law professor and director of UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, published a white paper urging judges who might see warrant applications for ballot seizure to consider ordering copies of the ballot to allow the election certification process to continue. 

Read the full story here. — Philip Wang

New York Attorney General’s office "monitoring" issues with ballot scanners in New York county

Nov 3, 9:43 AM

New York’s Attorney General Letitia James said her office is monitoring an "issue with scanners in Westchester [County] and is in touch with the state and local Boards of Elections as they work on a solution."

She noted that Westchester voters can still safely fill out and turn in ballots at their polling locations, assuring locals: "Your votes will count."

The Westchester County Board of Elections said it was aware of the “issue involving paper ballots that is preventing voting machines from accepting ballots at polling locations throughout the county.”

The technical issues come as voters are set to determine a competitive House race between Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, whose district includes part of Westchester County, and his Democratic challenger Cait Conley.

Lawler said on social media that “there is a problem with every ballot scanner” in Westchester County, but reiterated that “every ballot will be counted,” urging people to stay in line and vote. Conley similarly acknowledged the matter and said the issue is being worked on in a "bipartisan manner." — Tiago Ventura

As polling stations across the country fill up, what's the best time to vote to avoid long lines?

Nov 3, 9:13 AM

Long lines can be a strong deterrent to voting, especially for Black and Latino voters, who on average have experienced longer waits than white voters, according to a June 2020 report by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Since polling hours and conditions vary by county, and even within a county, wait times can be unpredictable. But early mornings and after-work hours tend to be the busiest times.

Additionally, lines tend to be longer on Election Day than they are during early voting periods, which do not demonstrate any consistent high-traffic time slots. 

However, there is no universally confirmed “least busy” time to vote.

Justice Department sends 1,000 election monitors across all 50 states

Nov 3, 8:45 AM

In what it described as its “largest monitoring effort in history,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) said Tuesday it would monitor voting across all 50 states for the first time, with approximately 1,000 election monitors and observers deployed.

The effort will draw personnel from the Civil Rights Division, U.S. attorneys' offices, and federal observers from the Office of Personnel Management, the department said in a press release.

While the department has deployed election monitors under the Voting Rights Act since 1965, the nationwide scope and number of personnel involved mark an unprecedented expansion of its monitoring efforts.

The announcement comes amid the Trump Administration’s forceful approach to election oversight.

The DOJ filed a complaint against California last month, seeking to block the counting of mail ballots registered to voters it alleges are suspected noncitizens. The department also sought to have ballots from those voters set aside, pending confirmation of citizenship, but the Supreme Court rejected the emergency request on Monday.

In Alaska, the department filed a lawsuit seeking to block certification of the Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan narrowly lost, amid concerns about confusion with another candidate sharing his name.

A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit, although the DOJ has since appealed.

Judge blocks Trump Administration from sending states lists of alleged noncitizen voters

Nov 3, 8:15 AM

A federal district judge temporarily halted efforts by the Justice and Homeland Security departments to send election officials lists of alleged noncitizen voters. The order also bars the departments from asking state election officials to separate those voters’ ballots or leave them uncounted until citizenship has been proven.

In the ruling issued late Monday, D.C. judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, prohibited the departments from “further disclosing, transmitting, or releasing data purporting to constitute lists of individual potential or actual non-citizen voters or registered voters” in any state or county.

The ruling comes amid the Trump Administration’s attempt to assert federal control over administration of the midterm elections.

In recent weeks, the Justice Department has mounted a legal challenge against the State of California. On Oct. 15, it filed a complaint against the state, seeking to block the counting of mail ballots said to be completed by alleged noncitizens. The complaint has been rejected in a number of courts, and on Monday, the Supreme Court also threw out an appeal from the Trump Administration regarding the legal challenge.

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrated the Supreme Court's decision, saying: “Democracy won.”

Trump has repeatedly questioned the integrity of U.S. elections while pushing for passage of the SAVE Act, legislation that would require proof of citizenship for voter registration and impose other election-related restrictions.

While the President has claimed mail-in voting is corrupt and noncitizen voting is rampant—research indicates both are incredibly rare.

Could a Democrat win the race for the late Lindsey Graham's seat in deep-red South Carolina?

Nov 3, 7:45 AM

Polling by the New York Times/Siena, released last week, found that likely voters in South Carolina are essentially evenly split over whether they would vote for the Republican nominee, who was appointed by the state governor to finish the remainder of her late brother’s term after he died in July and later announced that she would run for the seat in the midterms, and Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who won the Democratic primary in June.

In August, the Cook Political Report rated the South Carolina race as “Solid Republican,” indicating that the GOP was widely expected to retain control of the Senate seat. But the election forecaster later shifted the race slightly in Democrats’ favor to “Likely Republican;” then, on Oct. 20, it changed its rating again to “Lean Republican.”

The race is just one example of how Republicans are apparently struggling to maintain voter support in this election cycle. Most generic ballot polls show that voters are more likely to back Democrats than Republicans in this midterm election. Other polling suggests that GOP candidates are even having trouble keeping leads in states that are typically considered strongholds for the party, such as in Texas, where most surveys have found that the Democratic candidate James Talarico is ahead—by a narrow margin—of Republican Ken Paxton in a heated and expensive Senate race heading into Election Day on Tuesday.

Read the full story here. — Chantelle Lee

19 Florida polling places moved due to heavy rain and flooding

Nov 3, 7:15 AM

Florida officials were forced to find alternative polling stations after heavy rainfall triggered dangerous flash flooding along the midsection of Florida.

Polls in the state opened at 7 a.m. ET Tuesday morning, and as of 7. 15 a.m., at least 19 polling stations have been moved, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order on Monday declaring a state of emergency in Brevard, DeSoto, Hardee, Highlands, Indian River, Martin, and St. Lucie counties.

Included in the order was a provision allowing supervisors of elections in impacted areas to designate new polling places at sites that are deemed unsafe or where voters can't reach them due to flooding.

In some instances, precincts are being merged into other poll locations which have been able to remain open.

Among other races, Floridians are set to cast their ballots to determine a tight gubernatorial showdown between Trump-backed Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly, as Democrats seek to challenge the Republican stronghold in Florida.

How Trump is spending Election Day

Nov 3, 6:50 AM

After weeks of rallies across the country, President Trump is set to spend Election Day at the White House, as polls suggest his party may be in for a tough night.

Trump gave a final speech ahead of Election Day on Monday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the source of a recent troubled renovation, in which his Administration’s achievements while calling Democrats “extreme and dangerous.”

“For whatever reason, the sitting President doesn’t win the midterms, and we gave this a very strong shot,” he said.

The President’s schedule on Monday also had him attending at least nine virtual tele-rallies to stump for Republican candidates across the country. It was the capstone to weeks of campaigning by Trump. Just in October, he attended and spoke at 27 campaign rallies.

On Tuesday, the President is set to remain at the White House into the evening as states from coast to coast tabulate the election results, according to a White House official. Election night is expected to to stretch into the early hours, with the first polls closing at 6 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and the last in Alaska at 1 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday.

The President, along with First Lady Melania Trump, cast their ballots early in person in West Palm Beach, Florida, two weeks ago.

Read the full story here. — Philip Wang

Polls open across the East Coast for pivotal midterm elections

Nov 3, 6:15 AM

Polls have now officially opened in states including New York, New Jersey, Maine, Connecticut, and Virginia. Polling stations opened as early as 5 a.m. ET in Vermont, with eager voters heading to cast their ballots.

As more polls continue to open across the country, voters will be deciding who will control Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump's presidency.

With more than 58 million early votes already cast, the stakes are high. While the President himself is not on the ballot, many view the election as a referendum on Trump.

In closing remarks delivered at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in D.C. on Monday, Trump referred to the election as "the most important midterm, I believe, in our lifetime."

Trump urged his base to vote on Election Day, telling the crowd: “America is ready to go. They’re ready to vote. I hope they’re ready to do the right thing."

Although he acknowledged that the political party in control of the White House typically loses seats in Congress during the midterms, he insisted, "We gave this a very strong shot.” — Olivia-Anne Cleary

J.D. Vance makes final pitch to voters ahead of "most important midterm election" of his lifetime

Nov 3, 5:55 AM

Vice President J.D. Vance delivered his final remarks on the midterms in his home state of Ohio on Monday, where some of the most pivotal races are set to be decided.

Referring to it as the “most important midterm election” of his lifetime, the former Ohio Senator urged rally attendees to cast their votes for Republican Senate candidate Jon Husted and Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

“I am closing out this midterm campaign right where it all started for me, the great state of Ohio, because I know you're going to choose right tomorrow,” said Vance. "The only game in town for low taxes, for common sense, and for patriotic American values, it’s Vivek’s party, it's Jon’'s party, it's the Republican party, and don't forget it tomorrow.”

Ohio’s gubernatorial election has been one of the most contentious races of the midterms. Ramaswamy faced bipartisan backlash over his decision to feature his Democratic opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother in a campaign ad.

While some Republicans, including Vance, vehemently defended the ad, others condemned it and called for its removal.

The final set of New York Times/Siena polls before the midterm election showed Democrats with an edge in Ohio's races for Senator and governor. The polls released and partly conducted on Sunday showed Acton leading over Ramaswamy by 49% to 43% among likely voters. — Callum Sutherland

How Pete Buttigieg and Rafael Warnock became Democrats' midterm MVPs

Nov 3, 5:15 AM

One is a former mayor, White House hopeful, and Transportation Secretary. The other preaches from the pulpit once claimed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he isn’t casting votes in the Senate.

Neither Pete Buttigieg nor Sen. Rafael Warnock of Georgia are on the ballot this year, but both have been all over the campaign trail, stumping for candidates across the country ahead of the midterm elections.

Democratic operatives say they are two of the most in-demand boosters this cycle. Admirers say their efficient and plain-spoken manner cuts across ideologies and generations.

It’s the kind of positive feedback that is sure to gain notice as handicapping for the 2028 presidential race begins in earnest after the midterms.

And, coincidentally, both men’s stump schedules have sent them to places that may prove crucial to anyone with White House ambitions.

Just last month, Warnock made stops in South Carolina, which is due to kick off the Democratic nominating calendar, as well as Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He also dipped into Mississippi as Democrats are hopeful that a Blue Wave might just be big enough to flip a Senate seat there.

Meanwhile, Buttigieg has campaigned in 38 states this year—18 of them more than once. His final week of campaign travel alone had him in Michigan and Wisconsin—both recent swing states—as well as Colorado and Minnesota. All told, Buttigieg has campaigned for more than 70 candidates in person this cycle—including 24 House hopefuls in Republican districts marked by national Democrats as top contenders for flipping.

Read the full story here. — Philip Elliott

Michigan Democrat defends GOP endorsement as Abdul El-Sayed ignores her

Nov 3, 4:45 AM

Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens of Michigan took to social media Monday night to defend her shocking weekend endorsement of the Republican candidate in her state’s tight U.S. Senate race.

In an 890-word article on X titled “The Decisions We Make,” Stevens described her controversial move, which has been widely condemned by fellow Democrats, as neither “impulsive” nor made for her by anyone else but a “decision of conscience.”

Stevens explained how she came to conclude that Abdul El-Sayed, her former primary opponent, “is not fit to serve in the United States Senate.” She acknowledged that endorsing a Republican “is no small thing,” but she said that she backed Mike Rogers, the GOP nominee, “with the hope that he can serve in the tradition of John McCain.”

She went on to criticize the Democratic Party’s response to her move. “We cannot preach inclusion while punishing dissent,” she said. “I respect Democrats who disagree with my decision and ask for the same respect in return.”

El-Sayed did not respond to Stevens’ post Monday, though he earlier told reporters that he does not think about her. In a closing message to voters published on Fox News on Monday afternoon, El-Sayed made no mention of Stevens, Jewish voters, or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, though he referred to Rogers as someone who “took millions from Trump-aligned super PACs, then backed Trump’s dangerous war with Iran, even as gas and groceries spike for Michiganders.” — Chad de Guzman

Newsom warns against helping Trump interfere with elections

Nov 3, 4:15 AM

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat widely believed to be eyeing the future presidency, warned on the eve of the 2026 midterms that anyone who helps President Donald Trump interfere in the elections will face justice in the state.

“Let me speak clearly and directly to anyone thinking about helping him: If you interfere with our voters, you will be prosecuted with a felony,” Newsom said in a video posted on his social media accounts on Monday. “If you tamper with our ballots, you will face justice. It doesn’t matter who gave the order. Meddle in California’s election, and California will come for you. And don’t count—don’t count on a pardon. The President can’t pardon you out of California justice.”

Read more: How Trump Could Interfere With the Midterms on Election Day, and the Days After

The warning from Newsom, a vocal Trump critic who’s seen as a presidential contender in the 2028 elections, came as the Justice Department filed an emergency request seeking the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention in a case involving 20,000 people which the Administration has flagged as likely noncitizens on the blue state’s voter rolls. The filing was the latest attempt from the Trump Administration to combat alleged widespread voter fraud, allegations that have been repeatedly debunked.

But just hours after the filing, the top court rejected the Administration’s request. Newsom treated the court ruling as a victory. “Democracy won,” he posted separately on X.

The California governor nonetheless cautioned about potential interference in the midterms, saying that President Trump has been “setting us up for months and months” so that he could call the elections “stolen.” In the clip, Newsom cited how the Justice Department subpoenaed local election workers as a form of intimidation, while in a letter to California judges last week, Newsom raised “grave concerns [that] federal agents will seek search warrants to seize ballots and ballot materials before the election results are certified.” — Chad de Guzman

What time do polls open across the U.S.?

Nov 3, 3:45 AM

Election Day is underway, and polling precincts are set to open nationwide for in-person voting to add to the more than 58 million early votes already cast for the 2026 midterm elections that will decide the control of Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump’s presidency as well as numerous state and local contests.

Polling place hours vary by state, but commonly follow a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time schedule. The opening schedules of the following states differ (indicated in local times):

• 6 a.m.: Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, some parts of Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia.
• 6:30 a.m.: North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia.
• 7:30 a.m.: Arkansas
• 8 a.m.: Idaho, though counties may open elections at 7 a.m. local time; parts of Nebraska that are under Central Time

There are also some in-state variations.

• In Kansas, polling places must open by 7 a.m, but state law also allows counties to open polling locations as early as 6 a.m.
• In Maine, polls generally open between 6 and 8 a.m., but towns with fewer than 500 residents may open as late as 10 a.m.
• In Massachusetts, polls may open as early as 5:45 a.m. and no later than 7 a.m.
• While Minnesota polls open at 7 a.m., qualifying small towns may open as late as 10 a.m.
• In Montana, most polling places must open by 7 a.m., but towns with fewer than 400 electors may open as late as 12 p.m.
• In New Hampshire, municipalities decide on poll opening times, as long as it’s before 11 a.m.
• In North Dakota, polling precincts must open by 9 a.m. and no earlier than 7 a.m.
• Polling centers across most of Rhode Island open at 7 a.m., with the exception of New Shoreham Town Hall, where they open at 9 a.m. 
• In Tennessee, counties decide what time—between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m.—the polls will open.
• And in Vermont, the polls may open as early as 5 a.m. and as late as 10 a.m.
• Oregon and Washington primarily vote by mail.
  

Voters may find their polling place by contacting their state or local election office here or checking their voter registration here. — Chad de Guzman

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat with a background in public health, has defeated former Representative Mike Rogers in Michigan’s open Senate race on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, making him the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate. 

His victory keeps the seat in Democratic hands, denying Republicans one of their best opportunities to blunt the Democratic wave that has defined this year’s midterm elections. The retirement of Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, at the end of the current Congress had set up one of the country’s most competitive Senate contests in Michigan, a perennial battleground that President Trump carried by two percentage points in 2024.

Read more: 10 Candidates Who Could Make History in the Midterms

The election of El-Sayed, 42, the son of Egyptian immigrants who was born and raised in suburban Detroit, represents a milestone in American politics and a potentially consequential shift within the Democratic Party. An outspoken critic of Israel who has championed an ambitious progressive agenda, he joins a growing contingent of left-wing Democrats who have prevailed in elections this year. But unlike other prominent progressive victories in reliably Democratic districts, El-Sayed’s came in a closely divided statewide race where both parties have spent years competing for the support of working-class voters, suburban moderates, and an increasingly diverse electorate.

His win also offers Democrats a striking counterpoint to the argument, advanced by some of the party’s more moderate figures, that progressive candidates are too politically vulnerable to compete in battleground states. El-Sayed, who rejects the socialist label, prevailed despite a bruising campaign that exposed deep divisions among Democrats over Israel, drew millions of dollars in spending from pro-Israel groups, and culminated in an extraordinary rupture with his former primary opponent, Representative Haley Stevens, who endorsed Rogers just two days before the election.

Read more: Trump Invites Haley Stevens to Join GOP as Democrats Condemn Her ‘Betrayal’

A campaign marked by personal attacks

The campaign had turned strikingly ugly in its closing weeks, with Trump and other prominent Republicans invoking Islamophobic stereotypes to portray El-Sayed as a threat to American security. He faced considerable heat for campaigning with Hasan Piker, the incendiary anti-Israel streamer who said that “America deserved 9/11” and that the U.S. was responsible for more terror than Al Qaeda. Some Jewish voters accused El-Sayed of trafficking in antisemitic rhetoric through criticism of Israel and his suggestion that American military assistance to the country had come at the expense of domestic priorities. (El-Sayed has rejected allegations of antisemitism, arguing that his criticism of the Israeli government should not be conflated with hostility to Jewish people). The accusations and counteraccusations reverberated across Michigan’s large Muslim and Jewish communities, turning an election already fraught with national implications into an unusually personal and painful contest. 

At a rally in Michigan nine days before the election, Trump baselessly described El-Sayed as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood—an Islamist political movement—and warned that his election would bring terrorists into the country. “If Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas,” Trump told thousands of supporters. The President also repeatedly called El-Sayed by his middle name—Mohamed, which critics described as a dog whistle—and told supporters that he wanted El-Sayed to go through a metal detector to enter the Capitol. The night before the election, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Abdul El-Sayed Hates Jews and Hates Blacks. Don’t feel bad, he also Hates Whites.” The rhetoric underscored the extent to which El-Sayed had become a national target for Republicans this cycle.

Rogers, 63, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also raised baseless allegations about El-Sayed’s family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed has publicly disavowed the movement and denied allegations that he or his family has ties with it. When Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, called El-Sayed a “terrorist,” Rogers responded on social media that Portnoy was “exactly right.” 

For El-Sayed, the attacks recalled doubts he had encountered long before entering politics. In an interview with TIME in May, El-Sayed recounted a conversation with former President Bill Clinton after delivering a student commencement address at the University of Michigan in 2007. Clinton, who had also spoken at the ceremony, suggested that the young graduate might consider running for public office one day. El-Sayed remembered laughing at the idea. “I don’t know if you saw my name,” he recalled telling Clinton. “It’s not going to work out for me.”

Nearly two decades later, El-Sayed has made history in a state where the political influence of Muslim Americans has grown considerably. His path to the Senate was hardly conventional. A graduate of the University of Michigan and a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, El-Sayed earned his medical degree from Columbia University but did not practice medicine. Instead, he became an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia before taking leadership positions in public health in Detroit and Wayne County. In 2018, he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for governor of Michigan, drawing comparisons to former President Barack Obama with his charismatic public speaking.

El-Sayed sought to make his election for Senate a referendum on Trump, whose approval rating had fallen sharply in Michigan since his narrow victory there two years earlier. A New York Times/Siena University poll conducted in September found that just 34% of likely voters approved of the President’s performance. “Michigan knows Trump is on the ballot on Nov. 3,” El-Sayed said in the closing days of the campaign, arguing that voters would reject Rogers as a loyal supporter of the President.

Rogers had sought to establish some distance from the Trump Administration on issues that have proved unpopular in Michigan, including tariffs on Canadian goods and the ongoing war with Iran. In one campaign advertisement, the Republican declared that “Canada is not our enemy,” a notable departure from the President’s confrontational approach toward the neighboring country, whose economy is closely intertwined with Michigan’s automobile industry.

But Rogers struggled to escape the broader political environment confronting Republicans. His defeat suggested that the backlash against Trump had extended into a state that had helped return him to the White House, even as the President devoted considerable attention to the Senate contest.

A progressive platform and divisions over Israel

El-Sayed campaigned on an expansive progressive platform that included Medicare for All, higher taxes on the wealthy, and a challenge to the influence of corporate money in American politics. His campaign cast the rising cost of living and the power of wealthy donors as interconnected problems, arguing that the political establishment had become more responsive to powerful financial interests than to the economic concerns of ordinary Americans. He will also arrive in Washington as one of the Senate’s most outspoken critics of Israel. 

The Detroit suburbs are home to some of the country’s most established Muslim and Jewish communities, whose members have long played important roles in Democratic politics. Those communities have experienced the past several years very differently, particularly since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza. In 2024, Arab and Muslim activists in Michigan helped organize the “Uncommitted” movement, encouraging Democratic primary voters to withhold their support from President Joe Biden in protest of his Administration’s backing of Israel. The campaign exposed tensions within the Democratic coalition that continued into the general election, when Trump carried Michigan. Two years later, El-Sayed’s candidacy gave many of those same voters a chance to elect a senator who shared their opposition to American support for Israel’s military operations.

El-Sayed has described the war in Gaza as a genocide and argued that American assistance to Israel should instead be directed toward domestic needs, including schools and health care. His positions placed him at odds with much of the Democratic establishment and made him a principal target of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the influential pro-Israel lobbying organization that spent tens of millions of dollars opposing him during the Democratic primary and continued its efforts in the general election.

El-Sayed told TIME in May that Israel has evolved into a kind of moral Rorschach test for American politicians. “If you can’t call it what it is,” he said, “which is a genocide, then how are you going to stand up to Donald Trump? How are you going to stand up to pharma CEOs?”

The same campaign that energized Muslim voters also unsettled many Jewish Democrats, some of whom believed El-Sayed’s rhetoric had contributed to an increasingly hostile atmosphere for their community. Those concerns were especially acute after a violent attack in March at Temple Israel, a synagogue in West Bloomfield, where a man drove a truck into the building, narrowly missing classrooms occupied by young children. El-Sayed condemned the attack but sparked outrage when he suggested in a social media video that “hurt people hurt people,” referring to the attacker’s loss of relatives in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. He later apologized for the comments, but the episode remained a source of anger among Jewish voters who believed his remarks had appeared to rationalize an act of antisemitic violence.

A Democratic rift over Israel

Lingering tensions complicated El-Sayed’s efforts to consolidate Democratic support after his narrow primary victory over Stevens, a more moderate Democrat who had received substantial backing from pro-Israel donors and party establishment figures. The two appeared together at a unity breakfast shortly after the August primary, but their relationship deteriorated over the following months. Stevens accused El-Sayed of failing to adequately confront antisemitism among his supporters and demanded that he condemn an advertisement produced by an allied political action committee that linked American support for Israel to rising grocery prices. El-Sayed eventually denounced the advertisement, but he also accused Stevens of trying to reopen their primary fight

As the dispute intensified, he publicly made clear that he did not want her joining him at a planned church appearance in Detroit on the final Sunday before the election. The next morning, Stevens stunned Democrats by arriving at the church alongside Rogers and announcing that she would vote for the Republican. “I’m here with the person who I am voting for for United States Senate and that is Mike Rogers,” she told reporters after the service.

The endorsement was an extraordinary act of defection by a sitting Democratic congresswoman, particularly in a race that both parties regarded as potentially decisive to control of the Senate.

El-Sayed sought to minimize the controversy, telling reporters that “none of this matters.” But the episode revealed the difficulty he faced in bringing together a coalition whose members held profoundly different views about Israel and the direction of the Democratic Party.

His election now raises questions about how the Democratic Party will accommodate a growing progressive faction whose positions on foreign policy, economic inequality, and the influence of wealthy donors increasingly challenge those of its traditional leadership.

For a Democratic Party still debating how to rebuild its coalition and confront Trump, El-Sayed’s victory is likely to become a touchstone in the argument over what kind of party Democrats want to become.

Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union worker and local councilman, has beaten out Republican Rep. Max Miller in the race for Ohio’s seventh congressional district in a race that became dominated by domestic abuse allegations against the incumbent. 

The AP called the race shortly before 1:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

Miller’s defeat comes after domestic abuse allegations, which he denies, shook his campaign, spurring Democrats to invest more in Poindexter’s bid despite President Donald Trump winning the district by 11 points in 2024.

Poindexter, 46, is an iron worker and member of the Brook Park City Council. He centered his campaign around targeting the kind of working-class voters he grew up around in a suburb near Cleveland’s airport. Much of his campaign platform centered around lowering the minimum age to qualify for Medicare, regulating data centers, and limiting funding for the war in Iran.

“I’m not in this to carry the flag for the Democratic Party,” he said in August. “I’m in this to flip a seat for working families.”

The tight House race received national attention over the controversy surrounding allegations against Miller. 

Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno, had accused Miller of domestic violence, including throwing hot water on her, holding a gun to her head, and an allegation involving their daughter’s fractured collarbone. Miller, who denied all of the allegations, sued Moreno for defamation. Ultimately, a county prosecutor’s office found that, in the case of their daughter’s injury, there was “insufficient admissible evidence” to bring a case to a grand jury. 

Former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham had also accused Miller of domestic abuse and misconduct during a romantic relationship during Trump’s first term and previously filed a temporary restraining order against Miller. Miller also denied those allegations. No criminal charges have been filed against Miller.

Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, Miller’s former father-in-law, said that Miller should “seek public help” over the summer and joined Ohio’s other Senator, Republican Jon Husted, in calling for Miller to exit the race. 

Read More: Sen. Bernie Moreno Says Former Son-in-Law Max Miller Shouldn’t Serve in Congress

When asked over the summer whether his accusers were lying, Miller compared his situation to allegations that Trump faced during his 2016 presidential run. 

“He stayed in and was resilient,” Miller said of Trump, in a CNN interview. “That is a quality that the American people cherish, and so for no second am I going to sit here and continue to be debased by false and baseless allegations.”

The House Ethics Committee announced in August it was actively reviewing allegations against Miller.

Miller, a former Marine, has served in the House since 2023. He previously worked as a White House aide during Trump’s first presidential term. 

Ohio’s seventh district is located in the northeastern pocket of the state and stretches from the suburbs of Cleveland to Lake Erie and encompasses all of Medina, Wayne, and Ashland counties.

On an Election Day when national Democrats had monumental momentum, the results in Texas were a breed apart and could reshape the road to the White House in 2028.

Both James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa broke the Republican Party’s hold in deep-red Texas. But the losses didn’t stop there. When all the ballots are counted, Texas Republicans may be on the receiving end of something approaching a wipeout. It’s a stunning turn that proves in one fell swoop that years of Democrats’ optimism in someday flipping Texas were not foolhardy. Even Texas Republicans gifted last-minute gerrymandered districts in U.S. House races were not immune to the national mood. 

For Democrats, it was a dividend long invested. Year after year, Democrats kept insisting that this would be the cycle that would break the Republican fever in the state. And year after year, they woke up the day after Election Day feeling like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football.

Eight years ago, Democrats went all-in on Beto O’Rourke’s bid for Senate against incumbent Ted Cruz. O’Rourke came within three points of prevailing. Six years later, Cruz won another term by more than eight points.

Still, Democrats have long insisted that Texas is not a state of Republican voters. It’s a state of non-voters. Tuesday’s results finally proved that thesis.

The shift could have seismic consequences for the 2028 presidential map. Texas has 40 votes in the Electoral College, or roughly 15% of the haul needed to win the White House. If Democrats can sustain their success in Texas, that suddenly means other traditional swing states could prove optional. And both parties may find themselves having to invest heavily in the massive and pricey state to pin down Texas’ electoral votes every four years. 

Talarico’s win caps an intense Senate race that broke the nation’s longest statewide dryspell for Democrats, who last won statewide in Texas in 1994. Talarico is also the first Democrat to be elected Senator by Texans since 1988. Hinojosa is the first Democrat to win the Governor’s Office since 1990. That was when the governorship was won by Democrat Ann Richards, who then lost it to George W. Bush, beginning a Republican hold on the state's executive seat that would last for three decades.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a fixture in Texas politics dating to the 1990s who had amassed a massive warchest, lost. Dan Patrick, long seen as an invincible figure in Republican circles, was positioned to lose the powerful office of Lieutenant Governor. The state Attorney General could also end up going to a Democrat by the time all the votes are counted. Even seats on the Texas Supreme Court were positioned to flip blue, a first since 1994.

It was a very good night for Democrats from coast to coast as voters resoundingly rejected Republicans’ embrace of President Donald Trump, whose polling on Election Day was at record lows. But it was particularly potent in Texas, thanks in no small measure to Trump’s intervention in the GOP primary to nominate the scandal-plagued Ken Paxton, the state’s outgoing attorney general. Even in Texas, 77% of voters said they were not adherents of MAGA, according to exit polls. The same surveys found more than half—54%—said Trump did not have the mental capacity to effectively do his job.

The night was also a massive defeat of billionaire Elon Musk, who spent $224 million on Texas races. That proved completely ineffective to keep his state tilted solidly Republican.

Now, Republicans in Texas—and Washington—face the unenviable task of trying to consider how they could get to 270 electoral votes if Texas’ 40 aren’t a lock.

Troy Jackson, a logger and former president of the Maine Senate, defeated Republican Sen. Susan Collins, ending her three-decade tenure and delivering Democrats one of their most sought-after victories of the midterm elections.

Collins conceded to Jackson before the Associated Press called the race, the news agency reported.

“Maine, I owe you everything,” Jackson said. “I’m ready to get to work for Mainers in the U.S. Senate, and I promise you this: I’ll never forget where I came from or who I’m fighting for. Thank you. Let’s go build a government that works for all of us.”

Jackson, 58, became the Democratic nominee after oysterman Graham Platner dropped out in midsummer amid allegations of sexual assault, which Platner dismissed as “categorically untrue.” While Platner briefly drew national attention for his charisma and grassroots following, Jackson cast himself as a working-class advocate from rural northern Maine, blaming Republican policies for a lagging economy.

In his abbreviated campaign, Jackson tied Collins to President Donald Trump and their party’s economic record, promising to make life more affordable. He also leaned on his own story of growing up poor in Allagash, a town of about 230 people, and rising to lead the state Senate. It proved to be a winning recipe.

“The throughline with Troy has always been fighting for the working class,” says Toby McGrath, a Democratic consultant who ran Barack Obama’s two statewide campaigns in Maine. “He’s always been a labor guy and he understands the shift in all those parts of Maine where the mills are gone, the unions are gone, people are moving out.”

While Collins tried to remind voters of the money and projects she’d delivered to the state as chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Jackson argued such benefits didn’t outweigh the economic strain caused by Republican policies that Collins had supported.

The race got fiery in its final weeks as polls showed a neck-and-neck contest. Jackson became the subject of some criticism after telling Collins to “shut up” at a debate after she accused a protester of being a supporter of his campaign. And a super PAC aligned with Senate Republicans released a radio ad calling Jackson a “freak” and a “creep” over his relationship with his second cousin, with whom he has two sons. Collins distanced herself from the ad and called for its removal. 

Jackson comes from three generations of lumberjacks and started logging when he was 19 years old. He got his start in politics when Canadian loggers started crossing into Maine and picking up work ordinarily done by locals. He helped lead a blockade at the border to halt temporary workers from coming into the state and then, a few years later, decided to run for office. He was elected to the state Legislature in 2002, eventually becoming Senate president. Since the logging blockade, he’s been a fierce advocate for workers unions.

On other issues, like abortion and LGBTQ rights, his opinions have evolved. In his bid for the U.S. Senate, he embraced progressive ideas like abolishing ICE and supporting Medicare for All, though he struggled in an interview with CNN to articulate how the government would pay for a universal plan.

Collins, the longest-serving female Republican Senator and the longest-serving member of Congress from Maine, had defied political headwinds before this year. She was re-elected by nine percentage points in 2020, even as former President Joe Biden carried the state by the same margin. Many prognosticators on both sides of the aisle thought the independent-minded electorate would give her another term.

But voters who had backed her in the past said they felt she’d become less independent than when she started in office and that the desire to shift control of Congress away from Republicans outweighed their goodwill toward her for the things she’s brought back home.

Mike Staggs, a 55-year-old museum worker from Mount Desert Island, says that when he first moved to Maine 37 years ago, Collins “was a lot more moderate.”

“In the last couple Administrations, she’s seemed less interested in Maine and more about moving up the ladder,” he tells TIME.

Marla O’Byrne, 70, an independent voter from Southwest Harbor who retired from working with nonprofits last year, also voted for Jackson. O’Byrne was CEO of Friends of Acadia, which raised funds for Acadia National Park. She calls Collins, whom she had voted for in the past, an engaged supporter of the organization but says that ultimately didn’t outweigh her desire for Democrats to take control of Congress.

“There are times where being middle of the road, being a moderate may be the best way to go but I don't think that’s where we are,” O’Byrne says. 

“I think we’re looking at more than what Maine needs,” she adds. “We’re facing an existential crisis as a democracy.”

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been defeated by Democratic gubernatorial candidate and state Gina Hinojosa, a stunning loss that marks the end of a long streak of GOP leadership in the state.

Texas has been led by Republican governors since 1995, when George W. Bush defeated then incumbent Democratic Gov. Ann Richards. Richards was the last Democrat to win a governor’s race in the state, in 1990.

Hinojosa will also become the first Hispanic governor to lead Texas, which hosts the largest Latino population in the United States.

The AP called the race for Hinojosa Tuesday night.

During a concession speech Tuesday night, Abbott said that he had congratulated Hinojosa and thanked his staff and family for allowing him to become governor for 12 years.

“I love our state. It has been an honor to serve it,” Abbott said.

The projected victory comes despite Republicans’ significant spending edge in the race. The Texas Tribune reported that Abbott has outspent Hinojosa nearly eight-to-one: According to campaign finance filings, his campaign dispensed $281 million to Hinojosa’s $36.8 million over the past year, from Hinojosa’s campaign launch on Oct. 15, 2025, to the end of this most recent reporting period. Abbott’s spending this cycle also more than doubles his $131 million outlay over the course his 2022 bid.

Read More: Talarico Wins Texas Senate Race, First Democrat to Win Statewide in More than 30 Years

Abbott, who has been governor of Texas for three terms, previously spent more than a decade on the bench in Texas’ judicial system. In 1995, then-Gov. Bush appointed Abbott to the Texas Supreme Court. He was then re-elected twice in the late ’90s.

He later served as the state’s attorney general for over a decade beginning in 20022, before running for Texas governor in 2014. He won the seat that year by over 20 points against state Sen. Wendy Davis.

“​​If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost,” President Donald Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social following news of Abbott’s loss. “He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!”

Abbott is just one of a number of Republicans who have suffered defeats on Tuesday amid a wave of Democratic victories in long-red Texas that are sending shockwaves through the political world.

In another major upset called not long before Hinojosa’s win, Democrat James Talarico has defeated Trump-endorsed Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state’s closely watched Senate race, becoming the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas in more than 30 years.

In a resounding rebuke of President Donald Trump and his Republican Party, Democrats will control both the House and Senate for the last two years of Trump’s presidency, cementing one of the strongest midterm showings for either party in decades.
The Associated Press called the upper chamber for Democrats late on Tuesday, after the party’s candidates secured victories in battleground races across the map. The outlet later called control of the lower chamber in the early hours of Wednesday morning as Democrats picked up more than two dozen seats.

The milestone potentially sets up a new political dynamic in Washington. A President has not had to deal with a Congress completely controlled by the opposition party since the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Congress now stands to be a true counterweight to the White House and its agenda. 

Democrats needed to net four seats to claim the Senate majority—a tough task given the map this cycle clearly favored Republicans. But with wins in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, and Maine, Democrats achieved what most handicappers had treated as a long shot until just weeks before Election Day. Democrats in multiple toss-up Senate races managed to effectively harness a national mood against Trump, the economy and the Iran War to win in places initially deemed out of reach for the party. Outstanding Senate races in states like Michigan could potentially pad Democrats’ majority. 

Read more: How Trump’s Approval Compares to Other Presidents Just Before the Midterms

The new Senate is likely to be led by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who will regain his title of Senate Majority Leader from Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota. While some Democrats have criticized Schumer’s leadership as minority leader over the past two years, it’s not clear if any Senators are prepared to challenge his leadership before the next Congress convenes in January.

The size of a possible Democratic majority in the House is still unclear as votes in many states were still being tallied, but signs of a significant Trump-centered backlash were popping up all over the country Tuesday night, potentially setting up the party to come away with a double-digit majority. Strategists with both parties had predicted for months that Republicans were unlikely to hold onto the House, where they could only afford to lose three seats.

House Democrats have vowed to use a House majority to aggressively investigate Trump, his Administration, and his allies, as well as push policy proposals they campaigned on, including ending the Iran War, undoing Trump’s tariffs and lowering the cost of living.

Likely Democratic control of the House would also mean the end of Mike Johnson’s speakership, with Democrats likely set to rally behind their leader in the House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, to replace him. Jeffries would be the first Black speaker in U.S. history.

Read more: 10 Candidates Who Could Make History in the Midterms

Polls had been consistently pointing for months to the House flipping to Democrats. For well over a year, nearly every poll from a reputable pollster asking voters which party’s candidate they intended to support showed Democrats with a clear advantage. But Republicans managed to hold their own or do better in fundraising, especially in pivotal battlegrounds for control of the Senate. And some Democrats as recently as this past weekend were worried that they may somehow still come up short.

Republicans spent much of the year trying to make the best of a bad environment. They constantly claimed the polls were all off, that Trump could still turn out his coalition that remade the modern GOP, and that Democrats’ overconfidence could depress their own turnout.

As Election Day neared, Republicans moved into triage mode. While they initially had planned to go on the offense against incumbent Democrats, those ambitions quickly evaporated as they shifted funding away from flipping Democratic seats and toward shoring up Republicans in a wider array of districts. 

By late Tuesday, as exit polls started to paint a picture of the national mood, there were signs that many polls had likely under-estimated Democrats’ strength heading into Election Day.

The new Democratic caucus in both chambers are poised to include many new faces, from those who ran as moderates to self-avowed democratic socialists who ran as much against centrist leaders like Jeffries than Trump. Now starts the messy business of this new majority figuring out what they plan to do with their power. Trump will certainly be watching closely.

James Talarico just accomplished what no other Democrat in Texas has done in three decades: winning a statewide race.

Talarico cruised to victory against Ken Paxton, with the Associated Press calling the race late Tuesday. The outcome ends what had become one of the longest winning streaks in U.S. politics. Talarico is the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas since 1994. He is also the first Democrat to be elected Senator by Texans since 1988.

Most polling heading into Election Day showed Talarico, a state legislator and seminarian, running ahead of Paxton, the scandal-plagued state Attorney General who has faced criminal inquiries and narrowly dodged an impeachment conviction by his fellow Republicans in Austin. Both in Texas and around the country, interest in the race was sky high. More than 7.7 million votes were cast ahead of Election Day

For many Texas Democrats, Talarico’s win is vindication in a longheld belief that demographics in that state were destiny. Democrats have argued for years that Texas wasn’t as Republican as election results suggested, but rather a state with so many non-voters that a Democrat could win with the right candidate and message. This cycle proved them correct, as early vote numbers matched the numbers during 2024’s presidential election and ran well ahead of the 5.1 million who voted early in 2022. 

But Talarico certainly played a central piece in this history-making moment. A plain-spoken former Teach For America alumnus, his message was a blend of progressive optimism and faith-tinged evangelizing. Talarico worked to build an unlikely coalition that included plenty of folks who had been reliably Republican votes in the recent past. As clips of his speeches and interviews went viral he quickly became a political star with a national following, one who also became one of the cycle’s best fundraisers. 

Read more: How James Talarico Made Texas Competitive Again

Both Paxton and Talarico fought for their party’s nominations in expensive primaries. The price tag for just ads in the race approached three-quarters-of-a-billion dollars. Outside spending brought $534 million in advertising, with Paxton enjoying a roughly 2-to-1 advantage. The bulk of that came courtesy of Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and a Texas resident. The ally of Trump flooded the state with $224 million of support for Paxton. The eye-popping outlay proved for naught.

Republicans never quite figured out how to campaign against Talarico. Trump gave him the nickname “Talafreako”—which Talarico’s campaign embraced and turned into campaign merch. The persistent rumor that he was a vegan in meat-loving Texas ricocheted in the MAGAverse but photos of Talarico eating barbecue quickly dispelled that. In the race’s final days, no less than Vice President J.D. Vance offered a crude joke that Talarico is gay. (He is not.)

While Talarico sought to expand Democrats’ tent, Paxton seemed to focus almost entirely on turning out his base with the help of Trump, who broke with party leaders in Texas and Washington and endorsed Paxton over incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

Republican strategists insisted that Cornyn would be in a far stronger position to hold the seat, particularly among fears of a blue-wave midterms. There were also concerns that Paxton would have trouble fundraising enough to match Talarico. 

As one GOP strategist bemoaned, every dollar spent holding the seat in Texas was a dollar that was not being used to flip seats in Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, or Georgia. Some estimates pegged a GOP rescue mission at $250 million. Even that whopping figure under-estimated the ultimate cost in a state bigger than most countries in size and population. 

Trump at first refused to endorse either Cornyn or Paxton in the race. Once the primary went to a May runoff, he formally backed Paxton, all but ending Cornyn’s political career. So worried were Republicans about holding the Texas seat that they scheduled the highly unusual midterm political convention in the state to try to gas their base. 

Even after endorsing Paxton, Trump’s support for the nominee was uneven. In speeches, he would waver between championing Paxton and making digs at his likeability and appearance.

Paxton struggled with a clear message in the race. His tenure as the state’s Attorney General—once seen as a strength among a base that loved his fights against Democratic Administrations—became a liability as his accumulation of wealth during his years in public office drew allegations of cronyism. And he refused to debate Talarico, who pushed for such an event, even offering to let Fox News moderate it.