by Hunter Woodall | Nov 4, 2026 | Congress, elections, News, News Analysis, White House
For the last decade, Donald Trump tormented Democrats and defied expectations of what it meant to lead and endure in American politics.
On Tuesday, the old rules finally caught up with him.
Trump wasn’t on the ballot, but he made the midterms emphatically about himself, urging his supporters to turn out as if he were. After a decade in which he dominated the national narrative, the voters who had sided with him so often before appear not to have followed him en masse.
Democrats were projected to retake both the House and the Senate from the Trump-led GOP. They won governor’s races in red states and were closing in on upsets in deeply conservative congressional districts that, just days earlier, had looked all but unwinnable.
Plenty of races remained uncalled at 1 a.m. But the early returns pointed to one of the best nights for Democrats — if not the best — since Trump ran for the White House in 2016.
If those projections hold, the rest of Trump’s term will look very different. A Democratic House and Senate would be able to stall his agenda and investigate his administration, and the Senate would decide the fate of his nominees, including to the federal courts. That could be a significant check on a president who has already reshaped the Supreme Court.
The night also suggested that Trump’s appeal doesn’t transfer. Candidates he embraced or campaigned for lost in deep-red Kansas and South Carolina. Vivek Ramaswamy, an ardent ally of the president, lost the Ohio governor’s race. Trump’s conservative magic, it turns out, doesn’t extend to the candidates further down the ballot. That’s an uncomfortable reality for
by Amy Goodman | Nov 4, 2026 | Dolores Huerta, Farmworkers, Interview, labor, workers rights
Immigrant rights and labor icon Dolores Huerta died Wednesday at the age of 96. Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962 and then the United Farm Workers of America, working with Cesar Chavez. From 1965 to 1970, the union organized the historic Delano grape strike, which ended in major gains for farmworkers’ labor rights. In the years that followed…
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by Hunter Woodall | Nov 4, 2026 | elections, News
President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House has helped end Susan Collins’ Senate career.
Collins, Maine’s five-term Republican senator, has lost her bid for a sixth term to Democrat Troy Jackson. The result gives Democrats a long-sought win over a senator who had overcome national political dynamics and more than one hostile political wave.
Democrats’ difficult path to a Senate majority ran through Maine. Collins was the only Republican incumbent on the ballot this year from a state that is neither a presidential battleground nor reliably red.
Collins is one of the few Republicans left in Congress who voted to convict Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Even so, Republicans recognized that she was their best, and perhaps only, chance to hold the seat in Maine, which is a more reliably blue state.
On paper, she was among the most vulnerable Republican incumbents in the country. Yet Democrats’ handling of the race gave Collins, a formidable campaigner, openings, even in a national environment that favored the party out of power.
Months before the primary, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee lined up behind Gov. Janet Mills, 78. It did so even though Graham Platner, a progressive oyster farmer and Marine veteran, had entered the race first. In a cycle when voters showed a clear appetite for outsiders, Platner drove Mills from the race well before the primary.
After the primary, Platner was accused of sexual assault. He denied the allegation but eventually dropped out. Jackson, the former president of the Maine Senate, quickly replaced him as the Democratic nominee. Jackson had run for governor earlier this year as a Bernie Sanders-aligned
by Chris Walker | Nov 4, 2026 | 2026 Elections, California, Donald Trump, elections, News, Trump election fraud claims, Washington State
The Trump administration’s attempts to discount the votes of tens of thousands of voters it has dubiously deemed ineligible to participate in this year’s midterm elections hit two major roadblocks on Wednesday, as officials in Washington state and a judge’s ruling in California challenged the White House’s reasoning. In August, the administration issued a report claiming that 24,000…
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by Chris Walker | Nov 4, 2026 | 2026 Elections, Annie Andrews, Darline Graham, Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, South Carolina
For the first time in nearly three decades, voters in South Carolina have selected a Democratic candidate to represent them in the United States Senate. Pediatrician Annie Andrews (D) defeated Darline Graham (R) , the sister of longtime Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), who filled his vacant seat earlier this year when he unexpectedly passed away. Unlike her brother…
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