Missouri voters rejected an effort to overturn their state’s abortion protections, according to a projection by Decision Desk HQ, ensuring that the procedure will remain legal and enshrined in the state constitution despite dedicated efforts by Republican leadership. Amendment 3 would have reversed the results of a 2024 vote that enshrined abortion protections into the state constitution and…
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It’s easy to forget that after a group of House Republicans successfully ousted then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy three years ago, his successor, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson, was not the GOP’s first choice.
Or the party’s second choice. Or its third. Or its fourth.
Rather, Johnson was the Republicans’ fifth choice when he was elected, stumbling into a job for which he was not fully prepared. He nevertheless managed to hang on to his gavel, largely by becoming a rather pitiful lapdog to Donald Trump.
But as the midterm elections approached, and it appeared all but certain that the GOP would lose its House majority, Johnson faced awkward questions about whether (and how) he would maintain his Republican leadership post in the aftermath of failure.
As recently as three weeks ago, the House speaker told CBS News, “In the unlikely scenario where we lost the majority, I would expect my colleagues would ask me to continue leading this conference, even if we have divided government.”
The morning after a historic voter smackdown, his colleagues did not ask Johnson to continue leading the conference. On the contrary, as MS NOW confirmed with two House GOP leadership sources, the outgoing House speaker told his staff on Tuesday morning that he wouldn’t run for House minority leader, ending his tenure as a congressional leader.
Whether Johnson intends to abandon his congressional seat altogether is not yet clear, but for now, the Louisianan is paying a real price for failure.
There will be plenty to say about his hapless time with the speaker’s gavel, but in the short term, there’s a more immediate question to consider: Who will lead the House Republican minority in
About a week ago, The New York Times’ Nate Cohn, the newspaper’s top elections data analyst, reviewed four possible scenarios for the midterm elections. The fourth was easily the worst-case scenario for the Republican Party.
In this scenario, Cohn wrote, Democrats would win a large majority in the House, “maybe 250 seats,” and 53 or more Senate seats, marking “the beginning of a new chapter of American politics.”
“In today’s polarized era,” the analysis added, “it can be hard to believe that any party could win in this kind of tsunami.”
As the dust settles on Election Day 2026, according to MS NOW’s projections, Democrats are on track to hold at least 250 House seats and at least 54 Senate seats. The outcome that seemed “hard to believe” has actually happened.
The magnitude of the Democratic victories is so stunning that the political world is struggling to settle on the best disaster metaphor. “Wave” is common but insufficient. “Tsunami” works, and I’ve seen a lot of “earthquake” headlines. The National Review, a prominent conservative magazine, went with “Armageddon,” which certainly brought a dramatic flair, and Punchbowl News embraced a related theme, describing the results as “an extinction-level event for President Donald Trump’s party on Capitol Hill.”
In the coming hours, days, weeks and months, Republicans will try to absorb their historic smackdown, fixating on counterfactual “what if” questions.
What if Trump had spent his first two years working on border security and his golf game, while letting the strong Biden-era economy continue to hum along?
What if “Liberation Day” hadn’t happened, there had been no White House trade tariffs and the economy had been able to grow
For months leading up to Tuesday’s election, President Donald Trump repeatedly delivered a simple ask in rally after rally: pretend I’m on the ballot.
Voters across the nation appeared to follow his guidance on Tuesday, but not in the way the president intended.
Democrats wrested control of the House and Senate in a stunning victory poised to shake up the balance of power in Washington and have an early impact on the 2028 elections.
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‘End of the Trump Era?’: Historic blue wave engulfs Trump
November 4, 2026 / 06:46
Despite the president’s pleas on the campaign trail for people to vote as if he were running, by Tuesday night, Trump was dashing off Truth Social posts saying he had not been on the ballot — if he had been, he claimed, Republicans would have won “IN A LANDSLIDE.” His aides, acknowledging the resounding and widespread losses to Democrats, argued that MAGA voters didn’t show up at the polls because Trump wasn’t actually on the ticket.
“This is pretty much worst-case scenario,” one White House official said late Tuesday as the results rolled in. This person, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the mood inside the White House, said many Trump aides were “shocked” by the margins in numerous statewide races, which in many cases surpassed even the most pessimistic polls gauging Republican support.
But as White House officials tracked returns inside a downbeat East Room watch party Tuesday night, they sought to rewrite history and distance the president from his prior statements and decisions.
“President Trump was not on the ballot, and it’s proven that Trump voters show up when he is on the ballot,” another White House
The Social Security Administration (SSA) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent out mass emails praising President Donald Trump to online account holders just days before the midterm elections, potentially violating federal laws prohibiting the use of official government resources for a campaign. The emails were sent on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, with statements from the agencies’…
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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* While Donald Trump has been willing to invest his time in the midterm elections, speaking at a series of campaign rallies, he has been unwilling to invest his money. The Washington Sun reviewed Federal Election Commission records that indicated the incumbent president “hasn’t donated to any candidate committee, national party committee or super PAC during the 2026 election cycle, through Oct. 14.”
“There’s no public indication that Trump, who’s grown significantly richer during his second presidential term, has contributed his own money since then, either.”
This runs counter to claims the Republican made in early September, when he vowed, “I’m going to be making contributions to various campaigns and people that I think are good, Republicans that I think are good, people that I think are going to win, or can win, or are close to winning.”
That said, Trump’s super PAC, called MAGA Inc., has spent heavily in support of Republicans this year, even if the president kept his personal wallet closed for reasons he hasn’t explained.
* Speaking of campaign contributions, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg invested an additional $36 million in support of Democratic candidates in the election cycle’s closing weeks, on top of a previously reported $80 million in donations.
Among the beneficiaries were Keisha Lance Bottoms’ gubernatorial campaign in Georgia, Adam Hamilton’s Senate campaign in Kansas, and, in Texas, James Talarico’s Senate campaign and Gina Hinojosa’s gubernatorial campaign.
* Speaking of Lance Bottoms’ candidacy, the former Atlanta mayor launched an 11th-hour campaign ad from former President Bill Clinton. As Politico reported, “With Clinton’s election eve endorsement, Bottoms has achieved