Democrats on Tuesday won control of both houses of Congress and a decisive mandate to put a check on Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency, a victory propelled by voter anger over high prices, corruption and the unchecked spread of data centers. Some of the same concerns helped to lift Democrats to victories in statehouses, where they gained a majority of the country’s governorships for the…
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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
In the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion, state attorneys general have played central roles in both defending and eroding reproductive rights — and their power to do so extends far beyond their home states. Just in the past couple of months, the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama have sued California…
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On October 30, port workers in over 100 locations across the world stood in principled resistance to Israel’s ongoing genocide through an international strike meant to constrict the arms trade and physically halt munitions destined to be used in Palestine. From coast to coast, linking arms in the struggle against maritime transport has been a historic strategy to intervene in the material…
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On November 3, Virginians will vote on two ballot initiatives that have become the center of a well-resourced campaign led by Catholic Bishop Michael Burbidge. This campaign is urging congregants to vote “no” on two ballot measures. Ballot Question 1 would affirm abortion access as a constitutional right in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Ballot Question 2 would repeal a 2006 same-sex marriage…
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California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed SB 868, a bill legalizing residential solar panels for balconies. At a time when the Trump administration is unraveling federal climate progress, California’s so-called “Plug and Play Solar Act” enables homeowners and renters to purchase and plug lightweight solar panels into a regular power outlet and generate up to 1200 watts of electricity.
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