Democrats seize control of Congress and Senate, reshapes Trump’s final two years

Democratic taking control of Congress threatens to stifles Trump's agenda, trigger investigations and reshape the presidential race in 2028.

Democrats seized control of both the Senate and House on Tuesday, scoring sweeping victories in Republican strongholds for the first time in generations as tens of millions of voters delivered a scathing rebuke to President Donald Trump.

Voters in conservative bastions who had propelled the president to his second term in office just two years ago swung dramatically toward Democrats, fueled by deep frustration over the unpopular war with Iran, anxiety over the high cost of living and anger at Trump’s stewardship of the country.

Kansas elected its first Democratic senator since the Great Depression nearly a century ago. In South Carolina, a state that Trump carried by nearly 18 points in 2024, Democrats turned aside his hand-picked Senate candidate.

And in Texas, the biggest Republican state, Democrats ended a decades-long losing streak in seismic fashion, winning a Senate seat and ousting three-term Governor Greg Abbott.

Democrats focused their campaign on corruption and affordability, blaming Trump’s tariff policy and the war with Iran for driving up costs while highlighting the billions of dollars the Trump family has made since he returned to the White House.

Republicans, led by Trump, attacked Democrats over culture war issues such as transgender rights while portraying their opponents as radical and extreme. But in poll after poll, voters made it clear they were far more concerned with pocketbook issues.

The Democratic wave flooded huge swaths of the country. Republicans lost ground in all but a handful of the approximately 1,700 counties where most votes had been counted on Tuesday night, according to tallies compiled by Reuters and USA Today.

Democrats made gains in the richest counties and the poorest; in counties where more people have college degrees and where fewer do. Democrats’ advances were particularly sharp in heavily Latino counties, including the border counties of Texas that shifted toward Trump in 2024 and the agricultural towns of the Kansas prairie.

In Seward County, Kansas, home to one of America’s biggest beef processing plants and where about half of eligible voters are Hispanic, Democrat Adam Hamilton led incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall by 13 points, two years after Trump won the county by 39 points.

Democrats ran the table in the House races thought to be especially competitive, winning all 20 of the contests decided so far. Meanwhile, an unprecedented Republican gambit to redraw several House districts to make them more favorable largely failed, with Democrats hanging on to most of the targeted seats.

Midterm elections are typically seen as a referendum on the sitting president, and Trump did little to disabuse voters of that notion. In the campaign’s final weeks, he held dozens of rallies, telling supporters repeatedly to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

He also intervened in several races to ensure his preferred candidates reached the ballot, despite concerns from some Republicans that his choices carried significant liabilities.

In Texas, Trump backed Ken Paxton, the scandal-ridden state attorney general, over the incumbent, Senator John Cornyn. In South Carolina, the president anointed Darline Graham, a political neophyte, after her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, died suddenly earlier this year. Both candidates lost.

But even candidates who sought to distance themselves from Trump were unable to escape voters’ wrath. In Maine, Republican incumbent Susan Collins had her 30-year Senate career end on Tuesday, despite emphasizing her willingness to break with the president during the campaign.

Progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s open Senate seat on Tuesday, becoming the first Muslim elected to the chamber. He defeated Mike Rogers, a former congressman and FBI agent, who entered the race with Trump’s backing and sought to falsely portray El-Sayed, an Egyptian-American born in Michigan, as a religious extremist.

“You chose hate, and Michigan chose hope,” El-Sayed told cheering supporters on Tuesday night, referring to Rogers.

Competitive Senate races in Mississippi and Alaska had yet to be called early on Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, as it grew clear Republicans were in danger of losing their congressional majorities, Trump wrote on social media, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

REUTERS