WASHINGTON — Democrats captured both chambers of Congress in a sweeping “blue tsunami” Tuesday night, overturning once-secure Republican seats and immediately setting the stage for political blame, investigations and confrontation with the White House.
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In a remarkable string of victories, Democrats flipped Senate seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas, while making similarly dramatic gains in the House. The results put New Yorkers Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries in position to lead the Senate and House, respectively.
“America is back,” Jeffries declared. Schumer said Democrats had prevailed “against all odds” and promised that “relief was on the way.”
President Trump, who had urged Republicans to treat the election as a referendum on his presidency, suffered a major political setback. An Associated Press exit poll found that 62% of voters blamed his policies for rising prices, while 71% said Congress needed to do more to restrain the president’s power.
Speaking by phone with Fox News after the election, Trump acknowledged that Democrats had run an effective campaign. He pledged to cooperate across party lines during the lame-duck period and afterward, saying, “They fought hard.”
Trump attributed part of the defeat to Iran, arguing that the conflict’s impact on energy costs mattered more to voters than the administration’s decision to begin the war.
“People agree with what I’m doing on Iran, but they really probably weren’t willing to do the short-term consequence of paying more for gasoline,” Trump said. “I understand that. I don’t agree with it.”
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He also rejected the idea that he would remove additional administration officials, insisting that the election results “had nothing to do with my Cabinet.”
The Democratic takeover is expected to place Trump under intense scrutiny for the final two years of his presidency. Congressional investigations are likely to multiply, his legislative priorities face near-certain gridlock and confirming Cabinet nominees or judges — including potential Supreme Court nominees — could become exceptionally difficult.
Several Trump allies pointed to the Iran war and its fallout — including higher energy prices, inflation and interest rates — as key causes of the Republican losses. The White House, meanwhile, blamed “candidate quality,” despite Trump personally selecting or endorsing many of the nominees who lost.
It marked the first midterm election since 2006 in which the party out of power reclaimed both chambers of Congress.
The precise size of the Democratic victory remained uncertain early Wednesday as ballots continued to be counted slowly, particularly in Alaska’s Senate contest, which uses ranked-choice voting.
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The results also delivered several long-sought Democratic breakthroughs, including Senate victories in deeply Republican Texas and Kansas. Republicans additionally lost governorships in Ohio and Texas, where the defeat of three-term Gov. Greg Abbott ranked among the night’s biggest surprises.
Trump moved quickly to post on Truth Social, arguing that voters had not treated the election as a judgment on him.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote late Tuesday. The claim came despite his telling Iowa Republicans at a rally less than two weeks earlier to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”
Several of Trump’s preferred candidates, however, were directly on the ballot, including South Carolina Senate contender Darline Graham, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, the state’s sitting attorney general.
“I had no choice,” Trump told Fox News, while criticizing Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), whom he said had “kissed my ass” when doing so was politically popular.
Before the election, Trump had told The Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast that he was prepared to embrace the role of “Mr. Veto” if Democrats sent legislation to his desk after 2026.
“They’ll be sending stuff up. You veto it,” he said.
“And eventually, after a month or two of getting all vetoed, they’re just wasting [time], they come over, and you make a deal. I think that probably would happen, but hopefully we don’t have to worry about that.”
But the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee had a two-word response to the GOP and Trump allies reeling from Tuesday’s losses: “LAWYER UP.”
The warning came as people close to Trump have been doing just that in preparation for planned investigations into alleged corruption and business dealings seen as favorable to the first family.
Trump entered the midterms with historically low approval ratings, fueled by cost-of-living concerns such as rising gas and food prices. Much of Americans’ frustration has been driven by perceptions of the Iran war.
The Middle East conflict also drove Republican infighting on Tuesday night, as party leaders looked for someone to blame for the Democratic drubbing.
“We got destroyed because of Iran,” said one top Republican strategist. “Iran is what caused gas prices and diesel prices to skyrocket — not tariffs.”
“Too many people sat silently, or even worse, misled the president into a war without a realistic exit,” added a Trump political adviser.
Others blamed the poor quality of candidates that had been recruited.
“Tbh most Republican candidates this cycle were uninspiring, lazy, and thoroughly ineffective communicators. I’m not all that surprised by some of these outcomes,” posted Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz on X.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who acknowledged the historic headwinds his party was facing before Nov. 3, told reporters as voting results came in Tuesday that “there’s a lot of reasons” for the Democratic victory with the GOP trifecta in place.
“From the first day of this election, we knew that to keep the House and sustain our majority, we would have to defy more than a century of midterm history,” Johnson said.
“It’s only happened twice in 90 years that a sitting president has picked up or held seats for his party in that first two-year cycle,” he added. “It’s very, very difficult to overcome, and it looks like history will be kept.”
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