Democrats seized control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress in Tuesday's midterm elections, delivering President Donald Trump and the Republican Party a historic defeat that will reshape Washington when the new Congress convenes in January.
Projections show Democrats winning 247 House seats to 147 for Republicans, and holding 54 Senate seats to 44, giving them control of both chambers. Trump lashed out at the results, calling the elections "crooked" and "so rigged" in social media posts, while claiming Republicans would have won in a landslide had he been on the ballot.
The president blamed the Democratic victory for a historic stock market rout on Thursday, when Wall Street shed three trillion dollars in value, with the Nasdaq falling 5.5 percent and the S&P 500 dropping 4.4 percent. "The Stock Market crashed today because the Dumocrats had a big Tuesday — So sad to see, you only have yourselves to blame!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The Democratic wave extended to state races, with Democrat James Talarico defeating Republican Ken Paxton in Texas by more than 5.4 million votes to 4.2 million, garnering nearly 150,000 more early votes than Paxton's total tally. Democrats also picked up House seats in California, Montana and Virginia, a potential Senate upset in Mississippi threatened to deepen Republican losses, and Melat Kiros became the first Generation Z woman elected to Congress.
Within the Democratic Party, leaders face a power struggle over whether to pursue compromise or confrontation with Trump. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are tasked with uniting a party split between center and left wings. Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed cautioned that Democrats "didn't win on a mandate because people love Democrats. We won on a mandate because people cannot stand Trump and Trumpism."
Political scientist Ian Bremmer described the result as the most consequential electoral reversal for a governing party in more than half a century, calling it the "biggest loss in 50 years" for Trump, who engineered "the biggest political comeback in American political history" in 2024. German-American political scientist Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook expects a "very hard" internal power struggle within the Republican Party.
The defeat has triggered turmoil in the Trump administration, with reports that Trump asked advisors whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be fired after the unpopular Iran war hurt Republicans at the polls. Hegseth issued a video vowing to fight impeachment efforts in Congress and defended the war as "courageous and historic," while Secretary of State Marco Rubio is reportedly on "resignation watch." Democrats who won are also threatening to launch a criminal investigation into Trump's cryptocurrency business.
