NEW YORK – It was, as one Maga foot soldier put it, the “worst-case scenario” for Republicans.
Not only did the Democrats take the House of Representatives in the US midterm elections, they also won a sizeable majority in the Senate, meaning Donald Trump will spend his final two years as President with the opposing party in full control of Congress.
It was a stunning rebuke for a President who swept to power for a second time just two years ago, and it has left his Maga allies reeling. Many feel a mixture of shock, defiance and frustration at Trump, amid the cost of living crisis caused by his war with Iran.
What to know as Republicans suffer brutal election losses
The Democrats have made sweeping gains in a bruising night for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
Sweeping victories
The US midterms have seen the Democrats flip key Republican Senate seats in places such as and .
The stunning results have been widely regarded as a consequence of the cost of living crisis which has been driven by the US-Israeli war with Iran. Losing both houses will now make it hard for Trump to drive his legislative agenda.
Key Republican losses in the Senate
Democrat James Talarico defeated Trump-backed Ken Paxton in Texas.
Democrat Sherrod Brown won in Ohio, defeating Republican Jon Husted.
Democrat Annie Andrews beat Trump’s hand-picked candidate Darline Graham to take the seat.
The losses keep coming
Democrat Troy Jackson won, taking the state’s Senate seat for the first time in 29 years.
Abdul El-Sayed is projected to win, becoming the first Muslim senator in US history.
Paralympian Josh Turek won a Senate seat in the state for the first time in 18 years.
Democrats needed a net gain of four seats in the 100-member Senate to win a majority, while in the 435-member House, they needed three. Democrat Senator Jon Ossoff, who won re-election in Georgia, told supporters “the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption, and incompetence of the failed lame-duck President Donald J Trump”.
Trump’s response:
I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!
Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, the President sought to defend the bruising results.
While offering to work with opponents, he also posted a picture of a red baseball cap emblazoned with the word “Veto”, suggesting he would block legislation they sought to take through Congress.
Watch more from The i Paper
Why you feel completely broke
A decent salary and watching what you spend is increasingly not enough for people to feel well off– here’s why.
Cost of living
The UK is suffering the worst decade in terms of the growth in household incomes since records began.
Due to cost of living pressures and a lack of substantial wage growth, leading think-tanks like the Resolution Foundation predict that a typical working-age household will see their disposable income fall by £1,050 or 3 per cent between now and 2029.
Disposable income growing slower
Slow growth, inflation and stubbornly high housing costs are the main culprits. While disposable incomes fluctuated throughout the 1970s and 80s, they generally rose again after a fall. Not so since the 2008 global financial crisis, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic.
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House prices rising faster
The average house price in the UK is currently around 6.5 times the average income, compared to around 3.5 times in 1996 and 2.5 times in 1966.
- One could argue that it is why Andy Burnham thinks Britain should rejoin the European Union and why we’ve heard so much about growth – now rebranded as “good growth” – in order to improve incomes.
More people paying higher rate income tax
One of the major reasons behind stagnated income growth is the constant freezing of tax thresholds – levels that won’t change until 2030.
You are now dragged into paying the higher tax rate of 40 per cent if you earn £50,271 or more. You stay in that bracket until you earn £125,000, but at £100,000 a year you lose your personal tax-free allowance and your entitlement to state-funded free childcare.
The NHS blood test which could find several cancers
Blood tests capable of detecting signs of several cancers from a single sample will be offered to NHS patients in a world-first trial.
New blood tests
Thousands of patients will be invited to take part in the Stride-RCT study, which aims to catch cancers at a time when treatment is more likely to succeed.
The tests – which use AI and other cutting-edge technology – could also help GPs identify patients with cancers that are difficult to diagnose.
How will the tests be rolled out?
Who is eligible?
More than 20,000 patients aged 45 or older will be invited to take part.
The tests will be offered to patients who present with symptoms such as persistent bloating or abdominal discomfort.
Where will they be available?
The £8.5m government-funded trial will be offered in more than 200 GPs across England.
How do the tests work?
The tests are designed to detect signs of cancers including bowel, pancreatic, ovarian, stomach, liver, kidney, bladder and prostate cancer.
Some work by identifying tiny fragments of DNA that are shed into the bloodstream by tumours. Others measure proteins in the blood, or use AI to analyse results.
The tests aim not only to identify possible cancer cells but also to indicate where in the body it may be developing.
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How autism diagnoses are ‘increasingly linked to ADHD’
Experts found a rapid rise in autism diagnoses among 16-to 20-year-olds since 2010 in the UK, as well as a rise in women and white people, compared to other ethnicities.
What were the findings?
Researchers from the Medical Research Council looked at data from the UK and Sweden.
They found that new diagnoses have increased from six people per 100,000 in 2010, to 64 per 100,000 in 2023.
Analysis also showed there has been a change in the make-up of people diagnosed with autism, with a decrease in those with a prior diagnosis of epilepsy.
Instead, they found an increase in the proportion of people who had a prior diagnosis of ADHD, stress-related disorders, eating disorders, headaches and chronic fatigue.
The story in numbers
58%
The proportion of autism diagnoses in people with anxiety more than doubled form 29 per cent to 58 per cent between 2010 and 2023.
- In the UK, 24.5 million adults contributed to the study, including 141,119 with an autism diagnosis.
- Writing in , the team said this could be the result of “greater appreciation of nuanced forms of autism that may have previously been labelled as other conditions due to overlapping features, particularly in females”.
How menopause is affecting women’s careers and pensions
Half of women in the perimenopause or menopause say their career has suffered as a result, with workers cutting their hours or feeling forced to turn down opportunities for career progression, according to a new survey.
Lack of support for symptoms
Nearly one in three said their life stage had influenced their retirement savings, according to the research for Scottish Widows. A similar number also said their regular finances had been affected.
And 50 per cent of women surveyed said they would like more support at work. 17 per cent said they had been forced to take time away to manage symptoms.
Breaking down the numbers
- One in eight (13 per cent) women had reduced their working hours and 10 per cent had turned down a promotion or career progression opportunity, for menopause-related reasons.
Scottish Widows found that a 50-year-old woman in full-time work taking a six-month unpaid break could potentially cost £1,300 in pension contributions.
Gaps in pension contributions will have a bigger impact over time, as savers will also miss out on the interest that could have been earned on them.
Two-thirds of women surveyed believe employers should be required to provide better support to women experiencing menopause symptoms, including financial support.
A blow to pension pots
Perimenopause or often coincides with what should be the peak earnings potential of a woman’s career. When symptoms force women to reduce their hours, step back from promotion opportunities or leave work entirely, the ripple effect on their pension pots is huge
Susan Hope, a retirement expert at Scottish Widows
The lessons Britain can learn from France’s pensions crisis
The i Paper takes a look at why the bill for pensions keeps rising on both sides of the Channel – and what can be done about it.
What’s the situation in France?
France will be unable to resolve its debt crisis without tackling sky-high pension bills, economists have warned.
It spends a massive 14 per cent of its GDP on pensions and the costs are rising every day.
Falling birth rates and rising life expectancy in France and the UK means pensions are mounting pressure on public finances.
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Why pension burdens are becoming unsustainable
- Economists have warned that unless France takes action to overhaul the pension system, it is unlikely to end its debt crisis.
- In the UK, public spending will be further strained next year, as state pensions are set to get a 3.5 per cent boost.
- Fraser Thorne, CEO of Edison, told The i Paper: “The UK’s… trajectory is more manageable. But more manageable isn’t the same as sustainable.”
UK advantages over France
Heidi Karjalainen, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, says bigger private pension pots in the UK are making it easier to increase the state pension age, whereas “in France, it’s been really difficult to do that”.
It’s this cushion that will help the UK better navigate the trials and tribulations that come with an ageing population and falling birth rates, she says.
Giving people time to adjust
The French proposals were announced “without much notice”, Karjalainen noted, while the UK made the decision more than a decade ago.
Thorne says France offers a “pointed lesson in what can happen when governments try to reset the terms of the pension contract: five prime ministers in two years; mass street protests; and a reform ultimately diluted by political reality even when the economics were clear”.
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“We don’t just need a pep talk,” Ian McMath, the press secretary of the New York Young Republican Club, the largest youth Republican group in the US, told The i Paper. “We need to take stock as people were not interested in our message.”
McMath added: “We had this coalition in 2024 and just two years later it has swung against us. Republicans pushed away younger voters even though they are the most energetic wing of the party. A lot of young conservatives, people who were all about Trump in 2024, they checked out this time around.”
McMath was at a watch party for Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, but after the vote was called for his rival just after polls closed, McMath cut his evening short and was in an Uber heading home a little after 11pm.
Earlier in the evening, there were signs that Republicans were staying away from public events, sensing the bad night ahead for them.
At the Beach Cafe in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where the likes of Donald Trump Jr and Republican strategist Roger Stone have been seen partying in recent years, only a few tables were occupied by couples and tourists having a quiet midweek dinner.
One member of staff told The i Paper that the bar had been full at the weekend, with people celebrating the New York Marathon, which was in stark contrast to last night.
Tickets for the watch party at the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York were still available right up until the last minute, a sign that few in the party wanted to witness what was likely to amount to a very public backlash.
Meanwhile, at Union Hall in Brooklyn, a watch party filled with Democrats told a far different story. People were dancing in the bar and shouted “USA! USA! USA!” when James Talarico, a Democrat, won a Senate seat in Texas, part of a wave that flipped the traditionally Republican state. And there was a huge roar when it was announced that Democrats had retaken the House.
In Austin, Texas, where a Democrat won the governor’s race for the first time in 35 years, residents honked their horns so loudly that one person on X likened it to an “Eastern European city that just overthrew a dictator”.
But across the nation, many Republicans turned off their TVs and went to bed early as it quickly became clear that it wasn’t just a Democrat wave, it was a tsunami.
Matt Terrill, a former chief of staff to Marco Rubio, Trump’s Secretary of State, admitted that the election was a “bad night, no question about it” and blamed inflation for the results.
“The fundamentals of the economy are strong,” he said. “Stocks have hit record highs, median incomes are up for households across America. But what Americans are seeing day in day out, they were seeing the price of gas. That’s hard to message around.”
“If you believe President Trump, as I do, the price of gas will come down soon on the heels of the Iran conflict ending,” Terrill added.
However, others who move in Maga circles are far more critical.
Andrew Hale, a fellow at Advancing American Freedom, a conservative think-tank in Washington, called the results a “blue wave” and a “damning verdict on the Trump administration’s bad economic policies and corruption”.
“This is the worst defeat for the Republican Party in history,” he added. “The Republican Party must stop pretending that Donald Trump is normal and apologise to the American people.”
Another Republican strategist, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “I wouldn’t want to be in the White House for the next week. Everybody knows this is on Trump but he’s not going to admit it. He has to end the Iran war and fast. This was a bloodbath.”
Angie Wong, a Republican strategist based in Florida, said she was feeling “really good” ahead of the vote, but in a late-night text she wrote: “I am shocked. Democrats not only won the cities but also the rural counties where I thought their policies were not popular.”
“Clearly the Republican message of anti-socialism wasn’t a selling message, not when you had voters who had to choose between filling the gas tank or filling their prescription.”
The next two years now look grim for Republicans – and for the President.
In their first 100 days in control of Congress, the party has pledged to repeal much of the Trump administration’s agenda from the last two years. They will also probably use congressional committees they control to investigate the President and his family for self-enrichment and the Jeffrey Epstein story may soon return to the headlines with subpoenas flying in all directions related to the President’s former friendship with the late paedophile.
Even so, Trump – who reportedly watched the results come in from the White House – is unlikely to change course and has already promised to become “Veto Man”, blocking any laws he does not like.
There are also dangers for Democrats, according to Terrill, who said the party would likely “overplay their hand” by impeaching Trump or Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
“That’s not what those independent voters want, that’s not what the general electorate are going to want to see,” he said. “Democrats have not offered a solution. They ran against President Trump but they didn’t run for anything”.
For now, all there is for Republicans to do is hope that things will change and that the 2028 presidential election doesn’t go the same way. “The Republican Party has got to work on its messaging,” McMath said. “People will vote with the pocketbook. A lot of Democrats voted for us in 2024. Delivering on domestic issues has to be a priority”.