Donald Trump has received a stinging rebuke from voters in the US midterm elections.
The Democrats have taken control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, scoring stunning victories in former Republican fortresses such as Texas, South Carolina and Kansas.
As well as reconfiguring US domestic politics, the “blue wave” that swept the nation could shape how Trump approaches foreign policy in his final two years in office – with profound consequences for households in Britain.
How you ‘smart fridge’ could be hacked
Household appliances, energy meters and even microwaves are vulnerable to hacking from hostile states, experts have warned.
Here’s how…
Fridge hack
Hackers sent temperatures soaring in supermarket freezers across 10 countries on Tuesday – including Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Sweden.
The incident occurred three weeks after an unprecedented cyber attack caused French freezers to heat to 50°C, spoiling millions of euros worth of food.
How was the attack carried out?
Older internet remote-control boxes that manage refrigeration were targeted with an automatic defrost function, triggering dozens of shops, including IKEA.
Security experts believe a state actor like Russia may be to blame for the attacks, which also affected fridges in a small number of British businesses.
While state-linked attackers are more likely to target supply chains or national infrastructure to cause maximum disruption, experts are now calling for homeowners to reconsider if they need appliances that connect to the internet and action from government.
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Warnings from the Government
Millions have ‘smart fridges’
A YouGov poll last year showed more than two million Britons have smart fridges.
MP Graeme Downie said people in the UK should reconsider the connected appliances in their homes.
Cellular modules
Downie warned against the use of smart cellular modules that can connect to the internet or mobile network.
What else is vulnerable?
Luke de Pulford, the co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which monitors the threat from Beijing, said any firmware in devices that requires remote software could be vulnerable to hacking from a foreign-based entity.
- “Energy smart meters, microwaves, smart TVs – those are all things that are vulnerable. But also Chinese-made CCTV equipment. These are all devices that are well known to be vulnerable,” he said.
Taking pets abroad may be about to get easier – here’s why
Pet owners are likely to get easier access to the European Union for their pets under a new UK-EU agreement, it has been reported.
Pet passports
Pet passports will be revived under a new UK-EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement due to be agreed ahead of a joint summit reports.
Post Brexit, pet owners paid £200 to obtain an animal health certificate in order to take them abroad. Under the proposed deal, pets will now be a given a passport.
New deals with the EU
- 1Travellers will be able to bring their dogs, cats, and ferrets into EU territory for the duration of their lifetime without the need for expensive certificates. This will be implemented from 2028.
- 2UK ministers also hope to agree a deal to give car manufacturers access to the EU’s Made in Europe scheme.
- 3The EU is also looking to agree a youth mobility scheme allowing up to 100,000 Europeans to work aand study in the UK a year. Separately, Brussels is also looking for a reduction in tuition fees for EU students.
UK may have to accept almost 100,000 young Europeans a year to unlock Brexit deal
British negotiators think they can strike a youth mobility agreement with the EU while staying under the “psychologically important” figure of 100,000 visas, The i Paper can reveal.
Why Rice Krispies is no longer made from whole grain rice
Kellogg’s has removed rice grains from its Rice Krispies and Coco Pops cereals after “changing weather conditions” affected the quality and availability of the ingredient, the firm has said.
New formula
Rice Krispies has been reformulated to use rice flour instead of rice, while Coco Pops now contains a blend of rice flour and corn flour in place of rice.
Under the new recipes, the cereals now also contain wheat gluten, meaning they are no longer suitable for shoppers with a wheat allergy or coeliac disease.
Kellogg’s spokeswoman:
“This recent change helps us maintain consistent quality at a time when changing weather conditions are affecting the quality and availability of some of the and grains used in our cereals.”
The change in formula comes after this year’s El Niño weather phenomenon caused widespread droughts, floods and heatwaves across much of Asia where most of the world’s rice comes from.
Watch more from The i Paper
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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Watch more from The i Paper
More unpredictable on the world stage?
The Republicans’ loss of Congress could leave Trump unable to pass legislation and hemmed in by investigations into the conduct of his administration, including allegations of corruption.
But one area where Trump retains almost exclusive control is in setting foreign policy. It is therefore possible that Trump could respond to the results by becoming more active – and potentially more unpredictable – on the world stage.
Much will depend on how Trump processes Tuesday’s defeat. Alan Mendoza, the executive director of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, said it is still possible that Trump could take a considered approach of seeking bipartisan agreement on foreign policy and other issues. “We’ll work with the Democrats,” Trump promised on Tuesday night.
But given his previous form, there is clearly a risk he could respond in a very different manner. Mendoza said Trump may pursue a “scorched earth policy” of trying to “push through whatever he wants to push through wherever he can go”. “The world could get far more turbulent if he decides to throw the US’s weight around,” he added.
Mendoza also said it is possible that Trump could “turn his attention to Cuba” and “try and topple the regime” there. While such a move would send shockwaves through the Americas, it would likely have a limited impact on Britain because of our distance from Cuba and negligible trade links.
Richard Foord, a Liberal Democrat MP who sits on the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told The i Paper: “While many Europeans are delighted, caution is required. Trump remains commander in chief of the US military for more than the next two years. He retains control of US foreign policy too.”
He added: “We should not celebrate Trump’s demise prematurely.”
‘The world has an opportunity’
When it comes to the areas where Trump’s response is going to be felt most by British households, it is perhaps Iran that tops the list.
Trump has acknowledged that his decision to join Israel in attacking Iran in February contributed to the Republicans defeat in these elections.
“I think a part of it was Iran,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday night.
Iran’s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to the attack has pushed up energy prices and inflation on a global scale. The war is deeply unpopular in the US, where rocketing prices at the pumps and rising inflation have flown in the face of Trump’s promise in the 2024 presidential election to cut the cost of living. Of course, it has also driven up energy bills, fuel prices and inflation here in the UK as well.
World leaders including Prime Minister Andy Burnham are keen to use the midterms to prod Trump into securing a lasting resolution to the conflict. Responding to the midterms at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda on Wednesday, Burnham said: “President Trump has accepted the results, and I feel the world has an opportunity now to unite around the issue that is affecting us all, and that’s the cost of living.
“That has been the issue that I have put front and centre in my first three months in Downing Street, and we’ve made moves. But I can’t get people’s cost of living pressures down until the conflict in the Middle East is resolved.”
However, there is a risk that with the midterms now out of the way, Trump could try to force an end to the conflict with further escalation. Trump told Fox News: “If we have to do something large… a lot of people would like to do the heavy hit.”
If Trump doubles down on the war, then it could mean even higher energy bills and food prices in the UK.
If the conflict and disruption to energy supplies drags on into next year, it would also weigh on the public finances. That could mean that the Chancellor John Healey is forced to come back for more taxes in next autumn’s Budget to ensure Britain sticks within its fiscal rules limiting the scale of borrowing.
Ukraine and Putin
The other international crisis where Trump’s policy off the back of the midterms is likely to have the greatest impact on Britain is the war in Ukraine.
Trump has previously boasted about the number of wars he has supposedly ended and has long coveted the Nobel Peace Prize. Last week he called Norway a “shit house country” because the Nobel committee had not yet given him the prize.
In the weeks running up to the midterms, Trump waived various sanctions on Russia and struck a deal with Vladimir Putin to import Russian diesel.
The great fear in European capitals will be that Trump will continue this Putin-friendly stance by scaling back arms exports and intelligence support for Kyiv unless Ukraine agrees to an end to the conflict on terms which are largely favourable to Russia.
If Trump did take this approach, it would likely embolden Putin in the “hybrid warfare” operations that Russia is already waging across Europe. This would increase pressure on Burnham and Healey to accelerate plans to increase defence spending, which have been put off until next year’s spending review.
The Democrats have consistently been far more pro-Ukraine than Trump, and could use their majorities in both chambers of Congress to push legislation to help Kyiv. However, Trump would have the power to veto such legislation.
A two-thirds majority would be required to override the veto with support from some Republicans.
However, Foord warned that the midterms had resulted in some “very sensible Republicans” losing their seats. “Mike Turner (who lost his Congress seat in Ohio), for example, had more in common with Reagan than with Trump,” he said.
“He was an experienced Russia watcher who brought sensible views on European security to the House of Representatives, and to relations between the US and its allies. He had served previously as President of the Nato Parliamentary Assembly and Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.”
UK party politics
One other area in which the midterms could have an impact on Britain is in party politics.
Many Labour and Lib Dem MPs are elated by Trump receiving a bloody nose. On the other hand, the President’s ebbing political fortunes will give Reform UK pause for thought.
Nigel Farage is a long-term friend of Trump and has consciously modelled aspects of Reform’s agenda on the President’s policies. As late as Tuesday night, Farage was telling viewers of his GB News programme that pollsters predicting heavy losses for the Republicans would be proven wrong. “I don’t go with the consensus that Trump is going to get absolutely smashed,” he said.
Farage’s proximity to Trump has always been unhelpful for Reform, with polls finding that it is one of the most frequently cited concerns which voters have about the party.
Since the Iran war, Reform has been less vocal in support of Trump, and a senior party source told The i Paper that the midterm results would reinforce this “distancing”.
The source added that the results would encourage Reform to focus more on the cost of living and put the party off supporting future military interventions.
“People will punish politicians who take their off the ball,” the source said. “I think it will encourage Reform to think foreign adventures are just bad.”