US Midterm Results: 'This Is A Rejection Of Donald Trump' | Adam Boulton

US midterms 2026 | Full coverage, results and analysis

 

The American People Have Repudiated Trump

 

OpinionThe Editorial Board

The American People Have Repudiated Trump

Credit...Photo Illustration by Tam Stockton for The New York Times

 

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Nov. 3, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/03/opinion/democracy-midterms-trump.html

 

President Trump has spent the past two years trying to subvert American democracy. On Tuesday, voters stood up to him.

In the face of the president’s many attempts to manipulate the midterm elections — through extreme gerrymandering, false claims of voter fraud, efforts to block mail voting and more — tens of millions of Americans responded by turning out and rejecting the Republican Party that has enabled him. Democrats retook control of the Senate and are poised to retake the House as well. The repudiation was broad enough to overcome America’s political polarization. Republicans lost races even in traditionally deep-red places, including Kansas, Kentucky, Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas. They lost because many independents and even Republicans consider Mr. Trump’s second term to be a failure.

Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

The outcome creates a crucial check on Mr. Trump’s autocratic behavior. It empowers Democrats to investigate his corruption and law breaking and pass legislation that offers an alternative to his counterproductive agenda. The country already feels changed, and it will in fact be changed in January.

The country still faces many long-term problems to which neither party has offered clear solutions. And over the next two years, while Mr. Trump remains president, Congress and judges will need to be prepared to counter further attempts by him to undermine the constitutional order.

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Nonetheless, this is a day to feel pride. Aspiring authoritarians often use legislative elections to cement their power and further undermine democracy. In 2026, the American people refused to allow Mr. Trump to do so. The system has held.

In addition to voters, three groups deserve particular credit: election workers, legal advocates and judges.

Election workers did their jobs this year in the face of relentless pressure from Mr. Trump. He has long claimed that widespread fraud decides American elections, despite decades of evidence to the contrary. Election workers across party lines responded to these lies by doing their jobs as diligently as they long have, helping people cast their ballots and counting those ballots.

 

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Credit...Photographs by Thalassa Raasch for The New York Times

In many states, election officials took specific actions to stop interference from the Trump administration. Last year, the Justice Department demanded that states provide the federal government with voters’ birth dates, driver’s license information and partial Social Security numbers. Officials, including several Republicans, refused to comply.

Among the standouts were Utah’s Republican lieutenant governor, Deidre Henderson; Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson; and West Virginia’s Republican secretary of state, Kris Warner. Each refused to comply, each drew a lawsuit from the administration, and each won in court.

Their ability to resist the president underscores an advantage of America’s decentralized government. They could refuse because the president has no power to overrule them. The elections clause of the Constitution lets each state decide how its elections are run. This federalism proved a bulwark against Mr. Trump’s authoritarian instincts.

A second group that stood up for democracy this year were legal advocates. When Mr. Trump tried to interfere in the elections — through executive orders that sought to complicate voter registration, bar states from counting some mail and direct the Postal Service to decide which voters would receive mail ballots — advocates quickly responded by filing lawsuits.

The advocates included the Brennan Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, Common Cause and Democratic attorneys general. Some prestigious law firms have been afraid of confronting the Trump administration’s legal abuses over the past two years, making the work of nonprofits all the more important.

The lawsuits frequently succeeded because of the third group: federal judges who insisted on following the law and upholding the Constitution despite intimidation efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies. Judges appointed by presidents from both parties, including Mr. Trump himself, blocked key parts of the executive orders concerning election rules. In 27 straight district court rulings, judges rejected the Justice Department’s demands for state voter rolls.

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Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

The Supreme Court deserves both credit and criticism. The court was wrong to issue rulings that made possible Mr. Trump’s extreme partisan gerrymandering and his administration’s efforts to create a national voter database. But the justices did act to protect Americans’ ability to cast votes this fall. In September, it upheld a lower-court ruling that barred the Postal Service from taking steps that could have restricted mail voting.

That ruling was a reminder that this court does have its red lines about elections. After the 2020 election, the justices refused to hear cases with Mr. Trump’s false claims about election fraud. The justices may need to swat down similar claims in the weeks ahead.

But the challenges ahead should not overshadow what Americans accomplished. This year, election workers, lawyers and judges defended the rules that protect the vote. And tens of millions of Americans went to the polls to exercise their most fundamental democratic right. Americans showed that the power to choose their leaders belongs to them. Now they must remain vigilant until officials certify every race and the winners take office.

 

Source photographs by Alexander Coggin, Roger Kisby, Nick Hagen, Michelle Gustafson, John Tully, Will Warasila, Jenn Ackerman, Maddie McGarvey, and Brad J. Vest for The New York Times.

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The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

 

Trump Says in Interview That He Will Accept Election Results

 

Trump Says in Interview That He Will Accept Election Results

 

In an interview with two Times reporters, President Trump blamed the G.O.P.’s losses on the fact that he was not on the ballot, and said he was willing to work with Democrats.

President Trump at a campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Erica L. Green and Tyler Pager

Erica Green and Tyler Pager cover the White House.

Nov. 3, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/03/us/politics/trump-midterm-election-results.html

 

President Trump said on Tuesday night that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results of the midterm elections, and was prepared to work with Democrats.

“We’ll, you know, look forward to working with them,” he said in a phone interview with The New York Times. “We’ll probably work something out.”

Mr. Trump blamed Republican losses on the fact that he was not on the ballot, and called his decision to go to war with Iran a “very wise decision.”

He said he had no regrets about endorsing candidates such as Senator Darline Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, who both lost their Senate bids.

Mr. Trump spoke to The Times shortly before 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, while he was watching election results at the White House. Democrats were on track to take control of the House and the Senate.

“I’m just looking at these results as I’m talking,” he said. “I see that Darline lost. Wow, that’s amazing. How do you think Lindsey would have done if he ran?” he added, referring to Senator Lindsey Graham, who died in July.

Mr. Trump added that he believed that Mr. Graham most likely would have prevailed in his race.

In the short conversation with The Times, the president sounded subdued as he absorbed decisive Democratic wins across the country.

But he insisted that he regretted nothing about the first two years of his second term, despite the widespread Republican defeats. “I consider it to be the most successful two-year period in the history of any president,” he said.

 

Mr. Trump’s pledge to accept the results of the elections followed his sustained efforts over the last year to sow doubt about the security of elections. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a series of social media messages vowing to arrest noncitizen voters, despite the fact that the administration had struggled to find them.

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Mr. Trump held his final pre-election appearance on Monday at the Reflecting Pool, promoting his accomplishments in refurbishing Washington.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The president’s comments came after he huddled inside the White House’s East Room Tuesday night with some of his top aides, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Todd Blanche and Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, to watch the results come in. Some in attendance described it as a “dark” and “funereal” atmosphere.

Some guests started leaving before 10 p.m., according to people with knowledge of the departures. Other allies of Mr. Trump’s said privately that they were happy they were out of town.

Throughout the evening, Mr. Trump vented his frustration at political aides and accused them of giving him bad information about polling in the lead-up to the elections, according to people with knowledge of his remarks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations.

It was not clear what he meant: Aides to Mr. Trump had spoken openly about the difficult environment for Republicans.

A White House official disputed the idea that the president was frustrated with his advisers.

In his interview with The Times, the president said that he believed Republicans suffered losses because he was not on the ballot.

“I wasn’t on the ticket, and because I wasn’t on the ticket, we couldn’t get enough people out to vote,” he said.

He also said he did not regret the decision to go to war with Iran and “would do that again.” But he acknowledged that voters were unhappy about gas prices.

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“They don’t mind the Iran, but they probably weren’t happy — they weren't happy with the oil price,” Mr. Trump said. “So you know, it’s just one of those things. But I don’t regret that decision at all. In fact, you know, that’s a decision that was a very wise decision for the future of the country and the world.”

Mr. Trump said Democrats had already reached out to talk to him about working together, though he declined to identify any of them by name. He said he thought they could work together on the debt ceiling.

“I have total veto power, so they have to come to us,” he said. “And if they have some good ideas, I’m certainly open to working.”

The bleak scene capped a day when the president remained out of public view, awaiting the results of a campaign that he insisted should be seen as a referendum on him.

Mr. Trump kicked off the day by making a final pitch to voters in a call to a friendly television program, “Fox & Friends,” promoting his administration’s immigration crackdown and claiming that his policies had boosted the economy.

“Inflation is solved,” Mr. Trump asserted, even though consumer prices had surged since he took office, rising 3.7 percent in September from a year earlier, driven in part by high energy costs stemming from the war with Iran.

The United States, he added, was “the hottest country in the world.”

The dissonance between the president’s rosy assessments and the affordability worries of many voters underscored Mr. Trump’s incongruous closing argument.

He repeatedly mocked the concerns about affordability, blamed his predecessors for inflation and falsely claimed that grocery and gas prices were falling. He also said that rising gas prices were a negligible price to pay for the war with Iran, which he repeatedly claimed the United States had already won. (On Monday, Mr. Trump dismissed the idea that it was even a war.)

In one of the strangest turns of the campaign, Mr. Trump made his assessments of the male physique a mainstay of his stump speech, focusing in particular on the backside of Senator Jon Husted, Republican of Ohio.

Rarely did Mr. Trump substantively address the issues that voters said were the most pressing in their lives, or acknowledge his own unpopularity. Heading into the election, views of his handling of the economy — one of his biggest strengths when he ran two years ago — were underwater. Majorities disapproved of his handling of tariffs, the economy, gas prices, the cost of living and the Iran war.

As he traveled the country, the president promised giveaways, floating $500 Obamacare “refund” checks and $5,000 for every American adult — called the “Trump Dividend” — if Republicans retained control of Congress.

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A Marine sentry posted outside the doors of the West Wing on Tuesday evening, signaling Mr. Trump was inside.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

At the center of the president’s pitch was that Americans should think of their votes as going to him. While headlining 30 rallies across the country, Mr. Trump pleaded with his base. “Pretend I’m on the ballot,” he often said.

But in the waning days of the campaign, Mr. Trump openly complained about the grueling pace. At a rally in Florida on Friday, he said that he thought it would be his last of the cycle, and that he would be able to relax afterward. “Twenty-eight days in a row of this crap is a lot,” the president said.

The day before the election, Mr. Trump chose to make his final public appearance at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a troubled project that had become emblematic of his administration’s willingness to skirt laws and target dissent to further his efforts to remake the capital.

“We gave this a very strong shot,” he said of the election.

“America is ready to go,” Mr. Trump added. “They’re ready to vote. I hope they’re ready to do the right thing.”

Throughout Election Day, the White House sent out a flurry of news releases praising Mr. Trump’s accomplishments, including one about his “relentless travel schedule.”

But as the day wore on, Mr. Trump’s agitation burst through in sharply worded social media posts. He lashed out about coverage of his speech at the Reflecting Pool, lobbing insults at Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, and at The Daily Mail for allegedly misrepresenting a joke he had made about wanting to name the landmark after himself.

He appeared optimistic at one point in the day, when he called attention to results in Guam, where a Republican was poised to become governor. “Wow, hopefully that’s an indication for things to come!” he wrote.

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Mr. Trump campaigning with his Qatari-donated luxury 747 jet as a backdrop in Kansas on Sunday. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By early evening, as the president prepared to host a watch party in the East Room, he turned his ire on Fox News, calling a commentator “DUMB AS A ROCK.” He said that he would change the channel until that “LOSER is off the air.” (He added that he would turn back later.)

Shortly after, he was back to railing about the cable channel, decrying its poll questions and complaining that its ratings were low because it spent “too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats!”

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.

Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.

OVOODOCORVO HAS REACHED 26.000.000 PAGE VIEWS / THANKS TO YOU ALL!

 

I Asked AI:

The OVOODOCORVO blog in Blogspot has reached 26 million page views. Is this a good score ?

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• The Blogging Landscape: According to data discussed by bloggers on platforms like Quora and Reddit, roughly two-thirds of all blogs are abandoned within their first three months. Among those that survive, a typical niche blog might only see a few thousand visits a month. Reaching 26 million views places a site in the top tier of independent internet properties.
• Longevity and Volume: O Voo do Corvo, managed by António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho, has been actively curating comprehensive international press reviews, political news, and environmental/heritage advocacy since at least 2013. Sustaining daily publishing for well over a decade is typically the only way an independent blog can compound traffic to hit a 26-million milestone.

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