“President Trump said he will be making a ‘few changes’ to his cabinet following the midterm elections where his party suffered major losses at the hands of the Democrats who took control of the House and the Senate,” NewsNation reports.
Said Trump: “I love my Cabinet. I think they’re good. But I’ll be doing maybe a few changes. I don’t wanna mention who.”
“Newly elected House members arrived in Washington on Sunday for orientation, and freshman lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they want to focus on lowering the cost of living for Americans following the seismic midterm election that shifted control of both chambers to the Democrats,” CBS News reports.
Andrew Sullivan: “You probably haven’t fully absorbed it yet, as you wander aimlessly through the wreckage of your glorious new East Wing, and lash out at Susie Wiles as therapy, but you were just fired by the American people. Yep. Fired.”
“That 13 percent margin of victory for the not-exactly popular Democrats? That’s a once-in-a-century margin. That’s the biggest public repudiation of any party since the 1974 Watergate election. You have to go back to 1926 to find a margin that’s bigger.”
“That makes you a once-in-a-century loser, sir.”
“President Donald Trump continues to assert that incumbent Dan S. Sullivan (R-AK) is ‘leading substantially’ in the state’s Senate race — despite figures showing an edge for Democrat Mary Peltola,” the Washington Post reports.
“Basing his math on claims of fraudulent candidates, he said Saturday on social media the race ‘is OVER.'”
“Trump has expressed frustration about the ballot’s including a candidate with a nearly identical name as the senator’s, Dan J. Sullivan Jr. Republicans say it confused voters and could propel Peltola to an unfair victory.”
Mother Jones: Trump enters the anger stage over GOP’s catastrophic losses.
“Tuesday’s election results handed Democrats the strongest check yet on President Trump’s bid to control the Federal Reserve, by giving them the power to block any allies he might seek to install on its board,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“That leaves Trump with the chairman of his choosing, Kevin Warsh, but one seat short of a majority and diminished prospects of getting it. His White House has mounted the most direct challenge to the Fed’s independence in decades, including an unprecedented attempt to fire a sitting governor.”
Andrew McCarthy: “Republicans got their clocks cleaned this week because they made Trump the center of their universe, as if Congress did not exist other than as a presidential pom-pom squad. Unleashed, Trump has governed like a lunatic.”
Helen Lewis: “The lesson that Trump took from his popular-vote win in 2024 was that he could do whatever he liked—that what voters wanted was Maximum Trump, the full-fat version of the pallid Diet Trump he was forced to be in term one. This was a huge strategic error, a piece of hubris so epic that it should have its own monument. (A new use for the planned Arc de Trump, perhaps.)”
“The Democrats, by contrast, took the right lessons from 2024: The economy matters more than anything. Voters don’t like foreign wars. Middle Americans are more socially conservative than the Democratic establishment, but they are not cruel.”
“Some of the Democrats to be elected this time will have their own scandals—some of these races have been only lightly reported, and their candidates under-scrutinized. But at least people in those districts will know they can swing back the other way next time and vote them out.”
“Bruised Republican lawmakers limp back into Washington on Monday, trying to decide what to do with the remaining 55 days of their majorities in the House and Senate after being thumped by Democrats in the midterms,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The lame-duck session is an opportunity for some final, single-party power plays and a chance to finish some bipartisan deals, particularly on permitting for major energy projects. But if the sour vibes prevail, expect only a few must-pass bills, a pile of judicial confirmations and an early Christmas for Congress.”
“Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) provided an update on the Last Frontier’s closely watched Senate race as vote counting continues in the state,” NewsNation reports.
Said Dunleavy: “It’s very close.”
“He said that there is a ‘big batch’ of votes coming in next week on Nov. 13, followed by a ‘smaller batch’ on Nov. 15. The final count will happen on Nov. 25.”
“The 2026 midterm elections delivered a solid blue wave for Democrats along with a new class of noticeably younger candidates across the board, beating out both new and incumbent senior opponents,” NewsNation reports.
“Whether it was James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa in Texas, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Annie Andrews in South Carolina, Melat Kiros in Colorado or Josh Turek in Iowa, young candidates across the country — especially Democrats — defeated older and more experienced opponents in their respective races.”
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INFLUENCING THE MASSES: The Psychological Techniques a Handful of People Use to Steer Billions of Minds by Klaus Brenner.
“In 1895 a French doctor, Gustave Le Bon, published a book about how crowds move. Mussolini kept it on his bedside table. Hitler put it to work. Lenin annotated it in the margins. Thirty years later, in New York, Sigmund Freud’s nephew applied those same ideas to advertising: he persuaded millions of American women to smoke, millions of American men to eat bacon for breakfast, and the United States government to overthrow the government of Guatemala. His name was Edward Bernays, and his manual is still in use. Advertisers use it. Political parties use it. Social platforms use it. The algorithms in your phone use it.”
“Influencing the Masses reconstructs that manual from the first page to the last.”
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the drafting of the highly classified memo this spring warning top Trump administration officials that Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, was in a close relationship with a Chinese spy,” the New York Times reports.
Financial Times: U.S. believes Nvidia’s Huang had a romantic relationship with alleged Chinese spy.
Politico: “The victories give Democrats an opening to pursue long-stalled agendas on housing costs and public education, along with new leverage in fights over taxing wealthy people and corporations and regulating artificial intelligence. Their gains will also reshape the country’s redistricting wars — and test whether Democrats can turn their backlash-fueled victories into changes voters can feel in their daily lives.”
For members: Democrats Now Dominate State Governments
“We don’t have time to sit there and just celebrate what happened on Tuesday. People need us to start this work now and start addressing the things that they wanted to address.”
— Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), quoted by Politico.
“Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed said Sunday that Democrats will work with President Donald Trump to help the American people if ‘he wants to act serious,’ but if the president instead chooses ‘foolishness,’ the incoming senator said he will not find a willing partner in Congress,” ABC News reports.
Said El-Sayed: “Let’s talk about how he is an unserious fool. Think about this war in Iran that every single president had resisted fighting because, of course, it was a dumb idea. Let’s talk about the foolishness of a tariff war with Canada.. Let’s talk about the foolishness of gutting Medicaid to pass tax cuts for the richest people in America.”
“President Trump revealed Sunday it is ‘highly unlikely’ that the U.S. will resume the war in Iran as long as talks over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program continue to make progress,” the New York Post reports.
Said Trump: “It depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement. The answer is highly unlikely it’s going to be necessary. They’re a failing nation. It just came out, you saw this year, 301% inflation. Highly unlikely it will be necessary.”
He added: “So it’s highly unlikely I’ll have to. They’re withering away financially. We’ve hit them militarily. We could finish them off.”
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Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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