“After Republicans were soundly defeated in Tuesday’s midterm elections, the GOP’s knives are coming out for Stephen Miller,” the New Republic reports.
“Leaks from within the Trump administration are targeting the White House adviser and deputy chief of staff for policy, with unnamed sources attacking him.”
Seth Masket: “Democrats made much bigger gains in the South than they did elsewhere. The biggest gain in a Senate race for Democrats was, of course, James Talarico’s race in Texas, where he is currently leading by 12(!) percentage points.”
“But Democrats made huge gains throughout the Deep South. They are winning races they haven’t won since, well, they were the party of segregation.”
“Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts officially announced her bid for majority leader in a letter to colleagues Thursday,” Politico reports.
“Clark, currently the No. 2 to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, is widely considered a shoo-in among her colleagues. She is currently unopposed, and if she wins, she would be the first woman with the title and most progressive member of the top leadership trio that is also expected to include Jeffries as speaker and Rep. Pete Aguilar as whip.”
“I have never seen a night like this. No president has been so fully repudiated like this in my lifetime.”
— Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA), quoted by the Financial Times.
“President Trump wrote Thursday that incumbent Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) should receive the vote totals for Dan J. Sullivan, a Senate candidate in Alaska’s tumultuous race who has the same name as the incumbent lawmaker,” Axios reports.
Said Trump: “The vote totals for the Fake Dan Sullivan, plus the other ‘slug’ that the Dems put on the Ballot, should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan, and the Election is over.”
He added: “He easily wins. There is no other fair solution!”
Marc Novicoff: “Heading into the midterms, everyone who follows American politics had the same question: Were the polls correct, or would they underestimate Republicans once again? The answer turned out to be neither. This time around, the polls undercounted a different kind of voter: Democrats.”
“According to the Silver Bulletin polling averages, Democrats were on track to win the U.S. House popular vote by nine points and narrowly flip a few Senate seats in states that Donald Trump had won by double digits. Democratic voters across the country saw these numbers and braced for disappointment. They remembered the polling misses of 2016 (which underestimated Trump by about three points on average) and 2024 (which did too) and believed that they could be watching another blue mirage.”
“In fact, even this year’s seemingly incredible poll numbers turned out to significantly understate Democrats’ strength. Democrats are now expected to win the House popular vote by 13 points, the largest such victory in 50 years. And that four-point national polling error was small compared with the miss in certain states.”
The day after the GOP’s historic election wipeout, President Trump took to Truth Social:
“Too bad the Senate has not yet approved the Sunshine Protection Act or, the I Don’t Want to Change My Clocks Anymore Act. It’s so dark outside, so early (Sunset was 5:06 P.M., and it was dark by 5:31 P.M. — Isn’t that ridiculous?). Just a few days ago it was so nice and sunny at this same time. In addition, everyone’s been running around changing their clocks all over the place. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this prior to the Election because I didn’t want to have certain Senators lose their Race, in a landslide, but it is too bad they can’t get it done.”
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Wall Street Journal: “French police describe the ultra left as a loose collection of activists with a range of causes, including radical environmentalists, self-styled antifascists and anti-Israel militants. They are united by a willingness to use violence—or at least condone it—against the authority of the state.”
Reuters: “So far, Republicans have not won a House of Representatives seat in a district that Trump carried by less than 11 percentage points two years ago. That meant the Democratic wave was deep enough to sweep away Republican lawmakers who might normally have sailed to reelection.”
Reuters: “The Democratic wave covered huge swaths of the country. Republicans lost ground in 99% of the roughly 2,200 counties where most votes had been counted by Wednesday morning, according to tallies compiled by Reuters and USA Today, which are partnering this year to collect live election results. The party lost votes in rich and poor areas, in cities and in suburbs.”
“The losses in most places were dramatic: Across the counties tallied, Republicans’ share of the vote fell 8 percentage points compared with Trump’s share in 2024.”
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“Calling it a dummymander is generous. This was more like moron-mandering.”
— A Texas Republican strategist, quoted by Politico.
“A decade after MAGA stole Bernie Sanders’ populist thunder, a slate of Sanders-backed Democrats stole it back. Now the 85-year-old senator has a warning for his party: Don’t blow it this time,” Politico reports.
Said Sanders: “These are people who ran on a progressive agenda, taking on a Republican district, and they won. We’ve got to rethink politics in the sense that we can win over millions of Republicans and independents who are struggling economically if we focus on the issues that are important.”
“Rethinking politics, in Sanders’ telling, means a clean break from the Democratic Party built on the Kamala Harris platform — the Goldman-adjacent donor class and consultants who, for years, muddled economic messaging with culture-war fights Republicans were only too happy to pick.”
Charlie Warzel: “Musk’s unprecedented spending may even have hurt Republicans.”
“On a midterm election night awash in blue, one significant corner of the country stayed red,” the New York Times reports.
“Florida, the third most populous state, withstood a national Democratic surge on Tuesday, remaining a Republican bastion even as the GOP amassed deep losses in Texas and across the electoral map.”
Said Gov. Ron DeSantis: “We got wiped out in Texas, the biggest anchor we have in Republican politics. So really, Florida is the last main anchor standing.”
“President Donald Trump went all-in on an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting push to protect the GOP’s House majority. The blue wave washed right over it,” Politico reports.
”In a normal year, Republicans’ multi-state push to redraw seats should have handed them as many as a dozen extra seats. But in a historically large wave year — Democrats are on pace to win the national popular vote by roughly a 13-point margin — Republicans ended up netting just two seats.”
NBC News: Republicans bet the House on redistricting, but Democrats swept through the seats they targeted.
“Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. has told people close to him that he does not intend to retire immediately from the Supreme Court, despite Democrats’ commanding win in Senate contests on Tuesday, which means Republicans will hold the chamber for only a short time longer,” the New York Times reports.
“As a result, Republicans may have missed the window for President Trump to name a fourth or even a fifth justice to the Supreme Court in the final two years of his presidency.”
Bloomberg: Trump’s power to shape Supreme Court doused by Democratic rout.
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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