Washington/A blue wave, the color of the Democrats, swept the Republicans out of control of the United States Congress on Tuesday and demolished conservative bastions such as Texas, in a harsh punishment for President Donald Trump, who will face the last two years of his mandate with an opposition capable of blocking his agenda.
The polls anticipated a clear Democratic victory in the House of Representatives and a tighter battle in the Senate, but the punishment for the occupant of the White House and his party was greater than expected and cleared up the main unknowns of the election night sooner than many predicted.
The Democrats recovered the Lower House with a majority that could reach 244 seats, well above the 218 necessary to control the chamber.
And, although the Republicans resisted, suffering in strongholds like Florida, the opposition also achieved its most difficult objective: overturning the Senate, with victories as historic as they were symbolic in Texas, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa and Ohio.
The results in Texas point to a possible reversal of the Latino vote, which in 2024 contributed to Trump’s victory with historic support
In Texas, Presbyterian pastor and educator James Talarico became the first Democrat elected to the federal Senate from that state in 38 years, defeating Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general and a personal bet of Trump.
The blow did not end there. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, seeking a fourth consecutive term, fell to Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who will become the first Latina to hold the office, ending more than three decades of conservative rule.
The results in Texas point to a possible reversal of the Latino vote, which in 2024 contributed to Trump’s victory with historic support and which has now turned its back on him.
In Kansas, another Republican stronghold, Adam Hamilton broke a streak of almost a century without a Democrat being elected to the federal Senate from that state.
The new majority in the House of Representatives will allow the opposition to block Trump’s legislative agenda, open investigations and push for impeachment proceedings against the president or members of his cabinet, although an eventual impeachment would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
Control of the Upper House will also give Democrats the power to condition foreign policy decisions and block the confirmation of candidates to the Supreme Court.
Trump will thus face a hostile Congress, capable of putting his Administration under scrutiny and complicating the final stretch of his presidency, without the possibility of running for a third term in the 2028 elections.
“I did not stand for election and if I had, we would have won by a landslide! Thank you for your attention to this matter”
In the middle of election night, the president tried to distance himself from the defeat with a message on his Truth Social platform in which he attributed the Republican setback to the fact that his name did not appear on the ballot and went so far as to discredit Abbott, one of his main allies, for distancing himself from him.
“I did not run and if I had, we would have won by a landslide! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he wrote.
However, Trump went first-hand throughout the campaign, with almost daily rallies, and helped turn the elections into a referendum on his figure: he even asked his bases to go to the polls thinking about him.
His unpopularity ended up being a burden for the Republicans, hit by discontent over inflation, the rise in gasoline prices derived from the war in Iran, the impact of tariffs and his questioned immigration policy.
Later, in statements to the newspaper The New York Timesthe president adopted a more conciliatory tone: he recognized that the results pointed to a Democratic victory and showed himself willing to “work” with the new majority in Congress.
An unusual gesture for a president who never accepted his defeat against Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential elections and who, before these elections, had warned that he would only accept the results if the elections were “clean.”
