The Latest: Voters hand Democrats Senate control in sharp rebuke to Trump’s power
Democrats have taken control of the Senate after picking up five Senate seats in the 2026 midterm elections, as well as more than a half-dozen House districts.
The outcome appears to be a direct repudiation of President Donald Trump, who urged voters to pretend he was on the ballot. Most voters appear to blame Trump’s administration for high costs and want Congress to impose more checks on him, according to The AP Voter Poll.
Democrats' victories reached deep into Trump country, with ruby-red states Texas, Kansas and South Carolina electing Democratic senators for the first time in decades, while Democrats also flipped seats in North Carolina and Ohio.
Democrats Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Amy Acton in Ohio, Rod Sand in Iowa and Gina Hinojosa in Texas won races for governor, flipping GOP-held offices.
Here's the latest:
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Democrats win US Senate, ending Republican dominance by harnessing voters' frustration with Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats have retaken control of the U.S. Senate, delivering a decisive rebuke of Republican control of governance in Washington and ushering in a new era of congressional resistance to President Donald Trump.
The midterm elections that came to a close Tuesday channeled voters’ deep frustration with high prices, the war in Iran and concerns about government corruption. The House remains too early to call, but Democrats have already flipped seven seats as they try to win the majority in that chamber as well.
Democratic control of the Senate will profoundly reshape Trump’s final two years in office and likely hamstring his ability to push his agenda, including his hopes for sustaining a conservative shift to the Supreme Court.
Trump has promised he would use his veto power to block Democrats’ agenda, forecasting the potential for gridlock in Washington.
Democrats charted an extraordinary path to Senate victory through some of the most conservative states in the nation.
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Takeaways: Voters punish Trump, and the GOP pays the price almost everywhere
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump repeatedly encouraged voters to pretend he was on the midterm ballot. They did. And it went very badly for him and his Republican Party.
Voters absolutely punished Trump’s allies in swing states and Republican strongholds alike on Tuesday, giving Democrats key victories across New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and even South Carolina. Trump’s controversial mid-decade redistricting plan appeared to backfire. In Georgia, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor in U.S. history, while Texas elected Democrat Gina Hinojosa as its first Latina governor.
Voters nationwide were in the mood for change, according to The AP Voter Poll, which found that roughly three-quarters of voters feel “angry” or “dissatisfied” with the direction of the country.
Among those who had Trump in mind when they cast their vote, about twice as many wanted to express opposition to the Republican president as those who wanted to support him. Most also blamed the Trump administration for high costs: about 6 in 10 say higher than usual prices are “more because of Trump’s policies."
Trump's coalition was also fraying: Young voters and Hispanics appear to have shifted away from the GOP after warming to Trump in 2024.
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Voters deliver rebuke to Trump by handing Democrats control of the Senate
WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters delivered a significant rebuke to President Donald Trump by handing Democrats control of the Senate on Tuesday, rejecting his handpicked candidates that he had furiously barnstormed for in the final weeks of the midterm campaign.
Democratic candidates flipped Republican-held seats in North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, South Carolina and Kansas, where the president had personally chosen the GOP nominees or tried to rally voters on their behalf with campaign stops.
The results were also a major reprimand from voters of Trump, who repeatedly urged voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot” as he went into primarily conservative states to shore up Republican candidates and warned of a Washington where Democrats were in power. As he tried to personalize the midterm campaign, Trump also defended his policies on tariffs and the war with Iran that drove up prices.
A Democratic-led Senate means that the party will have more power to launch investigations into the Trump administration and can stymie his nominations to Cabinet posts and lifetime federal judgeships. The midterm results shift the center of gravity closer to Capitol Hill, where Democrats will be angling to check Trump’s power after two years of acquiescence from congressional Republicans.
The results leave Trump — who watched returns at the White House with his advisers and members of his Cabinet — with dramatically diminished political capital at home and abroad.
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Election Day unfolds with relatively few problems. Some voters disrupted by weather, machine issues
WASHINGTON (AP) — The final day of voting in this year’s midterm elections arrived Tuesday against a backdrop of uncertainty after a year in which President Donald Trump has tried to interfere in how states run their elections and sown doubts about the outcome should Republicans lose.
Millions of Americans had already cast their ballots, with early voting turnout surpassing the last midterm in 2022. In contrast to the president’s continued rhetoric about election cheating, voting so far has unfolded with relatively few problems.
By evening on Election Day, the biggest issues affecting voting were weather-related, with flooding in Florida and parts of the Southwest prompting changes to polling locations and other emergency measures. A problem with ballot scanners also was delaying vote counting — though voting was able to continue — in New York's suburban Westchester County, part of which is in a U.S. House district with a competitive race.
Trump has spent months trying to use the power of the presidency to put his thumb on the scale of this year’s elections, which will determine whether his party keeps control of Congress.
His Justice and Homeland Security departments have been involved in a massive hunt for voters who are not U.S. citizens, at one point engaging in a made-for-the-cameras predawn operation that led to more than two dozen arrests in California.
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'Very important' evidence found miles from Learjet crash site in Florida, investigator says
A piece of the Learjet that slammed into the ground in Florida, killing all nine people aboard, was found nearly 4 miles from the crash site, investigators said Tuesday, confirming that the plane was breaking apart before impact.
National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said most of the left elevator — part of the tail that controls the plane's pitch — was found in three pieces between 1.3 miles (2 kilometers) and 3.8 miles (6.1 kilometers) from Greenacres, near West Palm Beach, where the jet went down Sunday afternoon.
“What that means exactly, in terms of what caused the aircraft to lose control, or whether the loss of this piece was a result of the forces on the aircraft, we don’t know yet,” Chapman said at a news conference.
Without the elevator intact, the pilot would not have been able to pull the Learjet out of its nosedive, Chapman said.
“At those speeds I don’t know that it would’ve been effective even if it had still been attached to the aircraft, but knowing that it was lost is a very important piece of evidence in terms of pointing us toward other things to investigate,” Chapman said.
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Authorities release 911 call from the man who killed a shooter inside an Oregon elementary school
A frantic 911 call from the man who fatally shot a 16-year-old shooter who killed four people at an Oregon elementary school last month was released Tuesday to The Associated Press through a public records request.
In a tense call lasting a little more than a minute, Kaylub Giamanco told the 911 operator there’s “someone with a gun” at the school his daughter attends. “I have a gun and I will shoot them right now,” said Giamanco, who was driving home for lunch and saw the shooter at Silver Rail Elementary School.
The operator implores him “don’t do anything, let me get an officer there.” They talk over each other and Giamanco sounds increasingly frustrated by the exchange. “I’m about to go kill this kid,” he said.
A few seconds later he says the shooter is entering the building. The operator asks if the shooter is firing and Giamanco says yes. The operator tries to get more information but the call ends.
A 16-year-old had shot his way through locked doors to get into the school in Bend, Oregon, on Oct. 15, killing three children — ages 5, 8, and 11 — and a teacher in a special needs classroom. Another student was critically injured and a teacher was injured and hospitalized.
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Escaped Tennessee inmate caught after 10 days on the run when his truck gets stuck in the mud
An escaped Tennessee prisoner convicted of murder was recaptured Tuesday near Kansas City, Missouri, when his truck got stuck in the mud after troopers used roadside cameras and a helicopter to track him down, ending more than a week on the run, authorities said.
Jacob Morley, who was serving a life sentence for killing a co-worker four years ago, was apprehended at around noon, officials said.
Investigators learned early Tuesday that Morley was believed to have been hiding in a shed at a hunting camp in the area of Marion, Illinois, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. A truck was allegedly stolen from the property.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol says it was informed Tuesday morning that Morley was possibly traveling west on Interstate 70 in the Kansas City area. The vehicle was located using automated license plate readers and undercover officers traveling on a state highway in western Missouri.
Morley was driving a “metal flatbed work truck” with a white cab, said Sgt. Justin Ewing, a spokesperson for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Two rifles and a shotgun were recovered from the vehicle, which authorities suspect was stolen in Illinois, according to Ewing.
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Receding floodwaters leave a sea of mud and shattered homes in the US Southwest
PAGOSA SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Skies began to clear Tuesday, but while floodwaters from almost two weeks of on-and-off heavy rain still inundated parts of the U.S. Southwest, other areas left mud-caked by receding torrents presented homeowners and businessowners with the filthy work of cleanup.
Jack Ellis, a retired schoolteacher, surveyed damage along the San Juan River in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, which has suffered through multiple rounds of severe flooding in recent weeks.
“This is quite a disaster for everybody, especially in the low-lying areas,” Ellis said. “We dig in and dig out, and that’s what it’s going to take."
In all, more than 20 trillion gallons (76 trillion liters) of rain — 10 months of the flow over Niagara Falls — have fallen on the Four Corners states and Nevada in the past two weeks, according to former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Ryan Maue.
The U.S. Southwest has endured two recent major rounds of storms, with rain falling on ground already saturated from an especially wet fall.
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Miami gets top spot in first CFP rankings, but Tide at 5 and Irish at 11 bring a collective 'Huh?'
It’s been a confusing college football season so far. Nobody felt that more deeply than the College Football Playoff selection committee, which raised eyebrows aplenty in its first attempt of the season to make sense of it all.
Undefeated Miami received top billing in the committee's opening crack at the CFP rankings Tuesday, followed by Georgia (7-1) and undefeated Utah.
From there, the 13 people in that room could have been picking from a hat. Defending champion Indiana (8-1) was ranked fourth — eight spots ahead of Ohio State (6-2), which beat the Hoosiers 19-15 last month but has since lost quarterback Julian Sayin (to say nothing of another game).
At No. 5 was Alabama (6-2) — eight spots ahead of Tennessee (6-2), even though the Tide is only a few weeks removed from a 16-point loss to the Vols. At No. 6 was Kentucky (7-1), followed by Texas (6-2).
UCLA, the nation's only other undefeated team, was ranked eighth.
