Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
I usually check the New York Times the first things when I get up in the morning. On Wednesday though I checked a group text chat with my American family and friends first. It felt so good. It’s the news I wanted to see. Finally the American voters pushed back.
It feels as if a long lost friend is finally coming back. I know this is only one huge step in the right direction and many more have to follow. But let’s take this win and celebrate it!
I am so looking forward to checking the New York Times in the morning and not seeing something evil Trump and his cronies are trying yet again.
The Trump Decade Is Over
Democrats didn’t just win the House by the largest national vote margin in decades. James Talarico won a Senate seat in Texas by 12 points—more than Kamala Harris carried in sky-blue states like Illinois or New Jersey in 2024. Jon Ossoff won his reelection in Georgia by 18 points—more than the Harris ‘24 margin in places like Connecticut or New York State. In Kansas, where no Democrat had won a Senate seat since the Great Depression, Adam Hamilton won comfortably. In Mississippi, prediction markets now have Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom surging above 90 percent to take a state that Trump recently carried by 23 points.
When commentators say “I don’t recognize this country,” they typically mean it in a bad way. But, in my frazzled state of disbelief, I’m genuinely finding it hard to wrap my mind around an election result where Kansas voted like New Hampshire and Mississippi voted like Wisconsin.
This is so good. And who expected Mississippi to be such a tight call?
The Dangers of a Lame-Duck Trump
Trump’s lame-duck period will not be like those of his predecessors, however. He has already gone through what was widely considered at the time to be a lame-duck phase, between November 2020 and January 2021. He used it to contest the election outcome despite clear evidence that Joe Biden had won. Trump is the first president in the past 100 years to have served two nonconsecutive terms, and therefore the only American leader in living memory to have a second lame-duck period—this time lasting more than two years.
With Democrats soon to be in control of the House and the Senate, the threat of impeachment or investigations into the Trump family’s business dealings will likely make the president feel cornered and angry. And that’s what makes the remainder of Trump’s term so dangerous. A boxed-in Trump, with no obvious constructive foreign policy outlet to channel his energy, may well lash out internationally. And Congress, even if controlled by Democrats, will have little power over his day-to-day management of foreign policy.
I’m really afraid he’ll do more stupid things before his time runs out.
The U.S. Is Bullying Europe Like Never Before
Americans once promoted democracy in Europe as a political system, and under that general understanding accepted all elected politicians of the center-left and center-right as legitimate. This administration and its adjacent business elite are now pursuing a different policy. In some cases, they promote the interests of parties that they believe to be ideologically aligned with the MAGA movement, including some that are openly pro-Russian. Other European political figures seem to have gained Washington’s blessing (or are trying to gain it) because they can promote commercial interests favored by someone close to the administration. In at least three cases, Americans have reportedly tried to persuade elected European leaders to dump their current coalition partners in favor of new ones more to the White House’s liking.
Europe really wants the USA be a trusted partner again - and one who stays out of our domestic politics.
The masculinity midterms
The conservative ideal of masculinity was perhaps best encapsulated by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s state of the force address in September, where he declared the department would no longer be the “woke” or “weak” department with a Dr. Seuss-ian definition: “No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos. No wimps. No radicals.”
He went on to declare: “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in — with testosterone testing on top.”
Trump’s closing message of the 2026 midterm elections also focused on how people presented themselves and conventional ideas of attractiveness as opposed to what voters really cared about: He kept telling voters to look at people’s asses. He most frequently lauded the derrière of GOP Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio, who lost his race on Tuesday notwithstanding, and said rapper and recent MAGA convert Nicki Minaj had “a beautiful ass” at a rally in Michigan.
Finally. I never understood why anyone could get by with this kind of behavior.
‘I Have Seen the Enemy, and It Is Us’: Inside Team Trump’s Historic Collapse
The scale of the defeat was far from inevitable.
Republicans had record fund-raising, the world’s richest man, a favorable Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance and a demoralized, unpopular opposition.
In the Senate, they had a map that required Democrats to compete in states they hadn’t won in decades.
And in the House, the Trump team demolished the tradition of redrawing congressional lines only once a decade in order to carve up new districts to help the G.O.P. bolster its narrow majority.
What Republicans could not overcome was a president who lost the public’s trust on the economy and so much more. And what they had not counted on was an unpopular war in the Middle East — one that would close the Strait of Hormuz and push gas prices past $4 a gallon — that would rage all the way through the election.
It’s so awesome that all the money Elon Musk and others poured into Republican campaigns didn’t succeed at all.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico