Dallas, Texas – Tuesday’s midterms were bruising for Republicans in Texas, a longtime right-wing stronghold.
The state elected its first Democrats to statewide office in 32 years, and the left-wing party held onto four congressional districts that were recently redesigned to favour Republicans.
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But Republicans had one redistricting bright spot in a sea of unexpected defeats in Texas this midterm election cycle.
Amid the so-called blue wave, Republican Jace Yarbrough defeated Dan Barrios in Texas’s 32nd congressional district near Dallas, taking control of a heavily redrawn seat previously held by a Democrat.
Yarbrough became the only Republican this year to flip a Texas congressional seat, despite a push under United States President Donald Trump to shake up the state’s map for the right-wing party’s benefit.
So how did Yarbrough buck the trend? He was successful for two reasons, according to Matthew Wilson, a professor at Southern Methodist University who lives in the 32nd district.
“I think he did effectively pivot from a primary strategy to a general election strategy,” Wilson told Al Jazeera.
A constitutional lawyer, Yarbrough had defined his career by litigating progressive policies. But Wilson explained that the cost of living and other economic concerns took an increasingly prominent role in the final months of Yarbrough’s bid.
“In the primaries, the social issues, cultural issues were really important,” Wilson said.
“But then he pivoted very quickly and realised that those were probably not going to have the same resonance in the fall campaign. And so he did talk a lot about lowering prices. He did talk a lot about things that were of concern more to voters in the centre of the electorate.”
Wilson added there was another important factor in Yarbrough’s victory. “It was just the fact that his district was drawn to be so heavily Republican.”
The 32nd district had previously been composed of left-leaning Dallas and its immediate suburbs, but in August 2025, the Texas state legislature voted to reconfigure the congressional boundaries, with the aim of helping Republicans win five extra seats in this year’s midterms.
That push came at the behest of Trump, who called on Republican-led states across the country to follow suit.
Yarbrough’s district was redrawn to include only a portion of Dallas. It now stretches east instead, to encompass several Republican-dominated counties.
The demographics of the district also shifted dramatically.
In 2024, the district encompassed sizeable Latino, Black and Asian communities, accounting for about 60 percent of the population. The new map lowered the share of those demographics, while including several predominantly white areas.
Still, Wilson pointed out that Yarbrough’s victory was far more muted than initially expected. He won 51.5 percent of the vote to Barrios’s 48.5 percent.
“Even in his case, the race was a lot closer than he would have expected,” Wilson said. “So there was a pretty uniform Democratic swing across congressional districts.”
Latino backlash
With the dust settling on the election, Republicans will start the next congressional term in January with 24 representatives from Texas, losing one seat to Democrats this midterm cycle.
Democrats, who will have commanding control of both chambers of Congress, will have 14 House seats filled by Texans.
The four other Democrat-held districts Texas Republicans hoped to gain via redistricting were swept up in the groundswell of opposition to Trump.
In those districts, the party’s redrawn maps largely miscalculated Latino voters, a demographic that makes up 40 percent of the state’s population and swung towards Trump in 2024, according to political experts.
This year, the demographic tilted back towards Democrats with force, fuelled both by affordability concerns and dismay over Trump’s hardline immigration policies, which disproportionately affect Latino communities.
“In political science, there’s a body of literature we call ‘group threat theory’,” Michael Adams, a professor at Texas Southern University, told Al Jazeera. “When a particular group feels that they are threatened, that mobilises them, and we normally see a higher increase in terms of voter turnout.”
One of the most resounding defeats came in the ninth congressional district in Houston, which for years encompassed an area with large Black and Latino populations. Texas’s newly redrawn map cut out some Black communities but left a large population of low-propensity Latino voters.
Democratic candidate Leticia Gutierrez ended up taking nearly 58 percent of the vote against Republican Alex Mealer.
Speaking to Al Jazeera before the election, Gutierrez said her strategy focused on reaching Latino voters through aggressive Spanish-language outreach focused on pocketbook issues.
“I always say that I have a big chunk of family that are citizens registered to vote, but if they don’t hear it in Spanish, they’re probably not going to show up,” said Gutierrez.
“I’m fortunate enough to be able to speak both languages fairly well, and so just again, doing a lot of that targeted getting out the vote, getting in front of voters, door-knocking.”
Latinos make up about 60 percent of the ninth congressional district. The demographic is even more pronounced in South Texas, where Republicans hoped to pick up the 28th, 34th and 35th districts in their redistricting push.
But in a district representing the suburbs of San Antonio, Democrat Johnny Garcia handily defeated Republican Carlos De La Cruz by more than 10 percentage points.
Along the US-Mexico border, incumbent Democrat Henry Cuellar carried his district with nearly 66 percent of the vote over Republican challenger Tano Tijerina, while in the 34th district, Representative Vicente Gonzalez skated to victory by more than 15 percentage points over Republican challenger Eric Flores.
In another border district, Tejano musician Bobby Pulido, a Democrat, unseated Republican incumbent Monica De La Cruz, whose 2022 victory presaged a wider conservative shift among Latinos in the state.
Two years later, Trump carried nearly every Latino-dominated border district in Texas, seizing on unrest over immigration policies under former President Joe Biden. He also leveraged the prevalence of conservative social views among the largely Catholic population.
The area had long been considered a Democratic stronghold.
“Democrats are very conservative here. So I’m not surprised that it went for Trump in 2024,” 37-year-old voter Donato Medina told Al Jazeera from the border city of McAllen before the vote.
“But now it’s like people are kind of waking up, because his policies are affecting them directly.”
Just after 11 on election night, Nithya Raman took the stage in a plum-colored dress outshined only by her smile.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a narrow lead in early returns. But to Raman and her supporters who packed the plaza in front of the Greek Theatre, they had already won.
A blue deluge had swept across the U.S. to clear out the MAGA status quo that has gaslit Americans for too long. The clueless Republican ruling class’ only defense was that the liberal alternative was worse than the crap President Trump fed Americans while calling it apple pie.
Los Angeles is as blue as the Pacific, yet the same anti-establishment wave, fueled by voters frustrated with the high cost of living and a mayor who face-planted during crisis after crisis, had crashed hard here. Raman, a City Council member, was standing on its crest.
A campaign that started on the last possible day, dismissed by rivals as amateurish and given little chance to succeed against an incumbent with decades of experience and the support of nearly the entire L.A. Democratic establishment, was poised to win. Raman, 45, was expected to pull ahead as more ballots from younger, left-leaning Angelenos were counted.
Standing before Raman was the coalition that made her unlikely rise happen — one that, despite the obvious differences between L.A. and heartland politics, paralleled the one that made the Democratic Party’s takeover of the House and Senate possible.
There were the democratic socialists, who embarrassed mainline Democrats in L.A. once again with a blockbuster night for candidates endorsed by the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. In addition to Raman’s strong initial showing, Marissa Roy was ahead in the city attorney’s race, and Angela Gonzales-Torres had a substantial lead in her Eastside congressional matchup against incumbent Jimmy Gomez, a scion of the fabled Eastside Latino machine.
There were young people like Arthur Johnson, a 23-year-old Cal State Northridge student who waited in a long line on campus earlier that day to vote in person, “because I wanted that old-school feeling.” Johnson told me that many of his friends were voting for the first time “because they hate Trump, they hate Karen, and they wanted change, however it came.”
There were Latinos like Eloisa Galindo, 45, of East Los Angeles, who showed me a cellphone video of her hanging a handmade pro-Raman manta — a bedsheet sign — on a freeway bridge over the weekend. In Texas and California, Latino voters turned out in huge numbers, helping to make history in each state by electing one of their own as governor for the first time. Galindo and her fellow members of Eastside Padres Contra la Privatización, a group created to help residents affected by the Lineage warehouse fire, felt that Raman represented a new, better way.
“She paid attention to us, and the mayor didn’t,” Galindo said in Spanish. “We felt discriminated against, we felt forgotten — but Nithya did none of that.”
Galindo and her crew were far in the back but cheered so loud that it practically echoed across Griffith Park. The Four Tops’ ”Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” faded out, and Raman beamed.
L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman dances with her campaign chair, Kathleen Murray, at her election night party on the patio in front of the Greek Theater.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“Do you love Los Angeles?” she exclaimed. “Are you ready for an L.A. that loves you back? Look at the space around you. Look at what we built together.”
Her rousing speech surveyed the course of L.A. history, from its striving immigrants to Cecil B. DeMille to LGBTQ+ history to the creation of San Pedro’s harbor. She tied her campaign to an election year in which voters across America “demanded change” because they were “angry about a broken status quo, and the politicians who failed them over and over again.”
Angelenos, she said, have become convinced “that this is the best that we can do. Our City Hall became a place where we became so used to saying, ‘No,’ we forgot how to say ‘Yes.’”
She decried the “cynicism that started to take over this city, that started to make us believe that L.A.’s problems weren’t just bad, but they were permanent. That L.A.’s best days were behind us.”
Raman praised her supporters for believing in “hope” — for a better city, a better future, but also hope that even the most entrenched longtimer could be brought down by people who were just tired of being told their concerns didn’t matter.
She spoke for about half an hour and apologized for going on so long in the chilly weather — but no forgiveness was needed on a night like this. Supporters cried tears of joy and hugged one another, sharing political news of the city and also the country, as the energy in the crowd further amped up seemingly every half-hour. James Talarico won in Texas! Dr. Abdul El-Sayed took it in Michigan? Mississippi was in play?!
Was the blue wave real? Could it hold against an angry, vengeful Trump? On this night, at least, it would.
“We have shown Los Angeles” that it’s “a city that is worth fighting for every single day of our lives,” Raman said.
She ended her speech by inviting her Indian American family to the stage — parents, brother, husband and twin 10-year-old children. Faces of a new, more progressive America, now likely the First Family of L.A. They descended the stairs together, and then a crush of Raman supporters stopped her for photos and congratulations.
Another Motown classic — “Dancing in the Streets” — blared, a song of freedom and boogie and promise from a previous generation.
Early in Raman’s speech, she asked the crowd for a favor: “Will you all get on the dance floor with me?” Many obliged, joining their leader to shimmy to Selena and other SoCal favorites.
Tomorrow would come the hard part: What to do next. But on this night, Raman and blue America would dance.
A few hours later, with more votes counted, she was ahead of Bass.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged fellow Democrats to ‘fulfill promises’ after sweeping wins in midterm elections nationwide. Mamdani says voters are looking for economic solutions amid rising costs in housing and food.
The Democratic Party’s historic blowout of its Republican opponents in yesterday’s mid-term elections is extremely likely to result in a slew of high-profile Trump administration programs and initiatives getting put under the microscope and slashed. In the defense arena, the nuclear-powered Trump class battleship is likely the biggest target of opportunity for the new majority in the House and Senate.
A rendering of a Trump class battleship. White House/USN
To provide some quick additional context, Democrats are now set to take firm control of both chambers of Congress in January. This will give the party immense sway over how defense and other federal spending is authorized and appropriated, as well as how broader policy is set.
Control of key committees that oversee the U.S. military and its budgets will also change hands. Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington state Democrat, could be in line now to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut, may be similarly poised to head up the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee. Smith and Courtney have both been particularly outspoken critics of the Trump class battleship already.
President Donald Trump speaks at the rollout of the Trump class battleship program at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in December 2025. Daniel Torok/White House
“We need an appropriate mix of high-end survivable systems and lower-cost attritable capabilities, not a fleet of nuclear-powered battleships as proposed by the President,” Rep. Smith wrote in a letter to Democratic Party colleagues just today, which has now leaked online. The missive’s main thrust was to call for support for him returning to the role of Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in January.
“I think the Democrats will make a broad effort to remove Trump branding from Washington,” Mark Cancian, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel who is now a senior adviser with the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) think tank, also told TWZ. “The Trump battleship is likely doomed both because of the branding and because the program is extremely expensive and weakly justified.”
“The battleship program was in stormy seas before the midterm elections, because it was premised on a strategy that ran counter to a decade long bipartisan effort to distribute maritime lethality,” Mark Montgomery, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank, told us, as well. “Compounding this challenge was the fantastically high cost per battleship, equating to as many as 10 Arleigh Burke class Destroyers for one battleship – a terrible trade off.”
Montgomery is of the view that, “given the midterm election results, the battleship program is now aground and taking on water.”
The current state of the Trump class battleship plan
As it stands now, the Trump class battleship design is a 35,000-ton-displacement warship that is expected to boast a wide array of weapons, as well as advanced sensors and other systems. From what the Navy has said so far, the ship will be able to fire nuclear and conventional missiles, including hypersonic types, from several very large Vertical Launch System (VLS) arrays. Its armament package is also set to include an electromagnetic railgun and a pair of traditional 5-inch naval guns. Several classes of laser directed energy weapons, as well as other weapon systems for close-in defense, are to be fitted, as well.
An annotated graphic highlighting various capabilities set to be found on the Trump class design. Note that the mention here of “28 Mk 41 VLS” cells appears to be a typo, as other official information from the US Navy says the ships will have 128 such cells. USN via USNI News
The Navy has previously outlined plans to order at least 15 Trump class battleships between Fiscal Years 2029 and 2055. The first one, currently set to be named the USS Defiant, is not expected to enter service until 2036.
A look at the future USS John F. Kennedy, the second Ford class carrier for the US Navy. HII
From the start, TWZ has raised detailed questions about the actual viability of the Trump class design, as it has been described to date. This includes the ability of these warships to conduct independent operations, as well as the value of employing them in this way. At least right now, the Navy only plans to acquire a very small number of these ships, each of which can only be in one place at one time, and that would be top targets for adversaries in future conflicts.
The Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Jack H. Lucas, which was the first example of the latest Flight III subclass to be commissioned into US Navy service. USN
Nuclear shipbuilding presents additional challenges. There are currently only two shipyards qualified to build nuclear-powered vessels of any kind in the United States, and only one supplier of naval reactors. This part of the naval industrial base is already heavily committed to building aircraft carriers and submarines. This includes new Columbia class nuclear ballistic missile submarines, the on-schedule delivery of which is critical to national security, but that also faces potential risks.
Naval nuclear reactor components for the future Ford class aircraft carrier USS Doris Miller. BWXT
Bipartisan pushback already to Trump’s battleships
For its part, the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee has already demanded that the Secretary of the Navy outline what the service is doing to ensure the battleship program will not disrupt carrier and submarine production. Rep. Courtney was the one to call for this report, which is due no later than March 1, 2027.
Earlier this year, the Republicans in the House also allowed the passage of a version of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for Fiscal Year 2027, with a key provision related to the Trump class battleship. Section 131 would block any work on the future USS Defiant until the Navy provides assurances that key weapon systems are “sufficiently mature.” Efforts to pass a final version of the Fiscal Year 2027 NDAA have since stalled in the Senate over non-battleship-related issues.
A rendering of the first planned Trump class battleship, the USS Defiant, firing a variety of different missiles, guns, and other weapons. USN
In July, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a formal Statement of Administration Policy regarding the House’s version of the NDAA that included explicit opposition to Section 131 among other criticisms of the bill’s contents.
TWZ has pointed out on several occasions in the past that plans for the Trump class battleships could change dramatically given the lengthy schedule for the program. As mentioned, the USS Defiant is not expected to be delivered until 2036, well after the end of Trump’s second term, which will come to an end in January 2029.
There is still the possibility the battleship program could be reformulated in various ways rather than outright cancelled. Work on specific components, such as the railgun, might potentially be redirected to other programs.
A picture showing the prototype electromagnetic railgun at the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico being fired during a test. USN
“Any money allocated to the program will be for research or long term parts ordering that could just as easily support a next generation destroyer effort rather than the battleship,” FDD’s Montgomery also told us. “The battleship program itself probably can’t be killed until Trump leaves office, but all involved need to ensure that it does minimal damage to other Navy program efforts as it sinks to the bottom.”
“The Navy still needs the capabilities resident in the proposed battleship,” Brent Sadler, Senior Research Fellow for Naval Warfare and Advanced Technology at the Allison Center for National Security within The Heritage Foundation think tank, also argued in response to queries from TWZ. “The name – Trump class – likely won’t survive but the ship will.”
Sadler added that, in his view, what is really “needed is a national shipbuilding industrial plan that includes upgrading shipyard capacity to build the needed large surface warship.”
New pressure from Congress likely to go beyond battleships
The future prospects of other high-profile Trump administration defense initiatives are also very likely to at least see new scrutiny in the next year. Beyond battleships, the President has notably injected himself directly into other aspects of future naval shipbuilding plans as part of a larger effort dubbed the Golden Fleet.
In August, Trump released a memo titled “Rebuilding the United States Navy and America’s Shipbuilding Industrial Base” that called for, in part, the drawing up of plans for installing steam-powered catapults and hydraulic elevators on the future Ford class aircraft carrier USS Doris Miller. The President has long been a critic of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) catapults and Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE) that are central to the Ford class design. EMALS and AWE have been a persistent source of reliability and maintenance issues over the years, but going back to steam and hydraulics would be a costly and risky undertaking, as TWZ has previously explored in detail.
President Donald Trump descends to the hangar deck of the US Navy’s Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS George Washington during a visit to the ship in October 2025. White House
Reports later in August also said Trump was pushing the Navy to physically reposition the island superstructure on the Ford class on aesthetic grounds. The President has been very vocal over the years about what he thinks warships should and should not look like.
The Golden Dome missile defense initiative is another potential area where the new Democrat-led Congress could clash with the administration. The full scale and scope of the Golden Dome plan, as well as its cost, remain very murky. In August, U.S. Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, the top officer in charge of the initiative, warned that work could come grinding to a halt if key budgetary hurdles were not overcome.
Lockheed Martin
The leaked letter from Rep. Smith makes clear that many more programs and policy issues, as well as defense spending writ large, are set to be put under the microscope when the Democrats take control of Congress in the new year. The Trump administration continues to pursue a roughly $1.5 trillion defense budget for Fiscal Year 2027, which includes some $350 billion that would come from outside normal defense spending streams via a process called reconciliation.
“We must thoroughly review our national defense strategy and develop a more realistic and sustainable approach that does not require a defense budget in excess of $1 trillion or paid for through draconian cuts to critical domestic programs,” Rep. Smith wrote in his ‘dear colleagues’ letter today.
“President Trump has outlined a bold vision to restore American maritime dominance and construct a Golden Dome to protect our homeland and our citizens,” Deputy White House Press Secretary Anna Kelly told TWZ when asked about concerns about the fate of certain defense programs following the mid-term election results. “President Trump will work with anyone to protect the United States from threats abroad – if Democrats oppose these critical projects, they are playing politics at the expense of our national security.”
Asked to confirm her comments included the Trump class ships, Kelly added that these remarks also extended to the realm of “maritime dominance.”
It is still far too early to know the full extent of the fallout from this year’s mid-term elections on the U.S. government’s defense and other priorities. When it comes to the Trump class battleship, the program’s course had already looked increasingly uncertain before this massive shift in the political winds, and it looks one heck of a lot more precarious now.
WASHINGTON — Latino voters, whose swing to the right aided President Trump’s election in 2024, helped Democrats reclaim both chambers of Congress on Tuesday in a stunning reversal of support for Republicans.
The shift, which transpired nationwide but was especially pronounced in Texas, is seen as a rebuke of the president and his party by a group of Americans who have watched as their families and neighbors were detained by immigration agents while their cost of living shot up.
“President Trump asked voters to pretend like he was on the ballot, and our observation is that Latino voters did just by that, resoundingly rejecting his extreme policies and actions and anyone who rubber-stamped them,” said Janet Murguía, president of UnidosUS, a Washington-based Latino civil rights and advocacy group.
“While the numbers are still coming in, what we know so far indicates that this will undoubtedly be the largest turnout of Latino voters ever in a midterm election,” she added.
UnidosUS on Wednesday released findings from a poll, conducted by the Los Angeles-based analytics firm BSP Research, of more than 3,000 Latinos who voted in the midterm elections. The findings showed many Latinos are independent, swing voters — 17% of 2024 Trump voters supported Democratic House candidates in this election.
Gary Segura, president of BSP Research, said on a call Wednesday with Murguía and reporters that Latino voters returned this election to historic patterns, with about two-thirds voting for Democrats and one-third voting Republican.
In 2024, Trump won more than 40% of Latino votes, many motivated by his promises to reduce prices.
This year, cost of living and inflation are by far Latino voters’ top concerns, the poll found, with more than half citing food and grocery costs as particular burdens and saying they have no money left over each month or struggle to pay bills.
Immigration was also a factor, with 90% of Latino voters supporting a balanced immigration system and a quarter of them naming ICE and immigration reform as among their top three issues, following cost of living.
“The Republican candidates on the ballot yesterday were really struggling to swim upstream against an administration with this kind of disapproval across issues,” Segura said.
GOP strategist Giancarlo Sopo said right-wing echo chambers didn’t understand that when Latinos hear “criminal illegals” they picture gang members or people who evaded Border Patrol.
“But the vast majority of immigrants without legal status did not swim the Rio Grande,” he wrote in a post on social media. “Conflating people who sneak in with asylum applicants and visa overstayers working through a labyrinthine system is turning off Hispanics.”
In Texas, voters in majority-Latino districts near San Antonio and along the border helped Democrats break Republicans’ longstanding grip on the state to win the races for governor, lieutenant governor and senator. James Talarico’s victory against Republican Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton marks the first time a Democrat has won a Senate seat in Texas since 1988.
NBC exit polling shows that 61% of Latino men, with whom Trump had made particular inroads, voted for Talarico.
Among those casting his ballot was Ronaldo Salgado, the son of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Houston. He told MSNOW on Monday that he had placed his “I Voted” sticker on a memorial dedicated to his father.
“I always vote with my parents in mind, with my family in mind, but this year’s vote is definitely with much heavier weight on it,” he said. “I cried as I was casting my vote because I was doing it in honor of my dad.”
Bobby Pulido, a South Texas Tejano singer whose campaign strategy included performing at quinceañeras, beat Republican incumbent Rep. Monica De La Cruz by more than 20 percentage points. De La Cruz was among the battleground Republicans to warn the White House that ICE should focus on criminals and not law-abiding people.
Latino voters told the BSP Research pollsters that both parties, but especially Democrats, reached out to them more in this election cycle than in the past.
Even in districts where Democrats did not prevail, Latino votes made some races tight. In Florida, where Republican Sen. Ashley Moody narrowly won reelection and Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar holds a slim lead, Latinos also shifted left.
Doral, a municipality near Miami with the highest concentration of Venezuelans in the country, favored Trump in 2024 by 23 percentage points over Vice President Kamala Harris. On Tuesday, Doral voters chose Moody’s competitor, Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, by 3 percentage points.
Nationally, about 6 in 10 Latino voters opted for the Democratic candidate in their local House race, according to an Associated Press exit poll.
The midterm was also pivotal for Latino representation among elected officials.
In the two states with the most Latino residents, Gina Hinojosa became the first Latina elected governor in Texas, and Xavier Becerra is California’s first Latino governor in more than 150 years.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus announced that it will have at least 55 members in the new Congress, making it the largest membership in the caucus’s 50-year history.
“Our representation is growing, our voices are stronger, and no one can afford to take Latino voters for granted,” caucus leaders wrote in a statement.
But representation alone won’t cut it, said Julián Castro, chief executive of the Latino Community Foundation. Latinos will look to how their votes translate into policy changes that benefit those who trusted the leaders they helped elect.
“What are they going to do about affordability?” he said on the call with UnidosUS. “What are they going to do about corruption and rooting that out? What are they going to do about ending ICE abuse and cruelty and pursuing a more balanced approach on immigration?”
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), who is likely to become the next chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, acknowledged the responsibility that Democrats have.
“One of the big stories coming out of tonight is the enormous swing that Latino voters are now re-entrusting Democrats on,” he told MeidasTouch News. “…We have to deliver on taking on ICE. We have to deliver on passing real immigration solutions and reform.”
Democratic voters danced as they celebrated Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan. Al Jazeera’s Mikail Malik spoke to supporters in Detroit hailing the election of the first Muslim to the US Senate.
Shocked Republicans in Texas are trying to make sense of how they lost the Senate to the Democrats for the first time in almost 40 years. Al Jazeera’s Emma Withrow spoke to Ken Paxton supporters, some of whom blame Trump and now fear political retribution.
Blue Badge holders travelling in Europe can now park in a major holiday hotspot, thanks to an agreement between the Department for Transport and Ministry of Disabilities
Milo Boyd Deputy Travel Editor & Commercial Writer and Ryan Price
10:14, 28 Oct 2026
The disabled parking permit assists people with severe mobility issues or hidden disabilities to park nearer to their destinations.(Image: Tosh Lubek via Getty Images)
British holidaymakers with Blue Badges can now use it in a major holiday hotspot. The disabled parking permit assists people with severe mobility issues or hidden disabilities to park nearer to their destinations. It covers both drivers and passengers.
Now the Department of Transport has struck a deal with Italian authorities so the paperwork can be used in the boot-shaped country.
It builds on a similar arrangement agreed with France, where Brits have been using their permits since August last year. Work is ongoing with Spain to explore similar arrangements for Blue badge holders. Italian visitors travelling to the UK will also benefit, with Italy’s disabled parking permits to be recognised here.
Roads Minister Justin Madders said: “Disabled people shouldn’t have to worry about whether their parking permit will be recognised when travelling abroad. These new arrangements with Italy mean Blue Badge holders can relax and enjoy their trip, with easier access to reserved parking and exemptions from charges, whether they’re travelling for a holiday, visiting family or for work.”
Do you have a travel story to share? Email webtravel@reachplc.com
The definitive status of Blue Badge recognition across European Union nations – together with key neighbouring non-EU countries – falls into several distinct categories.
The Blue Badge is fully or partially recognised in the following countries:
Austria — Fully
Belgium —Fully
Croatia — Fully
Cyprus — Fully
Czech Republic — Fully
Denmark — Fully
Estonia — Fully
Finland — Fully
France — Fully
Germany —Fully
Greece — Accepts non-EU parking cards
Hungary — Fully
Iceland — Accepts non-EU parking cards
Ireland — Fully
Italy —Fully
Latvia — Fully
Liechtenstein — Fully
Lithuania —Fully
Luxembourg — Accepts non-EU parking cards
Malta — Fully
Netherlands — Fully
Norway — Fully
Poland — Fully
Portugal —Fully
Romania —Fully
Slovakia — Fully
Slovenia — May not recognise non-EU-issued parking cards
Spain (including Balearic and Canary Isles) — UK Blue Badge recognition decided by local administrations
Sweden — Fully
Switzerland — Fully
The DfT cautions that even in nations where the badge is recognised, disabled parking regulations can shift quickly or differ between towns. To steer clear of hefty penalties or vehicle removal, travellers should consult local tourist information centres or local authorities before departing.
Certain countries demand a local parking notice or clock disc be shown alongside the Blue Badge. The DfT also suggests carrying a doctor’s letter or a translated version of your Blue Badge, particularly when entering countries with stricter enforcement policies.
When parking you should always:
look for any signage indicating disabled parking spaces
make sure that your Blue Badge is displayed correctly and that you comply with any additional requirements, such as displaying a parking disc in countries such as Denmark
And, for the first time since 2010, a Democrat may soon be sitting in the governor’s office in more than half the 50 states. As recently as 2017, just 16 of them had Democratic governors — the lowest number in nearly a century.
There are, however, exceptions to every political trend, outliers in every election, a contest that zigs when races just about everywhere else are zagging.
And yet the state’s Democratic governor, Tina Kotek, is on the defensive as she fights for a second term in November, burdened by a dismal approval rating and a sense that things have been pretty lousy in Oregon under her leadership.
The state “hasn’t thrived in the last decade, and certainly hasn’t thrived since COVID, the way other states have,” said John Horvick, one of Oregon’s leading independent pollsters.
Kotek, a former speaker of the state House — and a highly effective lawmaker in that role — made some very concrete promises.
“She was going to build 36,000 new homes. She was going to improve our educational outcomes and make improvements to behavioral health in the state,” Horvick said. “Voters give her poor marks on all those.”
Gov. Tina Kotek speaks to opponents of data center development during a demonstration at the state Capitol in Salem, Ore., on Sept. 8, 2026.
(Alex Milan Tracy / Sipa USA / Associated Press)
The Democrat still remains the favorite to win reelection. Oregon’s gubernatorial races tend to be closer than presidential contests and voters have been shown a reluctance to heave their governor from office, even when they tell pollsters they’re not happy with the incumbent or the state of their state.
“We watch this movie every four years in Oregon, where it looks really, really close and then, in the end, the Democrat wins,” said Kari Chisholm, a political strategist in Portland.
That may happen again. But Kotek’s travails show the perils of incumbency this angry election season, even for a Democratic swimming with a blue tide.
Thirty-six states are electing governors in November. Most of the contests lean toward one party or the other, like in California, where Democrat Xavier Becerra appears a shoo-in to replace Gavin Newsom.
But a dozen races are at least somewhat competitive, including toss-ups in Georgia, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin. All of the hardest-fought contests are in states that Trump carried in 2024 — several by double-digits — with Oregon being the lone exception.
Kotek, who’s been rated one of the least popular governors in America, is facing a rematch against Christine Drazan, a former GOP state House leader who now serves in the state Senate. In 2022, she lost narrowly lost to Kotek, 47% to 44%, in a three-way contest.
Unlike four years ago, Kotek has a gubernatorial record to defend and the case Drazan makes against her is succinct.
“Tina Kotek told Oregonians that she would solve the problems and challenges facing our state,” Drazan said in the candidates’ first debate this month. “She hasn’t.”
In a recent Fox News interview, Drazan elaborated.
“We have record high businesses that have gone out of business, bankruptcies, businesses that are leaving, family bankruptcies are at an all-time high,” Drazan said, exaggerating some. “Oregon is uniquely bad right now. It’s not a national issue, it’s here at home.”
Further distancing herself from the Republican brand, Drazan has undergone a distinct makeover since winning the GOP primary in May. “Tough. Tested. Conservative,” is no longer the descriptive shorthand she uses on her campaign website. Now it’s “Mom. Public Servant. Champion for All.”
Drazan’s revised campaign biography also omits her opposition to various Democratic-backed policies, such as gun control, and her culture-warrior vow to “protect girls’ sports and keep men out of their locker rooms.” Instead, the Oregonian newspaper noted, her emphasis is now affordability and relatability.
Despite that, Kotek has continued wielding her sharpest-pronged political weapon, tying Drazan — an “out-of-touch MAGA extremist,” in her campaign’s parlance — to the unpopular president.
“I think we all know that there have been a lot of challenges facing our state and they’re still coming at us because of the confusion and disruption coming from Washington, D.C.,” Kotek said during the candidates’ third and final debate last week. “It’s just a fact. It’s upending who we are as a state and it is … making it harder for us to solve the problems that we have ahead of us.”
Passing the buck and pointing her finger is not exactly a message of triumph, uplift and achievement, but it may be enough to win Kotek a second term.
