breaking

WASHINGTON — Rep. Richard Hudson wanted a triumphant return to Capitol Hill this week after steering Republicans to another majority. Instead, the North Carolina Republican is facing the reality that he and dozens of colleagues will soon clear out their offices.

“It was really people coming out to send a message,” Hudson, the chair of the House GOP’s campaign arm, said in a brief interview. “They, rightly so, felt gas was too high, things were too expensive.”

“The mistake Republicans made,” he said, “is we didn’t convey to them that we cared about that and cared about them.”

Back in Washington this week for the first time since the GOP’s sweeping midterm losses, Republicans were in something of a daze. Even as they acknowledged the depth of their defeat, there was little appetite for a wholesale break from President Trump.

Instead, they met behind closed doors to talk about what went wrong. And they scrutinized the calendar to figure out how to push through as much of their agenda as possible before Democrats assume control of the House and the Senate in January.

There’s little appetite for a full break with Trump

There was widespread frustration that Republicans who were awarded full control of the White House and Congress just two years earlier had lost touch with voters.

“You cut rural healthcare spending, when you abandon pro-lifers, when you abandon the poor, when you abandon the needy, when you abandon working people, you’re gonna get your butt kicked,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who unsuccessfully sought to delay his party’s leadership elections in the Senate. “And you’re gonna deserve it.”

“We collectively failed,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who is trailing her Democratic challenger in a district that Republicans carried by more than 18 percentage points in 2024.

“It’s very clear,” she said. “The American people let us know we have failed in this governing experience for this Congress.”

The anger is sharp in part because of the rosy predictions from top Republicans ahead of the election. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who is also trailing a Democratic rival, said people kept telling her she couldn’t lose. But she knew otherwise.

“I couldn’t get anybody to listen to me,” she said. “People just didn’t think it could happen, but we knew it could.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) spent the final stretch of the campaign rejecting the historic headwinds that often befall a president’s party during a midterm. He toured the country, insisting the polls were wrong and Republicans would retain their majority even as some incumbents were skeptical.

Back on Capitol Hill this week, Johnson said voters made the “wrong choice” as Democrats flipped more than 40 Republican-held seats. That puts the Democrats on track to hold the most robust majority since the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The House and the Senate take different approaches

Republicans, meanwhile, are weighing how to proceed, balancing calls for moderation against an impulse for hard-line positions that might reenergize the party’s base. Each chamber took different tracks, previewing divisions that may lie ahead.

In the House, the Republicans who will remain in Washington next year largely represent staunchly conservative districts where Trump remains popular. Their decision to elect Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan as their next leader reflected a fighting stance.

Jordan is a cofounder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, currently chairs the Judiciary Committee and has previously chaired the Oversight Committee. From those positions, he’s waged heated fights against Democrats and become a top Trump ally.

“The way that Jim fights says a lot about where this conference is,” said Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.).

In the Senate, the desire for combat was less intense.

The question for Republicans there was less about whether they would stick with John Thune of South Dakota as their leader than when they would make that decision. Hawley and a small group of conservatives spent hours huddled with Republicans in the Old Senate Chamber arguing for a delay in leadership elections to allow the party to consider alternative candidates.

But the problem was that no one would come forward to offer themselves as an alternative to Thune, who has faced criticism from Trump at times for his refusal to abandon Senate rules to make it easier to pass conservative legislation.

“It’s a bad job,” Hawley said.

After hours of deliberation, Republicans ultimately backed Thune without so much as a voice vote.

“We’re going to let our leader be the leader,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who was also elected to lead the party’s effort to regain seats in the 2028 election.

GOP unites to protect Hegseth

Perhaps the biggest question for Republicans going forward is how to manage their relationship with Trump, whose policies on trade and the war in Iran helped contribute to their losses. He’s in the last two years of his second term, and the election defeats have raised stark questions about the durability of his Make America Great Again movement.

But there was no rush to distance themselves from the president as House Republicans, even those who have been critical of his administration, overwhelmingly blocked an effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Only Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who led the push alongside Democrats, broke ranks.

“What I found out tonight is they still haven’t broken from the spell of Donald Trump,” Massie said after the vote. “He still controls this conference.”

When asked whether the election was a referendum on Trump, Thune said the results stemmed from “a combination of things,” refusing to directly blame the president for contributing to the party’s challenges.

Signs of Trump’s influence

But there were signs that Trump’s influence had limits.

Few echoed his argument in a social media post this week that there were problems with the election. In conceding a closely fought Senate contest in Mississippi, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said she would “respect the decision” of voters.

Several Republicans, including Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Tim Scott of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas and Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, posted pictures of Democrats who will either succeed them or soon represent their states, harkening to an earlier era of postelection unity.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky pushed back against White House warnings to congressional Democrats that planned probes of the Trump administration could amount to “blatant criminality.” Comer, who oversaw extensive investigations of Democratic President Biden and his family as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said lawmakers have a role in holding any White House accountable.

“Regardless of who is in the White House, there’s always going to be a strong desire for the Oversight Committee to be a check and balance on the executive branch, regardless of the political scenario,” Comer said.

Sloan, Cappelletti and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

Actor Barbara Barrie, best known for films in which she elevated the role of Mom — including her Oscar-nominated turn in “Breaking Away” (1979) — died Wednesday in her Manhattan home. She was 95.

Barrie’s death was confirmed to the L.A. Times by the actor’s representatives, who said it was medically assisted. Her daughter, Jane Harnick, told the New York Times that her mother’s death followed a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Barrie’s representatives said in a statement to the L.A. Times that the actor was a proponent and advocate of New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act, a law that took effect on Aug. 5.

Born Barbara Berman in Chicago in 1931, Barrie and her family moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, where she attended Del Mar College. She would later transfer to the University of Texas, where she received multiple awards for drama.

After graduation, she took her acting dreams to the Big Apple, where she made her Broadway debut in the 1955 play “The Wooden Dish.” Throughout her career, Barrie starred in various Broadway productions, among them “The Selling of the President” (1972), “California Suite” (1976) and, most notably, the 1970 musical “Company,” by Stephen Sondheim, for which she received a Tony Award nomination for featured actress in a musical.

Her last Broadway stint was in 2017 in the original role of Helene Berman in the Joshua Harmon play “Significant Other.”

Barrie extended her acting expertise beyond the stage, however, making her first television appearance on “Kraft Television Theater” in 1955. A year later, she made her film debut, albeit uncredited, in the western epic “Giant” while she was in Texas visiting her family.

With more than 120 credits to her name, Barrie began appearing in popular TV shows in the 1950s and ’60s, such as “Naked City,” “The Twilight Zone,” “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “The Nurses” and more. Later TV credits included “Barney Miller” and “Suddenly Susan,” where she played an on-screen grandmother to Brooke Shields.

Her first major film role came in 1964, when she played divorcée Julie Cullen Richards in “One Potato, Two Potato.” She portrayed a white woman who falls in love with a Black man, Frank Richards (played by Bernie Hamilton). The film was released during a time when interracial marriage was not yet legalized nationwide. Barrie earned a Cannes Film Festival Award for the performance.

The actor went on to star as the mom Evelyn Stroller in the 1979 coming-of-age comedy-drama “Breaking Away,” which earned her an Academy Award nomination for supporting actress, and later an Emmy nomination when she reprised the role for the 1980 television series.

Other film credits include 1980’s “Private Benjamin,” 1997’s “Hercules” (where she voiced Alcmene, Hercules’ mortal mother) and 1999’s “Judy Berlin.” According to her IMDb profile, her last credit was in 2025 for the queer romantic comedy “Things Like This.”

In 1994, Barrie was diagnosed with rectal cancer, prompting her to raise awareness about the disease. She published two books on the matter, including “Second Act,” a 1997 memoir about resolute optimism and acceptance, and “Don’t Die of Embarrassment: Life After Colostomy and Other Adventures,” a 1999 memoir where she dives deep into her diagnosis and experience with a colostomy procedure.

Barrie married actor, director and producer Jay Harnick in 1964. He died in 2007. The two are survived by their children, Jane and Aaron.