Trumps

WASHINGTON — Republicans aren’t holding back.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described last week’s elections as an “extinction-level event” for the GOP. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas likened it to a “Watergate-level repudiation.” Former Vice President Mike Pence called it a “reckoning.”

For all the apocalyptic talk emerging from a midterm that relegated Republicans to their thinnest ranks on Capitol Hill in decades, there’s little agreement on how the party should move forward.

A return to the bedrock fiscal and national security conservatism that defined Republicans under President Reagan risks alienating the more hard-line conservatives welcomed into the party under President Trump under the “Make America Great Again” banner.

But leaning even further into Trump’s coarse brand of politics could lead to more voter rejection.

“We have soul-searching to do,” Alex Latcham, the executive director of the Senate Leadership Fund, which spent $810 million to support Republicans, said in an interview. “We need to first understand and honestly admit why we just endured a wipeout of this magnitude. And then we have to regroup and agree to a path forward.”

Questions about Trump’s future role

As has been the case for the last decade, the central question is the role Trump will play in shaping the party’s future. His insistence on loyalty reached a zenith this year as he intervened in GOP primaries and pressed voters to make the elections a referendum on his second term. He held dozens of rallies in the final weeks of the campaign for candidates, most of whom lost their races.

Since Tuesday’s election, he’s refused to acknowledge any responsibility, placing blame on the candidates. His public events have focused on his pet projects in Washington, which have proved unpopular with voters. On Friday, he elevated Stephen Miller, the advisor behind some of his most contentious policies, to White House chief of staff.

In an interview, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, said that the election results were “shocking” but that Trump could still steer the conversation around issues such as immigration. The governor described the GOP’s current dynamic as a natural process for a party whose leader is deep into his second term.

“It just tells you that the American people, after 10 years, they’re pretty much tired of whoever’s in office,” Stitt said. “I think people want a little more stability. They want people to be nice to people, to say, ‘Hey, we’re all Americans.’”

Others were more blunt.

Longtime conservative commentator Tucker Carlson — for many years a Trump acolyte — said the midterms marked “the end of the Trump era.” John Sununu, a Republican who lost his bid for a Senate seat in New Hampshire, blamed Trump.

“It seems like he or his family is in on every transaction and deal that goes on in Washington,” Sununu told John Kasich, a Republican former governor of Ohio and onetime presidential candidate, on SiriusXM. “Those two things, I think, caused people to say, ‘You know, I just can’t vote for a Republican while he’s still in office.’”

Republican infighting likely to intensify

The GOP infighting is poised to intensify quickly.

When Republicans return to Capitol Hill this week, they’ll have to choose between Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio to lead the new minority in the House. They may weigh whether to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. There could also be tough votes on defense spending and keeping the federal government open after Dec. 11.

Already a leadership fight is brewing at the Republican National Committee, where there are early conversations about limiting Trump’s influence in picking the next chair. KC Crosbie, the co-chair, circulated a letter last week calling the midterms a “serious setback” and announcing plans to run for chair at the committee’s January meeting in Arizona.

Trump announced his support Friday for the party’s current chair, Joe Gruters.

That’s to say nothing of the emerging contest for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination. Vice President JD Vance, seen as a leading contender, will probably face a broad range of opponents if he enters the race. Stitt is among the Republicans calling for a “big open primary.”

“I don’t think we should crown anybody,” he said.

There will be pressure to revive the coalition of voters, particularly Latinos, who have lifted the party to success in previous elections but swung to Democrats on Tuesday. Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) said he thought Secretary of State Marco Rubio is best positioned to win back Latinos.

“The two main constituencies that Republicans have to quickly regain are white suburban voters and Hispanic voters,” Curbelo said in an interview. “Vance was out on the campaign trail this year, and it doesn’t appear that he was able to move the needle in terms of Hispanic voters.”

A representative for Vance didn’t comment on that characterization.

Broad election fallout

Still, the fallout for the GOP is broad, according to the AP Voter Poll, an expansive survey of about 80,000 voters in all 50 states.

Younger Republican voters who supported the Republican candidate in their House race were less likely to approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, and more likely to say he worsened the economy with his policies.

About two-thirds of Republican voters under 30 said they approved of how Trump was handling the presidency, compared with about 9 in 10 Republican voters age 65 and older. About one-third of younger GOP voters said Trump had worsened the country’s economic conditions, compared with about 2 in 10 older Republican voters.

The war with Iran also appeared to divide Republican voters, with about 6 in 10 Republican voters under 45 saying the U.S. made the right decision in taking military action against Iran. That rose to about 8 in 10 among Republican voters who were 45 and older.

Young Republican voters were more likely to say U.S. support for Israel was “too strong.” Roughly half of Republican voters under 30 said the country’s backing of Israel was “too strong,” compared with about 1 in 10 voters 65 and older.

Despite rosy outlooks from top Republicans including Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in the final weeks of the campaign, Republican strategists had long seen the country’s confidence in the party unraveling.

In late August, the Senate Leadership Fund convened a donor retreat in Laguna Beach, where Latcham told the group that Republicans had lost the confidence of voters on handling the cost of living and the economy, according to two Republican Senate campaign sources who attended the event. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting.

In defeat, Republicans are trying to take a broader view, knowing that it may take several election cycles before they one day return to power.

Rep. Christopher Smith was reelected to his 24th term last week and will soon be New Jersey’s only Republican in Congress. He took a long view on the party’s current struggles.

“The pendulum swings back and forth,” he told reporters. “These are cycles.”

Sloan and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. AP writers Steve Peoples, Kevin Freking and Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

It was the most expensive election in American history: nearly $12bn spent, much of it on advertisements, with the majority of that money going to Republican candidates. But most voters weren’t buying it. The result: a Democratic sweep on a scale not seen in half a century.

In the aftermath of the vote, United States President Donald Trump – who has long revelled in his ability to turn controversy and crisis into spectacle – appeared to lose control of the narrative. The scale of the Republican defeat amounts to a repudiation of Trump’s politics and the US-Israel war on Iran. Meenakshi Ravi and Richard Gizbert examine the political and media fallout.

Contributors: 
Alex Shephard – Senior editor, The New Republic
Rob Arlett – former Trump state campaign chair & Republican strategist
Maya Berry – Executive director, Arab American Institute

On our radar

Serbia’s new political leadership has yet to form a government, but the country’s media institutions are already being purged of voices who gave former president, Aleksandar Vucic, years of favourable coverage. Tariq Nafi looks at the news outlets being held to account.

Equator: a magazine for a post-American world

Equator magazine is the brainchild of a group of writers and editors – some of them ex-mainstream media – who came together during a “moment of moral despair” as they witnessed Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza unfold. One year after its launch, Equator has produced some quality stories and essays on global politics, culture and art – all presented with an eye for design. We speak to cofounder and former Guardian editor, Jonathan Shainin, about the magazine’s vision and how it’s going.

Featuring:
Jonathan Shainin – Founding Editor, Equator magazine

WASHINGTON — In his first public appearance after an election that soundly repudiated his policies, President Trump turned to a topic both familiar and, given the context, surprising: not his policies or politics but his efforts to remake pieces of the city that is the backdrop to his presidency.

Despite Trump’s affinity for project management, though, with Democrats taking control of Congress, the work his administration is doing to change the physical face of the District of Columbia is sure to encounter far more roadblocks than it did for the first two years of his second term.

From the renaming of and renovation plans for the Kennedy Center to remaking a public golf course and erecting an arch 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty without its pedestal, Trump has been deeply involved in how D.C. looks. Democrats have voiced opposition but, in terms of power, have been in the wilderness.

The potential collision point between opposition oversight from Democrats and the Republican president’s preoccupation with the projects was evident in his last message to the American public before the election — and in his first afterward, too.

Both focused to some degree on his projects. On Monday, it was the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial; on Wednesday, it was a tour of the under-construction White House ballroom, where he talked columns and steel beams and Corinthian designs.

The clouds of scrutiny are already gathering

Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee with jurisdiction over the Interior Department that is involved with operations at parks and federal lands, spent much of the past year probing and questioning Trump’s projects, laying the groundwork for this moment.

“We’ve pushed back against vanity projects that seek to transform treasured public spaces into gaudy tributes to Trump. We exposed corruption, uncovered the efforts to hijack America’s 250th birthday, demanded accountability, and offered a compelling alternative governing vision grounded in science, fairness, environmental responsibility, and the rule of law,” Huffman said in a letter to colleagues seeking their support to be chairman.

As chairman with a strong Democratic majority, “I will ensure that the Committee’s full investigative and oversight authority is leveraged to uncover wrongdoing, demand accountability, and protect the public interest,” he said.

Trump has been rushing the various projects, a point Virginia Democratic Rep. Don Beyer made Thursday at a public hearing when he opposed construction of the memorial arch the president has planned in Memorial Circle directly across the Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial.

“The appropriations process beginning Jan. 3 will be controlled by Democrats. That will be one of the ways Congressman Beyer will step in,” said Beyer’s spokesman Aaron Fritschner.

A less appreciated impact will be the change in who names the general counsel of the House. The House Speaker has that role, presumably Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

While Democrats have joined in lawsuits opposing the various projects, their filings don’t carry the weight of Congress as the minority. “You’ll see the new majority pulling back the balance of power that (House Speaker) Mike Johnson was willing to cede,” Fritschner said.

A planning commission hearing for the arch featured dozens of witnesses

Beyer has already been a critic, Fritschner said, and cited other members who have signed on in amicus briefs. More than 120 witnesses were on hand for the National Capital Planning Commission meeting, which ran for 9 ½ hours late into Thursday night.

The commission gave the 250-foot (76-meter) arch its final approval on an 8-4 vote, before a federal judge stepped in before midnight to block the Trump administration from breaking ground for 14 days.

The remote, call-in commission hearing — which crashed repeatedly and was accompanied by a nearly universally negative comment section — drew witnesses who gave impassioned, three-minute comments opposing an arch they said will destroy the solemnity of nearby Arlington National Cemetery.

The Trump-appointed chairman of the commission, however, launched into a gushing appraisal of the towering monument and lauded Trump for wanting to build it.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is considering a motion from three veterans and an architectural historian to stop any work until the lawsuit is resolved. A separate lawsuit filed Saturday by the District of Columbia and Virginia has been consolidated with the existing one. D.C. and Virginia have asked for a temporary restraining order, which Chutkan granted late Thursday with her 14-day delay.

At Wednesday’s ballroom construction site tour, Trump spoke about the ballroom, the East Potomac Golf Links and the National Garden of American Heroes proposed for West Potomac Park and the arch. All four have been, or are currently in, litigation.

One of them, the golf course, has turned into an undertaking beyond the potential construction. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes has said she plans to open a “formal inquiry” to investigate if attorneys for the Trump administration violated ethical boundaries during a legal dispute about that project.

Beyond the courts, Congress is now an added bulwark

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs in several of the lawsuits, said the switch of control means the organizations that have filed lawsuits and challenged the administration will now be joined by Congress.

Organizations like hers will continue challenging the administration in court, she said, but “the important thing now is that the American people now have a tool that’s not just in the courts.”

Added Perryman: “We hope and we anticipate Congress will fulfill its constitutional duty of checking executive branch excesses.” That includes hearings and investigations into funding plans and sources, she said.

Information about estimates for work on the projects has been slim, even in court, with assessments trickling out during testimony in some cases. One number, for example, revolves around the seawall at the golf course, which would exceed $300 million. Congress appropriated $257 million for the renovation of the Kennedy Center.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Another area that could impact the District of Columbia is the change in governorships. Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Nevada all have Democrats coming into power as a result of Tuesday’s elections. They account for more than 600 National Guard members who are part of the mobilization that Trump ordered in August 2025.

Democrats who provided troops during the celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary were roundly criticized for their participation and removed their troops and airmen months ago. Nearly 3,100 are stationed in the city now, up slightly from last month.

Fields and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge late Thursday blocked the Trump administration from breaking ground on a towering memorial arch for 14 days.

The temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan halting the work represents a major setback for one of President Trump’s most prominent projects in his vision to remake Washington.

The decision followed a series of steps taken earlier Thursday by the government, including the final approval of the arch by the National Capital Planning Commission in an 8-4 vote after a 9 ½ hour hearing where scores of witnesses opposed the construction.

The administration said the work could begin as soon as the approval and the Interior Department issued a final decision authorizing construction and the proper notification was published by the National Park Service.

In approving the temporary stop, Chutkan said Virginia and the District of Columbia had shown that the immediacy of the construction would cause real harm to the plaintiffs.

“The harm is certain,” she wrote. “Defendants initially notified the court that construction could begin as early as November 5, 2026, if the NCPC approves the project at its meeting that day and the Department of the Interior authorizes construction.” In their filing, Virginia and D.C. warned of traffic pattern distortions as well as concerns about the impact on mutual aid emergency calls if the arch were to proceed.

“Second, the District and Virginia will incur significant unrecoverable costs. As soon as construction begins, DDOT will need to expend staff time and operating resources to affirmatively and proactively manage temporary detours, crashes or disabled vehicles,” Chutkan wrote.

The judge ordered the government to provide a status report next Monday to ensure they are complying with the order.

The judge’s decision came just over an hour after the National Capital Planning Commission hearing ended. The vote by the commission broke along federal and local lines. Those in favor work for the administration or are connected to the president, who was pushing for the immediate construction. Opponents represented the city of Washington.

The remote, call-in hearing — which crashed repeatedly in the first few hours and was accompanied by a nearly universally negative comment section — drew witnesses who gave impassioned comments opposing an arch they said will destroy the solemnity of the nearby Arlington National Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of fallen service members and military veterans are buried.

The panel’s Trump-appointed chairman launched the meeting with a gushing appraisal of the towering monument and lauded Trump for wanting to build it.

“President Trump understands as president and a superb builder that it’s important to our national identity to display who we are through grand monuments,” said Mark Paoletta, the commission’s chairman.

As Trump has often remarked, “the great cities around the world have arches: Paris, Rome, London,” said Paoletta, who also serves as general counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Commissioner Paul Ingrassia, a lawyer for the General Services Administration, said the arch was “not about politics. It’s about remembrance. It’s about celebrating our history. It’s about commemorating veterans. And it’s really something that’s a noble tribute to our nation and something that we can all rally behind.”

But D.C. City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who also serves on the planning panel, said the project has not received required approval from Congress, nor has Congress appropriated any money for it. The plan submitted to the commission does not include a reference to military use cited by Trump and other administration officials, Mendelson said.

“We cannot approve final site and building plans until we have the final site and building plans,” he said.

The commission oversees construction on federal land in the city and began reviewing the arch plan in June.

The arch is one of several projects around Washington that the Republican president has undertaken as he alters the capital to his tastes — from renovating one of its storied public golf courses to threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Those projects could soon face intense scrutiny after Democrats gained control of Congress in the midterm elections this week.

Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat who is set to chair the House Natural Resources Committee, called the project ill-advised and illegal.

“This arch would dishonor America,” Huffman told the commission. He called the proposed arch “a tribute to Donald Trump,” not veterans as Trump administration officials claim. The monument is similar to those built for emperors or kings, Huffman said, adding that Trump was using veterans as a pretext to build a memorial to himself.

Other critics, including the plaintiffs, argue that the Trump administration must seek congressional approval. The administration maintains that Congress cleared the way for a monument at Memorial Circle decades ago.

Several members of the Planning Commission used that logic in approving the project. Paoletta said it was a “national disgrace” that a memorial arch had not been placed there, despite a 1925 law that designated such a memorial, he said.

Chutkan rejected that argument in her ruling: “The sheer improbability that a 100-year-old statute would contain authority, unknown to every previous administration, to erect a 250-foot arch at a principal location in the Nation’s capital indicates how far defendants must stretch to justify this project.”

Daly and Fields write for the Associated Press. AP videographer Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — New York appeals judges grilled President Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors Thursday about his bid to erase his historic hush money conviction, but the court didn’t signal how or when it would rule.

The judges delved into legal theory, presidential immunity and some evidence in Trump’s 2024 trial. Convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to obscure a $130,000 payment to adult film performer Stormy Daniels, Trump denies any wrongdoing. He has turned to state and federal courts in hopes of unwinding the verdict.

Trump, who denounced the case on social media as recently as September, didn’t attend Thursday’s court session.

Much of the back-and-forth focused on prosecutors’ theory that the hush money was meant to keep unflattering information about Trump away from the electorate before the 2016 vote, and that it amounted to an illegal campaign contribution under the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Trump lawyer Robert Giuffra Jr. told the judges that Manhattan Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg’s office has no place tying a case to a federal election law.

“We think it’s the most obvious ground for reversal,” he said.

Prosecutors argued that they weren’t prosecuting an alleged federal campaign finance offense, but rather presenting it as a factor underlying what they claim was a Trump-orchestrated conspiracy.

“So are you relying upon FECA in order to prove your falsifying business records [charge]?” Justice Troy Webber asked.

“Only partially,” replied Bragg’s appeals chief, Steven Wu, adding that it was “important only to show that the purpose for the falsifying business records here was to conceal that conspiracy.”

Judges drill down on question about White House conversations

The appeal also concerns whether jurors should have been allowed to hear testimony about supposed White House workflow and conversations — some with then-Communications Director Hope Hicks — and even Trump social media posts during his first term. His lawyers cite presidential immunity for official acts, and they argue his official conduct included responding to the Daniels drama once it became public in 2018.

“Ms. Hicks was serving as a White House official,” talking with the president about how to respond to press inquiries that implicitly concerned his fitness for office, Giuffra told the appeals judges.

Wu countered later: “In this conversation, they were not speaking about a press response. … The president was talking to her about his private opinion.”

The appeals judges pressed both sides about the matter and the specifics of Hicks’ testimony. She told jurors that she asked Trump how he wanted to respond, but as for what he said, she testified only that he expressed relief that the Daniels story hadn’t emerged during the campaign.

Bragg’s office contends that all the White House-related evidence was fair game. The conversations were “unofficial conduct,” some of the other evidence was public record, and some was a general description of office practices, prosecutors say. They maintain that even if some of the evidence should have been excluded, its admission was a “harmless error” that doesn’t warrant overturning a conviction that rested on “a mountain” of other proof against Trump.

Justice Bahaati E. Pitt-Burke wondered aloud about that.

“If you take all of those things cumulatively, right, and there’s a problem with this evidence, there’s a problem with this evidence, at what point … does it stop being harmless error and turn into something else?” she asked.

“It would have to be a lot more than there was in this case,” Wu responded.

Trump’s lawyers also have argued the case was political

While the appeal turns on complex legal disputes, political overtones aren’t hard to find. The very first paragraph of one of the Trump team’s court filings contended that the case was the flimsy product of “immense political pressure” on a Democratic prosecutor to go after Trump — rhetoric that echoes the Republican president’s own oft-repeated claims in the court of public opinion.

The May 2024 verdict made Trump the first former — and now current — U.S. president with a criminal conviction. Though historic, it didn’t impede his return to the White House or subject him to any punishment.

The trial involved $130,000 that Daniels got from Trump’s then-fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, weeks before the 2016 election. The money bought, for a time, her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with the married Trump a decade earlier. He says that nothing sexual happened between them.

Trump’s company reimbursed Cohen in 2017, logging those payments as legal expenses.

Trump’s lawyers argue there’s only “weak” evidence that he even knew about Cohen’s dealings at the time. His trial attorneys also said that payments to Cohen were indeed legal expenses, and that any hush money expended on Trump’s behalf wasn’t hidden campaign spending, just an effort to avoid embarrassing his family.

The distinction matters because, under New York law, falsifying business records isn’t a felony unless it’s done with an intent to commit or conceal a separate crime.

While pursuing his state appeal, Trump also has been trying to shift the case to federal court and have it dismissed on immunity grounds. A federal judge said no — for the third time — in August. Trump’s attorneys are appealing that decision, with arguments set for Nov. 16.

Peltz and Sisak write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A federal panel was expected Thursday to approve President Trump’s proposed memorial arch in Washington at the end of a meeting that drew dozens of opponents to a key part of the president’s push to leave his imprint on the nation’s capital.

The approval would clear a hurdle on the road to breaking ground on the project, and the administration has said it could launch construction within a day of the vote. But the proposed 250-foot tall gilded arch still faced legal challenges.

The remote, call-in hearing — which crashed repeatedly and was accompanied by a nearly universally negative comment section — drew witnesses who gave impassioned, three-minute comments opposing an arch they said will destroy the solemnity of the nearby Arlington National Cemetery.

The Trump-appointed chairman of the commission, however, launched into a gushing appraisal of the towering monument and lauded Trump for wanting to build it.

“President Trump understands as president and a superb builder that it’s important to our national identity to display who we are through grand monuments,” said Mark Paoletta, the commission’s chairman.

As Trump has often remarked, “the great cities around the world have arches: Paris, Rome, London,” said Paoletta, who also serves as general counsel for the White House Office of Management and Budget. In addition to Paoletta, the arch received support during the hearing from Republican lawmakers and a veteran who praised the administration’s efforts to build the monument.

The commission oversees construction on federal land in the city and began reviewing the arch plan in June.

Trump is working to remake Washington

The arch is one of several projects around Washington that the Republican president has undertaken as he alters the capital to his tastes — from renovating one of its storied public golf courses to threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Those projects could soon face intense scrutiny after Democrats gained control of Congress in the midterm elections this week.

Many of the plans are being challenged in the courts, and three lawsuits have been filed opposing the arch. A judge has been asked to block the construction so long as lawsuits are still being litigated, and she could rule as early as Thursday.

Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat who is set to chair the House Natural Resources Committee, called the project ill-advised and illegal.

“This arch would dishonor America,” Huffman told the commission. He called the proposed arch “a tribute to Donald Trump,” not veterans as Trump administration officials claim. The monument is similar to those built for emperors or kings, Huffman said, adding that Trump was using veterans as a pretext to build a memorial to himself.

Opponents argue the arch is too big for the skyline and would disrupt carefully designed sight lines between landmarks in and around the capital — most prominently the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery — that were meant to symbolize the reunification of the North and the South after the Civil War.

But the opposition has done little to influence the members of the commission, which is led by some of Trump’s closest allies. Trump appointed Paoletta to chair the 12-member panel. Two other commissioners are also White House aides.

Trump wants an arch, but it faces legal challenges

Still, a federal judge on Monday complicated Trump’s efforts to move quickly on the project.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s plans, said she must be told of any decision by the planning commission within an hour. The order set the same time limits for any decision by the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior.

Before Thursday’s hearing began, attorneys with the Justice Department filed a notice with Chutkan informing her that a contractor had already done site prep work on Oct. 31, with what she said appeared to be no authorization from the National Park Service.

The plaintiffs in the three lawsuits are calling for a halt to work on a monument that is set to be built on a patch of grass off a bridge that spans the Potomac River and connects Washington with Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Va. When complete, the monument would be 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty without its pedestal.

Critics, including the plaintiffs, argue that the Trump administration must seek congressional approval. The administration maintains that Congress cleared the way for a monument at Memorial Circle decades ago.

Paoletta said it was a “national disgrace” that a memorial arch had not been placed there, despite a 1925 law that designated such a memorial, he said.

Last week, the government submitted a 106-page plan for the arch that envisions a massive structure more than 12 stories high that includes a huge bronze statue of Lady Liberty with wings and carrying a torch with an eternal flame. The structure would include an observation deck with views to the east and the west and two mezzanines.

Inside the arch are rooms for program space, offices, a staff lounge, circular staircases, multiple elevators and a fire command center. The project proposes significant traffic changes in the area, including rerouting traffic on nearby roads. Administration officials have said the arch also will have a national security function.

In a recent hearing, Chutkan asked why the Trump administration was so keen on moving ahead quickly with the arch despite the ongoing lawsuits, aside from Trump’s “desire to bedazzle the city.”

Administration lawyer Robert Stander said the arch was “absolutely a high-priority project” and that any ruling delaying construction would impede the work of the government.

Daly and Fields write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Corruption topped the list of concerns for voters who ousted Republicans and handed Democrats control of Congress in the midterm elections. Now, the newly empowered Democratic Party is putting the issue front and center as its leaders chart their course for investigations and policymaking.

Senior Democrats in both chambers of Congress have vowed to marshal the subpoena powers and larger investigative staffs that come with their soon-to-be majorities to probe what they say is the self-enrichment that President Donald Trump and people in his orbit have done at the public’s expense. The Republican president and his White House have long denied any wrongdoing.

House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda to look at how Trump and his family have become wealthier since he returned to office — and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who’s in line to become House speaker, has not ruled out trying to impeach Trump for a third time.

Months ago, Jeffries tasked the ranking Democrats on the Oversight and Judiciary committees, Rep. Robert Garcia of California and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, with leading the effort, as Democrats work to link the costs of public corruption to the affordability concerns hitting Americans’ pocketbooks.

“Lawyer up,” Garcia posted on X as election results favoring Democrats began coming in on Tuesday night.

The Senate is expected to conduct similar investigations.

“Americans want us to clean up corruption in government,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is poised to return as Senate majority leader next year. “No American should have to make tradeoffs at the supermarket while Trump is making inside trades on the stock market.”

Investigation targets could include ICE raids, Epstein and DOGE

Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has outlined five priorities, including Trump family business dealings, the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, said he wants to dig into Trump’s White House ballroom and other construction projects, as well as the Trump family’s role in mineral deals.

With the House majority comes an infusion of congressional committee staff and resources, and the effort is expected to be sprawling, involving House committees with authority to conduct oversight on Cabinet officials and the agencies they lead.

In the Senate, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who is expected to become the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said his panel will want to look into Trump’s real estate projects around the nation’s capital and his crypto dealings with special envoy Steve Witkoff. Witkoff is a longtime ally who partnered with Trump on the president’s family cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial.

“The tentacles of corruption reach deep in this administration, and they have added costs to everyday Americans,” Blumenthal said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. The senator added that he also wants hearings on ICE raids, the actions of the Department of Government Efficiency and Medicare plans he says are too restrictive and have cost some patients care.

Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is in line to become Senate Finance Committee chairman, ticked off several investigative targets that he describes as part of an “accountability” agenda, including banks that he contends ignored red flags about the financial dealings of Epstein and pharmaceutical companies that have profited from their ties to the Trump administration.

“When I am chair, they will be forced to answer to the Senate Finance Committee for their role in hurting the American people and enabling Trump’s corruption,” Wyden said in a statement Wednesday.

The issue of corruption resonated for voters, The AP Voter Poll shows

Many U.S. voters in Tuesday’s elections expressed deep concerns about government corruption and the state of democracy, according to The AP Voter Poll, which surveyed more than 100,000 voters nationwide.

While roughly 4 in 10 voters said the economy was the top issue facing the country, about 3 in 10 said that “the state of democracy” was the top issue. About half of U.S. voters said government corruption was “crucial” to their vote for Congress, and most of those voters supported the Democratic candidate in their local U.S. House race, while about one-third said they voted for the Republican.

About 8 in 10 voters who said “the state of democracy” was the top issue facing the country supported the Democrat, while about 2 in 10 supported the Republican.

Older voters, those age 65 or older, were more likely than voters under 65 to say “the state of democracy” was the most important issue facing the country. About 4 in 10 older voters pointed to this as the nation’s top problem, compared with about 3 in 10 who said the economy. That view was reversed with younger voters, who were more likely to call the economy the top issue.

That explains why anti-corruption played such a central role in Democratic campaigns this cycle, with candidates accusing their Republican opponents of looking out for themselves or their donors rather than a broader constituency. They embraced stock trading bans and bans on former members of Congress becoming lobbyists and promised to be part of an effort to root out corruption.

Democrats’ challenge: Focusing on corruption without ignoring cost-of-living issues

In his public comments since his party lost the elections, Trump has taken a conciliatory tone toward Democrats, conceding that they “did a good job” in their campaigns as he’s tried to skirt personal blame for the GOP’s midterm thrashing. That could change as investigations ramp up.

“As the president has said, he’s willing to work with anyone to continue delivering victories for hardworking Americans,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said Wednesday. “If Democrats choose to pursue sham investigations and radical left policies, they are choosing to work against the American people.”

Schumer insisted that congressional Democrats will be able to balance legislating on key issues, such as affordability, while launching investigations to target “rampant corruption.”

In a letter to Democratic lawmakers announcing his candidacy for House speaker, Jeffries said the “days of the House functioning like a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump administration are over.”

“The massive corruption the country has experienced from the Trump Cartel explains why very little is getting done to help everyday Americans,” Jeffries wrote as he promised to target price gouging and push for a stock trading ban for lawmakers. “That changes immediately.”

The challenge for Democrats will be to continue to tie corruption to the affordability issues that topped the list of concerns for voters.

The Congressional Integrity Project, an advocacy group initially created to combat Republican investigations into President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, is now shifting its focus to help Democratic lawmakers make that connection. In a memo, the group urged congressional Democrats to trace the Trump administration’s actions to people in and outside government, as well as corporations, who may be profiting from those moves.

“Corruption is not just corruption,” said the group’s senior adviser, Jack Miller. “It is costing taxpayers and costing Americans in their everyday lives.”

Some Democratic lawmakers are already stressing that congressional investigations have to be directly tied to affordability issues, while urging restraint.

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said that Democrats need to earn voters’ trust, and while investigations are an important part of the Democratic agenda, “we can’t turn this into just a vengeance tour.”

“We have to be careful, cautious and judicious about that,” Welch said.

Kim and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro and polling writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

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.

The questionable utility and opportunity cost of the Trump class warships have made the program a hot topic of debate since it was first rolled out in December 2025. The battleship effort has already faced growing bipartisan pushback over its price tag and practicality, as well as industrial base concerns.

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.

“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.

In May, the Navy confirmed that the plan is also for the Trump class battleships to be nuclear-powered. The service retired its last nuclear-powered surface combatants – a category that does not include aircraft carriers and submarines – in the 1990s. It has been even longer since a ship of this type was built in the United States. Russia’s Kirov class battlecruiser Admiral Nakhimov is the only nuclear-powered surface combatant currently in service anywhere in the world.

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.

The USS Defiant could cost as much as $23 billion, and the average price of the next 14 battleships could be $18 billion, according to estimates the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) put out in August. To put this in perspective, even the $18 billion figure would make these warships significantly more expensive than each of the next three Ford class aircraft carriers.

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.

All of this comes at a time when the Navy has been struggling to meet operational demands for surface combatants with its existing fleets. This has been further exacerbated by shakeups in separate plans to acquire new frigates and larger uncrewed surface vessels (USV), as well as rising costs associated with its workhorse Arleigh Burke class destroyers.

Though top Navy officials have voiced significant support for the Trump class since December 2025, there had been no calls publicly for a ship of this type before Trump started his second term. For his part, Trump has been enamored with the idea of the Navy sailing new battleships for years now. He notably floated the idea while running for his first term in 2015.

TWZ has previously drawn further attention to industrial base concerns stemming from the battleship plans. Naval shipyard capacity in the United States has steadily dwindled since the end of the Cold War, and what remains is under immense strain from existing demands. Navy shipbuilding programs, even established ones, routinely run up against workforce shortages and growing costs. This is despite extensive efforts by the federal government, including under Trump, to reverse these trends.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

Many other defense programs could potentially be at risk of being truncated or even cancelled if defense spending plateaus in the near term. Spending priorities also now have to take into account the need to restock critical munitions expended in the course of the war with Iran, as well as other crises in the Middle East in recent years. There are also ongoing demands to support allies and partners, especially Ukraine.

“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.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

In the weeks leading up to the midterms the deployment of US forces and Trump’s own, often belligerent, statements ramped up talk that the US was getting ready to go back to war with Iran.

On the eve of the elections, the US carried out a limited bombing raid on an Iranian island in the Gulf.

Before he was hospitalised with a stroke, the US Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, went to a classified briefing about potential military options for renewed war with Iran.

Without going into detail, he condemned the plans as “insane”, warning that they would trigger a “devastating escalation”.

There has been speculation that the Americans have plans to bomb civilian infrastructure.

Not only would that be likely to constitute a war crime, it might also be answered by devastating Iranian strikes on equivalent targets on US allies in the Gulf. Its list of potential targets could start with the United Arab Emirates, which is as close to Israel as it is to the US.

The regime in Tehran watches political developments in the US closely. It has not concealed its satisfaction that the consequences of its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have become a domestic political issue in the US.

Tehran is aware of the damage caused to Trump and the Republicans by the sustained rise in the prices of everything (from petrol and diesel to agricultural fertilisers) caused by the war and its attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted a warning on social media.

He said: “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message. If the US govt betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, now acting prime minister of Israel after its election last week, and manoeuvring hard to form a new government, has repeated that he wants to bring down the Islamic regime in Tehran.

Reports in Israel and the US say that he is pushing Trump to go back to war.

Netanyahu does not have the seats to form a new government with his outgoing coalition.

But if a major war restarted and was sustained, and if Israelis came under direct fire, he could have new options of forming a unity government that he would use his considerable political skills to dominate.

By the end of the year, the U.S. will stop providing Israel with billions of dollars in annual assistance, President Donald Trump proclaimed Tuesday morning. The announcement was delivered as both Washington and Jerusalem are mulling plans for a new wave of attacks on Iran and amid increasing American voter antipathy toward the Israel in the wake of the Gaza war and America’s involvement in the war with Iran.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has openly discussed weaning his country off direct U.S. assistance in favor of more cooperation on weapons development, the Trump announcement still caught many there by surprise. It also raises a lot of questions about Congressional authorization and the impact on future sales of advanced arms from U.S. manufacturers, many of which are planned, that still have to be answered.

“As far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that – we give Israel $4 billion a year – and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping,” Trump told Fox & Friends Tuesday morning during his message to American voters going to the polls for the midterm election. “And they’re fine with it because you know they have become a very successful country. They don’t need it, and we won’t be paying anymore to Israel, so it’s just a wasted thing because we’ve already agreed that by the end of this year we won’t be paying Israel.”

“Now we’ll help Israel if they need it,” the American leader added. “You know they’ve been a great ally, and we’ve been the greatest of all allies to many many countries.”

Trump did not elaborate on what specific expenditures he was referring to, and we’ve reached out to the White House for more details. However, the president was almost certainly talking about the ongoing decade-long Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Israel.

The MoU calls for providing $3.8 billion in annual aid and it is drawing to a close. Set to run through 2028, the vast majority of that funding is for Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to purchase weaponry mostly from American manufacturers.

“In 2016, the U.S. and Israeli governments signed their third 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid, covering [Fiscal Year] 2019 to [Fiscal Year] 2028,” according to a 2025 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. “Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledged to provide—subject to congressional appropriation—$38 billion in military aid ($33 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations) to Israel.”

The MoU is merely a promise and not legally binding. Congress has to approve any funding requests.

A New Deal

Washington and Jerusalem began negotiating a new MoU in June, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry (MoD).

“The new framework, reflecting the strategic vision of Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, is designed to strengthen the IDF’s qualitative military edge through expanded joint investment in research, development, and co-production, deepen the U.S.-Israel partnership demonstrated during Operation Roaring Lion, and gradually transition from aid to a completely reciprocal partnership,” MoD explained.

Netanyahu has been warning Israel for months that it would have to face reduced assistance from the U.S.

“If you think we will continue receiving what I secured twice — tens of billions of dollars in American aid for the defense budget — you’d better prepare yourselves and get used to the idea that this will not continue,” he told Israeli media last month, according to Bloomberg News. “That is because America has changed, not because Israel has changed. It will end. It is only a matter of time.”

Netanyahu added that Israel has two more years with Trump, but must prepare for a less favorable Washington after he leaves power.

In January, the Israeli leader said he wanted to reduce Israel’s reliance on American aid. He told The Economist that he was not seeking the full renewal of the MoU, which has to be renegotiated by 2028. 

“I want to taper off the military aid within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told the publication. Asked if he meant “to taper it off to zero,” Netanyahu said “yes.”

“We want to be as independent as possible,” the Israeli leader proffered. Referring to his meeting with the the American president in Florida in late December, Netanyahu added: “In my visit to President Trump, I said we very deeply appreciate the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age, and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”

For Israel, the MoU “now matters less for the money it provides than for what it signifies: a gauge of the depth and durability of U.S. support,” the Crisis Group think tank argued in August. “To be sure, FMF has enabled Israel to build up its military power without fully bearing the cost, and phasing out this assistance would impose real burdens. Israel would have to pay for critical U.S. weapons from its own budget.”

However, with its annual GDP now exceeding $700 billion and defense spending above $40 billion, “Israel has found increasing difficulty in arguing that it requires an additional $3.3 billion each year for military purchases,” Crisis Group posited. “Netanyahu has asked the finance ministry to allocate billions of dollars in additional funding for the defense budget over the next decade, a large portion of which would be earmarked to procure U.S. fighter jets, on the assumption that Israel will no longer receive the funds necessary for these purchases from Washington.”

Since the attack by Hamas, U.S. money from the MoU has made up a smaller percentage of the Israeli MoD’s overall budget as the country has increased its own defense spending. Those funds have also been bolstered by several large tranches of U.S. supplemental aid to procure bombs and other weapons.

“For most of the last 15 years, the $3.3 billion Israel receives annually in FMF made up roughly 20% of Israel’s defense budget, which was itself 5-6% of Israel’s GDP in the same period,” the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) explained in May. “Both Israeli defense spending and the share coming from U.S. aid slowly declined amid major economic growth throughout the 2010s, and then spiked in 2023 following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and ensuing wars.” 

IPF stated that after the Hamas incursion, “Israel sharply increased defense spending (both within the regular budget framework and in extraordinary expenditures) to 8-9% of GDP, and the U.S. gave Israel several large supplemental security assistance packages between late 2023 and early 2026 in addition to the MOU-directed security aid.”

“The net result, taking into account both much higher Israeli spending and large amounts of American aid, is that in 2024 U.S. assistance briefly accounted for more than one third of Israel’s defense budget,” IPF noted. “In 2025 this figure dropped to close to 10%, with Israel spending an estimated NIS 168 billion ($52 billion) on defense in that year.”

Until recently, “Israel had been given a partial exemption” on the requirement that FMF funds be allocated for American products,” the Crisis Group noted. This allowed Israel to “invest a portion of the money in its own defense industry, Crisis Group explained. “This carveout, in turn, has made Israeli firms more competitive in the arms export market.”

Heavy Reliance On American Hardware

Israel, which has received more than $175 billion in U.S. aid since its creation in 1948, relies heavily on American weaponry. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) tactical aviation fleet consists of U.S.-built F-15s, F-16s, F-35s and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, among other U.S. types. Israel also made deals for a number of other platforms including KC-46A aerial refueling tankers and CH-53K heavy-lift helicopters and it uses large amounts of American precision munitions. Meanwhile, Israeli missile defense systems like Iron Dome and Arrow 3 have been developed with significant assistance from the U.S.

A top Israeli MoD official told The Times of Israel (ToI) last month that his country wants to flip the switch to add value to the American defense industry by using its experience developing weapons as it fights seemingly constant wars. The continual threats from regional actors and terror groups allow Israel to serve as a testing ground for U.S. defense technologies, Aviram Hasson, director of the Defense Ministry’s mission to the US and Canada, explained.

“Hasson pointed to engineering breakthroughs and intellectual property emerging through development of Israel’s active-defense systems, saying every US government request for technology arising from the long-range anti-ballistic missile Arrow 3 program has been fulfilled,” the publication noted.

“It is clear on both sides of the ocean that this cooperation is a strategic need of both powers, not only of Israel,” Hasson told ToI.

U.S. Has Paid Far More Than $4B A Year For Israel’s Defense

Beyond direct financial aid, the U.S. has expended a great deal of resources defending Israel over the past several years. This has included defending against multiple Iranian missile barrages on Israel on top of participating directly in two wars. In addition, there were the constant drone and missile battles in the Red Sea with the Houthis, who began attacking shipping there in response to Israel’s war in Gaza. Part of the U.S. operation against the Houthis was also providing a layer of protection against long-range missile and drone launches at Israel by the rebel group.

During the course of all these events, the U.S. deployed a very large number of its available warships, aircraft, and air defenses, as well as thousands of personnel, to the Middle East at great expense, both in dollars and the toll on troops and equipment.

Just this year alone, 23 U.S. troops have died and nearly 900 have been injured since the launch of Epic Fury in February. Dozens of aircraft have been destroyed and U.S. bases in the region have been partially destroyed and will take billions to repair.

The U.S. has also fired off a large amount of its own munitions defending Israel from attacks by Iran and its proxies. This has contributed heavily to shortfalls in America’s own stockpiles.

All told, the U.S. has spent nearly $50 billion just on the most current conflict with Iran, far exceeding the $4 billion Israel gets per year in annual direct aid. Then there is the opportunity cost of the massive wear and tear on the force and the U.S. military’s overall capacity to fight in the near and medium term due to all these engagements.

All that being said, it can be argued that the U.S. had major interests in participating in these conflicts beyond just the defense of Israel. It is rarely just that simple. The Iran nuclear program, for instance, has impacts much farther than the Middle East and Israel. Still, the U.S. has poured unprecedented resources into Israel’s defense and these investments far eclipse the $4B being discussed today.

Surprise In Israel

Many Israeli government officials were caught completely off guard by the Trump announcement, according to Politico.

“Officials in the Finance Ministry say they were surprised by U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that military aid to Israel would cease by the end of the year, ” the publication reported.

“No formal document was submitted from the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the end of aid,” Politico added. “The ministry was aware of the intention to end it, but was surprised by the intention to do so immediately.”

Officials in the Defense Ministry and the military were also reportedly surprised by the announcement, according to the Post.

“We did not expect this announcement, certainly not today,” a senior defense official told Israeli media.

“There is ongoing dialogue with the Americans, and we can say that we were surprised. We will study the implications of the decision, which has yet to reach professional officials,” the official is quoted as saying.

As for Netanyahu, he has yet to weigh in on Trump’s statement. However, one of his main rivals in the closely fought Israeli parliamentary election that could unseat him has commented.

“The fact that Israel’s defense establishment is learning of a shift in our strategic relationship through the media, at the same time as the Israeli public, shows just how dangerous Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct is,” Gadi Eisenkot said in a statement. “He can no longer be trusted and must be replaced.”

In his comments to Fox & Friends, Trump conceded that the midterm election played a role in his decision.

The annual assistance to Israel is a “bad talking point” for Democrats, including Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, the president proclaimed.

“The left uses the $4 billion payment … as a signal of unfairness. And we can’t allow that to happen,” Trump stated. “I don’t like that. … It’s almost too easy to target

There are many unknowns surrounding Trump’s statement about diminishing U.S. support for Israel.

The MoU, if that is what he is talking about, still has two years left, and almost $8 billion worth of anticipated funding, the vast majority earmarked for procurement of U.S. arms. 

As we noted at the top of this piece, the MoU itself isn’t legally binding but the aid is authorized by law and appropriated by Congress each year. Ending it early would mean Congress either not appropriating the money or changing the law.

Will Congress agree to cut the deal off by December? What about the U.S. defense industry? It is unclear at the moment how, or if, this move would affect American defense contractors selling arms to Israel. These companies depend in large measure on predictability and taking this agreement off the table two years early could be problematic.

It is not exactly clear at this point which U.S. arms makers will be hit the hardest by Trump’s announcement. There are billions of dollars in contracts for the future procurement of aircraft, munitions and other equipment to companies like Boeing for F-15Is and KC-46As, Lockheed Martin for F-35Is and AM General for Joint Light Tactical Vehicles. While Israel has bumped up its defense budget, it is not really known at this point how it will cover these costs without that lost U.S. aid.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

At least one AeroVironment LOCUST laser counter-drone system is part of the array of anti-air defenses that have popped up around President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in recent weeks. Versions of LOCUST have been seeing steadily increasing use within the U.S. military in recent years, including deployments now along the border with Mexico. Though there has been much progress in the development of practical laser directed-energy weapons in recent years, the technology has continued to face hurdles to more widespread adoption.

The LOCUST system at Mar-a-Lago, which is mounted on a 4×4 Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), is seen in two pictures that Getty’s Andrew Harnik took on October 31. When exactly the laser-directed energy weapon was deployed is unclear. Laser Wars was the first to spot the system in one of Harnik’s pictures and confirm its deployment.

Harnik’s main focus was a pair of Humvee-based AN/TWQ-1 Avenger short-range air defense systems on a floating platform in Lake Worth Lagoon near the edge of the estate, which were first deployed there just over two weeks ago. Additional Avengers have also been positioned around Donald J. Trump International Airport, which is situated some three miles to the west. The U.S. military has also set up elements of Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System Fly-Away Kits, including Ku-band radar, electronic support measures (ESM), jammers, and 360-degree infrared search and track systems nearby. TWZ covered the presence of the Avengers and the Fly-Away Kits in a report last Friday.

This heightened security comes amid signs that a new round of major hostilities with Iran could be on the horizon, as well as the run-up to tomorrow’s mid-term elections. The regime in Tehran has threatened Trump’s life on several occasions over the years. The President has already been the subject of several domestic assassination attempts and threats.

“At the request of the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and under NORAD [the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command] and USNORTHCOM [U.S. Northern Command] authorities, NORAD and USNORTHCOM recently deployed ground-based air defense [GBAD] assets and Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System capabilities in and around Mar-a-Lago, Florida,” the commands told us in a statement last week. “These assets add a complementary layer of technology to enhance protection. Due to operational security, we are unable to provide additional details. For further detail, we refer you to the USSS.”

“The U.S. Secret Service is operating in a heightened threat environment, and we continuously adapt our protective operations to incorporate cutting-edge tools, technology, and methods to safeguard our protectees,” the Secret Service also told us in a prior statement. “At the request of the U.S. Secret Service, NORAD and U.S. Northern Command are providing Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System capabilities in support of our protective operations.”

The U.S. Army began receiving the JLTV-based versions of LOCUST, along with examples mounted on the smaller 4×4 Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) last year through a program called the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL). This followed the delivery of palletized LOCUST systems under a rapid prototyping effort called the Palletized-High Energy Laser (P-HEL) in the early 2020s. The Army is now acquiring LOCUST X3 systems under its Enduring-High Energy Laser (E-HEL) program. LOCUST has become something of a star more broadly within the directed energy space across the U.S. military. The U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy have also been exploring the use of versions of LOCUST in ground-based and shipboard contexts.

To date, all versions of LOCUST consist of a turret with the laser beam projector, as well as built-in electro-optical and infrared video cameras for target acquisition and tracking. The complete system also includes power generation and cooling components. LOCUST variants can also be cued using offboard sensors, including small-form-factor high-frequency radars and passive radio frequency signal detection systems on host vehicles or located off-platform nearby, like what the Fly-Away Kit provides.

The stated power rating for LOCUST varies from version to version, with the latest X3 being a 30-kilowatt type. Though the system is categorized as a high-energy laser, this is at the lower end of the power spectrum for weapons of this type, and it is explicitly geared toward the countering small drones mission set. Layering LOCUST in with other hard- and soft-kill counter-drone and air defense systems in a potentially high-threat area, as we are seeing now at Mar-a-Lago, makes good sense.

As mentioned, Mar-a-Lago is not the first time a LOCUST has been deployed in a real-world context. In 2022, the Army confirmed the operational deployment of two P-HEL systems to unspecified foreign locales. Earlier this year, JLTV- and ISV-based AMP-HELs have appeared along the border with Mexico. One of the systems was part of the chain of events that led to the shutdown of airspace around El Paso, Texas, in February. That incident, in turn, prompted the Pentagon to craft a new agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regarding the use of laser directed energy weapons within the United States.

As TWZ has written in the past:

“In general, laser directed energy weapons offer the promise of functionally unlimited magazine depth, as long as there is sufficient power and cooling capacity. They also present a drastically lower cost-per-intercept proposition compared to traditional anti-air interceptors. This is all advantageous for engaging drones, particularly smaller and cheaper designs that can still present very significant threats. The dangers posed by uncrewed aerial systems are only set to grow as networked swarming and automated targeting capabilities, enabled by advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, become more accessible. Defenders already face real risks of just being overwhelmed by attacks involving volumes of drones.”

…

“At the same time, a laser like LOCUST can only engage a single target at once. Lower-powered lasers need to dwell on their targets for a longer period of time in order to cause significant damage by burning a hole in them, as well. This limits the number of targets a single system can engage in a given window of time.”

“In addition, the power of any laser beam drops as it propagates through the atmosphere further and further away from its source. Weather and other environmental factors like smoke and dust can also distort the beam and reduce its power. All of this only adds to the aforementioned dwell time. Adaptive optics, and just more power overall, can help produce useful effects at greater distances, but laser weapons continue to have short ranges, typically measured in handfuls of miles, as a general rule.”

“The Army, as well as other branches of the U.S. military, have repeatedly acknowledged challenges in fielding laser directed energy weapon systems. Sensitivity to vibration, humidity, dust, and sand, as well as fragile optics and cooling demands, have all created further complications for operating and sustaining these systems in real-world environments. “

Army officials just recently touted the benefits of laser directed energy weapons like LOCUST, while also acknowledging again that there is still work to be done at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention last month.

“Lasers are real. We can do it. We can go out. We can shoot things,” Kirk Williams, Chief Engineer at the Army’s Directed Energy Project Office, another one of the panelists, said. “But what we got to do now is make these systems reliable enough so that the soldiers have the faith in them when they need them, and that’s really the main point that we’re trying to go after right now.”

“We’re getting to the point where the systems are reliable enough, but we still have to make them maintainable and repairable because this is an Army system,” he continued. “It’s going to be on a battlefield. Things are going to break. We can break things in very creative ways, right? So if it’s not reliable, or if it’s not maintainable, if it’s not repairable, that’s a problem.”

At least one LOCUST system is now participating in a very high-profile mission to help protect President Trump.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

On November 3, as Americans vote in the midterm elections, the United States faces a defining test of presidential power, constitutional accountability and democratic resilience. The election will determine control of Congress, but its stakes extend far beyond partisan fortunes. At issue is whether constitutional checks and balances can constrain President Donald Trump, whether election officials can withstand political pressure, and whether the government will respect the voters’ verdict when the outcome threatens its interests.

The battle for control of elections

The administration’s efforts to reshape election procedures have encountered substantial judicial resistance. According to an October 20 review by the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 34 federal district court decisions had temporarily or permanently blocked administration initiatives involving election procedures and demands for voter registration records. The rulings included decisions by judges appointed by presidents of both parties, including Trump himself.

These decisions demonstrate that judicial oversight remains an important constitutional safeguard. Yet repeated litigation exposes a vulnerability: courts often intervene only after disputed measures have been introduced, leaving states to challenge policies that can generate uncertainty close to Election Day.

The controversy intensified on October 26, when a federal appeals court declined to order California to set aside ballots from approximately 20,000 registered voters whom the Justice Department alleges may be noncitizens. The court ruled that the lower court had not been given adequate opportunity to consider the government’s request. The underlying dispute remained unresolved.

The administration maintains that its actions protect electoral integrity. But investigating credible allegations of wrongdoing is fundamentally different from restricting eligible voters on the basis of unverified suspicions. Election security requires accurate voter rolls, but it equally requires protecting citizens from erroneous challenges.

Repeated allegations of fraud can undermine confidence even when evidence fails to establish that an election has been compromised. The danger is that routine election administration becomes suspect in the public mind, regardless of the facts.

Congress as a constitutional check

Republicans hold narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress, placing control of the House and potentially the Senate within reach of Democrats.

A Democratic House majority would strengthen the opposition’s ability to investigate administration policies, subpoena officials and scrutinise executive decisions. Immigration enforcement, election procedures, federal spending and the implementation of executive orders could face intensified oversight.

Such scrutiny could expose misconduct where evidence supports it and compel officials to explain decisions otherwise shielded from meaningful examination. Yet investigations do not automatically produce accountability. Subpoenas can trigger prolonged legal battles, and congressional hearings alone cannot force policy changes.

Control of the Senate would give Democrats greater influence over presidential nominations and judicial appointments. Nevertheless, Trump would retain his veto power and substantial executive authority. Even unified Democratic control of Congress would not automatically reverse his agenda.

The deeper question is whether Congress will exercise its constitutional responsibilities independently or allow partisan loyalty to take precedence over institutional accountability. Checks and balances cannot function effectively if one branch declines to challenge another when circumstances demand it.

The test after election day

Perhaps the most consequential confrontation will come after the ballots are cast.

Trump’s response to his 2020 presidential defeat remains a critical precedent. He challenged the result, made unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, and pressured Georgia officials to find enough votes to reverse his loss. On January 6, 2021, a mob attacked the Capitol as Congress met to certify the presidential election.

That history does not establish that similar events will recur in 2026. It does, however, make scrutiny of potential election disputes essential.

The danger may lie not in a single intervention capable of changing the result, but in successive confrontations: challenges to ballot counting, pressure on state officials, demands for investigations and attempts to portray ordinary procedures as evidence of fraud. Even unsuccessful efforts can delay resolution and weaken public confidence.

Candidates have every right to pursue legitimate legal challenges. Courts must consider credible evidence, and election officials must correct documented irregularities. But allegations are not proof, and no president can simply declare an unfavourable result invalid.

An election can also be damaged without a single vote being changed. Intimidation of election workers, unfounded accusations and efforts to discredit established procedures can erode public acceptance of legitimate outcomes.

The distinction between lawful scrutiny and political interference is therefore fundamental. Electoral integrity depends on evidence, consistent procedures and respect for the law – not on whether the outcome favours the governing party.

Courts cannot defend democracy alone

Judicial intervention demonstrates that constitutional safeguards remain operational. Courts can invalidate unlawful executive actions, but they cannot independently administer elections across thousands of jurisdictions or guarantee that political leaders will respect every ruling.

Nor can judicial decisions alone restore public confidence after sustained efforts to discredit electoral institutions. Democracy depends on Congress exercising oversight, election officials counting ballots accurately, courts acting impartially and political leaders respecting lawful outcomes.

The willingness of judges appointed by presidents of both parties to rule against administration initiatives reinforces a fundamental principle: constitutional protections cannot depend on partisan alignment. Their effectiveness rests on whether institutions apply the same rules regardless of who benefits.

The broader danger is institutional erosion. Repeated confrontations can weaken public confidence, discourage election workers and normalise the idea that constitutional constraints are obstacles to political power rather than obligations governing its exercise.

A verdict beyond the ballots

The November 3 midterms will not resolve the struggle over presidential power. If Republicans retain Congress, Trump will continue to benefit from congressional majorities, although judicial and state-level checks will remain. If Democrats gain one or both chambers, the administration will face greater scrutiny, but substantial executive authority will persist.

Neither outcome guarantees effective constitutional government. The decisive issue is whether institutions exercise their lawful responsibilities and whether political leaders accept that presidential power is neither unlimited nor permanent.

American democracy has survived profound crises, but resilience should not be confused with invulnerability. Checks and balances work only when institutions enforce them and political leaders respect their limits.

The midterms are therefore about more than congressional arithmetic. They will test whether votes are counted according to law, disputes are resolved through established procedures and electoral outcomes are respected regardless of partisan consequences.

The ballots will determine who controls Congress. What follows will reveal whether American institutions can still uphold a principle fundamental to democratic government: no president stands above the law, no party owns the electoral process, and no exercise of political power is beyond accountability.

On November 3, Americans will vote to determine the composition of Congress. The aftermath will test something more enduring: whether the constitutional restraints that have sustained American democracy remain binding when their enforcement carries the highest political stakes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

WASHINGTON — After spending a month asking voters to treat the midterms as a vote on him, President Trump closed his monthlong campaign sprint on Monday sounding like a man bracing for defeat.

“For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” Trump said. “But we gave this a very strong shot.”

Still, Trump said he hopes Americans are “ready to do the right thing” and insisted that Republicans could hold on to Congress if voters who buoyed his 2024 victory turn out again. He urged voters to do so, calling this election “the most important midterm, I believe, in our lifetime.” The alternative, he warned, will be a “radical agenda” in Washington as he finishes his last two years in office.

“With your vote, we will decide if these extremists will be given power or not,” Trump said, claiming that the Democratic Party has “nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history.”

The message capped a dizzying campaign push in which Trump made himself the focus of the midterms as he held dozens of rallies in mostly Republican states. In those rallies, he promised $5,000 checks and brighter days ahead to Americans who vote to keep Republicans in control of Congress. But heading into Tuesday, most polls are predicting a Democratic wave amid a voter backlash to Trump’s handling of the economy and a war in Iran.

Democrats are heavily favored to retake power of the House and are leading in all the key states that would be the likeliest to decide which party will control of the Senate, according to a New York Times/Siena University poll released Sunday. But polling can be flawed, as evidenced by forecasts that underestimated Trump’s support in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

Trump’s approval rating is near historic lows this time around, the poll found. A separate NBC News poll released Sunday found nearly two-thirds of voters are seeking a change from the direction Trump is leading the country.

This year, early voting has already seen strong turnout, outpacing the last midterm election cycle, a trend that could mean bad news for Republicans. If a Democratic surge materializes, party leaders have vowed to use their potential congressional powers to investigate Trump and his family’s business dealings, with a focus on alleged corruption and economic harm to the American people.

Trump told Fox News on Sunday that if Democrats win control of both chambers he will “become Mr. Veto” and “make deals” with them, but hopes he won’t have to “worry about that.”

On the eve of the election, Trump’s message once again seemed to acknowledged that possibility, but his focus was largely focused on the numerous beautification projects his administration is leading in the nation’s capital.

President Trump holds up an image of algae in the Reflecting Pool as he delivers remarks Monday.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

His final pitch to voters was made in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a landmark his administration has spent months trying, and at times failing, to repair. For the first 20 minutes, he did not mention the election at all. Instead, he flipped through photos of the damaged pool, describing in detail how crews resurfaced and re-caulked its granite, and worked to address the “tremendous algae” that covered the pool.

“Look, it is not an easy thing. The algae is brutal. It forms easily and I don’t think you’ll see too much,” Trump said as he showed a picture of the algae layered over the water. “The green, that’s not grass, that’s algae. It took over the entire pool.”

The renovation has not gone as promised. When he took on the project in April, he said contractors he knew would refinish the pool within weeks for about $1.5 million. The work wrapped up behind schedule at more than 10 times that cost, after algae blooms and a peeling blue liner forced crews to drain it again in July. Trump blamed vandals for the issues, but federal prosecutors in Washington attributed the problems to shoddy workmanship.

Trump spent time listing numerous other renovation projects around the capital, arguing that the construction work shows how his presidency is delivering for the American people.

“Our country is strong, respected and prosperous once more and our capital is cleaner and safer and more spectacular than ever,” Trump said.

His focus on renovation projects drew the attention of Democrats, who argued his message was out of touch with what American voters want from leaders now.

“This is just [what] the median voter wants to hear — an update on various capital improvement projects in the District of Columbia,” Ashley Schapitl, a former Biden Treasury official, posted on X.

It was not the first time Democrats had poked fun at the president’s for being too focused on construction projects. At a rally last week, former President Obama said Trump “should be on HGTV,” ridiculing his ballroom project and the changes he has made to the Rose Garden and the Oval Office.

“He has the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” Obama said. “There’s just gold everywhere.”

Trump has bristled at such criticism, insisting that renovations relax him and that he gets them done quickly.

His message on Monday struck a similarly dismissive tone as in other campaign events. Even as voters say they are struggling with the cost of living, Trump has insisted the economy is “booming” and brushed off higher gas prices as a “very small price to pay” for the war in Iran.

The contrast was on display over the weekend at a glitzy Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Florida. As hundreds gathered in the club’s ballroom, eating Alaskan king crab and caviar, Trump showed off the crowd to reporters.

“Look at all my rich members,” Trump told reporters. “They spent all day getting ready. Look at these guys.”

WASHINGTON — Over the past decade, President Trump has steadily expanded executive power, pushing the limits of his authority and evading traditional constraints. But a Democratic takeover of Congress on Tuesday could set up one final constitutional test for the Trump era, challenging the legislative branch to reclaim its role as a check on an increasingly powerful White House.

A blue wave could give Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, handing them not only investigative and subpoena powers in the House, but also, through the Senate, the authority to confirm presidential appointments, pursue impeachments trials, and control legislation and federal spending.

That would historically be enough to bring a president to heel. Yet the Trump administration’s broad assertion of executive privilege and politicization of the Justice Department could make oversight from a Democratic Congress sluggish — if not impossible — over Trump’s final two years.

The Office of Legal Counsel has claimed that even Trump’s communications with private advisors could be shielded by privilege. Independent watchdogs across the federal government, which have traditionally supported congressional oversight, have been systematically removed. And a Justice Department that historically pursued congressional criminal referrals regardless of their political implications is poised to ignore them under current leadership.

A combative administration will pose a challenge to Democratic congressional leaders, who may face internal party calls to pursue a third impeachment of the president over any number of scandals, and will likely shape debate over the coming presidential campaign season.

“Our system of checks and balances and the requirements of super majorities makes it difficult for the legislature to hold the executive fully accountable,” said Alan Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard and a lawyer to Trump during his first Senate impeachment trial.

“This is a good thing,” he added, “leaving ultimate accountability to the voters, who are the ultimate check in a democracy.”

Norm Eisen, who served as chief ethics lawyer for President Obama and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment trial, acknowledged the Trump administration is likely to aggressively resist Democratic probes.

“To be sure, those in the government may resist,” Eisen said, “but the incredible scale of corruption over the past 20 months has also implicated a wide variety of those in the private sector. They will cooperate because the consequences for not doing so are too great.”

Democratic control will also challenge the expansive vision of presidential power that Trump and his closest aides have successfully advanced since the 2024 campaign.

Project 2025 — a conservative effort pioneered by Trump allies that ultimately joined the administration — embraced a sweeping theory of unitary power, under which the president would exercise near-total control over the executive branch, including the Justice Department.

A conservative Supreme Court, featuring three Trump appointees, has endorsed key elements of that theory, affirming broad presidential authority to remove executive officials and granting presidents absolute immunity for exercising their core constitutional powers, along with presumptive immunity for other official acts.

Practical limits on the oversight powers of a Democratic Congress already has some leaders thinking of other, coercive means of using congressional power to exact accountability.

A cabinet fleeing for the campaign trail, or for the safety of the private sector, may create a series of openings that will be difficult for Trump to fill with a Democratic majority in the Senate, said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College and author of “The New Imperial Presidency.”

“Trump doesn’t have a huge legislative agenda, but there are some things he wants,” Rudalevige said. “Those can be held up. And relatedly, Democrats could embrace the power of the purse, since the budget is the one bill that needs to pass.”

Already, several Democratic House members are debating whether to demand the resignation of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s embattled defense secretary, as a condition of further appropriations funding for the department in its pursuit of war with Iran, the Hill first reported last month.

Democrats may find it difficult to hold the administration accountable for past actions, much of which are already being litigated in federal courts, said Peter Kastor, history department chair at Washington University in St. Louis. The larger question, he said, is how the two parties could govern together — particularly if Trump defies congressional authority, such as by impounding funds appropriated by lawmakers.

“I think it will be extremely difficult for Democrats to take any action to punish the administration for its actions until now, much as Democrats may want this,” Kastor said, suggesting the greatest wild card may lie not in Democratic strategy, but in the actions of a Republican minority.

“The big question is not whether they will desert Trump,” he added, “but rather what role they would see for themselves as a minority caught in the middle of a grand political battle.”

In an interview with the New York Post, Trump suggested he is expecting a wave, stating he will “become Mr. Veto” if Democrats sweep control.

But a president who long viewed concession as weakness may now have to pivot.

“At some point, we’ll probably make deals,” he added.

Charleston, South Carolina – Avery Milton thought he was a die-hard supporter of US President Donald Trump. The 28-year-old South Carolina native had voted for Trump in the past three elections and believed in his promise to put America first. But ahead of the midterm elections, the president has left him feeling betrayed.

“He stabbed us in the back during his second term,” Milton told Al Jazeera.

Milton’s disillusionment is not isolated. He said many people close to him share this frustration, particularly younger conservatives around his age who are starting families and entering the workforce. Trump launching a war on Iran, after campaigning on a promise to avoid new wars, was a particular breaking point.

Now, Milton is helping lead a grassroots effort to write in Republican Congressman Ralph Norman for the US Senate, rather than support the party nominee, Senator Darline Graham, who has Trump’s endorsement.

A write-in candidate is someone whose name does not appear on the ballot but can still be chosen by voters who write it in themselves. The option is often used to indicate dissatisfaction with the official candidates, but rarely leads to a victory. One of those rare victories happened in 2010, when Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska won after launching a write-in campaign, having lost her Republican primary that year.

In the 2022 South Carolina Senate race, write-in votes accounted for just 0.1 percent of all votes cast.

Despite the president’s endorsement, Graham has struggled to unite conservatives behind her, potentially giving Democratic challenger Annie Andrews an opening in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate since 1998.

Darline’s unlikely path to Republican Senate candidate

After the sudden death of Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham on July 11, his younger sister, Darline, was appointed to serve out the remainder of his term.

Her appointment followed a tradition of family members succeeding deceased lawmakers, most commonly their spouses. But she made history as the first sibling appointed to fill a Senate vacancy.

Graham initially described the role as an opportunity to finish her brother’s work during the remaining months of his term. But days later, Trump urged her to run for a full six-year term, posting “RUN, DARLINE, RUN!” on Truth Social and promising his “complete and total endorsement” if she entered the race. Three days later, Graham announced on Fox News that she would run.

For some Republicans, the transition from temporary appointment to a full-term campaign happened too quickly. Milton said he felt the appointment had effectively “installed” a candidate.

Graham went on to defeat Republican Ralph Norman in the state’s August primary elections.

Norman, who represents South Carolina’s fifth congressional district, has repeatedly declined to campaign alongside Graham since losing the primary. He has made clear that his support for Graham is limited.

“You have to earn the vote. She hasn’t done that,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “The campaign has been about trying to prop up a candidate.”

The tensions have been particularly pronounced in Upstate South Carolina, where Norman has considerable support. Milton said Graham has done little to reach voters there during the campaign, aside from private dinners and appearances alongside Trump.

“She [Graham] never tried to reach out to everyday people here Upstate. And that spoke volumes about how this South Carolina GOP establishment feels about the grassroots conservatives. They just really don’t care,” Milton said.

Frustrated by what he saw as a failure to represent grassroots conservatives, Milton helped launch the Write-In Ralph movement, building a website and giving the campaign a public platform.

Milton said he and other supporters wanted a senator who would think independently, rather than simply fall in line with party leadership.

“We don’t necessarily want somebody that’s a rubber stamp for everything,” he said, adding that he wanted someone willing to “think of all the sides of an issue and policy”.

South Carolina’s independents

A sizeable group of South Carolina voters does not identify with either major party.

While the state does not register voters by party, a New York Times/Siena poll conducted in October suggested that 30 percent of likely voters identified as independents. Among those voters, Democratic Senate candidate Andrews led Graham by 20 percentage points.

The findings point to a potential blind spot for Republicans seeking to consolidate support around Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) coalition.

John Connolly, a 77-year-old retiree who lives in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, is one example of a voter whose political allegiances have shifted over time. He sees Graham’s appointment as part of a political culture that rewards loyalty over experience.

“I see her as nothing more than a puppet,” he told Al Jazeera. “To nod her head yes whenever she’s told to.”

Leila Ali, a regional campaign adviser who has spent more than a decade working with grassroots organisations across the US South, said political strategists often underestimate the diversity of the Southern electorate.

“The biggest thing that people get wrong is that they think the Southern vote is this monolith,” she told Al Jazeera.

Ali pointed to South Carolina’s early voting figures as evidence of that engagement. Nearly 950,000 early votes have been cast in the state, according to the state’s Election Commission, setting a new record for early voting in a midterm election.

An increasingly close Senate race

The stakes of this race have become increasingly apparent as the November 3 election approaches.

Despite Trump winning South Carolina by nearly 18 percentage points in 2024, he has made two trips to South Carolina in three months to campaign for Graham – an extraordinary show of presidential attention.

And polling suggests the race is far more competitive than Republicans might have expected. The October New York Times/Siena College poll had Graham and Democratic challenger Annie Andrews tied at 48 percent among likely voters.

For Democrats, this division offers a rare opening in a deep-red state where the party has struggled to compete.

Even with the race tightening, Republicans like Milton are willing to risk a Democratic victory by writing in Ralph Norman on their ballot. And if Graham loses, Milton says the blame should not fall on the write-in effort.

“They’re going to try to point the finger on this Write-in Ralph movement,” he said. “But I just want to make something very clear: that would assume that our votes would have gone to Darline anyway, and that’s just not the case.”

MARANA, Ariz. — Michael Falk was heading into the Pima County branch library to drop off his ballot when he stopped to discuss Tuesday’s midterm election.

Pima County, in south-central Arizona, is home to one of the most competitive congressional races in the country. Falk, a 66-year-old retiree and political independent, was casting his vote for the Democrat, JoAnna Mendoza, even though he hardly knows a thing about her.

But Falk knows — and loathes — a good deal about President Trump.

“From the very beginning, when he stepped on the political stage, he made it quite clear to the people who were silenced for a long time, the bigots of the United States, he gave them a voice, and he told those people, ‘It’s OK for you to think the way that you do.’

“And then that just took off like wildfire,” Falk said, sweeping his arm like a moving wall of flame, “and that’s why we have all these laws that are against brown people and illegal people.”

Gregory Corron confessed he’s not too familiar with Mendoza’s opponent, the Republican incumbent Juan Ciscomani.

But Corron, a 67-year-old computer programmer, voted for Trump three times and believes the president is moving the country in the right direction.

Gregory Corron likes the way things have gone under Trump and wants him to continue unimpeded by a Democrat-run Congress.

(Cassidy Araiza / For The Times)

“I think, for instance, exposing fraud is a big thing. Technology is taking off. I’m totally excited about that,” said Corron, who was killing time at a strip mall in Oro Valley while the tires on his Lexus were being replaced. “I think the economy is strong. The stock market is doing well. Employment is doing well.”

For that reason, Corron cast his ballot for Ciscomani, fearful of what might happen if Democrats take control of Congress. “The reforms that Trump started,” Corron said, “need to continue.”

Mendoza and Ciscomani have assaulted the voters of southern Arizona for months, overwhelming their senses and curdling the airwaves with a ceaseless barrage of acrid advertising. Together, the two rivals and their allies have spent tens of millions of dollars on the contest, which both parties have made a top priority.

And yet, to a large degree, Mendoza and Ciscomani are mere stand-ins, their candidacies serving as little more than proxies for the president and his opposition.

Laura Lentner, another Oro Valley resident, allowed as how Ciscomani has done some good things. He is not, the Democrat said, a bad man.

“But his continued support of Trump negates it all for me,” said the 73-year-old retired dental hygienist. It’s about time, Lentner suggested, Republican lawmakers stand up and “stop being afraid of [Trump] and his constituents.”

Arizona’s 6th Congressional District is anchored in eastern Tucson and its suburbs, sprawling north toward Phoenix, east to New Mexico and south all the way to the U.S.-Mexico border. The arid landscape is creased with rugged mountain ranges, cleaved by scenic canyons and filled with vast stretches of open space interrupted by midsize cities and small towns that spring like oases from the desert floor.

In recent years, the terrain has been some of the hardest-fought political turf in the nation.

Joe Biden carried the district in 2020 by less than a percentage point. Four years later, Trump flipped it by the same tiny margin.

Ciscomani, bidding for a third term, has won two nail-biters. He’s facing a fresh opponent in Mendoza, a Marine veteran and former congressional staffer.

The district has a significant Latino population — Ciscomani and Mendoza are Mexican American — and a sizable number of seniors, veterans and military personnel. Mendoza has leaned into her Navy and Marine Corps service. “Battle Tested. Ready To Lead,” her billboards declare, including one near the Ft. Huachuca Army base. (His signs tout “Veterans For Ciscomani.”)

Mendoza has attacked the incumbent as a “spineless” tool of Trump, putting the president front and center in her avalanche of advertising. Ciscomani’s incessant ads tout his bipartisanship — he hails from the establishment wing of the Republican Party — and portray Mendoza as a tool of the unhinged left.

In that way their campaigns distill the push-pull of this midterm election, which, like every one before, amounts to a referendum on the occupant of the Oval Office.

For Trump supporters, that means explaining away vexations like inflation and the war with Iran, twin anchors dragging down the president and fellow Republicans.

Higher costs, Trump voters said, are a hangover from Biden’s time in office, a needed sacrifice or an inconvenience that will pass. Echoing the president, they said the record-breaking cost of gas was a trade-off — and a good one — to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

“I wish gas prices were lower,” said Susan Summers, a Republican who stopped to chat while grocery shopping in Vail. The old railroad town has become a destination for retirees like Summers, 74, a former administrator at Cal State San Bernardino, and for commuters who don’t mind the roughly 25-mile drive to Tucson.

But, Summers went on, she’s willing to accept higher gas prices “because I think it was important to stop a fanatical regime from acquiring nuclear weapons that would actually threaten us in the longer range. Once there is some kind of resolution … prices will come down somewhat and it will make life easier for a lot of people.”

Merilyn Prentice, 78, is another refugee from the state next door. She moved to Benson (population 5,500) from Southern California after a career in nursing. She praised Trump for demonstrating a resolve that other presidents lacked.

“They’re terrorist supporters, and we have terrorist cells in this country,” Prentice said of Iran. “No one wants to talk about that. None of the other presidents wanted to touch it.”

An early voting center and ballot drop-off location at the public library in Marana, Ariz.

(Cassidy Araiza / For The Times)

If backers of the president often seemed defensive — justifying, rationalizing, urging patience — Trump critics were seething.

In Sierra Vista, Ann Nichols, 72 and a Democratic-leaning independent, could scarcely get the words out fast enough as she cataloged her outrage.

“Let’s not forget how the tariffs have wrecked the economy,” she said, “how the war that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu tricked Trump into declaring on Iran has wrecked the economy, driven up gas prices, and the rampant corruption in the government, and how the Environmental Protection Agency might as well be known as the Environmental Pollution Agency, and the attempt to wreck the Education Department, and we’ve got a twit who knows nothing about medicine in charge of medicine.”

Nichols paused to adjust her N95 mask. She spent decades as a medical librarian at the Ft. Huachuca Army base.

Her vote for Mendoza, Nichols said, was a vote to leash Trump and start undoing some of the damage he’s inflicted over the last two years.

For all that passion, however, it would be wrong to assume a blue wave — should one come Tuesday — means there’s great regard or overflowing affection for Democrats.

Clayton Surratt, 63, a retired actor and screenwriter, was passing out boxes of groceries — veggies, protein, a loaf of bread — at the food bank in Vail when he paused to share his unhappiness with both Trump and the Democratic Party.

“I think our current government thrives and lives on cruelty,” he said as a steady stream of cars pulled up for delivery. “It upsets me to see our world, our leaders, acting in ways that we would punish an 8-year-old at school if they behave that way.”

At the same time, Surratt said, he’s not sure what Democrats stand for, beyond opposition to Trump.

Adam Thompson, a Democratic-leaning independent, was blunter still. “I don’t like either party,” he said. The 39-year-old lives in Tanque Verde and travels throughout south-central Arizona, delivering soda and snack foods to major retailers. He’s particularly upset these days with Trump.

Why, Thompson asked, are so much time and resources being devoted to matters overseas?

“We need to take care of the people here,” Thompson said. “The war in Iran, the war in the Middle East is not helping me put food on my table. I work my ass off. But at the end of the day, I have to pay that price because … we’re so busy fighting wars for other people.”

The big question is how many discouraged Trump voters sit the election out. Their level of apathy and absenteeism will spell the difference between a good and a great night for Democrats.

Alex Lagerberg, a 35-year-old tattoo artist and libertarian, is a three-time Trump voter. He was initially attracted by his seeming authenticity and background as a New York real estate developer. “He was a good option because he was not a politician,” Lagerberg said outside a mercado in Casa Grande. But, he continued, it turns out that Trump’s supposed entrepreneurial prowess wasn’t all Lagerberg thought it was, or that Trump purported it to be.

“Treating the country like a business was a good thing for a little bit, but it really hasn’t helped,” Lagerberg said. “We haven’t seen much change.”

He’s not particularly motivated to vote, Lagerberg said, or decide between Ciscomani and Mendoza, especially with the two heaving so much mud at each other.

Alex Lagerberg is disappointed in Trump and not very motivated to vote on Tuesday.

(Cassidy Araiza / For The Times)

Rick, who declined to give his last name because he doesn’t want to be hassled for his opinion, has made up his mind. He’s done voting — forever.

The 67-year-old retired government worker, a right-leaning libertarian, soured on politics and politicians long ago. “Democrat, Republican,” he said, “it’s all the same thing.”

He voted for Trump in 2024, giving the political system one last shot. And now? Trump promised “no new wars. What do we have?” Rick asked. “New wars. Taxes are still too high. And Medicare? Medicare sucks.” So no, he said, he’s not bothering with the election.

As he left Vail’s thrift shop, steamed about Trump, Mendoza, Ciscomani and the whole lot, Rick clutched his purchase, a compilation of Ray Price’s greatest hits. One song by the country singer seemed to sum up Rick’s attitude: “You Done Me Wrong.”

He’s not alone.