Democrats just won a House majority built to block Donald Trump
1 hour ago · 6 November 2026Share
The House of Representatives Chamber at the United States Capitol. File photo. USCapitol · Public domain
America just handed Donald Trump the weakest Congress of his term.
Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives. They've won at least 255 seats. That's their biggest House majority since the early 1990s.
The election was two days ago. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, stood up in Washington and said Democrats "will win at least 255 seats, if not more." CBS News ran its own count. It landed on about 256.
And counting isn't even finished. An earlier count from Al Jazeera had Democrats on 228 seats called outright, with leads in 34 more. Add those up and the final number could pass 260.
Count it any way you like. This is a landslide.
Here's why. Democrats went into the election holding 214 seats. Republicans held 218. Democrats only needed a handful more to flip control. Instead they flipped about 43 districts from red to blue. Only two moved the other way.
His approval rating stood at 38% on election day. CBS calls that historically low for a sitting president at a midterm. Yahoo News points to exit polling putting it even lower, at 37% — the worst midterm approval of any president since at least 2006. In the same exit polls, 63% of voters said they disapprove of how Trump is handling his job.
So what actually decided this? Cost of living.
89% of voters told exit pollsters that cost of living was a major or crucial factor in how they voted for Congress. 91% said the same about government corruption. And that's despite a jobs market the Trump administration has been calling a success story. Voters weren't grading Trump on jobs. They were grading him on prices.
Democrats' win was also read as a verdict on three other things: Trump's immigration crackdown, the eight-month war with Iran, and the tariffs placed on America's own allies.
The rest of this story is for members.
Aerial view of the Capitol, the Library of Congress, and Russell Senate building in Washington, D.C. File photo. Bradford, F. D., photographer; Bradford, F. D., copyright claimant · Public domain
Hakeem Jeffries put it simply. He says quote "It wasn't simply a blue wave. It was an American tsunami." He said Mike Johnson, the Republican House Speaker, had actually warned his own party that the polls were wrong. He was right.
And that warning cost Mike Johnson his job.
He told his own staff, on a call, that he won't run to be minority leader in the new Congress. He's stepping back from House Republican leadership entirely. Now two of his colleagues are fighting to replace him. Steve Scalise, the House Majority Leader, is running. So is Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Republicans saw this coming, by the way. Several states, including Texas and Florida, redrew their congressional maps this year specifically to protect Republican seats.
It didn't work.
And the House isn't the only thing Democrats took. According to Al Jazeera, they also won back the Senate. That gives Democrats control of both chambers of Congress for the first time since Barack Obama's second term. On top of that, more than 100 Democratic women were elected to the House. That's a first, according to the Democratic Women's Caucus.
Hakeem Jeffries has already said he'll run for House Speaker. And he's laid out what he wants to do with the power: reverse the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, extend health insurance tax credits that are due to expire, end the war with Iran, and roll back Trump's tariffs.
So is impeachment on the table? Jeffries says no. He says quote "I haven't had a single member of the House Democratic Caucus talk to me about impeachment." That's the party with the power to start impeachment proceedings, saying right now it has no plans to use it.
Republican leadership has said nothing publicly about the defeat since the results came in. Donald Trump has not responded in detail either.
The final seat count is still being confirmed. The full shape of the Senate and the state governorships isn't locked in yet either.
But one thing already is. For his last two years in office, Donald Trump is facing a Congress built to block almost everything he wants.
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