Democrats take the House and Senate as Vance blames the Iran war for GOP losses

Democrats take both chambers

Voters went to the polls on Tuesday, 3 November, and Democrats took control of the House and the Senate. They also won key governors' races. Republicans lost ground in many of their traditional heartlands, and on the day after the vote, while ballots were still being counted, the Democratic margin kept widening. Trump has repeatedly said his party lost because he was not on the ballot, and he returned to that argument after the result.

Blame falls on the Iran war

On Wednesday, 4 November, Vice President JD Vance broke with the administration's line on the conflict. He had privately doubted a full-scale military operation, and after the defeat he put the blame squarely on the war.

“The reason we lost is the war.”

Vance added that anyone who argued that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it should say so. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth answered with a defiant video urging "fight, fight, fight", and the US military was again massing a large force near Iran. Trump said on Wednesday that it was "largely true" the conflict had driven up gas prices, yet he said he would make the same decision to go to war again.

In a 60 Minutes interview with correspondent Ross Douthat, broadcast on Sunday night, 8 November, Trump pinned the defeat on the same causes.

“They didn't like the war. They didn't like the fact that gasoline went up because I had it down at a low.”

Trump also cited a dislike of Israel and then turned to the press, saying coverage did not favour Republicans. The AAA put the national average for a gallon of gas still above $4 on Sunday, about a dollar higher than a year earlier.

Stephen Miller gains influence

Stephen Miller, 41, was named White House chief of staff on Friday, 6 November, succeeding Susie Wiles, who had preferred to work behind the scenes and tried to temper his blunt approach to immigration. Trump said after landing in Florida that he wanted a more visible lieutenant at his side.

“He's a great fighter.”

Trump added that Miller had been with him from the beginning and was very loyal. A day after the vote, while counting was still under way, Miller held one of his regular calls with national security officials on immigration. People with knowledge of the call, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said none of the midterm results came up and no one discussed scaling back the hardline approach. Instead, Miller pushed for more deportations, lower border crossings and removals of immigrants to countries they were not from. He rose from a Senate aide to a speechwriter on Trump's 2016 campaign and helped oversee the militarized crackdown on the US-Mexico border.

Congressional probes and Republican rifts

Democrats have promised to investigate the policies Miller helped devise. Robert Garcia, expected to lead the House Oversight Committee, says he has four investigations ready, covering the Trump family's businesses, the conduct of ICE and Homeland Security, corporate corruption and Jeffrey Epstein. Reuters puts the family's take from four crypto ventures at $2.3bn. The Oversight Committee is also likely to examine why Jared Kushner received $2bn from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.

On the Republican side, John Cornyn, who spent 24 years in the Senate, was ousted after falling out with the president. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he said that "successful coalitions add, they don't subtract". In the UK, Nigel Farage has distanced Reform UK from Trump, saying the president broke promises to the American people by going to war with Iran.