Democrats’ decisive victories in Tuesday’s key elections have already begun to reshape the political landscape, forcing President Donald Trump and Republicans to reckon with the message sent by voters and what it might signify for 2026 and beyond.
At the same time, the elections cast fresh doubt about the potential for a quick deal to end the 36-day-old government shutdown, now officially the longest in U.S. history, surpassing the record set in Trump’s first term. Senate Democrats, some of whom had been warming to a potential deal, were left considering whether the election results in New Jersey, Virginia, California and elsewhere signaled that they should look to make the most of their momentum and keep fighting.
“It was a great night for America, and a five-alarm fire for Donald Trump and Republicans,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a post on X.
A frustrated Trump blames the shutdown: While Democrats and analysts said that voters had delivered a strong, unambiguous rebuke of the president and his policies, Trump, not surprisingly, framed it far differently.
A year to the day after he was re-elected, the president hosted Republican senators for a morning breakfast meeting at the White House to discuss the party’s electoral drubbing. “I thought we’d have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented and what we should do about it, and also about the shutdown and how that relates to last night,” Trump said in his opening remarks to the senators. “I think that if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans.”
Trump has allowed congressional Republican leaders to guide the GOP strategy on the shutdown, so blaming the election results on the shutdown insulates him at least partially from responsibility for the outcome. Trump also said Republicans had lost because he wasn’t on the ballot, calling that “the biggest factor.”
In talking to GOP senators, Trump noted the pain being caused by the shutdown and called for getting the government reopened immediately — but he didn’t call for negotiating a deal with Democrats. Instead, he again forcefully urged Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster, not just to end the federal funding lapse via a simple majority vote but to enact additional planks of the GOP agenda.
“It’s time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that’s terminate the filibuster,” Trump said. “It’s the only way you can do it, and if you don’t terminate the filibuster you’ll be in bad shape. We won’t pass any legislation. There’ll be no legislation passed for three and a quarter years.”
Trump urged Senate Republicans to reopen the government on their own, then enact voter ID laws, eliminate mail-in voting and “pass all the things that we want to pass to make our election secure and safe.” He then pointed to California and other states that he called “disasters” for their election laws.
Senate Republicans aren’t likely to heed Trump’s call. Majority Leader John Thune has said repeatedly that the votes simply aren’t there to end the filibuster. “It’s not happening,” Thune told reporters.
Democrats demand a meeting: Tuesday’s results may have undercut growing sentiment among some Senate Democrats to accept a shutdown-ending deal that fell short of the party’s goal of ensuring the Affordable Care Act subsidies are extended. At the very least, it stiffened some Democrats’ resolve to keep pressing their demands and to refuse to accept just the promise of a vote on the subsidies.
Buoyed by the election results — and by Trump’s own remarks about the effects of the shutdown — Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent a letter to the president to demand a bipartisan meeting to end the shutdown and address what they call a “Republican healthcare crisis” — their term for the looming expirations of more generous Affordable Care Act subsidies.
“We have been asking for a meeting for weeks, and even months,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “But now the election results ought to send a much-needed bolt of lightning to Donald Trump that he should meet with us to end this crisis and his shutdown, which he admits, hurt him badly in the election.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, warned against accepting anything less than firm commitments to extend the healthcare subsidies.
“What people want is that the Democrats stand up and continue to fight, so I think that one of the reasons, of many, that the Democrats had so much success is an appreciation that Democrats are trying to protect healthcare for the American people,” Sanders told reporters.
He said Democrats must press for commitments from Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson that they will back any bill to extend the subsidies.
“If it’s just a piece of legislation that passes the Senate,” Sanders said, “so what? Where does it go? Then it becomes just a meaningless gesture.”
A set of talking points reportedly circulating in Democratic congressional offices included a similar warning: “Caving without concessions would sap Democrats' momentum and undercut the party's support from its base.”
And Katie Bethell, the executive director of progressive organizing group MoveOn, told Axios:“Moderate Senate Democrats who are looking for an off-ramp right now are completely missing the moment if, on the heels of last night's election landslide, they are entertaining the idea of capitulating to Trump and the Republicans in the fight to protect Americans' health care.”
The record-long shutdown keeps going: As the political clashes continue, so does the shutdown — and its painful effects are set to get worse. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Wednesday that, if the funding lapse continues, flight capacity at 40 major airports will be cut by 10% starting on Friday morning, which will affect about 3,500 to 4,000 flights a day.