Democrats inflicted a string of historic defeats in the midterm elections against Republicans, allowing them to take control of both chambers of Congress.

The fate of Donald Trump’s final years in the White House will be significantly influenced by the midterm results, as his political opponents gain essential power over policymaking. With control of both chambers, Democrats can now serve as a check on Trump’s most extreme policies.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives were up for election, along with 35 seats in the 100-member Senate.

With the majority of preliminary results declared, Democrats are expected to hold at least 54 seats in the Senate after a series of victories in former Republican strongholds, including Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, Ohio, Maine and Iowa.

“The days of Trump’s supplicant Senate are over,” Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer said after the results.

As results came in, Trump told Foxx News that he thought the Democrats “did a good job.”

“They fought hard. They were, you know, they’ve been fighting for a long time. They’ve been fighting me for a long time,” he said.

The 2026 midterm elections have been seen as a referendum on Trump’s second presidency, with Democratic candidates blaming the administration for the growing cost of living crisis and economic fallout from the Iran war, among other issues that drove voters to the polls in record numbers.

Democrats have also regained control of the House of Representatives, which they last held in 2023, having flipped numerous seats in states including Kentucky, New Jersey, Indiana and North Carolina — a major blow to the president’s command for GOP-controlled states to implement new voting maps that were designed to give them better odds in midterms. That effort largely failed.

A final result in a nail-biter Senate election in Alaska isn’t expected imminently as election officials tabulate remaining ranked-choice ballots. In Mississippi, a state that has not sent a Democratic senator to Washington, D.C., since the Reconstruction era, Scott Colom has a small lead over incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde‑Smith. The state does not have any recount laws, raising questions about next steps as election officials continue to count the votes.

Texas voters elected Democratic candidate James Talarico, who is the first Democrat in the state to be elected to the upper chamber of Congress in nearly 40 years. South Carolina’s Annie Andrews defeated Trump-backed Republican Darline Graham — the sister of late senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham — in a stunning rebuke of the president’s agenda.

In Michigan, progressive Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated Trump-backed Republican Mike Rogers. Voters will send the first Muslim senator to the upper chamber in American history.

Defensive Republicans, meanwhile, have sought to cast their opponents as too extreme.

Delivering his re-election victory speech in Georgia, Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff said: “Together, we’ve affirmed that our task is not just to contain one president’s wickedness, but to heal the brokenness beneath.”

“The American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption and incompetence of the failed lame duck president Donald J. Trump,” he added.

The president signaled a willingness to work with Democrats for the last two years of his term but ruled out any compromise on his aggressive immigration agenda and transgender rights, which were an outsized focus among Republican campaigns in fear-driven messages that did not resonate with most Americans.

Trump suggested that he will invoke his veto power to combat any Democratic-backed legislation in the new Congress.

“The power of veto is one of the stronger powers that a president has, and they’ll send over things that are insane, and I’ll veto them,” he said.

Potential Republican-led challenges and legal intervention from the Trump administration could drag results into the coming days and weeks ahead, though the president has indicated that he will accept the results.