Republicans routed as Democrats gain powerful new leverage over Trump for remainder of his presidency

Democrats have regained control of the US Senate, routing Republicans nationwide with historic victories that will give them powerful new leverage over Donald Trump for the remainder of his presidency.

Democrats will soon have the ability to hold up not just Trump’s legislative agenda, but also any appointments he makes to his cabinet or the federal judiciary – including the supreme court, where conservatives have a 6-3 majority.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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      2 minutes ago

      I mean, it’s hard to be optimistic about much given the current state of, you know, reality. Turning Trump into a lame duck is very worth it, but it doesn’t mean much long-term unless these gains can be maintained/expanded into 2028 and combined with a progressive president (or at least one willing to compromise with progressives). There’s a lot of work to be done before there’s reason for optimism, and the Democratic Party is very good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

  • finisfa@feddit.org
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    16 minutes ago

    Now hunt them down. There is no time tolouse.

    Musk will already be preparing to flee the country. These people are cowards, russian agents, traitors.

  • Necrifyre@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    3 hours ago

    Democrats have basically Congress, Senate and House.

    Trump is fucked. If Democrats want to mean everything they say to voters. Get rid of that asshole as soon as possible. Don’t even give him the satisfaction of the last 2 years of his term.

    • chillhelm@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Dems can not get Trump out. They would need 60+ in the Senate for removal. They would need at least 5 Rs for that. Impeach him one more time by all means but he WILL stay President.

      Dems should focus instead on passing legislation, blocking all Trump appointments and reversing every single EO from the White House.

    • Rakonat@lemmy.world
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      35 minutes ago

      The only way Trump gets removed from office is if a significant number of Republicans flip on Trump and try to distance themselves and the party from MAGA and his policies leading up to 2028 election. With the current state of things that seems highly unlikely though things could change over the next 18 months that would push the GOP distance themselves enough the current admin to support his removal. Though if the last 10 years have been any indication, there isn’t anywhere near enough backbone for them to turn against the far right.

    • YragNitram1956@feddit.uk
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      2 hours ago

      Agree totally. ‘The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocated under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and racist opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who couldn’t spell “precipice” if his life depended on it.’

  • FluidBeef@quokk.au
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    3 hours ago

    So are we thinking two years of deadlock, four of a corporate stooge Democrat who quietly expands ICE and the defeat in the Gulf, then Undead Trump term one?

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      I am wondering if the GOP sees this voting bloodbath as a referendum on trump. If so then they might feel he’s more of a liability than an asset and they 25th Amendment him.

        • firebyte@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          They tried with all of the mid-cycle redistricting measures to try to gerrymander their way to victory.

          It backfired. Republicans got flattened.

          Even r/Conservative is finally smelling the Spirit of Hartshorn.

          • YragNitram1956@feddit.uk
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            2 hours ago

            “I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016 and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic, morally vacant, and psychologically mangled he is. I do not wonder anymore. He won for that exact reason. He was not a candidate. He was a mirror. If you were a racist, you found your guy. If you were a misogynist, you found your guy. If money was your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart was armoured shut, you found your guy. If you mocked disabled people, you found your guy. If you hated intelligent people, you found your guy. If you were a rapist, you found your guy. If you enjoyed golden showers with Russian sex workers, you found your guy. If you had done absolutely nothing to confront your emotional wreckage, you found your guy. If you were a serial cheater, you found your guy. If you were a perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy. If you stiffed honest workers, you found your guy. If you were a conman, you found your guy. If you mocked people’s appearances, you found your guy. If you longed for a toxic Daddy, you found your guy. If you were dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy. If you were unconscionable in every economic dealing, you found your guy. If you lied as naturally as breathing, you found your guy. If you had never eaten a green vegetable, you found your guy. If you were a white supremacist, you found your guy. If your ego contained a hole so large not even the presidency could fill it, you found your guy. If you were a sociopath who cared not one molecule about other humans, you found your guy. If he had only two of these traits, he never would have won. He won because he had hundreds of them, and millions of people recognized themselves in at least one. This has never been about Trump. It has always been about the people who finally had their worst instincts validated. Trump did not create the cruelty, he licensed it. He handed out permission slips for hate. He is merely a symptom of a far deeper disease: collective toxicity. If there is one sentence that explains Trump’s power, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That is the part that should chill the spine. Who knew that tens of millions of Americans were thinking such unconscionable things about their fellow citizens? Who knew how many white men felt so threatened by women and challenged by minorities that they were ready to torch democracy to feel big again? Who knew that after decades of apparent progress on race and gender, so many people were living in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to legitimize their worst selves and convert their bitterness into political power? We were living in a fool’s paradise. We aren’t anymore." — Michael Jochum

          • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
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            2 hours ago

            I forgot about that cesspool, is it even relevant anymore? Like…is this deadass? Aren’t they literally talking about themselves?:

            (All 23 replies aren’t available to view btw, if anyone was curious. That sub suppresses it’s users like they live in a majority black district)

        • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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          1 hour ago

          If they couldn’t sway it when they controlled the government on nearly all levels I doubt they can when they’ve lost most states

      • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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        4 hours ago

        I doubt it.

        However I do think the Republican leadership plan is to get rid of Trump in January. Trump is a loose cannon they can’t control, and he’s caused way too many issues for them, but leveraging his clear mental decline after he gets past the halfway point of his 2nd term gives them free reign to toss him aside via his obvious dementia. Install Vance for the remaining 2 years, someone they can control, hoping to get that sweet 10 year total.

      • pimento64@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 hours ago

        No, they know they’re in too deep and it’s ride or die. The most decisive thing they’re going to do in from new on is eventually annihilate their families three days after Trump dies when he doesn’t come back to life.

      • freely1333@reddthat.com
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        3 hours ago

        They already had a referendum on Trump and he won convincingly lol like he literally was just part of an election of his own and wining Texas would not even have saved Dems.

    • sylver_dragon@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      It would be nice, but that’s probably not in the cards for the next two years. Even if everything goes right at this point, the Democrats would be looking at 55 seats in the Senate. That’s still 5 seats short of overriding filibusters or vetoes and also for an impeachment conviction. The Democrats need to govern well, get the cost of living down and they need to show that the trust put in them was well placed. Spending the next two years in a bunch of political theater won’t do that and Democrats will lose the trust they have now.

      Trump’s corrupt regime needs to be held to account, but that’s not going to happen in the next two years. Democrats need to prove they can make peoples’ lives better so they can expand (or at least maintain) their advantage. Then, if they can win the Presidency in 2028, then it will be time to retool the DOJ into an actual law enforcement arm and turn them loose on the corruption of Trump’s administration.

      • krashmo@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Democrats will lose the trust they have now.

        They don’t have trust now. They are not Republicans; that is the one and only reason they are winning today. None of this is about trusting Democrats and if they don’t understand that and respond appropriately then the US is going to have Marco Rubio or some other Republican ass clown as president in 2028.

        • copingwithelmons@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          Talriko and el sayed seem like noncareer politicians. Maybe they’ll actually bring about some change like zohran and you’ll see more candidates like them in future.

          Was surprised to see independents in iowa, montana and nebraska give tough fights.

      • TeaWithDani@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        The Republicans folded like lawn chairs once they knew they couldn’t block the release of the Epstein Files. They just need to be pressured enough to throw the executive under the bus to save their own asses.

      • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        All of this, AND the problem remains of the establishment Democrats who are not fascists, but maybe where Republicans were like 20ish years ago. So it’s very much an uphill battle for real progress.

        But this is a night to celebrate.

  • Azal@pawb.social
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    4 hours ago

    You want an idea of how insane this one is? Sure, Kansas didn’t go solid blue like Texas, but understand, the last time they had a Dem senator was 1932. You gotta screw up bad to lose Kansas to a Democrat.

  • auzy1@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Thank fuck… Make it a supermajority please.

    Hopefully, this shuts up our far right wing party here in Australia a bit more

    • 100_kg_90_de_belin@thelemmy.club
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      4 hours ago

      Voting hasn’t done shit yet but put their asses on seats. Let’s check again in two years and see how they’ll have ridden this blue wave.

      • luckybart@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 hours ago

        It’s already done more than the alternative. Doing something with the power is secondary to getting the chance to in the first place.

        If no one showed up tonight, there wouldn’t even be that chance.

        If the Democrats screw it up, it still isn’t a referendum against voting.

  • DonJefe@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Democrats got the Senate, the House… hell, even Texas is going blue. Thank you Trump for creating the biggest, most beautiful, strongest blue wave! 🌊🌊🌊

  • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Awesome. This means that if Trump is impeached again he’ll actually get a trial in the Senate (he didn’t the last two times because the Republicans controlled it) which will make it much more politically costly to acquit him.

    Also, it means that any new nominations will have to be confirmed by a Democratic majority, including Supreme Court nominations. If Thomas or Alito retire before Trump is gone then he’ll have to either nominate someone more moderate to replace them or the seats will remain empty until the next President takes office (thanks, McConnell, for setting that precedent.) The Supreme Court might just get unfucked within the next few years.

    They still won’t be able to get any legislation passed due to the veto, but the administrative power that the Democrats will get due to their majority will make a big difference.

    And, of course, all these Senators will still be in office until at least 2032, which gives the Democrats a chance to widen their majority even more in 2028 and gives them a buffer against the likely Republican gains in 2030.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      I honestly think legislation being passed is the most likely outcome vs impeachment. I think they will be afraid to impeach and will want to show their voters something. Trump will sign some of the bills just to spite Republicans for losing the election, because he is petty like that.

        • copingwithelmons@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          Hey, you can’t scapegoat leopold and forget that Belgium held on to and continued to exploit congo till the 60s. That’s less than a hundred years ago, your grandad was probably alive then.

          Oh and Belgium got their first democratically elected leader lubumba assassinated. And you still regularly interfere in their politics.

  • epicurean_toast@lemmus.org
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    5 hours ago

    I was expecting a “medium good” day for the Democrats, with maybe a House majority and a 50/50 Senate split leaving it in the hands of JD’s tiebreaker. This is beyond anything I could in good faith predict