US President Donald Trump on Thursday branded the country's elections "crooked" and demanded that outstanding votes in Alaska's unresolved Senate race be awarded to the Republican incumbent, reversing his earlier acceptance of the midterm results.
"Our elections are so crooked, you have no idea," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he also condemned the "disgraceful" victory of a democratic socialist in the Los Angeles mayoral race. His remarks came two days after voters delivered control of both chambers of Congress to the Democrats in a sweeping repudiation of his presidency and of the Republican Party he has reshaped in his image.
The scale of the Republican defeat continued to grow on Thursday. Democrats are assured of at least 54 Senate seats against 44 for the Republicans, and their majority in the House of Representatives passed 250 seats, the party's largest in nearly two decades. Another potential Senate upset in Mississippi threatened to deepen the historic loss.
After Trump warned he would wield his veto pen against Democratic legislation, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer fired back with a warning of his own. "If Donald Trump does spend the next year vetoing common sense legislation to lower costs and end corruption, this election, this absolute Republican catastrophe on election night 2026, will look like a good day compared to what will come down on Republicans in the 2028 election," Schumer said.
The closest remaining contest was in Mississippi, one of the most reliably Republican states in the nation, where Scott Colom, a 43-year-old Black candidate, appeared on the verge of an improbable Senate victory. By Thursday afternoon his lead over Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith stood at 1,724 votes with only a small number of ballots still to be counted, and a final result could take days. Colom would be the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the southern state since 1982, and the first African American to do so since 1874.
In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola led with 48.2 percent of the vote, just ahead of Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan on 47.9 percent. Writing on Truth Social, Trump argued that ballots cast for a fringe candidate who is also named Dan Sullivan, whom Republicans accuse of being a "decoy" intended to draw votes away from their contender, and for minor candidate Gerald Heikes, a registered Republican, "should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan". "There is no other fair solution!" he added.
A Colom victory in Mississippi would add to a wave of barrier-breaking wins in these midterms. Keisha Lance Bottoms, the great-great-granddaughter of a slave, was elected the first Black female governor of Georgia and the first in the country, while Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed defeated a Trump ally to become the first Muslim to enter the US Senate.
Democrats also prevailed in territory once considered safely Republican. James Talarico ended a 38-year drought by winning a Senate seat in Texas, and Adam Hamilton became the first Democratic senator from Kansas in 94 years. Republican congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio said Trump's months-long war against Iran and his global trade wars had cost the party the election, adding that young voters in particular felt "betrayed".
