After Election Day, Trump stares down the specter of Democratic probes and the race to succeed him

WASHINGTON (AP) — For Donald Trump, Tuesday’s elections will chart the course for the final two years of his presidency.

If his party loses control of Congress in the midterm elections, the rest of his time in office is likely to be consumed by Democratic-led investigations into his administration and his business dealings, and possibly even another impeachment. The political spotlight will also begin its shift to Republicans and Democrats vying to replace him during the 2028 presidential campaign.

Beyond that, if voters deliver a rebuke to Republicans on Tuesday, Trump will be left with dramatically diminished political capital at home and abroad, as he has all but guaranteed the results will be seen as a referendum on himself by repeatedly urging voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

Placing himself front and center on voters’ minds was a major gamble by the president and his political team, who believed personalizing the midterms would activate “Make America Great Again” supporters who might otherwise be less likely to turn out when Trump was not an official candidate. Democrats were eager to watch the unpopular president insert himself so fully in the campaign, believing it’s served as an effective reminder of who should be blamed for the state of the economy, which voters said was their top concern.

“Trump’s desire to have everyone think that he’s on the ballot? Like, it’s happening,” said Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who has campaigned in key battlegrounds this fall, including Iowa, Georgia and Texas. “Everyone is thinking about him and the harm that he has done to them directly.”

But if Trump defies the political odds and retains GOP majorities, then he will undoubtedly emerge more powerful and with a stronger grip on his party, which would owe much of its success to the president's monthlong barnstorming of primarily conservative states where he remains very popular with voters. On Tuesday, Trump plans to spend his day at the White House.

The president — who faced a Democratic-led House for the latter half of his first term — campaigned aggressively in the final weeks to keep the Republican majorities on Capitol Hill because he knows what the consequences would be if Democrats seize power.

But the president at times shrugged off the prospect of a Republican loss of power in Congress, and even told a crowd in Oklahoma that Democrats, if they take power, could impeach him again. “I’ve become very good at beating them in impeachment," Trump said.

The president is also keenly aware of the political power he draws from having a foil leveraging opposition to consolidate support in his party and boost fundraising.

Senior Democrats, as they anticipate a majority in at least one chamber of Congress, have been telegraphing what their top investigative targets would be. Their list is vast, with ambitions to go after the Trump administration’s policies, the conduct of its personnel, and interactions between government officials and private corporations who’ve tried to wield influence with the White House.

For instance, California Rep. Robert Garcia, who is set to lead the powerful House Oversight Committee if Democrats win the House, in recent days has made it clear he plans to dig into the administration’s immigration and detention policies, making an unannounced visit to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in southern California and holding a news conference outlining his agenda to “demand accountability” for ICE’s tactics.

Among his other priorities are the Trump family’s business dealings, the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and broader allegations of corporate corruption.

A Democratic majority would be armed with control of committees, bigger budgets and staff, and subpoena powers that could compel the administration to be responsive to Congress. In response, the White House could reprise its strategy from the first Trump administration, when it slow-walked congressional requests for documents and testimony and asserted executive privilege over certain information.

The president is also bracing for major legislative fights, saying he has a “strong veto."

“I hope that that won’t be the case, but if it is, that’s happened before with many presidents,” Trump told reporters last week. “And you have strong veto and you end up working out deals.”

A potential House speaker, Hakeem Jeffries, would also be confronted with whether to pursue an unprecedented third impeachment against Trump, who was impeached twice in his first term in office but acquitted by the Senate both times. Democratic lawmakers have signaled that, instead, they may go after top Cabinet members, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, one of Trump’s most stridently loyal administration officials who has played a key role in the Iran war that Democrats have decried.

“I'm here to say, one of the first things we’re going to do in the majority, we’re going to run Pete Hegseth out of town,” Jeffries said at an October rally.

Trump’s personal pitch involved a flurry of campaign rallies across the U.S. in the final weeks, increasingly in deeply Republican areas where the apparent need to shore up his party’s candidates was seen as a warning sign of the national mood.

In an attempt to buck historical trends that have seen the president's party typically lose seats in midterm elections, Trump also tried some novel tactics. He staged a two-day Trump-focused Republican convention in Dallas, where he led party faithful in a repeat-after-me pledge to vote and issued a dubious promise that he'd send $5,000 to every adult if his party wins in November.

But his closing message has been disjointed.

On the campaign trail, the winding remarks he typically delivered for 90 minutes included some promotion of the local Republican nominees, but plenty of free association that drifted away from the issues voters care about, such as the high cost of fuel. Trump frequently waxed on about the renovations he's done to Washington and the White House, including his construction of a giant ballroom.

And lately, he's been fixated on the muscular builds of some Republican candidates, regaling crowds in North Carolina, Michigan and Kentucky with descriptions of the impressive backside of Ohio Sen. Jon Husted.

He's also embraced positions at odds with a broad swath of voter concerns, claiming communities that reject data centers will end up “backwards and poor” and claiming affordability is a “hoax” and a word “made up by the Democrats.”

Befitting of his unusual strategy, Trump set his closing argument ahead of Tuesday at the National Mall, where he stood before the Reflecting Pool and spent much of a winding, hourlong speech bragging about his beautification of Washington, D.C.

“So, we have a lot of great things planned for Washington, and I could get into the nation,” Trump said. “But for that, you don’t have enough time.”

Senate candidate Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, left, stands with President Donald Trump on stage during a campaign rally at the Five Flags Event Center, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Dubuque, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally at the Salina Regional Airport, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Salina Kan. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

President Donald Trump boards Air Force One after speaking at a campaign rally at the Salina Regional Airport, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Salina Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Salina Regional Airport, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Salina Kan. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Five Flags Event Center, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Dubuque, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

President Donald Trump walks from the podium after speaking at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

MBARARA, Uganda (AP) — In the red light district in Mbarara, a city in western Uganda known in part for sex tourism, a sex worker named Lisa Mutoni insists on using condoms when men enter her room, to protect her against HIV and other infections. The problem: Some try to remove or tear the condom while having sex.

She takes HIV-prevention medication called PrEP, or preexposure prophylaxis, which can come in the form of daily pills or periodic injections. But there’s a new option for her and millions like her — if they could only get it. It’s a drug called lenacapavir that studies have shown can offer nearly complete protection from HIV with just two shots a year.

Mutoni said access to lenacapavir would benefit sex workers who sometimes shift elsewhere for months at a time.

“If you know that you have that injection for six months, you feel like you are safe,” she said. “And then it is very good, nice because sometimes you can also forget, if it is the pill, you can forget to swallow.”

But Mutoni says every time she tries to get what is commonly referred to as “lena,” it's not available. “They tell me that it is finished,” she said.

Such is the promise and the frustration with lenacapavir, a drug developed by Gilead Sciences. Other PrEP options, including pills and an every-other-month shot of the drug cabotegravir, are very effective and widely available. But health experts say lenacapavir has the power not just to protect individuals but potentially even turn the tide of the HIV epidemic globally because of its long-lasting effects.

But there are not nearly enough doses, in this East African country or the rest of the world.

“The rate of growth (of lenacapavir rollout) isn’t fast enough. We need to be getting to the millions pretty soon,” said Andrew Hill, an expert in HIV treatment who is a senior visiting research fellow at the University of Liverpool in northwest England.

That may start to change in the coming months. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has just tentatively approved a generic version of lenacapavir that could help speed the production and distribution of the drug to 120 low-income countries at a price of roughly $40 a year, far below the U.S. list price of $28,218. The approval was announced Monday.

The hope, according to the Global Fund, is to get it to 3 million people by the end of 2028.

Some, including Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, say this isn't nearly enough. The group is calling on Gilead to make cheap doses available to more countries and to sell it directly to MSF so it can help protect more people faster.

“Gilead says it wants to end the HIV epidemic ‘for everyone, everywhere,’ but its actions say otherwise,” said Melissa Barber, MSF USA global health advocacy and policy adviser, in a recent statement.

For now, people in Mbarara, where an estimated 10% of the adult population has HIV — double the rate of Uganda as a whole — have to settle for inferior choices.

Julius Bampe, a polygamous man, was alarmed earlier this year when testing confirmed his younger wife had HIV. She was immediately given drugs to suppress her infection, while Bampe sought lenacapavir.

But when Bampe, an itinerant builder, went to get his injection, he found that there were no doses left.

“When I got here, they said that is what they would have given me, but they said they didn’t have enough doses for everyone,” he said.

The facility that Bampe goes to received 40 lenacapavir doses in April, with instructions to focus only on pregnant mothers at risk of acquiring HIV. The guidelines were later changed to include couples like Bampe and his wife, sex workers and others.

That batch was quickly administered and another 70 doses sent in June were used up within 10 days, said Tarsisio Biryeija, a nursing officer working as a counselor at Mbarara Health Centre IV.

Uganda has slashed its HIV rate over the past three decades, and it's far below that of some southern African countries. But like in many nations, health authorities in Uganda say infections are driven largely by transactional sexual encounters like those in Mbarara — and the type of transmission that lenacapavir could be so effective at stopping.

Mutoni, the sex worker in Mbarara, gets counseling and other support, including condoms, from Immaculate Nyamwija, founder of a Mbarara-based organization known as Action for Improved Health and Wealth. Nyamwija offers HIV support services to women who would face discrimination elsewhere.

“It is a challenge, because the demand is high and the doses are few,” she said. “Who would not wish to take (lenacapavir) for six months? Who would wish to be on drugs every day?”

Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, and Laura Ungar in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report.

For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

A nurse prepares a syringe before injecting a patient with the new HIV prevention drug lenacapavir at the ART clinic at Mbarara City Council Health Center IV in western Uganda, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)