BEIRUT (AP) — From Michigan to the Middle East, Arabs are celebrating Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate win and delighting in his introduction of Arabic terms like “habibi” and “inshallah” to the American political lexicon.
After being the target of Islamophobic rhetoric on the campaign trail, the rising political star who will be the first Muslim American U.S. senator has mocked his critics on the right while championing the Palestinian cause and leaning into his faith and Egyptian heritage.
“JD, habibi,” El-Sayed said in his victory speech, addressing U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who had warned that the candidate would lead rioters in burning down Detroit. “There is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January.”
“Habibi” literally translates to “my beloved” and is peppered through Arab pop songs. In everyday speech, it often means “buddy,” “pal,” or “bro.” El-Sayed's supporters have sported shirts reading “Habibi for Abdul.”
El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, said his campaign had turned “inshallah” — “God willing” — into “hamdulillah,” which means “thank God.”
Arabs thrilled to the gentle ribbing of the vice president, with many posting music video clips featuring “habibi” to social media. It was a rare outpouring of joy in a region traumatized by past and present conflicts — which have also fueled negative stereotypes in the West.
One user on X posted a video of Egyptian diva Shireen Abd El-Wahab dancing to one of her most popular songs, joking that El-Sayed would make it the new national anthem.
Egyptians are renowned in the Arab world for their sense of humor and are known for cracking jokes in the face of life's difficulties, a spirit that has been popularized in films and by famous comedic actors.
Riffing off El-Sayed's victory speech, some shared a meme from an Egyptian film in which a man attends a funeral while high and is unable to stop laughing. “I came here to crack jokes,” read the caption, quoting a line from the film.
An Egyptian academic, Khalil al-Anani, praised El-Sayed on X, saying: "'Habibi' is the sweetest word.” He thanked the senator-elect for bringing joy to Egyptians.
Arab and Muslim Americans have faced prejudice for decades, with popular films depicting them as terrorists and politicians on the right fanning baseless fears about the imposition of sharia, or Islamic law.
During the campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump referred to El-Sayed as a “jihadist,” evoked the Sept. 11 attacks and deliberately misstated the candidate's name.
On social media, users responded to such attacks by posting light-hearted videos, including of Lebanese diva Haifa Wehbe belly dancing and young veiled women breakdancing in the streets.
“Donald, look, I know you've struggled with my name,” El-Sayed said in his victory speech. “So after JD swears me in in January, you can just go on and call me ‘senator.'”
Supporters cheer as Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed departs a campaign cookout, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, in Pontiac, Mich. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed speaks at an election night event, early Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Detroit, as his wife Sarah Jukaku watches. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Alaskans are awaiting more results from key races on the general election ballot, including a bitterly fought U.S. Senate campaign and an open seat for governor. A ballot measure seeking to repeal Alaska’s unique system of open primaries and ranked vote general elections was also too early to call.
The midterm election blowout has set up a new era in Washington, with Democrats eager to meet voter demands for change, while Republicans watched their congressional majorities evaporate in a revolt against President Donald Trump’s policies. Democrats triumphed in several surprise upsets, marking a decisive rejection of unified GOP control of the House and Senate. See the full election results.
Trump acknowledged the Iran war affected the midterms, suggesting voters were frustrated by surging gas prices that have been a byproduct of the more than 8-month-old conflict. He struck a conciliatory tone earlier, suggesting he could work with the Democrats but later threatened to use his veto power to strike down their agenda.
The fallout for Republicans is only beginning. Vice President JD Vance, a 2028 presidential contender, blamed the war in Iran for Republicans’ midterm wipeout. And Mike Johnson of Louisiana will not seek reelection as House speaker, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Here's the latest:
Fresh off winning a third term, the potential Democratic presidential contender said Thursday he wants to see the new Congress “walk and chew gum at the same time” by helping lower consumer costs and still conducting accountability hearings and investigations into the Trump administration.
“That could lead possibly to impeachment,” Pritzker said at a Center for American Progress forum, but that shouldn’t be the initial point.
The long-term goal, Pritzker argued, is to gather details about Trump’s and his associates’ activity so “the American public could understand what it is, then we could actually take action to prevent it next time.”
Without calling names, Pritzker added, “There are certain officials other than the president that ought to be targets.”
Republican congressional candidate David Flippo has conceded the race for Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District and congratulated Teresa Benitez-Thompson, the first Democrat to win the historically red seat in northern Nevada.
“The voters have spoken, and I respect their decision,” he said in a Wednesday night statement.
The Air Force veteran and businessowner campaigned as a major Trump ally with strong conservative values. He faced major scrutiny since he moved from southern Nevada to join the race after longtime Republican Rep. Mark Amodei announced his retirement.
Flippo was accused of exaggerating his military awards and had delayed filing required financial disclosures. Amodei refused to endorse Flippo, calling him a fraud.
In his concession statement, Flippo said establishment Republicans and “their allies in the media in Nevada, Montana, and Texas turned against their own party, costing races across the country.”
The likely income majority leader said the battle over Democratic Party identity is a distraction and that any governing majority requires a coalition of “different voices.”
“Populism and moderation are not mutually exclusive,” Schumer said, arguing that all victorious Democrats on Tuesday agreed on the fundamental tasks of lowering costs, stopping the Iran war, standing up to Trump and addressing corruption.
“Unity does not mean blind fealty to a party line,” Schumer said. “Just look at what that’s done to the GOP. Unity means linking arms with people you will not agree with on every issue so that you can make progress on the more important areas where you agree.”
Schumer said Democrats flipped so many Senate seats by having “candidates who fit their states, who ran the gamut from proud progressives to lifelong moderates, all united by one simple mission: make the government work for the people.”
A Democratic candidate has conceded in a U.S. House race in Maine that was slated to go to ranked choice voting.
The Associated Press has not yet called the race between Republican Paul LePage and Democrat Matt Dunlap in the Maine 2nd Congressional District. State officials said Thursday the race would proceed to a ranked count because neither candidate broke 50% of the popular vote.
Dunlap’s campaign said Thursday that it does not “currently believe that ranked choice voting will change the results of this race.” LePage said in a statement that he was confident he had won.
A win by LePage would be a rare blue seat that flipped red this year. Democratic Rep. Jared Golden did not seek reelection.
LePage is a former governor of the state and an ally of President Donald Trump. Dunlap is a former Maine Secretary of State
The New York Democrat and likely Senate majority leader and said Thursday that the new Congress will work to answer voters’ concerns on “costs, chaos and corruption” regardless of whether Trump plays along.
“Will Trump sign all of it into law? Knowing Trump’s and Republicans’ intransigence, of course not,” Schumer said at the Center for American Progress.
Schumer said Democrats will try to curb Trump’s tariffs, the Iran war, ban federal elected officials from stock trades, and limit consumer costs from data center expansion.
Schumer said Republicans have to choose whether to participate or ensure another drubbing at the polls.
“If Donald Trump does spend the next year vetoing common sense legislation to lower costs and end corruption, this election,” Schumer said, “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.”
A Maine race in which Republicans have a rare chance to flip a blue seat this year is headed to a ranked choice count, the state announced.
Republican Paul LePage and Democrat Matt Dunlap ran against each other to fill the seat that Democratic Rep. Jared Golden is vacating. The 2nd Congressional District covers much of rural Maine and is typically very competitive.
The secretary of state’s office said Thursday that neither candidate broke 50% of the vote, so the ranked second choices will come into play. There were only two candidates on the ballot, but use of write-in candidates allowed voters to pick second choices.
LePage declared victory in the race Wednesday. Dunlap’s campaign has said it is awaiting full results.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says “a mighty wind” was responsible for sweeping so many fellow Republicans out of office Tuesday, brushing aside whether GOP gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial attack ad against Democratic Gov.-elect Amy Acton played a role.
The 79-year-old DeWine joked during the Impact Ohio postelection conference that “the elephant in the room” was now “the donkey in the room.”
When people didn’t laugh or applaud, he nudged the room, “Oh, c’mon.”
DeWine predicted that Acton, who previously served in his cabinet, would uphold Ohio’s tradition of governing from the middle. He said Ohio has a history of moderate Republican and moderate Democratic governors and he expects Acton to be one, too.
On Tuesday, Acton became the first Democrat in 20 years to win Ohio’s governor’s office and the first woman elected to the post.
Another wipeout for stocks tied to the build-out of AI data centers is overwhelming Wall Street and erasing gains from the day before, which marked the stock market’s best day in three months.
The S&P 500 fell 3.2% Thursday and is on track for its worst loss since President Donald Trump shook markets worldwide in 2025 with his “Liberation Day” tariffs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,079 points, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 4.9%.
Stock markets worldwide felt pressure from continued drops for AI stocks as worries rose about possible moratoriums on further data centers following Democratic victories in the U.S. midterm elections.
Texas will send 14 Democrats to the U.S. House, a net gain of one seat that squashed Republicans’ hopes of gaining five seats through redistricting. Each congressional district voted more Democratic than its estimated 2024 presidential margin under the new boundaries, with shifts of more than 30 percentage points in the 9th, 15th and 28th Districts.
Curtis Hertel, chair of the state’s Democratic Party, said narratives about divisions among voters were false and that consistent messaging about affordability contributed to a “blue tsunami.”
“I don’t know how you could watch the election results and say that there are rifts,” Hertel told reporters during a virtual news conference.
Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed’s race was widely seen as a referendum on whether a progressive candidate could win a national seat. His campaign was driven in part by dissatisfaction with the political establishment.
Hertel said Democratic candidates in Michigan don’t have to be “one size fits all.”
“The difference for people is not which part of the party you come from. The difference is, are you going to fight for my family?” Hertel said.
More drops for AI chip stocks are dragging the U.S. market lower, even as much of Wall Street rises following strong profit reports from AppLovin, Tapestry and other companies.
The S&P 500 fell 1.8% Thursday and erased all of its gain from the prior day, which was its best in three months.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 403 points, and the Nasdaq composite fell 3%. AI-related stocks worldwide felt pressure from worries that Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections could mean moratoriums for data centers in some areas, and South Korea’s Kospi index tumbled 5.3%.
In other markets, though, the initial knee-jerk reaction to the midterms faded. Oil prices recovered some of their sharp slides.
The Bank of England indicated Thursday that the sharp decline in energy prices after the U.S. midterm elections — if sustained — could limit the prospect of further interest rate hikes in the coming months.
After raising its main interest rate for the first time in more than three years to 4% from 3.75%, the bank said the outlook for U.K. borrowing costs largely hinges on what happens with the Iran war.
The heavy losses suffered by the Republican Party in the midterm elections have been followed by a sharp drop in energy prices. Many believe it’s now less likely Trump will launch fresh strikes on Iran, with Democrats gaining control of Congress early next year after their big wins this week. Many Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday, blamed the war for the party’s poor performance at the ballot box.
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This post has been updated to clarify that it's the first interest hike in three years, not nearly three years.
After President Donald Trump said he would accept the results of his party’s midterm rout, many of his loyalists followed suit even though they, too, are always a hair trigger away from branding a losing election rigged.
Across the country, great numbers of defeated Republican candidates conceded, congratulated their Democratic opponents in moments of grace and bowed to their fate.
Misinformation experts have multiple theories about why election denial claims have not spread as widely this time. One is the scale of the Democrats’ success.
People see “a lot of enthusiasm on the left,” said Jen Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies conspiracy theories. “They see all of these races moving that way across the country in places that you never would have expected.” And it’s “really hard to say every single place cheated.”
It’s also possible Trump’s acceptance of the results set the tone for others.
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A preliminary count released by the clerk of the New Hampshire House shows Democrats achieving a supermajority in the nation’s largest state legislative body. The Associated Press has not yet made calls in many of the races.
Heading into Tuesday’s elections, Republicans had a 41-member advantage in the House and a veto-proof 16-8 majority in the Senate. Preliminary numbers released by the House clerk show the new total as 292 Democrats, 107 Republicans and one Independent in the House. Democrats have a majority in the state Senate, according to AP race calls.
Further complicating the path for Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, the secretary of state’s totals also show Democrats won all five seats on the Executive Council, an obscure but powerful panel that approves state contracts and key appointments.
Correction: A previous version of this post preemptively stated that the Democrats had flipped both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature. While preliminary data from the state House clerk show a Democratic majority in the state House, The Associated Press has not yet called enough races to determine control of the chamber.
World shares were mostly higher Thursday, though heavy selling of artificial intelligence-related stocks offset gains for some markets following the U.S. midterm elections.
South Korea’s Kospi sank more than 5% and the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo lost nearly 2%. Oil prices were mixed after the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 3% on Wednesday after Republicans lost control of the U.S. Congress.
In early European trading, the German DAX rose 0.6% to 26,598.03, while the CAC 40 in Paris surged 1.2% to 8,276.55. The United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 gained 1% to 10,935.08.
The future for the S&P 500 was nearly unchanged, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4%. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 jumped 1.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged more than 1,500 points, and the Nasdaq composite rose 1.4%.
U.S. stocks usually climb following midterms. But technology shares have taken a hit as investors mull the potential impact on the artificial intelligence boom from a Democratic-led Congress next year.
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Corruption topped the list of concerns for voters who ousted Republicans and handed Democrats control of Congress in the midterm elections. Now, the newly empowered Democratic Party is putting the issue front and center as its leaders chart their course for investigations and policymaking.
Senior Democrats in both chambers of Congress have vowed to marshal the subpoena powers and larger investigative staffs that come with their soon-to-be majorities to probe what they say is the self-enrichment that President Donald Trump and people in his orbit have done at the public’s expense. The Republican president and his White House have long denied any wrongdoing.
House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda to look at how Trump and his family have become wealthier since he returned to office — and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who’s in line to become House speaker, has not ruled out trying to impeach Trump for a third time.
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Campaigning across Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed didn’t highlight the possibility that he could become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. But with victory in hand, he savored his triumph over the vitriol aimed at him and his fellow Muslim Americans.
“They tried to demonize people because of how they pray,” he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “And Michigan — the whole Michigan — clapped back. People don’t want that. They’re sick of it.”
Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath yanked anti-Muslim sentiment into the forefront of American life, those emotions are shared by many Muslim Americans.
They saw a surge of anti-Muslim rhetoric after Zohran Mamdani was elected New York City mayor, and they saw the attacks intensify as El-Sayed became the new prime target. But after El-Sayed’s defeat of GOP rival Mike Rogers, there is a pervasive sense that a broader victory is at hand.
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Trump was publicly humbled by inflation in Tuesday’s midterm elections, as rising prices provoked a blistering set of losses for Republicans in House, Senate and gubernatorial races.
Most voters said that Trump’s own policies had smothered growth and driven costs even higher, according to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of roughly 100,000 midterm voters. The president’s message that the fault lay with his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, didn’t land. Americans saw prices start to climb with Trump’s chaotic rash of tariffs last year, and energy costs spiked after he launched a war with Iran in February.
About two-thirds of voters said Trump’s own policies had fueled inflation. By contrast, only about half of 2022 midterm voters said this about Biden’s policies, according to AP VoteCast.
The election results matched what voters had been telling pollsters for months, but Trump had campaigned with a decidedly deaf ear.
“I’ve done a great job,” Trump said at one of his final midterm rallies in Iowa.
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At the urging of President Donald Trump, Republicans in eight states redrew the boundaries of dozens of congressional districts over the past year while angling for an edge that could help them hold onto a slim House majority in a tough midterm election.
Ultimately, it didn’t work.
Republicans lost most of the Democratic-held seats they had targeted to flip, lost others they had banked on retaining and got swept out of power by a Democratic surge fueled by voter dissatisfaction with Trump, the economy and the war with Iran.
The Republican redistricting plan fell flat in Alabama, Florida and Texas. It got scuttled by courts in Missouri and then firmly defeated by its voters Tuesday. And it got offset in California, where a retaliatory Democratic redistricting flipped all five of the Republican-held seats it targeted.
“This is a catastrophic rebuke of Donald Trump’s failed effort to gerrymander the country into oblivion to save the U.S. House of Representatives for himself,” John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said Wednesday.
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The final midterm votes are still being counted, but make no mistake: The next election season has already begun.
Presidential prospects in both parties jockeyed for position on Wednesday, even as the political world was digesting the impact of the Democratic wave that crashed over American politics the night before. Democrats celebrated their party’s stunning success — and began promoting themselves — while dejected Republicans scrambled to distance themselves from Trump’s wreckage.
The Republican with the most at stake was likely Vice President JD Vance, who entered Tuesday night as the GOP’s leading presidential prospect and woke up on Wednesday far more vulnerable — like any Republican who is close to Trump.
Voters still processing an extraordinary midterm campaign may not welcome an immediate pivot to 2028. But for would-be candidates, there is real urgency to move toward a White House bid in what is expected to be a wide-open contest in both parties.
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The U.S. Capitol dome is reflected in the body of a parked car, Wednesday Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Scenes outside the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., at the Capitol, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
