Robert Yale Shapiro is a doctor of political science and associate dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and specializes in American politics, public opinion, and political leadership. He speaks to ARA by phone from New York to assess the historic midterm elections that have given the majority of both chambers to the Democratic Party.

If the midterm elections were an opportunity to curb Donald Trump's "bad ideas" – in the words of American diplomat Daniel Fried – the Democratic victory could be read as a counterbalance to the U.S. president's fluctuations in his positioning regarding Ukraine. And it will be, in part, but possibly not as much as the Ukrainians would like because the New York tycoon will continue to have the final word on foreign affairs. However, paradoxically, an internally weakened Trump could also use foreign policy to project power and seek victories that could also reinforce him internally.

Graphic jokes, intelligent graphic jokes, are my weakness and my ruin. I always have on my writing desk the books of jokes about literature (about writers, above all) from the magazine The New Yorker, which was my first book purchase when I first stepped into the luminous city of New York. Every joke world it is so, so fun, it makes you feel so, so smart, so member of the circle... Thursday, November fifth, this newspaper surprised me with a graphic joke on the front page, which made me laugh with complicity and surprise. “Wow”, I whispered. It was a front page that could make young and old, students and workers laugh or smile or open their eyes in that way.

Trump is responsible for everything but is never to blame for anything. How enviable. If something goes wrong, as is the case with the result of these elections that we have followed more than the Americans themselves, it is not because of his desire to enrich himself by taking advantage of the presidency; nor because of his immigration policies that the police execute without batting an eyelid; nor because of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein; nor because of his permanent sexism; nor because of cutting the few public services that exist in the USA; nor because of making tax cuts for billionaires like him. Perhaps a little bit because of the Iran war that made oil prices rise, that yes. He acknowledges that. But he also acknowledges that he would do the same thing again because it is what had to be done and because Trump and remorse are two terms that never go together anywhere. This man goes through the world light as a cobweb. The weight of his actions is carried by the world.

Donald Trump will not change. Faced with the crushing defeat, the White House launched on social media one of those messages that characterize the character and give an idea of his pitiful situation: "Remember that Donald Trump remains your president." Indeed. And he will be for two more years. Two years that may prove difficult for him. Although, as things stand, they may still be more difficult for the Democrats, who have emerged victorious from the polls.

What the United States has just experienced has not been a normal midterm election, in which the electorate rebalances power and grants the majority of the chambers to the party that opposes the president. The scale of the Republican defeat goes much further. The Democrats have won in places where, just two years ago, Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris by 25 points, such as Iowa or Tennessee. It had been nearly a century since Kansas sent a Democratic senator to Washington. Georgia will have a Black female governor for the first time. The progressive Abdul El-Sayed will be the first Muslim senator in history for Michigan. And the preacher James Talarico has managed to turn Texas, until now a Republican bastion, into a blue state thanks to the Latino vote. Texas and also New Mexico will have governors of Hispanic descent. And California, the first Latino governor since 1878. The political earthquake is of such proportions that it will take time to analyze it in detail, but while there are still states counting votes, it can certainly be said that November 4, 2026, will go down in history as the day that marked the beginning of the end of Trumpism.

It was not the evidence that Trump is a lying, crude, egomaniacal president with symptoms of mental incapacity who only looks out for himself and his friends that fundamentally defeated him, but the cost of living. It is what it is.

The United States midterm elections yesterday are undoubtedly a historic moment, a tsunami until recently unforeseeable. Demographers, sociologists, and communicators, take note. It is not just a turning point in the miserable history of the exercise of evil and sadism starred in for two eternal years by Donald Trump and his administration. It is the end of a bubble from which people have awakened, suddenly, in recent months. It has been the material conditions of life that have made a paradigm shift a reality, because yesterday's event is not –only– a victory for the Democratic Party.

Óscar Puente, a foul-mouthed and clumsy politician, has redeemed himself by way of giving explanations and assuming responsibilities with his resignation as Minister of Transport due to the Urda railway tragedy and the high-speed rail disaster. Furthermore, these were not explanations just to get by: they were exhaustive explanations, first in a press conference and then in parliamentary chambers, and at his own request. It was not a deferred resignation either, but a strictly live one, also renouncing being on the electoral lists. This is called accountability and assumption of responsibilities, and the spectacle was so unusual that it left even the sagacious analysts speechless—those who now repeat that the resignation was inevitable (the same ones who, a few hours before it happened, said that Puente would cling to his position because he aspired to be Sánchez's successor). All in all, the one left most disoriented is a nationalist right, the PP and Vox, who, in the face of catastrophes, still use a manual that advises insulting victims when they do not suit their interests. All eyes, by the way, have turned back to Carlos Mazón, after two years have passed since the DANA in the Valencian Community and he remains protected by the PP, with good remuneration and judicial immunity in the Valencian Courts. But beyond the particularly odious comparisons, Puente's resignation has revived the pre-campaign: remember, as columnist Matías Vallés would say, in which newspaper and in which sectarian column you read before anywhere else that the campaign might be knocked out, but not dead.

The midterm elections are held every four years, coinciding with the halfway point of presidential terms, and usually harm the party in the White House. Beyond the referendum on Trump, this year's elections represent an opportunity to try to recover some of the guardrails on the executive branch that the Republican has eroded during the nearly two years of his term. With a conservative majority installed in the Supreme Court, if the Democrats manage to regain control of both chambers, they will have some margin to provide opposition.

The world is waiting for elections that will be decided by the pockets of Americans. The price of gasoline and unaffordable electricity bills are today the thermometer of a discontent that will tip the next political majorities on Capitol Hill. Donald Trump has turned the midterm elections into a referendum. An examination of the costs of global volatility and the limits of presidential falsehood that masks the mess of his administration.

The wind is blowing in favor of the Democrats, but the United States midterm elections will be very contested and will depend on the results in less than a dozen states. This is what polls suggest about an election in which President Donald Trump risks being able to continue deploying his political and economic agenda without the brake of Congress for the last two years of his term. The Democrats, however, aspire to turn the majorities around and snatch the control that the Republicans now have in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

According to most forecasts, Donald Trump could lose the Republican majority in one of the two chambers of the United States Congress this Tuesday, or both. It would be logical: the cost of living has skyrocketed and people directly relate the poor state of their pockets to bad presidential decisions, especially the Iran war.

We find ourselves at the gates of the end of the Trump era, and this Tuesday Americans will decide how they want this end to be. If the polls get it right, Donald Trump will become a “super lame duck,” as Nate Silver, an electoral forecasting guru who popularized data analysis models in predicting results, claimed a few days ago in an interview with the newspaper New York Times. That is to say, in a president without political capital nor legislative support for the remainder of his term. Even the Republican Party, under his firm control, could begin to turn its back on him.

The curious word in the title is the American English term for referring to the redrawing of electoral maps with the goal of favoring the interests of a particular party. This practice is called gerrymandering, which is exactly what Trump has forced in a total of fifteen electoral districts, with the purpose that the results of this Tuesday's legislative elections allow him to maintain the majority he currently holds in the lower house of Congress. We said that Trump has forced a gerrymandering because the territorial redistribution was not "due" until 2030, when the census will have to be updated. But it seems that the maneuver must have had quite limited success, because it only gives three safe seats to the Republican Party. It also gives an idea, admittedly, of the anxiety with which Trumpism and the MAGA movement – and the minimaga in the provinces, of which we have a good number around here – are facing these midterm elections.

On Tuesday, the United States renews Congress and a third of the senators at the polls. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate currently have a Republican majority, a fact that has allowed Donald Trump to govern without many obstacles. Now, however, all forecasts predict that the Democrats will obtain a majority in the House of Representatives, and it is also possible that they will achieve it in the Senate. What could change? Would the world notice the consequences of a change in majorities in the US legislative branch? We discuss this with Charles Franklin, professor of law at Marquette University (Wisconsin) and director of that center's poll, one of the most reputable in the United States.

Never a midterm election (midterms in English) in the United States had garnered such interest as those this Tuesday. And it is that surely never before had the United States had a president who has not only blown up the international order that has governed since the end of the Second World War, but has also undermined the democratic institutions of his own country from the first day of his second term. Curiously, it seems that neither of these two factors will be the deciding one in the elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate, but rather it will be the rise in prices caused by the war in Iran and the tariff policy. It is precisely economic policy that has eroded support for Trump among his base and has shot up support for the Democrats in traditionally Republican states.

Ukraine has attacked Russian oil again despite pressure from US President Donald Trump to stop attacks he considers to be driving up the price of diesel. Kyiv launched a drone attack early this Friday against the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in southwestern Russia, which produces fuel for the Russian army. Before the attack, local authorities issued a drone alarm and closed the airport.

Likud, led by Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu, was the most voted party in Tuesday's Israeli elections, but it nevertheless received a significant electoral punishment and was left very far from being able to form a government, even by adding the ultra-Orthodox, Zionist, and far-right partners that have supported it in recent years. Together, they would total fifty seats, when the majority in the Knesset is sixty-one (in the previous legislature, Netanyahu and his partners had sixty-three). There is a consensus among analysts that Netanyahu has paid at the polls for the radicalism of his last term, which many attribute precisely to the extreme positions of his partners. Two ministers, in particular, the fanatical head of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, and the cynical head of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, from the Religious Zionist Party, also far-right and ultra-nationalist, have personified anti-Palestinian radicalism and are the direct reason for the strong mobilization shown in these elections by Arab Israeli voters, who have gone to the polls in mass. If an electoral repeat is not forced, the Arab parties will be key in the formation of a new executive led by Gadi Eisenkot and his party Yashar (which defines itself as center-right, although this is a quite elastic label) and which could include secular right-wing forces such as Israel Beitenu, or center-left ones like The Democrats. Whatever happens, however, Netanyahu may lose the immunity that has given him impunity, and have to account for pending corruption charges before the Israeli justice system. Or be tried by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, for the genocide in Gaza.

The latest Federal Reserve (the Fed, the United States central bank) meeting could not have come at a worse time, both for Donald Trump and for its chair, Kevin Warsh. One week before the elections, the Fed has decided to keep interest rates in the same range of between 3.75% and 4% after having decided to raise them at the previous meeting for the first time since 2023.