Sunday, November 8, 2026 · Morning Edition

Today

By StaffNews Desk

Good morning. Voters delivered a decisive rebuke to Donald Trump and his party in Tuesday's midterms, rejecting his claim that a new "golden age of America" was under way even as prices soared and war dragged on. Americans under 30, who had drifted right in 2024, swung decisively back to Democrats. White voters without a college degree — a key bloc of the president's coalition — moved toward Democrats too, leaving the Trump coalition shattered.

Republicans can stick with Trumpism or chart a new path, and the administration has chosen neither reflection nor retreat. Trump elevated hardliner Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff, offered the vacant press secretary job to UFC boss Dana White — "a violent Fighter and Warrior," in his words — and ordered the DOJ to probe alleged Democratic threats, singling out Slotkin. Meanwhile Vance's potential rivals smell blood.

On the left, the vindication is explicit. Third Way, the corporate Democratic outfit that declared war on the left, is now celebrating James Talarico and admitting that Bernie Sanders-style populism is now the political mainstream. And Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she hopes the court's decision granting former presidents broad criminal immunity will be overturned, saying her colleagues have done some "crazy things."

Abroad, New Zealand's too-close-to-call election punished the major parties, handing smaller rivals their best-ever results. At home, the administration is handing $1 million to a group studying crime against white South Africans even as it cut human rights funding to nations in crisis. Gavin Newsom appointed his former aide Nathan Ballard, who pleaded no contest in a domestic violence case, to a state commission. And gig workers, routinely deactivated by Uber and Instacart with little notice, are turning to AI to fight the bosses' decisions.