President Donald Trump was left to grapple on Thursday with the stinging rebuke from voters after a midterm election rout, while triumphant Democrats vowed to lower prices and combat the “cartel” within the White House in the new Congress.

Trump faces a radically transformed and hostile political landscape after Democrats seized both the House of Representatives and the Senate in Tuesday’s midterms.

The result was a personal humiliation for the 80-year-old Trump, leaving him as a lame duck president for the remaining two years of his term and signaling an end to his stranglehold on the Republican Party.

Vice President JD Vance publicly split with Trump over the Iran war a day after the vote, saying the conflict was the “reason we lost” as he distanced himself from the unpopular war ahead of a possible 2028 White House run.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote in a long social media post. “The president himself said so last night. If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a ​worthwhile cost to pay.”

Democrats by early Thursday morning had control of 54 Senate seats and a strong majority in the House.

Two Senate races — in heavily Republican Mississippi and Alaska — remained too close to call.

Democrats have vowed investigations into Trump and his administration and said the incoming majority would be focused on accountability and affordability.

“The massive corruption the country has experienced from the Trump Cartel explains why very little is getting done to help everyday Americans,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Wednesday in a letter announcing his candidacy for speaker of the House.

“That changes immediately,” he said, adding Democrats are “going to hold the crooks accountable”.

It will be the first time that Trump, a Republican who also held the White House from 2017 to 2021, has had to contend with a Democratic-controlled Congress in both chambers.

Jeffries said the incoming majority will be focused on affordability and accountability.

“We don’t work for Donald Trump,” the New York lawmaker told reporters on Wednesday. “We work for the American people. And the days of the House of Representatives functioning like ​a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump administration are over.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has emerged as a national Democratic figure since his election a year ago, released a video on social media urging his party to address the concerns ​of voters burdened by rising prices who want schools and roads.

“It is not enough to simply win power. We must use it,” Mamdani said. “Now, it’s time for us in the Democratic Party to deliver.”

Once seated in January, Democrats are expected to use their power to investigate Trump’s administration, family and allies and demand concessions on major legislation. The Democratic Senate can block Trump’s nominees, including any US Supreme Court justices should a vacancy arise.

The Democratic victory is fuelling questions about the longevity of the Supreme Court’s two eldest justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and the durability of its conservative majority.

In the meantime, Republicans hold the reins and will have at least one must-pass piece of legislation ahead — a measure to fund the federal government past December — that they could use to enact conservative priorities during the so-called lame-duck period.

The loss also upended Republicans’ House leadership, with House Speaker Mike Johnson saying he would not continue to lead his caucus next year.

Trump had no public events scheduled for Thursday, according to a White House press schedule.

First Lady Melania Trump was set to host officials from Moscow and Kyiv at the White House ahead of talks in Abu Dhabi aimed at ending the Ukraine war.

‘Worst-case scenario’

Trump has attempted to brush off the election results.

He spent the beginning of his first public appearance on Wednesday talking to reporters about the marble and Corinthian columns of his new $400 million ballroom.

But he conceded that what Vance had said about the Iran war was “largely true because it drove the gasoline up” — a key issue for voters angered by the rising cost of living.

“But at the same time, if I had it to do again, I’d have to do it again.

Because long term, it’s the only answer. You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Trump added that he would “get along” with Democrats, repeating the conciliatory tone he took as the results emerged on Tuesday night, but repeated his threat to veto legislation that he didn’t like.

He warned that if his foes tried to impeach him for a third time it would “destroy” the Democratic Party.

Still, he remains the head of a party now wrestling with a resounding defeat that could spark Republican infighting.

Democratic wave

Democrats focused their campaign on corruption and affordability, blaming Trump’s expensive tariffs on imports, some of which were ruled to be an illegal tax by the courts, and the ​war with Iran for driving up ⁠costs while highlighting the billions of dollars the Trump family has made since he returned to the White House.

Republicans, led by Trump, attacked Democrats for defending transgender people’s rights and similar social issues, portraying them as radical and extreme. Voters made it clear they were more concerned with pocketbook issues.

Trump had cast the midterm elections as a referendum on the first half of his second four-year stint in the White House, repeatedly urging his Republican base to “pretend I’m on the ballot”, a message that Democratic Party leaders were happy to amplify.

The result: voters in conservative strongholds who had propelled the president to his second term in office just two years ago swung dramatically toward Democrats, fueled by deep frustration over the unpopular war with Iran, anxiety over the high ​cost of living and anger at Trump’s stewardship of the country.

In Texas, the biggest Republican-led state before Tuesday, Democrats ended a decades-long losing streak in seismic fashion, winning their first Senate seat there since 1988 and ousting three-term Governor Greg Abbott.

Kansas elected its first Democratic senator ​since the Great Depression nearly a century ago, and in South Carolina, a state that Trump carried by nearly 18 points in 2024, Democrats turned aside his hand-picked Senate candidate.

“This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country as we have seen probably in the last 100 years,” Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said in public remarks on the results.

DeSantis, who ran for president against Trump in 2024, noted Florida, where Trump-backed Byron Donalds became the state’s first Black governor and Ashley Moody retained a Senate seat, was the only bright spot for Republicans this week.

“This is going to last far beyond just two years,” he said of Republicans’ election defeat.

“We just have to be very clear-eyed. This is probably the political worst-case scenario for a midterm election.”