Good Day, this is the Commonwealth Report.
News for the public, not the powerful.
Orange Crush. Did America Just Fire Donald Trump?
The votes are still being counted, but the verdict on Donald Trump is in. The NBC News Exit Poll finds nearly half of voters saw this election as a chance to deliver a major rebuke to the president. 43% said they voted partly to oppose Trump, far more than in his first midterm in 2018. His approval sits at 38%, the lowest of any sitting president on Election Day in nearly two decades. 62% disapprove. 75% say the economy is in rough shape, 65% say Trump’s policies made it worse, and 62% blame him personally for high prices. Nearly eight in 10 say inflation is hurting their families. 57%say his immigration crackdown went too far, and 62% call the Iran war the wrong decision.
Voters told the Guardian why. In Portland, Maine, Todd Cox, a 63-year-old tech worker who voted twice for Susan Collins, switched to Democrat Troy Jackson. “It goes back to affordability,” he said. In the Georgia suburbs, voters said Trump himself pushed them to the Democrats.
And there’s something deeper. A Harris poll for the Guardian found 76% of voters believe elected officials care more about enriching themselves than helping ordinary Americans. Nearly nine in 10 call government corruption a serious problem, second only to the cost of living. 40% say Republicans have the bigger corruption problem. Just 21%say Democrats.
When people can’t afford groceries and watch the powerful line their own pockets, they remember who did it to them. This is what accountability looks like.
Democrats Seize Congress - Is Trump’s Lame Duck Era Here?
Democrats have won the House and the Senate. NBC, CNN, and the Guardian all report it. They flipped seven Senate seats, in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas, including states Trump won by double digits, and now hold 54 seats to the Republicans’ 44. Texas and Kansas sent Democrats to the Senate for the first time in decades. Susan Collins is gone. In the House, Democrats will hold at least 225 seats, with Hakeem Jeffries in line for Speaker. Chuck Schumer told Americans, “Relief is on the way.” Subpoena power. Control of the purse. The founders gave us midterms so the people could pull the emergency brake. Last night, they did.
Trump Threatens Tremendous Executive Powers. How Will He Govern Around the Voters?
Donald Trump saw this coming, and he’s already telling us what he’ll do about it. Just before polls closed he told CBS correspondent Robert Costa he’s prepared to use what he called tremendous executive powers over the next year to push his agenda, citing recent Supreme Court rulings he believes expanded his authority. Costa said Trump told him he’ll be “Mr. Veto if the Democrats take the House.” Costa said Trump is willing to push Democrats to the brink if they investigate him or block his agenda. The message is clear. The voters just took away his Congress, and his answer is to rule by executive order and veto pen. That’s not how a republic works. Congress writes the laws. A president doesn’t get to govern around the people’s representatives because he lost.
The news you need. Twice every weekday.
Chris Pappas Makes History as the First Out Gay Man Elected to the Senate
New Hampshire Congressman Chris Pappas has won the Senate seat Jeanne Shaheen is vacating, and he’s the first openly gay man ever elected to the United States Senate. Decision Desk HQ called it at 8 pm Eastern, with Pappas leading Republican John E. Sununu 60 to 37 in early returns. Sununu held that same seat from 2003 to 2009 before Shaheen beat him. Pappas went to the House in 2018 as New Hampshire’s first openly LGBTQ member of Congress, backed the Equality Act, and fought for LGBTQ veterans. He told The Advocate, “I’ve never sought to make history.” The Senate confirms judges and cabinet secretaries. For more than two centuries no openly gay man had a seat at that table. Now one does. That’s what a more perfect union looks like.
Can a Billionaire Buy Georgia? Keisha Lance Bottoms Just Said No
Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is the next governor of Georgia, and she’s the first Black woman ever elected governor of any state in American history. She beat Republican billionaire Rick Jackson, a health care tycoon who poured more than 200 million dollars, most of it his own, into the race. Jackson promised to govern like Trump with a Southern tone and be the president’s favorite governor. Bottoms answered him in their only debate, “I’m not running to be his favorite governor.” She ran on expanding Medicaid, lowering housing costs, fully funding schools, and a moratorium on new data centers. She’s the first Democrat to win the office since 2002, and the first woman ever to hold it. Her family traces back five generations to a Crawfordville plantation. Georgia, heart of the old Confederacy, just handed its highest office to a Black woman who beat the biggest checkbook in state history. Money didn’t win. People did.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, November 5, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
