The president who just lost both chambers of Congress has an answer stamped onto a red hat.
President Donald Trump pledged to veto legislation he called “insane” after Democrats seized control of both the House and the Senate in midterm elections held Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, speaking by phone to Fox News during the network’s live election-night coverage, “FOX News Democracy 26.” “They’ll send over things that are insane, and I’ll veto them,” Trump said.
Late Tuesday night, he posted an image of a red hat stamped with the word “Veto” to Truth Social. The same cap sat on the Resolute Desk on Thursday, Nov. 5, during an Oval Office signing ceremony.
Trump said of the results, “I don’t like to consider it a defeat,” and predicted that after a couple of months of vetoes, Democrats would start asking how to get things done. The two sides would work together after that, he said. Several Democratic lawmakers have already reached out to him, Trump said, and he maintains friendships across the aisle, though he was somewhat surprised by the number of races Democrats won. He said he would give no ground on border policy or transgender ideology, and that the results would prompt no change to his Cabinet.
Why an Override Needs 290 Votes
Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution gives the president the veto, and it sets the price of beating one: two-thirds of the members voting in each chamber. That works out to 290 votes if all 435 House members cast ballots, and 67 if all 100 senators do. The chamber where the bill originated votes first, and if the override fails there, the other chamber never votes at all.
Congress has a quieter route as well. A bill that the president neither signs nor returns within 10 days, excluding Sundays, becomes law without his signature.
No veto touches the powers a Democratic majority gains over congressional investigations, government oversight, federal spending and Senate confirmations. Trump keeps his executive authority over trade, foreign policy and the federal bureaucracy, along with his power to issue executive orders.
Justice Samuel Alito told Fox News on Thursday he has no plans to retire and is committed through at least the current Supreme Court term. The federal judiciary had 28 vacancies as of Nov. 8, with 16 nominees awaiting confirmation before Democrats take the Senate.
Collins and Paxton Both Go Down
Democrats flipped at least seven Republican-held Senate seats. In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson beat Sen. Susan Collins. In Texas, James Talarico beat Ken Paxton for the Senate seat, and Democrat Gina Hinojosa unseated Gov. Greg Abbott. Michigan sent Abdul El-Sayed to the Senate, where he will be the nation’s first Muslim senator, and Georgia elected Keisha Lance Bottoms, who will be the state’s first Black governor and its first woman governor.
Two more Republican-held Senate seats remained too close to call as of Monday, Nov. 9. Democrat Scott Colom led Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi by more than 2,500 votes, and Democrat Mary Peltola led Sen. Dan Sullivan by 637 votes in Alaska, where ranked-choice tabulation is set for Nov. 18. Elon Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars backing Republican congressional candidates.
Some Republicans did win. Florida Gov.-elect Byron Donalds will be that state’s first Black governor.
Trump said Democrats fought hard and did a good job, and that they have been fighting him for a very long time. Some of the candidates he endorsed alienated his base by opposing him, he said, and he attributed Abbott’s loss to the governor behaving less like a conservative in recent months. On Truth Social, Trump posted that Republicans would have won in a landslide had his own name been on the ballot.
Why He Points to Gasoline
Trump told Bret Baier of Fox News, “I don’t think it’s the war, Bret, I think it’s the gasoline price,” and traced part of the Republican losses back to Iran. Voters grasped why he acted, he said. Many Americans largely backed the war but balked at paying more at the pump, Trump said, arguing that the decision was the only way to keep the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining a nuclear weapon. His Tehran policy will matter more historically than the night’s results, he said.
Donald Trump Jr. made the same case on his Triggered podcast, calling the results a “blue tsunami” and a “wake-up call.” “Whether you think it was the right decision or not, the Iran War is largely what shifted voter sentiment and caused this wave, right? It jacked up the price of gas,” he said. Trump Jr. said he agreed with Vice President JD Vance’s Election Day postmortem, which blamed the Iran war and gas prices for Senate losses in South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in Tehran that Americans had “said NO TO WAR.”
He Calls Oversight a ‘Criminal Act’
Trump likened the oversight investigations Democrats are planning to a “criminal act” and ordered Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate. Host Dana Bash questioned Blanche about complying with that order on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Nov. 8. Blanche said of Democrats, “That is not oversight,” adding, “I welcome oversight. Oversight is exactly something they should be doing.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries laid out the House Democrats’ agenda at a Nov. 9 press conference. He is “a hard yes” on an impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the Iran war, he said, and he backs a congressional stock-trading ban. The House scheduled a procedural vote on Rep. Thomas Massie’s Hegseth impeachment resolution for Tuesday, Nov. 10. Democrats need one more Republican signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on the American Dream and Promise Act, Jeffries said.
“House Democrats have taken the position that we’re not going to give a dime to the administration’s violent mass deportation machine,” Jeffries told the press conference. House Democrats vote on his leadership the following Wednesday.
Trump said House Speaker Mike Johnson “has done a very good job,” stopping short of fully endorsing him to keep leading House Republicans. Johnson said on Wednesday, Nov. 4, that he would step aside as the top House Republican in the new Congress, which convenes in January 2027.