Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, said Wednesday that Congress will move to stop the war with Iran, and that some Republican senators have already agreed to join the effort. Speaking at a press conference at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., Schumer said the founders gave Congress control over spending as a way to restrain a president who starts a war without public consent, according to Clarin.com.
His remarks came hours after election night, with projections indicating Democrats will take both the House of Representatives and the Senate from Republicans in the midterm elections.
President Donald Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday night that the war was partly to blame for the scale of Republican losses. He said he did not regret launching the conflict earlier this year, Clarin.com reports.
Why it matters
The projected Democratic sweep reshapes the balance of power in Washington less than two years before the next presidential election. With control of both chambers, Democrats gain subpoena power, committee gavels and, most importantly for the war debate, the ability to approve or reject funding.
Schumer's promise to use the budget as leverage turns the Iran conflict into the first major legislative fight of the new Congress. It also signals that some Republicans are willing to break with the president on the war, a shift that would have been difficult to imagine before the vote.
A funding fight takes shape
The incoming Congress is expected to consider cutting off money for military operations against Iran. Schumer framed the move as a constitutional duty rather than a partisan attack, pointing to the founders' decision to place the power of the purse with the legislature. Clarin.com reports that Democratic leaders in both chambers have also pledged to deploy subpoenas and investigative teams to examine what they describe as personal enrichment by Trump and people close to him.
Corruption topped the list of voter concerns that unseated Republicans, according to the outlet, and Democrats are now putting the issue at the center of their agenda as they set the direction of investigations and policy.
The new majority takes control on January 3.
Trump's legal and diplomatic moves
The president is also reviving his attempt to overturn his conviction, handed down before he returned to the White House, over falsified business records tied to a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, Clarin.com reports. The renewed push comes as he absorbs the midterm defeat.
On the diplomatic front, first lady Melania Trump called Thursday for a "more durable" ceasefire in Ukraine during an event at the White House with representatives of Ukraine and Russia. She had helped secure a ceasefire in the town of Oleshky and asked participants to show the same courage in finding common ground through shared concern for innocent people's suffering, according to the outlet.
Alaska count drags on
Two days after the election, the Senate race in Alaska still has no clear winner. With 75.5 percent of ballots counted, Democratic candidate Mary Peltola leads Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan by slightly more than 600 votes, 48.2 percent to 47.9 percent, according to an NBC analysis cited by Clarin.com. The state's heavy use of mail ballots and manual counts means a result may not be known for several weeks, with tallies often running 10 to 15 days past election day.
Latin America fallout
The Democratic victory could complicate future US financial support for Argentina. Two bills in Congress that had stalled may now advance under the new legislative balance, and both question the $20 billion rescue package of 2025 and call for the money to go to Americans instead, Clarin.com reports. If passed, they could limit any further aid.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday that immigration raids and racism against Latinos likely influenced the shift of Latino voters toward the Democratic Party on Tuesday. At her morning press conference, she said she had no data but that it was logical to think the change was connected to racism and to raids targeting people by skin color and ethnic origin, according to the outlet.
Young voters also moved sharply toward Democrats, especially men under 30, a group that had backed Trump's return to the White House in 2024, Clarin.com reports.
Wall Street opened without a clear direction, with technology stocks under pressure, the outlet noted.
What to watch: whether enough Republicans formally back the war-funding effort to give Schumer a working majority when the new Congress is seated in January.
