Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says Democrats will work to lower costs with or without Trump

(Gray News/AP) – Democrats won control of Congress in Tuesday’s 2026 midterm elections in a widespread repudiation of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, a drubbing that reached deep into reliable GOP territory.

“Oh man, wow, wow, wow,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said in his victory speech. “Against all odds, we Democrats have won the Senate!”

Schumer said Democrats recruited great candidates who focused their campaigns on costs, chaos and corruption, while Republicans embraced “the worst president ever.”

“Republicans made a choice and followed Trump over the cliff,” Schumer said. “We listened, they didn’t. And the American people reduced the red brick wall to a pile of bricks.”

Schumer closed his victory speech with a warning to his own party: “Americans voted for change and now, Democrats must deliver.”

He held a post-election news conference in Washington Wednesday, where he spoke about the high costs of fuel, electricity and the corruption of the Trump administration. Schumer said Democrats are determined to lower costs for the American people.

“We are going to work hard to drive costs down, with the president or without him,” Schumer said Wednesday to close his news conference.

Democrats flipped at least seven Senate seats in ruby-red states and battlegrounds alike: Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina. They held on to battleground seats in Georgia and Michigan.

In the House, Democrats flipped more than two dozen districts, some that voted for Trump by double digits in 2024.

Trump faces a profoundly reshaped Washington for the last two years of his presidency. Democrats will have the power to block his legislative agenda, reject his appointees and investigate his administration.