Tag: Donald Trump

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Soccer world braces for 2026 World Cup draw with Trump presiding

The draw for the 2026 World Cup — the biggest edition of soccer’s global showpiece ever held — takes place in Washington on Friday with U.S. President Donald Trump expected to feature prominently in proceedings.

The expanded 48-team tournament — up from the 32-nation field that competed at the 2022 Qatar World Cup – will be played across the United States, Mexico and Canada from June 11 to July 19 next year.

Trump’s attendance at the Kennedy Center ceremony underscores his rapport with FIFA chief Gianni Infantino, who has made several visits to the White House and even joined Trump at international summits in the years since the joint North American bid was awarded the tournament in 2018.

Infantino’s close relationship with Trump is widely expected to see the U.S. leader be named as the first recipient of a new FIFA Peace Prize, which will be awarded at the draw

Trump has made the World Cup a centerpiece event of both his second presidency and the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence next year.

But he has not hesitated to bring domestic politics into the event, threatening to move World Cup matches from Democratic-run cities if he deems conditions to be “unsafe”.

In a sign of the global tensions surrounding a World Cup which will have 11 of its 16 venues in the United States, Iran said it will boycott the draw because U.S. authorities refused to grant visas to several members of its delegation.

The president of the Iranian soccer federation, Mehdi Taj, said: “We have told the head of FIFA… that it is purely a political position and that FIFA must tell (Washington) to desist from this behavior.”

The pretenders to the title which a Lionel Messi-inspired Argentina won for the third time in 2022 in Qatar will be drawn into 12 groups.

The top seeds are Argentina, the host nations USA, Mexico and Canada, record five-time winners Brazil, two-time champions France, four-time winners Germany as well as Spain, England, Portugal, Netherlands and Belgium.

The evergreen Cristiano Ronaldo, who will be 41 when the tournament kicks off, has said his sixth World Cup finals with Portugal will be his last and he would relish crowning his long career with a first global title for his country.

The enlarged cast list also means an opportunity for a handful of first-time qualifiers, including Cape Verde, Jordan and the tiny Caribbean nation of Curacao.

With six of the field still to be decided in playoffs, the favorites will want to avoid Italy, who won the World Cup as recently as 2006 but have not qualified since 2014.

Despite an error-strewn qualification campaign, the Italians can still reach the finals by winning two sudden-death games.

The opening match will be held at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, which also hosted the 1970 and 1986 finals, before the tournament unfolds over nearly six weeks, culminating in the final at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

Because of the complexity, teams will only learn the full details of their match venues and kickoff times on Saturday, a day after the draw.

Supporters’ groups have warned fans could face eye-watering sums for tickets for the most attractive games due to FIFA’s decision to use dynamic ticket pricing.

Prices on popular secondary market websites in the United States such as Stubhub and Seatgeek have already skyrocketed, with prices for the July 19 World Cup final in New Jersey starting at around $7,000. (JapanToday)

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Putin accuses Europeans of sabotaging peace efforts on Ukraine; meets U.S. delegation

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kyiv’s European allies Tuesday of sabotaging U.S.-led efforts to end the nearly 4-year-old war in Ukraine, shortly before he met with a delegation sent by President Donald Trump.

“They don’t have a peace agenda, they’re on the side of the war,” Putin said of the Europeans prior to talks in the Kremlin with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Putin’s accusations appeared to be his latest attempt to sow dissension between Trump and European countries and set the stage for exempting Moscow from blame for any lack of progress.

He accused Europe of amending peace proposals with “demands that are absolutely unacceptable to Russia,” thus “blocking the entire peace process” and blaming Moscow for it.

“That’s their goal,” Putin said.

He reiterated his long-held position that Russia has no plans to attack Europe — a concern regularly voiced by some European countries.

“But if Europe suddenly wants to wage a war with us and starts it, we are ready right away. There can be no doubt about that,” Putin said.

Russia started the war in 2022 with its full-scale invasion of a sovereign European country, and European governments have since spent billions of dollars to support Ukraine financially and militarily, to wean themselves from energy dependence on Russia, and to strengthen their own militaries to deter Moscow from seizing more territory by force.

They worry that if Russia gets what it wants in Ukraine, it will have free rein to threaten or disrupt other European countries, which already have faced incursions from Russian drones and fighter jets, and an alleged widespread Russian sabotage campaign.

Trump’s peace plan relies on Europe to provide the bulk of the financing and security guarantees for a postwar Ukraine, even though no Europeans appear to have been consulted on the original plan. That’s why European governments have pushed to ensure that peace efforts address their concerns, too.

Speaking with Putin via a translator before the talks, Witkoff said he and Kushner had taken “a beautiful walk” around Moscow and described it as a “magnificent city.”

Coinciding with Witkoff’s trip, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to Ireland, continuing his visits to European countries that have helped sustain his country’s fight against Russia’s invasion.

In what could be a high-stakes day of negotiations, Zelenskyy said he was expecting swift reports later Tuesday from the U.S. envoys in Moscow on whether talks could move forward, after Trump’s initial 28-point plan was whittled down to 20 items in Sunday’s talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Florida.

“They want to report right after that meeting to us, specifically. The future and the next steps depend on these signals. Such steps will change throughout today, even hour by hour, I believe,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference in Dublin with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin.

“If the signals show fair play with our partners, we then might meet very soon, meet with the American delegation,” he said.

“There is a lot of dialogue, but we need results. Our people are dying every day,” Zelenskyy said. “I am ready … to meet with President Trump. It all depends on today’s talks.”

After months of frustration in trying to stop the fighting, Trump deployed officials to get traction for his peace proposals. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin’s talks with Witkoff and Kushner would take “as long as needed.”

The talks have followed parallel lines so far, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sitting down with Ukrainian officials. (JapanToday)

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Two National Guard soldiers shot near White House, suspect in custody

Two US National Guard soldiers were shot and critically wounded Wednesday two blocks from the White House and police said a suspect had been taken into custody.

“Please join me in praying for the two National Guardsmen who were just shot moments ago in Washington DC,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X.

An AFP reporter near the scene said she heard several loud pops that sounded like gunshots, and then saw people running away from Farragut Square, a popular and busy outdoor area near the White House and a subway station.

Donald Trump, who is in Florida, was quickly briefed on the “tragic” situation, a spokeswoman said.

“The animal that shot the two National Guardsmen, with both being critically wounded, and now in two separate hospitals, is also severely wounded, but regardless, will pay a very steep price,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Local authorities confirmed that emergency services responded to and transported three gunshot victims from the area.

Secret Service were seen behind yellow police tape, their guns drawn.

“We heard gunshots. We were waiting at the traffic light and there were several shots, Angela Perry, who was in her car with her two children, told AFP.

“You could see National Guard running toward the metro with their weapons drawn,” the 42-year-old said.

Trump has sent National Guard troops to Democratic-run Washington, Los Angeles and Memphis to combat crime and help enforce his crackdown on undocumented migrants.

Last Thursday a federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of thousands of National Guard troops in the US capital is unlawful.

His extraordinary domestic use of the Guard was also challenged by California earlier this year after the president sent troops to Los Angeles to quell protests sparked by the rounding up of undocumented migrants. (Channels)

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Ex-Brazil president Bolsonaro begins 27-year jail term

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro to begin serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a failed coup, after he exhausted all appeals.

The brash former army captain who fired up Brazil’s right and reshaped the country’s politics is ending a divisive career jailed in a small room at police headquarters equipped with a TV, mini-fridge, and air-conditioning.

Bolsonaro, 70, was convicted in September over a scheme to stop Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections that included a plot to kill the veteran leftist.

Prosecutors said the scheme failed only due to a lack of support from military top brass.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal to his sentence earlier this month and, on Tuesday, ruled the judgement was now final, with no further challenges allowed.

The court also ordered a military tribunal to decide whether Bolsonaro should be stripped of his captain’s rank.

Bolsonaro had been under house arrest until Saturday, when he was detained at police headquarters in the capital, Brasilia, for tampering with his ankle monitor using a soldering iron.

Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said there had been “very serious indications of a possible attempt to flee” during a planned vigil organised by Bolsonaro’s son outside his home.

The justice pointed to the location of the nearby US embassy and Bolsonaro’s close relationship with US President Donald Trump, suggesting he may have tried to escape to seek political asylum.

During a hearing on Sunday in Brasilia, Bolsonaro stated he “experienced a certain paranoia” due to medications he was on and that he had no intention of fleeing.

Earlier, Bolsonaro had claimed he used a soldering iron on the monitoring bracelet out of “curiosity”.

The court ruled Bolsonaro will remain detained in the officers’ room — a secure space for protected prisoners — where he is currently held in Brasilia. (Punch)

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Wike slams Turaki as police seal PDP secretariat

The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, on Wednesday, slammed the factional National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Tanimu Turaki, over his call on United States President Donald Trump to intervene in Nigeria’s political affairs.

This was as the police on Wednesday sealed the national secretariat of the PDP in Abuja over the party’s violent leadership tussle.

While receiving board members of the South-South Development Commission, led by its chairman, Chibudom Nwuche, at his office on Wednesday, Wike said Turaki’s statements posed a threat to national security and accused his PDP faction of ignoring court rulings, which he described as an act of impunity.

Turaki had on Tuesday called on Trump and other advanced democracies to “save Nigeria’s democracy”, following a confrontation between rival PDP factions at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja.

Turaki said democracy was under threat in Nigeria, in addition to alleged Christian genocide.

But speaking on Wednesday, Wike said Turaki ought to have been invited for questioning by security agencies.

He said, “Look at a threat to national security. You are calling Trump to come and save your democracy when you cannot obey a simple court judgment. Simple court judgment: don’t do this until you have done this. Now you are turning it around against a government. What is their business? You cannot keep your house in order; you are blaming an outsider for not keeping your house in order. Who does that?”

He further questioned Turaki’s claim of genocide and noted that security agencies had not investigated the matter.

“You come out and make a statement on national television to say, look, it is not only killing—genocide against Christians. And where are the security agencies? For somebody to make such a statement, you won’t invite them to come and give facts. But if it is Wike—kill him!” he added.

Meanwhile, police on Wednesday sealed the PDP national secretariat at Wadata Plaza, Abuja.

Officers mounted a barbed-wire barricade across the main entrance, saying the order came “from above” but declining to provide further details.

Efforts to reach the FCT Police Command spokesperson were unsuccessful.

The sealing of the secretariat followed a day of heightened tensions at the venue amid a leadership tussle between rival PDP factions.

Confusion erupted on Tuesday after two conflicting notices were issued for a National Executive Committee meeting—one by expelled National Secretary, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, and the other by Turaki.

Each faction claimed legitimacy, resulting in a standoff.

Following the confrontation, Turaki, accompanied by governors Seyi Makinde and Bala Mohammed, accused Wike of instigating the unrest and called for international attention to what he described as a threat to Nigeria’s democratic process. (Punch)

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BBC apologises to Trump over Panorama edit but refuses to pay compensation

The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump for a Panorama episode that spliced parts of his 6 January 2021 speech together, but rejected his demands for compensation.

The corporation said the edit had given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and said it would not show the 2024 programme again.

Lawyers for Trump have threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn (£759m) in damages unless the corporation issues a retraction, apologises and compensates him.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told BBC Breakfast she was confident the corporation was “gripping this with the seriousness that it demands”, adding her role was to ensure “the highest standards are upheld”.

But she also told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the BBC’s editorial standards and guidelines were “in some cases not robust enough and in other cases not consistently applied”, adding that there would need to be people “at a very senior level with a journalistic background”.

Political appointments to the corporation’s board would be examined in the BBC’s charter review, she said in response to a question asking if member Sir Robbie Gibb, a former political adviser to Theresa May, had overstepped his remit and weighed into politics.

While this was a matter for the board and its chairman, she said, those appointments “damaged confidence and trust in the BBC’s impartiality”.

Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey had urged the prime minister on Thursday to “get on the phone to Trump” to put a stop to his lawsuit threat and “defend the impartiality and independence of the BBC”.

The fallout from the scandal led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness on Sunday.

BBC News has approached the White House for comment.

The apology comes hours after a second similarly edited clip, broadcast on Newsnight in 2022, was revealed by the Daily Telegraph.

In its Corrections and Clarifications section, published on Thursday evening, the BBC said the Panorama programme had been reviewed after criticism of how Trump’s speech had been edited.

The BBC had been given a deadline of 22:00 GMT (17:00 EST) on Friday to respond.

“We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” the statement said.

Lawyers for the BBC have written to President Trump’s legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday, a BBC spokesperson said.

“BBC chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation are sorry for the edit of the president’s speech on 6 January 2021, which featured in the programme,” they said.

They added: “While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”

In Trump’s speech he said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”

In the Panorama programme the clip shows him as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

Speaking to Fox News, Trump said his speech had been “butchered” and the way it was presented had “defrauded” viewers.

The BBC received the letter from Trump’s lawyers on Sunday. It demands a “full and fair retraction” of the documentary, an apology, and that the BBC “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”.

In its letter to Trump’s legal team, the BBC sets out five main arguments for why it does not think it has a case to answer.

First it says the BBC did not have the rights to, and did not, distribute the Panorama episode on its US channels.

When the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was restricted to viewers in the UK.

Secondly, it says the documentary did not cause Trump harm, as he was re-elected shortly after.

Thirdly, it says the clip was not designed to mislead, but just to shorten a long speech, and that the edit was not done with malice.

Fourthly, it says the clip was never meant to be considered in isolation. Rather, it was 12 seconds within an hour-long programme, which also containedlots of voices in support of Trump.

Finally, an opinion on a matter of public concern and political speech is heavily protected under defamation laws in the US.

A BBC insider said that internally, there is a strong belief in the case the corporation has put forward, and in its defence. (BBC)

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Donald Trump pardons UK billionaire and former Tottenham owner Joe Lewis

Joe Lewis, the British billionaire and former owner of Tottenham Hotspur FC, has been pardoned by Donald Trump over a 2024 conviction for his part in a “brazen” insider trading scheme.

Lewis, 88, was fined $5m (£3.8m) and given three years probation by a New York judge last year but was spared jail time after pleading guilty to involvement in a plan that prosecutors said was designed to enrich his friends, lovers and employees.

Lawyers for the east London-born investor initially accused prosecutors of making an “egregious” mistake by charging him with multiple counts of securities fraud and conspiracy.

But Lewis, who also owns the largest stake in one of the UK’s biggest operators of pubs, bars and restaurants, Mitchells & Butlers, later changed his plea to guilty after prosecutors agreed to a non-custodial sentence.

Lewis retained his right to change his plea again if a custodial sentence were imposed.

In a statement to the court at his sentencing last year, he said: “I made a terrible mistake. I broke the law. I am ashamed, sorry, and I hold myself accountable.”

The judge, Jessica Clarke, said Lewis’s circumstances did not warrant incarceration and imposed a $44m fine on his company, Broad Bay, on top of his $5m personal fine and probation.

But on Thursday, the Daily Telegraph was first to report that Trump planned to pardon Lewis entirely. The Guardian understands that the fine will not be repaid to Lewis or his company.

The White House later confirmed the pardon and said Lewis requested it so that he could receive medical treatment and visit his grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the US, the Associated Press reported.

Lewis said: “I am pleased all of this is now behind me, and I can enjoy retirement and watch as my family and extended family continue to build our businesses based on the quality and pursuit of excellence that has become our trademark.”

A source close to the family said: “Joe and the Lewis family are extremely grateful for this pardon and would like to thank President Trump for taking this action.

“Over his long business career, Joe has been a visionary, creating businesses across the world, which multiple generations of his family are now taking forward. There is so much more to the Joe Lewis story than this one event.”

Lewis already transferred his majority ownership interest in Tottenham to his family via a trust in 2022, the year before he was charged.

The north London football club is now overseen by Lewis’s daughter Vivienne, his son Charles, and Vivienne’s son-in-law Nick Beucher.

Details of the insider trading scheme were documented in a 29-page dossier published by the US attorney for the southern district of New York in 2023.

Prosecutors accused Lewis of passing on share tips based on inside information to his employees, including his private jet pilot and his then 33-year-old girlfriend, Carolyn Carter, to allow them to make a profit from stock trading. (Guardian)

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‘We’ve got to fight for our journalism,’ BBC director general tells staff

BBC director general Tim Davie has told staff that “we’ve got to fight for our journalism” after Donald Trump threatened to sue the corporation for $1bn (£760m) over a Panorama programme.

It comes after a leaked internal BBC memo, published by the Telegraph last Monday, said the film had misled viewers by splicing together parts of the US president’s speech on 6 January 2021 and made it appear as if he had explicitly encouraged the Capitol Hill riot.

“We have made some mistakes that have cost us, but we need to fight,” Davie, who resigned on Sunday alongside BBC News CEO Deborah Turness after mounting pressure over the memo, said on Tuesday.

“This narrative will not just be given by our enemies, it’s our narrative,” he added.

He said the BBC went through “difficult times… but it just does good work, and that speaks louder than any newspaper, any weaponisation”.

Trump threatened to take legal action if the BBC did not make a “full and fair retraction” of the programme by Friday. The corporation has said it will reply in due course.

BBC chair Samir Shah said in a letter to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (CMS) on Monday that the corporation would like to apologise for the edit, which he called an “error of judgement” which gave the impression of a “direct call for violent action”.

During Tuesday’s staff call, where Shah also spoke, neither Davie nor the BBC chair mentioned Trump’s legal threat.

Davie said the fact that “there was an editorial breach, and I think some responsibility had to be taken” was one of the reasons he was quitting.

He also cited the upcoming charter renewal – saying he wanted to give his successor a “runway into that” – and the personal pressures of the “relentless” role.

Shah also defended the fact that the corporation did not respond to the memo’s publication for seven days.

“We had a deadline, that was Monday… and we met that,” he said, referring to the deadline given by the CMS, and stressed that he “needed to be careful and get it right”.

No timeline was given for selecting Davie’s replacement, but the chair said the corporation was in “succession mode”.

The BBC’s culture editor Katie Razzall said there was “some disquiet” from BBC staff over the Q&A session, which was moderated by a member of the BBC’s communications team, not by a journalist.

Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy defended the BBC from “sustained attacks” by politicians who she said were going beyond criticising its editorial failures.

She said the “concerns are serious” but there was a “fundamental difference from raising serious concerns about editorial failings and members of this house launching a sustained attack on the institution itself.”

She added that the BBC was “essential to this country” and wasn”not just a broadcaster, it’s a national institution” – “It is a light on the hill here and around the world.”

Nandy confirmed that the once-a-decade process of reviewing the corporation’s charter would begin shortly and that it would ensure a BBC which is “fiercely independent” and “genuinely accountable” to the public.

At its meeting on Tuesday, the CMS committee agreed to hold an evidence session with members of the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee in coming weeks, including Shah and BBC board members Robbie Gibb and Caroline Thomson.

Shadow culture secretary Nigel Huddleston said the BBC “needs saving from itself” and that whilst “we all want the BBC to succeed” there needed to be “institutional change…not just a few people at the top”.

Downing Street has refused to comment on Trump’s legal threat, explaining that this was a “matter for the BBC”.

“It is clearly not for the government to comment on any ongoing legal matters,” the prime minister’s official spokesperson said.

“Our position is clear, the BBC is independent and it’s for the cooperation to respond to questions about their editorial decisions.”

Asked whether there were concerns the issue would impact Keir Starmer’s relationship with Trump, the spokesperson said the two had a “very strong” relationship.

The spokesperson would not be drawn on whether the BBC should apologise directly to the president.

Trump’s legal team wrote to the BBC on Sunday threatening to take action over the “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements” in the Panorama programme.

The BBC said the programme, which was first broadcast on 24 October 2024, was not available to watch on iPlayer because it was “over a year old”. (BBC)

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BBC chief resigns after row over Trump documentary

The Director General of the BBC, Tim Davie, announced his resignation on Sunday following a row over the editing of a documentary about US President Donald Trump.

Davie and the broadcaster’s head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned after accusations that a documentary by its flagship Panorama programme had edited a speech by Trump in a misleading way.

“Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable.

“While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision… I have to take ultimate responsibility,” Davie said in a statement posted on the BBC website.

The latest controversy follows a Daily Telegraph report this week that said concerns were first raised in the summer in a memo on impartiality by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee.

Earlier Sunday, the UK Culture, Media and Sport Minister Lisa Nandy called the allegations “incredibly serious”.

The BBC has promised “a full response” to Parliament’s culture, media, and sport committee on Monday.

The criticism emerged over clips spliced together from sections of a Trump speech on January 6, 2021, when he was accused of fomenting the mob attack on the US Capitol, seeking to keep him in power despite losing his re-election bid.

The edit made it appear he had told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them and “fight like hell”.

In the undistorted clip, however, the president urged the audience to walk with him, “and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

At the time, Trump was still disputing President Joe Biden’s election victory, in a vote that saw him ousted after his first term in office.

The edit was included in a documentary entitled “Trump: A Second Chance?” that was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.

Nandy said the Trump edit was one of several concerns about editorial standards at the BBC.

“It isn’t just about the Panorama programme, although that is incredibly serious,” she told BBC television in an interview.

“There are a series of very serious allegations made, the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way that difficult issues are reported at the BBC,” she said.

Nandy said she was concerned about a tendency for editorial standards and the language used in reports to be “entirely inconsistent”, whether it be on “Israel, Gaza… trans people or on this issue about President Trump”.

The licence fee-funded broadcaster earlier this year issued several apologies for “serious flaws” in the making of another documentary entitled “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone”, broadcast in February.

In October, it accepted a sanction from the UK media watchdog for what was deemed a “materially misleading” programme, whose child narrator was later revealed to be the son of Hamas’s former deputy agriculture minister. (Punch)

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Democrats sweep first major elections of second Trump term

Democrats swept a trio of races on Tuesday in the first major elections since Donald Trump regained the presidency, elevating a new generation of leaders and giving the beleaguered party a shot of momentum ahead of next year’s congressional elections.

In New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, won the mayoral race, capping a meteoric and unlikely rise from an anonymous state lawmaker to one of the country’s most visible Democratic figures. And in Virginia and New Jersey, moderate Democrats Abigail Spanberger, 46, and Mikie Sherrill, 53, won the elections for governor with commanding leads, respectively.

Tuesday’s contests offered a barometer of how Americans are responding to Trump’s tumultuous nine months in office. The races also served as a test of differing Democratic campaign playbooks ahead of 2026, with the party locked out of power in Washington and still trying to forge a path out of the political wilderness.

That said, the midterm election is a year away, an eternity in the Trump era, and opinion polls show the Democratic brand remains broadly unpopular, even as Trump’s own approval rating has declined. The contests on Tuesday also all unfolded in Democratic-leaning regions that did not support Trump in last year’s presidential election.

Perhaps the biggest practical boost to Democrats on Tuesday came out of California, where voters gave Democratic lawmakers the power to redraw the state’s congressional map, expanding a national battle over redistricting that will shape the race for the U.S. House of Representatives.

The winning candidates on Tuesday could reenergize and inspire more engagement from Democratic voters, many of whom have clamored for fresh faces at the vanguard of the party. Turnout in the New York City mayoral race was the highest since at least 1969.

All three Democratic candidates emphasized economic issues, particularly affordability, an issue that remains top of mind for most voters. But Spanberger and Sherrill hail from the party’s moderate wing, while Mamdani used a viral video-fueled insurgent campaign to present himself as an unabashed progressive in the mold of Senator Bernie Sanders and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“The Democratic Party is back,” Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, assrted on X.

Mamdani, who will become the first Muslim mayor of the biggest U.S. city, outlasted former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, 67, who ran as an independent after losing the nomination to Mamdani earlier this year. Cuomo, who resigned as governor four years ago after sexual harassment allegations that he has denied, portrayed Mamdani as a radical leftist whose proposals were unworkable and dangerous.

Mamdani has called for raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for ambitious left-wing policies such as frozen rents, free childcare and free city buses. Wall Street executives have expressed concern about putting a democratic socialist at the helm of the financial capital of the world.

Republicans have already signaled they intend to present Mamdani as the face of the Democratic Party. Trump has incorrectly labeled Mamdani a “communist” and vowed to cut funding for the city in response to Mamdani’s ascension.

In a social media post on Tuesday night, Trump blamed the losses on the fact his name was not on the ballot and on an ongoing federal government shutdown.

Spanberger, who beat Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, will take over from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. New Jersey’s Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli and will succeed Democratic Governor Phil Murphy.

Both Sherrill and Spanberger had sought to tie their opponents to Trump in an effort to harness frustration among Democratic and independent voters over his chaotic tenure.

“We sent a message to the world that in 2025 Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship,” Spanberger said in her victory speech. “We chose our Commonwealth over chaos.”

Trump gave both candidates some late-stage grist during the ongoing government shutdown.

His administration threatened to fire federal workers — a move with an outsized impact on Virginia, a state adjacent to Washington, D.C., and home to many government employees. He froze billions in funding for a new Hudson River train tunnel, a critical project for New Jersey’s large commuter population.

In interviews at Virginia polling stations on Tuesday, some voters said Trump’s most contentious policies were on their minds, including his efforts to deport immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally and to impose costly tariffs on imports of foreign goods, the legality of which is being weighed by the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

Juan Benitez, a self-described independent, was voting for the first time. The 25-year-old restaurant manager backed all of Virginia’s Democratic candidates because of his opposition to Trump’s immigration policies and the federal government shutdown, for which he blamed Trump.

For Republicans, Tuesday’s elections served as a test of whether the voters who powered Trump’s victory in 2024 will still show up when he is not on the ballot.

But Ciattarelli and Earle-Sears, both running in Democratic-leaning states, faced a conundrum: criticizing Trump risked losing his supporters, but embracing him too closely could have alienated moderate and independent voters who disapprove of his policies. (JapanToday)