Setback For Trump As Democrats Seize House In US Midterm Elections

In midterm elections two years after he won the White House, Trump and his fellow Republicans expanded their majority in the US Senate fol­lowing a divisive campaign marked by fierce clashes over race, immigration and other cultural issues.

But with his party losing its majority in the House, the results represented a bitter setback for Trump af­ter a campaign that became a referendum on his leader­ship. With some races still undecided, Democrats ap­peared headed to a gain of more than 30 seats, well beyond the 23 they needed to claim their first majority in the 435-member House in eight years.

The newly empowered House Democrats will have the ability to investigate Trump’s tax returns, possible business conflicts of interest and allega­tions involving his 2016 cam­paign’s links to Russia.

They also could force Trump to scale back his leg­islative ambitions, possibly dooming his promises to fund a border wall with Mexico, pass a second major tax-cut package or carry out his hard­line policies on trade.

A simple House majority would be enough to impeach Trump if evidence surfaces that he obstructed justice or that his 2016 campaign collud­ed with Russia. But Congress could not remove him from office without a conviction by a two-thirds majority in the Republican-controlled Senate.

House Democrats could be banking on launching an investigation using the re­sults of U.S. Special Coun­sel Robert Mueller’s already 18-month-old probe of allega­tions of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 presidential election. Moscow denies meddling and Trump denies any collusion.

‘A new day’

“Thanks to you, tomorrow will be a new day in America,” Democratic House leader Nan­cy Pelosi told cheering Demo­crats at a Washington victory party, saying House Democrats would be a check on Trump.

“We will have a respon­sibility to find our common ground where we can stand our ground where we can’t,” Pelosi said. Despite his party losing the House, Trump wrote on Twitter, “Tremendous suc­cess tonight.”

Trump called Pelosi, Sen­ate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and sev­eral of the Republican winners.

Trump – a 72-year-old for­mer reality TV star and busi­nessman-turned-politician – had hardened his rhetoric down the stretch on issues that appealed to his conser­vative core supporters, issu­ing warnings about a caravan of Latin American migrants headed to the border with Mexico and condemnations of liberal American “mobs.”

In A First, 2 Muslim Women Get Elected

A onetime Somali refugee and the daughter of Palestinian immigrants shared the historic distinction Tuesday of becoming the first two Muslim women elected to the US Congress.

Both women — Ilhan Omar, 37, and Rashida Tlaib, 42 — are Democrats from the Midwest and outspoken advocates of minority com­munities that have found themselves in the sights of US President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.

Omar won a House seat in a strongly Democratic district in Minneapolis, Minnesota, suc­ceeding Keith Ellison who was himself the first Muslim ever elected to Congress.

Tlaib’s victory was no surprise. She ran unopposed in a congressional district that stretches from Detroit to Dearborn, Michigan.

Their stories trace a sim­ilar trail-blazing rise through local politics.

Ilhan Omar

“I’m Muslim and black,” the hijab-wearing Omar said in a recent magazine interview.

“I decided to run because I was one of many people I knew who really wanted to demonstrate what representative democracies are supposed to be,” she said.

Omar fled Somalia’s civil war with her parents at the age of eight and spent four years at a refugee camp in Kenya.

Her family settled in Min­nesota in 1997, where there is a sizable Somali population.

She won a seat in the state’s legislature in 2016, becoming the first Somali-American law­maker in the country.

Before that, she had worked as a community organizer, a policy wonk for city leaders in Minneapolis, and as a leader in her local chapter of the NAACP — the African-American civil rights group.

She decided to run for Con­gress after Ellison, who is also black, decided to give up his seat after 12 years in Congress to run for attorney general of Minnesota.

Omar has forged a progres­sive political identity. She supports free college education, housing for all, and criminal justice reform.

She opposes Trump’s re­strictive immigration policies, supports a universal health care system, and wants to abolish US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has conducted deportation raids.

Rashida Tlaib

Rashida Tlaib is the Detroit-born daughter of Palestinian immi­grants — the eldest of 14 children.

A fighter who once heck­led US President Donald Trump during a 2016 campaign stop in Detroit, she says she didn’t run to make history as Muslim.

“I ran because of injustices and because of my boys, who are questioning their (Muslim) identity and whether they be­long,” Tlaib said in an US televi­sion interview in August.

“I’ve never been one to stand on the sidelines.”

Like Omar, she blazed a trail through Michigan poli­tics, becoming the first Muslim woman to serve in the Michi­gan state legislature in 2008.

In August, she emerged as the winner of a Democratic pri­mary for a seat vacated by John Conyers, a long-time liberal lion who stepped down in Decem­ber amid sexual harassment al­legations and failing health.

With no Republican chal­lenger in the race, Tlaib’s election on Tuesday became a formality.

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