President’s party stripped of control after he spent weeks pleading with Americans to pretend he was on ballot

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Donald Trump has been dealt a devastating blow to his authority with a succession of crushing defeats in the midterm elections, in which his Republican party was stripped of control of the Senate and the House as his handpicked “Maga” candidates were swept away by a blue tsunami.

The president spent weeks before the election pleading with the American people to pretend he was on the ballot. He may now rue that tactic: the American people took him at his word, and delivered him a bloody nose of historic proportions, flinging his presidency into lame duck status.

‘It’s the disregard for the rule of law. It just seems like they’re thumbing their nose at it’

In the battleground state of Maine, Todd Cox, 63, has supported the state’s incumbent Republican senator Susan Collins not once, but twice, in previous elections. Not this time.

On Tuesday, Cox, a technology professional, cast his vote for Collins’ Democratic challenger Troy Jackson – driven not by pressing local issues, but broader concern “for the direction the country is going in”, he said.

On the Bering Sea, Unalaska is the US’s most productive seafood port, employing thousands of workers. But Trump’s cuts, and his disastrous war with Iran, have caused chaos – and put Republican control of Congress at risk

It was less than 17 hours until the start of Alaska’s lucrative Bering Sea crab season, and Oystein Lone was standing on a dock in the city of Unalaska, preparing to embark in rough conditions.

The problem wasn’t the next day’s forecast of 60mph gusts, which would kick up white-capped swells and make crabbing, already one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States, even more hazardous. Nor was it the question of whether there’d be enough red king, tanner and snow crabs to go around – state regulators had, in fact, announced higher quotas for the season.