With Democrats in power, Trump may be under siege and lose his dominance over the Republican party – but his id will relish the prospect of fighting

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Donald Trump posted a document on social media this summer by a supposed historian that compared him with, among others, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. That now seems fitting: the US president has himself fought one battle too many, and appears to have brought about his own destruction.

Tuesday’s US midterm elections were a thumping, shellacking and extinction-level event rolled into one. Ruby-red Republican strongholds once deemed safe toppled like dominoes. Democrats won Senate seats for the first time in Kansas since 1932, in Texas since 1988 and in South Carolina since 1998.

After campaign blitz and urging voters to pretend he was on the ballot, president claims Republicans ‘would have won in a landslide’ if he had been

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Donald Trump, who spent months urging supporters to pretend he was on the ballot, declared on Tuesday night he “wasn’t on the ballot” as Democrats scored a string of victories over his Republican party in the US midterm elections.

As a blue wave appeared to take hold across the country, the US president said he was prepared to accept the results.

The Texan could pull off a historic victory in the Lone Star state, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988

When a young, untested former school teacher stood up to address a modest gathering of local donors in Austin, the state capital of Texas, Wendy Davis felt sorry for him. “Poor kid,” she remembers thinking.

Then James Talarico began speaking. “He was like five or six sentences in and I knew that something was different about him,” recalls Davis, a former Democratic state senator. “He was as articulate and unique then as he is now. From that day, I started calling him ‘Baby Obama’.”

The Senate candidate denounced opponent Ken Paxton, calling out corruption allegations and support from Musk

James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas, has taken aim at Elon Musk, warning that the tech mogul is trying to buy political influence and declaring: “Texas is not for sale.”

Talarico held a campaign rally on Friday at the University of Texas at Austin, packing an auditorium at his alma mater with hundreds of students and other supporters, who cheered, whooped and waved campaign signs.

At a gathering in Texas, near where floods killed 136 people last year, survivors are united on the need for urgent action

It may be a club none of its members actually want to be in, but the growing number of people in the US affected by extreme weather disasters are starting to organize into a political force.

Severe wildfires, floods storms and other calamities now touch the lives of huge numbers of Americans – about half of all people in the US by one estimate – as the climate crisis supercharges extreme events. Some survivors are now coalescing to push for improved disaster response and even action on the politically contentious issue of global heating.

The president demonised Democrats in an attempt to wangle votes in midterms despite backlash over Iran war

With his approval rating at a historic low, Donald Trump has brought down the curtain on the Republicans’ first ever midterm convention by pleading with supporters to do him “the biggest favour” and “pretend” they are voting for him in November’s US elections.

The president is facing a growing backlash over rising prices and the war in Iran. Sweeping losses for the Republican party could effectively turn Trump into a lame duck for his final two years in the White House.

President makes offer that would cost US over $1tn and asks voters to ‘pretend that I’m on the ballot’ despite being deeply unpopular among electorate

Donald Trump pledged to pay every adult citizen in the US $5,000 if Republicans retain the House and Senate in the midterm elections, during a marathon speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas in which the president assailed Democrats as “radical” and defended his unpopular war in Iran.

The outlandish proposal, which would cost over $1tn, immediately raised ethical concerns. But it laid bare the extent of the Republicans’ concern about their prospects in the pivotal November elections.

The oil giant’s sponsorship deal with Fifa has featured prominently at matches in Houston. But 100 miles away in another Texas city, residents say the firm’s refinery is exposing them to poisonous gases and long-term health problems

The street is wide, its grass verges thick and scruffy after a week of rainstorms. Jamal Johnson will walk home straight down the middle carrying his plastic shopping bag, a jot of motion through the stillness. He lives in one of the modest wood-panelled houses spaced out on each side, most lovingly kept and passed through at least two generations. There is nobody else in sight, but a freight train breaks the silence, grinding left to right along the line flanking the north-facing gardens. The west side of Port Arthur, Texas, could be any lower-income neighbourhood in the southern states if it were not for the looming menace on the other side of the track.

This is a sad, unsettling place. “I’ve got a load of friends and family who’ve had weird diseases,” says Johnson, his face contorting at the thought. He lists a grandfather and aunt who died of cancer, the latter at a young age after relocating here to care for other relatives. An uncle died with complications from ALS (motor neurone disease). “You know what I’m saying? Man, they’ve let off all these poisonous gases; it’s like that all the time. It’s fucked up.”

Attendees at Conservative Political Action Conference express support and concerns amid rift over Trump’s action

Wherever you go, there you are, the saying goes. It was a lesson Donald Trump’s Maga faithful may have been reminded of last week when they gathered in a convention center near Dallas for a revival of the president’s political movement, only to find that there was no escape from the problems it faces.

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is usually a place of optimism, if not, triumph. It was on its stage last year that Elon Musk pumped a chainsaw in the air amid his abortive foray into clear cutting government bureaucracy, and where JD Vance named undocumented immigration as the “greatest threat” facing the United States and Europe. Trump is a regular, regaling the audience with lengthy monologues about his accomplishments.

Ein neuer Krieg? US-Präsident Donald Trump hatte eigentlich das Gegenteil versprochen, das stellt die Maga-Bewegung vor ein Dilemma. Wie sie damit umgeht, lässt sich beim großen Jahrestreffen der Konservativen in Texas beobachten.