Democrats took both chambers Tuesday night, landing at 54 Senate seats to the GOP's 44 after flipping seven, and clearing 228 seats in the House. The map broke in places nobody had on their card — James Talarico became the first Democratic senator from Texas in nearly 40 years by beating Attorney General Ken Paxton, Abdul El-Sayed took Michigan, and Susan Collins lost Maine. Governor Greg Abbott also lost Texas to Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.
In his first appearance since the defeat, President Trump said he could "finish the job very easily" if Tehran refuses a binding deal on its nuclear program, while the IRGC's top commander vowed "united" resistance across the region. Republicans are openly blaming the Iran war for the wipeout, with JD Vance delivering a scathing postmortem and Ron DeSantis calling it close to an extinction-level event for the party. Trump also ruled out replacing War Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying he's doing "a very good job."
Hakeem Jeffries formally launched his bid for Speaker and laid out a first-100-days plan built around affordability, accountability, and what he called American values — reversing Medicaid cuts, restoring SNAP funding, extending ACA tax credits, ending the tariffs, and stopping the war in Iran. He says no House Democrat has raised impeaching Trump with him, but Hegseth is squarely in the crosshairs: "we're going to run Pete Hegseth out of town."
Gasoline averaged $4.12 a gallon Wednesday and diesel hit $6.27, making the second-term average the highest of any presidency on record. PCE inflation came in at 3.6%, an increase analysts attribute almost entirely to energy costs flowing from the Iran war and Strait of Hormuz bottlenecks. Crude did dip below $100 earlier this week on peace-deal hopes — the first real relief in months.
Both sides launched damaging airstrikes overnight Thursday, with Russia's defense ministry claiming it downed nearly 500 Ukrainian drones. Simultaneously, negotiators met for a second day at NATO headquarters in Brussels on postwar reconstruction, 2027 funding, and security guarantees. The US, UK, France, Germany, the EU, NATO, the World Bank and BlackRock all had people in the room.
Hong Kong High Court Judge William Tam sentenced the pro-democracy activist to nine years and ten months Thursday on foreign-collusion charges under the Beijing-imposed national security law. Prosecutors said Wong and Nathan Law urged foreign governments to impose human rights sanctions over the crackdown. The judge started from a 13-year benchmark and reduced it for the guilty plea — Wong now stays imprisoned until 2036, when he'll be 40.
At least 14 flights were hit Thursday, with roughly 11 planes from Dublin, Madrid and Warsaw diverted or grounded, and Italian, French and Bulgarian fighter jets scrambled. More than 20 hoaxes have been logged this week, hitting low-cost carriers hardest — Ryanair alone has been targeted at least seven times. Origin and motive remain unknown, though authorities have tied similar hybrid campaigns to Russia or Iran.
The gamma-ray hunting telescope reentered the atmosphere after two decades of watching the most violent events in the universe. Its career ledger: more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts, 1,400 exploding stars, plus comets, asteroids and black holes. Not a failure — just a long, productive life ending in the only way low orbit allows.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory turned up an object designated 2026 ED138, estimated at somewhere between 370 and 930 miles across. It currently sits about 4.3 billion miles from the sun — farther out than Pluto. If the upper size estimate holds, it would rank among the largest dwarf planets in the solar system.
Nick Berry of Northampton was sweeping farmland in Hampshire — right near Highclere Castle, where Downton Abbey was filmed — when he pulled a 1,000-year-old Anglo-Saxon gold pendant out of the dirt. The British Museum believes the imagery depicts the "Hand of God." A thousand years underground, found by a guy with a hobby and a good afternoon.
