The Latest: Trump concedes Iran war impact on elections but insists he’d ‘do it again’

As he takes stock of his Republican Party’s midterm drubbing, President Donald Trump faces the difficult question of what to do about his unpopular 8-month-old war against Iran . For weeks, Trump threatened a post-election full-scale bombardment if Tehran didn't accept his terms. On Thursday, Trump suggested that the election losses aren’t weighing on his calculations.

A handful of remaining Senate and House races, still to be called by The Associated Press, will determine the strength of Democrats’ majority in Congress. Contests in Alaska and Mississippi have narrow margins with votes still outstanding. As the scale of the Democrats’ nationwide victories comes into focus, dozens of House races have not yet been called.

The jockeying to replace Sen. Marsha Blackburn is intensifying after she won the Tennessee governor's race, with one Republican congressman publicly expressing interest and speculation swirling around Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth . But Hegseth is not currently being considered for the seat, according to a person familiar with the matter who discussed the private conversations on condition of anonymity.

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Trump is doubling down on his support for data centers and warned Friday that states that deny them will lose out on “the riches they bring!”

Tuesday’s midterm elections brought a wave of Democrats pledging to clamp down on the energy-hungry behemoths that underpin the artificial intelligence boom. Skepticism of data centers and their impact on electricity prices and overall affordability bolstered successful Democratic campaigns for governor in states such as Texas and Ohio.

Trump has cast data centers as crucial to winning an AI arms race against China but also for lowering taxes and bringing in jobs to communities that allow them.

“As President, I am 100% in favor of Super Intelligence (SI), and will work with the many States in the U.S. that want to become RICH by having them,” Trump said Friday on Truth Social. “They are GOLD, and only foolish leadership will say “NO” to the riches they bring!”

Global shares tumbled Friday following a broad selloff on Wall Street of shares related to artificial intelligence as the prospect of more regulation in the wake of the US midterm elections compounds fears about high levels of debt and spending in the sector.

Stock markets around the world have been feeling pressure from continued declines for companies that have benefited from the boom in the artificial-intelligence technology industry. Critics also say AI stock prices shot too high and were in a bubble amid concerns about high levels of borrowing and spending as companies race to build the massive computing capacity needed to train AI applications. What might come next remains uncertain, they say.

The Democrats’ win in the US midterm elections Tuesday also raises the prospect of more regulation, including at the state level, where popular resistance to data center construction remains strong.

Clergy members and other Democratic candidates with an unapologetically Christian message to “love your neighbor” helped their party flip control of Congress .

It was a striking midterm victory that demonstrated the strength of the religious left as a counter to the stalwart evangelical support for Trump and his fellow Republicans.

“This attempt to corner the market on Christianity by evangelicals was repudiated,” said Brian Kaylor, a Baptist pastor and editor of a progressive faith and politics site.

Instead, American mainline Protestantism, with its less-strident theology, took the election spotlight.

Seminarian James Talarico in Texas, megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas and Iowa ministers Sarah Trone Garriott and Lindsay James flipped key seats in the U.S. Senate and House. They’re part of the mainline Presbyterian, Methodist and Lutheran branches with moderate or progressive beliefs.

Unlike the nationalists wanting America to privilege a particular Christian worldview in public life, the mainline candidates in keeping with their Christian values backed church-state separation and sought common ground across religions, Kaylor said.

In his first public appearance after an election that soundly repudiated his policies, Trump turned to a topic both familiar and, given the context, surprising: not his policies or politics, but his efforts to remake pieces of the city that is the backdrop to his presidency.

Despite Trump’s affinity for project management, though, with Democrats taking control of Congress, the work the administration is doing to change the physical face of the District of Columbia is sure to face far more roadblocks than it did for the first two years of his second term.

The potential collision point between an oppositional oversight from Democrats and the president’s preoccupation with the projects was evident in his last message to the American public before the election — and in his first afterward, too.

Both focused to some degree on his projects. On Monday, it was the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial ; on Wednesday, it was a tour of the under-construction White House ballroom, where he talked columns and steel beams and Corinthian designs.

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Latino voters moved sharply to the left in the midterm elections , propelling Democrats to an improbable electoral sweep in Texas and in battleground House races from coast to coast.

It’s a remarkable pivot for a demographic that had shifted toward Trump just two years ago.

“We showed our power and flexed our muscle during this election,” said Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez, who won his battleground district in New Mexico by around 17 percentage points after winning by less than 1 percentage point in 2022.

Democrats capitalized on voters’ angst over rising prices and government corruption , riding a wave of frustration to retake control of the House and the Senate .

Hispanics joined in that decisive repudiation of Trump and his Republican Party. In Texas, every county voted more Democratic than it did two years ago, when Trump beat Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race . But the more heavily Hispanic the county, generally the heavier the shift.

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After a campaign season filled with outrage against data centers , the midterm elections ushered in a wave of Democrats pledging to clamp down on the energy-hungry behemoths.

A tougher regulatory environment for artificial intelligence giants and data center developers is expected to follow, even if Trump stalls any federal crackdown.

Data center regulation itself was not on most midterm ballots, and it wasn’t among the top issues for most voters. But hardline stances against the server warehouses were woven into the platforms of many candidates, including the Democrats who upended longtime Republican control of the governorships in Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Nevada and Iowa, many of which are data center hotspots.

Skepticism of data centers and their impact on electricity prices often blended with the fight for affordability — a key campaign talking point for Democrats.

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The jockeying to replace Sen. Marsha Blackburn is intensifying in Tennessee, just days after she won the race for governor, with one Republican congressman publicly expressing interest and speculation swirling around Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth .

Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who won reelection Tuesday, told The Associated Press that he wants to be considered for the Senate seat when Blackburn becomes governor in January.

Hegseth has also surfaced as a potential replacement, with his future uncertain after Republicans’ sweeping losses in the midterm elections. But Hegseth is not currently being considered for the seat, according to a person familiar with the matter who discussed the private conversations on condition of anonymity.

The person said Blackburn is focused on her transition to the governorship and dismissed the speculation about appointing Hegseth to the Senate seat as baseless chatter.

Meanwhile, Hegseth released a video on social media on Thursday in which he acknowledged the threat of impeachment and argued that it would be “all about the politics of personal destruction” and that “won’t work with me. You can rest assured of that.”

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As he takes stock of his Republican Party’s midterm drubbing, President Donald Trump now faces the difficult question of what to do about his unpopular 8-month-old war against Iran .

For weeks, Trump has threatened to return to a full-scale bombardment of Iran once the U.S. elections were in the rearview mirror if Tehran did not come to a settlement under terms acceptable to him.

In his first comments on Wednesday after Democrats’ resounding election victory — a wave powered in part by the American electorate’s dissatisfaction with the war — Trump largely agreed with Vice President JD Vance, who publicly ruminated on the war being a catastrophe for Republicans.

And in an Oval Office exchange with reporters Thursday, Trump suggested that the election losses aren’t weighing on his calculations.

“If we have to do the rest of the Iran thing, we’re very much locked in,” Trump said.

Now, as Trump ponders his next move, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Iran, the Middle East and the global economy writ large.

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