United States

In the weeks before the election, with divisive rhetoric escalating, a series of shocking events quickly unfolded. Beginning on October 22, pipe-bomb-bearing packages were intercepted that had been bound for more than a dozen political opponents and prominent critics of Trump, including Hillary Clinton, activist billionaire George Soros, and former president Obama. A Florida man who was a staunch Trump supporter was arrested in connection with the pipe bombs and charged with five federal crimes, including the illegal mailing of explosives. Another man who had made anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic statements on social media stormed a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 27, killing 11 people who were attending services there. Earlier in the week, still another individual had shot and killed two seemingly random African American victims in a grocery store in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, after failing to gain entrance to a black church. These events produced a national outpouring of concern over the virulence of the political tribalism that had not only taken root but seemed to be growing quickly in American life.

The 2018 midterm elections

Against this backdrop, Americans went to the polls on November 6 to fill 35 U.S. Senate seats (26 of which were held by Democrats) and to elect a new House of Representatives and 36 governors. When the votes were counted, the Democrats had regained control of the House of Representatives, the Republicans had increased their majority in the Senate, and both parties were able to claim significant victories in the gubernatorial elections—most notably with Republicans holding on to the governorships of Florida and Ohio, while Democrats retook the state executives in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois. The congressional election was originally characterized as a disappointment for Democrats, largely because of losses by some high-profile hopefuls, but, as the results of too-close-to-call contests were reported in the coming days, it became clear that there actually had been a “blue wave”: Democrats picked up 40 House seats, the largest gain by the party in that body since it added 49 seats in the 1974 post-Watergate election. A record number of women had run for office, and nearly one-fourth of the members of the new House of Representatives were women. Despite opposition from some Democrats who felt their party needed younger, fresher leadership, Nancy Pelosi once again was chosen to be speaker of the House.

The 2018–19 government shutdown

Even before the new Congress began its term, Pelosi and the Democrats locked horns with Trump over his demand that the new budget to fund the continuing operation of the federal government include $5.7 billion to pay for construction of the border wall that had been the central promise of his campaign for the presidency. With funding for the federal government due to expire on December 21, Trump held a televised meeting with Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on December 11 at which the president said that he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security.” Trump refused to sign a short-term budget bill passed by the Senate that did not include his desired funding, and the Senate was then unable to pass a bill sent to it by the still Republican-controlled House of Representatives that included $5.7 billion for the wall. As a result, on December 22 a partial shutdown of the federal government began that would become the longest such shutdown in the country’s history.