How Trump’s war in Iran and missteps flipped Washington overnight 1. FROM MY DESK On Tuesday, Republicans suffered losses that amounted to one of the most decisive repudiations of an American president.

The blowout was a direct result of President Trump’s decision to go to war in Iran, which sent gas prices up 40% and left many of his most loyal supporters disillusioned. Foreign policy wasn’t the only drag: Trump also lost his advantage on immigration.

This morning, we map out how the blue wave touched nearly every part of America, explain why Chuck Schumer emerged as one of Tuesday’s biggest winners and take a closer look at the tough new reality facing Trump.

2. TODAY’S HEADLINES

• Two midterm election races where Democratic challengers hold narrow leads over the Republican incumbents—Alaska and Mississippi—have yet to be called.

• Americans’ vote for anti-data center candidates and ballot measures could rein in AI’s expansion and hobble economic growth.

• China has blocked SoftBank’s $5.4 billion acquisition of ABB’s robotics unit, highlighting Beijing’s determination to protect its high-value technology from foreign rivals.

• France’s riots were fueled by an “ultra left” faction that lives off-the-grid.

• Saudi Arabia is trying to find a way out of the war in Yemen. But it has no easy choices.

• The fatal Learjet crash in Florida has cast a spotlight on the regulatory standards for private charter operators, which are very different from those for commercial airlines.

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• The blue wave has set off a potential regime change in markets. If Wednesday’s broad rally is any indication, Wall Street is betting on a more-predictable, more-“ real” economy in the final years of Trump’s term.

• Stocks Spencer Jakab is watching: Not every company got a lift Wednesday from the wave, but one sector stood out for some extra pep in its step. Companies involved in hip and knee replacements as well as other surgeries often charged to Medicare were seen as having a brighter future. Leading the pack was Zimmer Biomet Holdings, up 13.5%. Other big gainers include Intuitive Surgical, Stryker and Smith & Nephew. .

• A forced slowdown might be exactly what some AI companies need right now, writes Telis Demos.

4. READ IT HERE FIRST It will be hard to halt U.S. aid to Israel. Israel has ordered billions of dollars worth of American military hardware beyond what the U.S. has committed to paying for, illustrating how hard it would be to phase out Washington’s funding for the country. Beyond 2028, Israel would need approximately $10 billion to pay for outstanding orders as of April 1, according to a State Department document sent to Congress and reviewed by the Journal. It’s unclear how much that amount might have changed since then, reports Jared Malsin. The disclosure comes as Trump said Tuesday that he planned to end aid to Israel. Inside CVS, a handful of executives quietly orchestrated the breakup of a healthcare juggernaut.

A small group of top executives spent months engaged in a strategic review that developed into a secret plan: a decision to split up the $400 billion healthcare giant, hiving off its ubiquitous pharmacies. It was an unlikely and radical step. The breakup will put CVS’s Aetna health-insurance unit and Caremark pharmacy-benefit manager into one company, and its approximately 9,000 retail pharmacies into another. The logic: Its balance sheet was strong enough to support the two resulting companies, and the breakup would create more agile, focused firms, report Anna Wilde Mathews and Alexander Saeedy.

6. SEE THE STORY A county-by-county look shows how the blue wave touched nearly every part of America.

The nation shifted leftward on Tuesday. Of about 3,000 counties where at least half the expected vote for the House has been tallied, all but about 170 saw Republican candidates run behind Trump’s 2024 margin against Kamala Harris. The median county shifted about 11 percentage points toward the Democrats. Here’s how it happened.

7. HAPPENING TODAY

• Economic data: Weekly jobless claims offer a final read on labor-market health ahead of Friday’s October jobs report. The Bank of England announces its latest interest-rate decision.

8. THE NUMBER The jump in requests for house managers at domestic placement agency Town + Country so far this year compared with 2025. Once a luxury reserved for the ultrawealthy, these operations-minded professionals—a hybrid of cleaner, planner and household organizer—have seen rising demand from middle- and upper-middle-class families looking to run their homes like corporations.

9. AND FINALLY…At a small lake in Hanoi, kids hustle American tourists for English lessons.

Like many American tourists in Asia, Kendall Stempel and Chloe Starr were on high alert for a hustle. So when a gaptoothed, 6-year-old boy named Hieu approached them, they braced for the pitch. But he didn’t want their money. He was after their vocabulary. The women had just become the latest targets of san tay: the increasingly popular Vietnamese pastime of hunting foreigners for English practice. At Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake, tourists of a certain complexion are coveted as living, breathing Duolingo lessons.

10. BEYOND THE NEWSROOM

• Opinion: The Republican wreckage left by this defeat doesn’t foretell what will happen in 2028. But it does call for soul-searching.

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