Midterm elections 2026: all the news

The 2026 midterm elections will determine the scope of President Donald Trump’s power in his final two years in office, and signal what voters care about going into the 2028 presidential election. While this year’s races are expected to be most broadly defined by affordability issues, there’s several topics impacting the tech industry that appear to be on voters’ minds.

Among them are concerns about data centers, and whether voters will have to bear the burden of higher energy costs, AI safety, and the rapid expansion of surveillance technology through Flock. There’s also the question of how to tax billionaires’ wealth in California, a topic that has driven heavy tech spending and creative stock class structures meant to keep tech executives from fleeing the state should a ballot measure pass.

The next Congress is likely to continue grappling with how to regulate AI, and stem the data center backlash, among other issues. How that conversation shapes up, and which tech CEOs are hauled to testify on Capitol Hill, will be shaped by the outcome of November 3rd.

- DOJ sends 1,000 election monitors to watch polls in every state. Federal election monitors are a standard procedure, but this year the Trump administration has expanded it to the “largest monitoring effort in history.” States have prepared to make sure they don’t interfere, as the administration has taken several steps this year to assert more oversight of state-run elections.

- Prop 45 in California could be hiding a loophole for data centers A high-stakes California ballot measure pitched as a fast track for “essential” infrastructure could wind up giving data center developers a loophole to evade public scrutiny, environmental advocates warn. Proposition 45 would shorten timelines for state-mandated environmental assessments for eligible projects and make it more difficult for residents to challenge those projects in court. Proponents say passing the measure would help alleviate the state’s housing shortage and meet rising electricity demand with new renewable energy projects. Environmental groups and some legal experts, however, warn that data center developers backing the proposition could escape scrutiny if Prop 45 becomes law. Read Article >

- Another election year, another tech company war room. OpenAI is the latest tech company (and according to Politico, the first major AI company) to set up a command center for fighting election misinfo and abuse of its systems, approaching the second major AI-era US election: The Election Operations Center will begin running this week until all votes are counted, to identify the potential spread of misinformation or other efforts to disrupt the elections. It’s meant in large part to combat abuse of the company’s own tools like ChatGPT, monitoring real-time events and fielding reports of unexpected behavior from models or cases of suspected violations of their platform’s terms.

- Voters in Texas agree: They hate data centers Ask Texas NAACP president Gary Bledsoe what it’s been like to see data center developers descend upon Austin and its surrounding suburbs and he can rattle off project after project facing opposition from locals. There’s the fight in Taylor over plans to build a data center at a site that’s supposed to be a park. Temple, around 40 miles away, is another sore spot, Bledsoe says. The mayor and City Council members there face recall attempts over data center developments. And some 30 miles outside of Austin, San Marcos became the first city in all of Texas to ban data centers. Read Article >

- Data center backlash is uniting America If there’s one issue that seems to activate all kinds of voters in 2026, it’s data centers. The rapid buildout of these massive server storage facilities — and the infrastructure construction and expenses that come with them — has sparked local opposition in communities across the country and become a major issue in many congressional and gubernatorial campaigns. At the same time, tech money has been pouring into many of these races. Leading the Future, a super PAC backed by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, has already spent $45 million in a year. And Public First Action, an Anthropic-backed group that says it supports AI safeguards, says it’s raised $80 million. Both have funded Democratic and Republican-aligned groups. Other super PACs see an opportunity to push for stricter AI policies, like the recently created Tomorrow Together, which launched $4 million in ads for battleground House races, with messages about data center development and AI safety. Read Article >

- Republican politicians have embraced anti-Indian racism — and it’s costing them votes Two years ago, University of Houston student Vasant Bhatt was doing everything he could to help Republicans regain power. He knocked doors for Sen. Ted Cruz’s reelection campaign and helped organize his community for Donald Trump, two victories he, like many other Republicans, celebrated in 2024. But this week, Bhatt did something unexpected: He voted for Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, and he publicly urged others to do the same. Bhatt, whose father is a small-business owner, tells The Verge he was initially drawn to the Republican Party due to its economic principles. “The strong belief in individual liberty and limited government,” he says, led him to identify as a conservative. More recently, however, another aspect of his family’s experience has driven him away from the party. As an Indian American, Bhatt feels increasingly unwelcome in a party where racist rhetoric is becoming far too common. Read Article >

- Meta made a deal to keep Mark Zuckerberg from leaving California over its billionaire tax. It said in a filing that Zuckerberg “was evaluating relocating his primary residence” if California’s Proposition 40 passes. As Bloomberg reports, Meta’s board issued special shares so that he wouldn’t have to leave: Zuckerberg gets non-voting shares he can sell for liquidity without reducing his voting control. In return, he has committed to remain in California — or wherever Meta is headquartered — for eight years while he remains in a full-time leadership role.

- Trump is giving Nick Shirley $10,000 and launching a $25 million fraud bounty program Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance said on Tuesday that the Trump administration was giving right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley $10,000 and launching a $25 million bounty program for members of the public to report fraud. In December 2025, Shirley published a viral video alleging fraud at daycares in Minnesota that were operated by members of the local Somali community. Shirley lingered in parking lots and asked to enter childcare centers, taking refusals as evidence that the centers weren’t actually caring for children. The video quickly went viral, triggering a massive governmental response: Federal immigration agents descended on the Minneapolis area, and the Trump administration froze Minnesota’s federal funding for childcare. Shirley has since visited other states in the US under similar pretenses, showing up unannounced to grocery stores and hospice centers in search of evidence of fraud. Vance and others in the administration publicly praised Shirley, who has since become a mainstay in the MAGA-aligned content creator ecosystem. He’s helped popularize a genre of so-called independent journalism popular on the right in which content creators and influencers confront businesses or people they suspect of fraud or crime as the basis for their online content. Harassment — or even immigration crackdowns — often follow. Read Article >

- Democrats think cracking down on AI could give them an edge Democrats could win back control of Congress this November, and if they do, they’ll need to decide how to approach one of the country’s newest and thorniest political issues: AI. Polls predict Democrats will flip at least one chamber of Congress in the midterm elections, which would put committee leadership back in their hands. That could usher in a wave of newfound scrutiny for AI companies. Top Democrats on key committees have already signaled their willingness to press the industry on tax credits tied to data centers and recent hacking incidents, and would be able to set committee agendas if they take over, allowing them to call CEOs to testify in Congress and demand documents that explain companies’ inner workings. Read Article >

- Tech billionaires have reportedly donated over $340 million to fight a wealth tax in California. According to The Guardian, the campaign they’re funding is spending over $1 million per day trying to defeat Proposition 40, which would enact a one-time 5 percent tax on California’s billionaires. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is reportedly the biggest donor, contributing at least $102 million, alongside other tech executives: The donors to the no campaign are a who’s who of Silicon Valley, including the Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, crypto magnate Chris Larsen and several prominent venture capitalists.

- Elon Musk has donated over $276 million to Republican midterm efforts Elon Musk has handed out at least $276 million to Republican groups since July, The New York Times reports, making him both the party’s top known donor and the biggest established midterm donor. $158 million of that money — one of the largest political donations in American history — has been funneled into the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC that aims to secure and maintain a Republican Senate majority. Among others, it’s fighting to retain the party’s Senate seat in Texas, which serves as a major hub for Musk’s business empire. He’s also donated over $76 million to America PAC, a super PAC Musk founded in 2024 that canvasses for hard-to-reach Republican voters. Smaller amounts have also been given to other conservative groups, including: Read Article >

- The midterms are going to be a data security nightmare One messy database is threatening to disenfranchise thousands or even millions of registered voters, while leaving even more at risk of intimidation or data breaches, in the name of solving a problem that barely exists. As the 2026 midterm elections approach, election and privacy experts are sounding alarms about the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program, which President Donald Trump’s administration has expanded to ostensibly catch noncitizens voting. Experts say that amounts to a dangerous, error-prone effort to centralize voter data. “The federal government doesn’t have the authority to do any of that and doesn’t have the expertise either,” says Eileen O’Connor, senior counsel at the Brennan Center. “Inserting themselves into the day-to-day functioning of state elections is unprecedented and disturbing.” Read Article >

- Democrats preview how they’d go after the Ticketmaster settlement if they regain power A handful of Democrats called an unofficial hearing on Capitol Hill Monday to slam the Department of Justice’s “trivial” and “pathetic” settlement with Live Nation-Ticketmaster, previewing how they might go after Trump administration antitrust deals if they win back congressional power in November. While the DOJ settlement with Live Nation, which came one week into trial and with a promise of up to $280 million, received copious pushback, Democrats don’t at the moment have the power in either chamber to set committee agendas. That meant that Monday’s so-called shadow hearing looked different than most official proceedings. Instead of sitting at the elevated seats behind the dais, the lawmakers sat at tables below, eye level with witnesses including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, one of the AGs continuing the fight against Live Nation-Ticketmaster, ousted Trump administration antitrust official Roger Alford, and several entertainment industry players, including a member of the band The Hold Steady. Several artists asked to appear at the forum declined out of fear for their livelihoods, according to House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who co-hosted the forum with Senate Homeland Security permanent subcommittee on investigations Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). Read Article >

- AI backlash is coming for elections Ask Americans how they feel about AI and most say they have concerns. Communities have mounted resistance to data center projects, stalling them across the US. On social media, anger at AI companies and executives is unrestrained — sometimes to the point of condoning violence. But look at the issues that most campaigns are focused on, and AI is far less prevalent, experts say. Read Article >