US midterm elections: Senate control decides Trump's political fate

Even if Trump loses both chambers, he cannot be removed from office: impeachment requires an absolute majority and only one third of the Senate, currently under Republican control, is up for election.

## What it takes to remove a president

Presidential removal in the United States does not depend on the outcome of legislative elections. The process requires the House of Representatives to first approve impeachment, and the Senate to then hold a trial and convict with an absolute majority. Without that majority, removal is impossible.

That threshold is the key to everything. The Senate has **100 seats** and only one third is renewed in each electoral cycle, so control of the upper chamber does not change overnight. It is currently in Republican hands, and that majority holds even if the party loses the House of Representatives.

## The House is written off and the real battle is the Senate

The scenario being considered is that the House of Representatives flips to the Democrats and the effort focuses on holding the Senate. It is the logical reading: without the upper chamber, any attempt at impeachment dies at the trial stage.

In that context, the names being floated to compete in traditionally Republican states are **James Talarico** in Texas, **Mary Peltola** in Alaska, **Abdul El-Sayed** in Michigan and **Josh Turek** in Iowa. They are candidates seeking to break the usual map, not defend it.

## Money and accusations before the vote

The campaign is not waiting for election day. **Elon Musk** is publicly pressuring Talarico to push him out of the race, and fraud accusations are being levelled against Peltola before the election takes place. These are attrition tactics, not policy.

None of this changes the impeachment arithmetic: without an absolute majority in the Senate, removal will not happen. Politics and money are heating up the campaign, but the constitutional threshold remains where it was.