A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK
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Snapshot of the day
November 4, 2026
Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh S.K., Siddharth Varadarajan,
The results of the midterm elections in the United States are in and voters have clearly chosen to punish Donald Trump’s Republican Party for the president’s appalling foreign and domestic policies. In particular, the disastrous war Trump launched against Iran earlier this year appears to have played a major part in his undoing — a fact that Vice President JD Vance has noted publicly.
And what might last night’s ‘blue tsunami’ entail for Raisina Hill, where Prime Minister Modi had gone out of his way to appease Trump on a whole range of issues and whose top foreign policy advisors had exulted in the ascendancy of the Republicans two years ago? One aspect of the bilateral relationship that comes into sharper focus against this background is the stalled trade deal: Ajay Srivastava says the results could mean that a wounded Trump may ratchet up tariff pressure on India in pursuit of a ‘quick win’. Speaking to TCA Sharad Raghavan, Deep Pal said on the other hand that negotiators in New Delhi will be keen to see if this ‘new reality’ makes the Trump White House more flexible for better terms for India. But from what we know so far, this administration ‘has … shown it does not believe in stepping back but rather in doubling down’. On the immigration front, there could be stronger Democratic scrutiny of Washington’s policies going forward, though Trump has plenty of executive power behind him in this area.
What ramifications could the rout have for Pakistan? Again, here there are two scenarios: it could mean that Islamabad’s clout in DC may fade a little, but if it results in Trump feeling pressured to strike a deal with Iran, it could also see it play a bigger mediating role.
Sushant Singh at Yale spoke to Jahnavi Sen about the US election results and their implications.
A number of South Asian Americans have made their mark in the midterms. Pia Dandiya got elected to the House of Representatives from Florida, making her the fifth person of Indian origin in the US Congress. Jyot Singh got elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. In the Los Angeles mayoral election, Councilwoman Nitya Raman, a Democratic Socialist, has a slim lead over incumbent Karen Bass, the official Democratic nominee. But in Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor, lost to the Democrats.
Arab-American Abdul El-Sayed, who won the hotly contested US Senate race in Michigan, has an Indian origin wife, Sarah Jukaku, whose family comes from Bhatkal in Karnataka. Prompting one observer to ask whether Indian-Arab couples “might be a winning ticket in American politics”.
The Kerala high court has sought to qualify the constitutional right to protest non-violently, with a division bench setting aside a single judge’s order allowing students suspended from the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit to give their semester exams. A previous judgment of the high court,
