Democrats delivered a resounding rebuke to President Trump in all five of yesterday's most-watched races — rewarding candidates who attacked high prices and Trump, Axios' Holly Otterbein and Alex Thompson write.

• It wasn't just that Democrats won top races in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California and New York City. That was predicted. But in race after race, the margins of victory — including double-digit wins in the Virginia and New Jersey governor's races — were wider than expected.
• County after county moved blue.

"The Democratic Party is back," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) declared.

• Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist elected New York City's mayor, told supporters his victory represented "a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can afford."

🖼️ The big picture: Still, the results didn't settle the Democratic Party's civil war over the best way to move forward after its crushing losses in 2024.

• Progressive and moderate Democrats both emerged with genuine measures of victory — and they're already wielding it as evidence that it's their side that should lead the party out of the wilderness in 2026 and 2028.
• Progressives in New York City and California fired up their base to elect Mamdani, and to redraw California's congressional map to help Democrats' push to flip five U.S. House seats next year.

Centrist and establishment Democrats had clear victories in Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania:

• Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey won big by touting their law enforcement bona fides, promising to lower costs and running against Trump's management of the economy.
• In Pennsylvania, Democrats carried three Supreme Court contests on an anti-Trump, pro-abortion rights message.

🔮 Democrats' celebrations were a split screen when it came to surrogates — many of whom happen to be potential 2028 presidential candidates:

• Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) were active campaigners in New York City and California.
• In Virginia and New Jersey, Spanberger and Sherrill deployed an army of mainstream Democrats, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

🔭 Zoom in: Progressives and moderates found common ground in their focus on affordability, but differed wildly on solutions.

• Mamdani called for freezing rent for millions of New York City residents, making city buses free and opening city-run grocery stores.
• Spanberger and Sherrill blamed Trump's policies — tariffs, federal layoffs and his "bad budget bill" — while pledging to lower costs. "No sales tax increases, period," Sherrill promised in her closing TV ad.

🗽 Money quote: "In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light," Mamdani said at 11:32 p.m. during his acceptance speech in Brooklyn.

• Later in the fiery speech, Mamdani promised "a shining city for all": "New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants — and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us."

📱 In a Truth Social post, Trump rejected blame: "'TRUMP WASN'T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,' according to Pollsters."

• What the pollsters said: "Tuesday's races were a quiet rebuke of Trump for many voters, AP Voter Poll finds" ... Fox News: "Economic anxiety keys Dem sweep in high-stakes races as left leverages voter frustration."

Share this story.

More results.

President Trump has raised about $1.9 billion from an array of corporate donors to help finance his political committees, White House construction projects and celebrations of the nation's upcoming 250th anniversary, sources tell Axios' Marc Caputo.

• Why it matters: No president has raised so much money, so quickly, for so many different reasons. And there's more to come, aides say.

"The midterms are paid for," a source briefed on Trump's fundraising operations told Axios.

• "He's been at this since taking office and he's not stopping."

🔎 Zoom in: Trump's second-term fundraising began with his inaugural ball, transitioned to his MAGA Inc. super PAC and Secure America political nonprofit, and then focused in recent months on the new ballroom and White House renovations.

• "He over-fundraised for the ballroom, about $350 million," a second source said.
• The money flowing toward Trump's projects comes from a who's who list of top corporate donors, drawing criticism and raising ethics concerns.

What's next: Trump's obsession with the ballroom and White House renovations is giving way to a focus on building a new arch at the entrance to Washington at the terminus of the Memorial Bridge, which leads to Arlington National Cemetery.

• The arch's estimated cost: $100 million.
• "It's what he's talking about," said a confidant who spoke with the president recently as he considered models of differently sized arches.
• "There's a small arch. A middle arch. A large arch. And he likes the large one, of course, as long as it's big and gold and white."

Inside the room: Trump's unquenchable thirst for fundraising has stretched him thin at times.

• On Saturday, just two days after returning from a grueling multi-stop trade mission to Asia, he held a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago and pulled in an estimated $10 million, an adviser said.
• "He was exhausted. But he just wanted to keep going. After dinner, he played DJ on the patio," the adviser said, noting that Trump had played golf earlier in the day, hours after a Friday night Halloween ball from the night before.
• "$10 million used to seem like a lot of money. Now it's like a ho-hum night."

👀 What we're watching: With the nation's 250th birthday approaching next July 4, Trump will probably squeeze more donors for the semiquincentennial celebration.

• "Donors should get ready," the confidant said. "He's coming for more. Sky's the limit."

Share this story.

An astonishing 15-point win by Democrat Abigail Spanberger to become Virginia's next governor helped propel her party to a broad sweep of the state's top offices.

• Why it matters: Off-year elections in Virginia — a state filled with federal workers hit by job cuts and furloughs — can act as a bellwether in the first year of a presidency.

Virginians "chose pragmatism over partisanship" and the "Commonwealth over chaos," Spanberger — the first woman ever elected Virginia governor — told supporters in declaring victory.

• The victory also gives Democrats unified control of the state government for the first time since 2021 — and they picked up at least 10 seats in the House of Delegates. That's "a level of dominance the party has not enjoyed in more than three decades," The Washington Post reports.

🔬 Zoom in: The winning Democratic ticket is one of the most diverse in state history, Axios Richmond's Sabrina Moreno writes:

• Spanberger will be the state's first woman governor.
• Ghazala Hashmi is the first Muslim woman to be elected to statewide office in the U.S.
• Jones will be Virginia's first Black attorney general.

📊 6 in 10 voters in Virginia and New Jersey said they're "angry" or "dissatisfied" with the way things are going in the country, the AP Voter Poll found. Just one-third said they are "enthusiastic" or "satisfied," AP reports.

• In a sign of the extent of the GOP's struggles, Republicans lost the Virginia attorney general's race to Democrat Jay Jones, who was forced to apologize after text messages surfaced weeks before Election Day in which he depicted the murder of political opponents.

📜 Stat du jour: "No woman has led Virginia since its colonial government was formed 406 years ago." (The Washington Post)

• Virginia results ... Go deeper: How Spanberger won (WashPost gift link).

As Day 36 dawns, this is now the longest shutdown in U.S. history, breaking the record set in the 2018-2019 shutdown during President Trump's first term.

• Keep reading.

Months after abruptly canceling his nomination, President Trump ended a fierce behind-the-scenes tussle and restored Jared Isaacman as his nominee to run NASA, Axios' Marc Caputo writes.

• Why it matters: The White House sees Isaacman — a self-made billionaire who has twice been to space — as the right visionary and leader to get the delayed Artemis missions to the moon back on track in the space race with China.

The intrigue: Trump also praised Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for leading NASA on an interim basis. But senior White House officials and Isaacman allies came to believe that Duffy's operation was leaking unflattering stories about Isaacman to block his nomination.

• White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in recent days placed a "stern but friendly call to Duffy" with a simple message: "Knock it off," a source said.
• A source close to Duffy denied the secretary was involved in sandbagging Isaacman.

During the transition, Elon Musk had advocated for Isaacman to become the next NASA administrator. Trump happily obliged.

• But Trump's falling out with Musk in June led the president to abruptly cancel Isaacman's nomination — a rare move stoked by the head of the president's personnel office at the time, Sergio Gor.

🚀 Behind the scenes: Isaacman took the bad news with grace and stayed in touch with the president's team. He even gave $1 million to Trump's fundraising operation months later without bringing up the NASA post, an insider said.

• Keep reading.

Stocks sold off yesterday as investors' jitters about an AI bubble grew stronger, Axios business editor Pete Gannon writes.

• The tech-heavy Nasdaq sank 2%.

🤖 Zoom in: One of the hottest tech stocks of the last two years, Palantir Technologies, led the fall, closing down 9.2% despite an upbeat outlook this week.

• The issue: It wasn't enough for Wall Street analysts to justify the company's sky-high valuation after its stock more than quadrupled over the last year.

Investors also cooled on a host of other AI stocks that have soared this year: Oracle fell 4.3%, Nvidia fell 3.4% and AMD slipped 3.3%.

• Get the Axios Business Suite: 3 daily newsletters.

The legendary photographer David Hume Kennerly shares with Axios AM readers this early selfie of himself with Dick Cheney on a 1993 road trip in Wyoming. Cheney, who died Monday night at 84, was pondering a run for president when the two lit out in his Caddy.

• Kennerly, who had been the personal White House photographer for President Gerald R. Ford when Cheney was the youngest White House chief of staff, worked for TIME.

"Just the two of us and some antelope," Kennerly told me. "Note the radar detector, which is saying something in the Cowboy State! Dick C was my pal and I mourn his passing."

• "The Dick Cheney I Knew": Tribute by former NBC News correspondent Pete Williams, who worked for Cheney for seven years on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon.

Elon Musk is hinting that Tesla will soon showcase a flying car — possibly "before the end of the year," Axios' Nathan Bomey writes.

• Why it matters: A flying car would combine two of Musk's long-running passions — flight and cars — and could remake the budding world of airborne electric vehicles.

Musk delivered the eye-popping teaser during an interview with Joe Rogan, who asked him about the status of the long-delayed Tesla Roadster sports car.

• "We're getting close to demonstrating the prototype," Musk said. "This product demo will be unforgettable."

Asked why, Musk said: "My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars. But we don't have flying cars."

• When Rogan pressed him to explain further, Musk responded: "I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one."

🥊 Reality check: Musk has a long track record of promising new products long before they become a reality.

• Share this story.