The White House This Week: A Midterm Beating, a New Chief of Staff and a Job Offer to the UFC Boss

Our read on the week

This was the week the bill came due. Voters took Congress away from the President on Tuesday, the stock market took a beating on Thursday, and by Saturday the White House looked less like a government settling in for two hard years and more like a team reshuffling its roster in the middle of a losing game. Some of what the President did this week was smart. Some of it was the opposite of what voters just asked for. Here is our take, story by story.

The midterms: he said the right thing, then undercut it

Democrats swept Tuesday's election. They take the House by a wide margin and flipped Senate seats in places Republicans thought were safe, from Kansas and Iowa to Ohio, Texas, Maine and the Carolinas, with Mississippi and Alaska still counting.

We give the President credit for his first reaction. On Wednesday he said he would accept the result, work with the new majorities and save his veto for bills he cannot live with. That is how a grown-up handles a loss. He even admitted the war with Iran and gas prices hurt his party, telling one interviewer, "I think part of it was Iran." That was honest, and it was correct.

Then, a few days later, he started passing around posts that questioned how real the Democratic wins were. He stopped short of calling the election stolen, but he did not need to. Every time a leader winks at doubts about a vote count, a few more people stop trusting elections, including the ones their own side wins. He should have stuck with Wednesday's version of himself.

The market drop: blame is easy, the cause is not

The Dow fell roughly 1,800 points on Thursday and the Nasdaq more than 5 percent, mostly in artificial intelligence and chip stocks, after a big rally the day before. The President blamed the Democrats and warned that people's 401(k)s were taking the hit.

We think that is only half the story. Investors were spooked that a Democratic Congress, full of members who campaigned against giant data centers, will slow down the AI building boom. That is a real worry for those companies. But the market was already nervous about a war in the Gulf and high energy prices, and tech stocks had started climbing back by Friday. Pointing fingers after one bad day does not protect anyone's retirement. A plan to end the war and bring down energy costs would.

Wiles out, Miller in: the wrong lesson from Tuesday

On Friday the President announced that chief of staff Susie Wiles is leaving the White House for his political operation, and that Stephen Miller takes over on Monday. Wiles was the calm one, the person who kept the staff in line and, by most accounts, the person most able to tell the President something he did not want to hear. Miller is loyal, sharp, and the hardest-line voice in the building, the driving force behind the immigration crackdown.

Our view: this is the wrong lesson to take from a midterm loss. Voters did not say the White House was too soft. They said they are tired of high prices and a war with no end in sight. Replacing the steadiest adviser with the most combative one tells the country the President plans to fight harder, not listen better. Miller's supporters will say a hostile Congress calls for a fighter. Maybe. But a fighter without a referee is how you lose the next election too.

Hegseth: Congress is finally doing its job

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could be impeached by the House this coming week, and the charge is being led by a Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Massie accuses Hegseth of carrying on the Iran war without Congress signing off and of abusing his office. After Tuesday, enough Republicans may be ready to join the Democrats to pass it. The President says he is keeping Hegseth.

We think this vote is overdue, whatever the outcome. The Constitution gives Congress, not the Pentagon, the power to decide when this country goes to war. A long war that Congress never clearly approved is exactly the kind of thing lawmakers of both parties should be standing up about. Removal would still need two-thirds of the Senate, which is unlikely. But a House vote, with Republicans joining in, would tell the White House that the blank check on Iran has run out. That is a healthy thing for the country.

The Oval Office monument: protecting history, or locking the door?

On Thursday the President made the Oval Office, the outer office and the Cabinet Room a national monument. The order puts the rooms under the Interior Department and requires a formal review before anyone makes major changes or tears anything out. It does not stop the next president from redecorating. He also showed off progress on his new White House ballroom.

Protecting the most famous rooms in America is not a bad idea on its own. But the timing is hard to ignore. Signing it two days after losing Congress looks less like guarding history and more like trying to make his own renovations harder to undo. If the goal is to protect the White House, a bipartisan law would carry far more weight than a proclamation the next president could rewrite.

Dana White: a revolving door at the podium

The White House cannot seem to keep a press secretary. Karoline Leavitt left in August to spend more time with her young children. Her replacement, Katie Zacharia, lasted five days in October. On Saturday the President said he had offered the job to his friend Dana White, the head of the UFC. One report says White has already said no; White says he will meet the President on Monday anyway.

We like Dana White as a promoter. He would certainly make the briefings worth watching. But the press secretary is supposed to be the government's voice to the public on wars, markets and emergencies, not a ringside announcer. A job that has emptied out twice since August and is now being offered to a fight promoter says more about the White House than about any one person in it.

What it means for you

Expect gridlock for two years. Very few big new laws will make it past a Democratic Congress and a President with a veto pen. That means fewer surprises, but also no big help on prices coming from Washington. Plan your own budget around that.

Do not let one bad day on Wall Street scare you. If you are near retirement, make sure the money you will need in the next few years is not sitting in the most volatile stocks. That is good advice in any week, and especially in this one.

Watch the Hegseth vote. It is really a vote on the Iran war. If Congress forces the war toward an end, gas and heating oil prices could ease. If not, plan for an expensive winter.

The bottom line

Voters sent one message on Tuesday, and it was about their wallets and the war. The President heard it on Wednesday and seemed to forget it by Friday. Democrats should not get comfortable either. They won because people are fed up, not because people fell in love with them, and two years of nothing but investigations will cost them just as fast.

Our wish list for the next seven days is short: lower prices, a plan to bring the troops home safely, and a little less cage fighting in Washington. We will be back next Sunday to keep the record.

What was the biggest story of the week for you?