Washington (United States) (AFP) - US President Donald Trump resumed complaining about election results Thursday but the Democratic midterms steamroller powered ahead, with a potential new Senate pick-up in Mississippi underlining the historic drubbing dealt to Republicans.

The dust was still settling after Tuesday’s election in which Americans overwhelmingly chose to hand control of Congress to Democrats, turning their backs on the decade-long Trump era and a Republican Party he remade in his norm-smashing image.

Trump returned to form with a social media post complaining that the still-undecided race for senator in Alaska was unfair and that votes cast for two minor candidates “should be immediately given” to the currently trailing Republican incumbent.

Even a week ago, this kind of blast on Truth Social would have raised fears that Trump planned to use his huge powers to try and tilt the election in his direction – as he did in attempting to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential vote.

But the midterm earthquake has reshaped the landscape beyond Trump’s control.

Democrats are already set to hold at least 54 Senate seats to the Republicans’ 44, and a minimum of 240 House seats to 147 for Republicans. The only question Thursday was how much farther these majorities might expand.

A CNN estimate said Democrats could get more than 250 seats in the House of Representatives, the party’s biggest majority in almost two decades.

After Trump warned that he would use his veto power to block Democratic legislative projects, the victorious party’s Senate leader Chuck Schumer sent his own threat.

“If Donald Trump does spend the next year vetoing common sense legislation to lower costs and end corruption, this election – this absolute Republican catastrophe on election night 2026 – will look like a good day compared to what will come down on Republicans in the 2028 election,” Schumer said in a speech.

- Mississippi, Alaska nail-biters -

The biggest remaining midterms nail-biter was in Mississippi, one of the most solidly Republican states in the nation, where against all expectations a 43-year-old Black candidate, Scott Colom, appeared to be on the cusp of winning a US Senate seat.

By afternoon, Colom’s lead ahead of incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith was inching up at 1,724 votes and only a handful of ballots left to count. The final result could take days to come.

Colom would be the first Democrat to win a Senate seat from the southern state since 1982 – and the first African American to do so since 1874.

In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola was also just ahead of the pack with 48.17 percent of the vote, followed by Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan with 47.88 percent.

Trump’s Truth Social outburst referred to a fringe candidate also named Dan Sullivan, whom Republicans accuse of being a “decoy” aimed at siphoning votes from their candidate, and another minor contender Gerald Heikes, who is registered as a Republican.

Trump – who initially stood out for an uncharacteristically quick acceptance of the midterm results Tuesday – posted that all the votes for the “Fake” Sullivan and Heikes “should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan.”

“There is no other fair solution!”

- Making history -

If Colom wins in Mississippi, he would join a host of other new faces smashing racial and cultural barriers in the midterms.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, the great-great-granddaughter of a slave, became the first Black female governor of Georgia – and in the country.

And Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed beat a Trump ally to become the first Muslim to enter the US Senate.

Tuesday’s midterms also featured wins for Democrats in territory where Trump had previously been so dominant that it was all but written off by the left.

James Talarico broke a 38-year hoodoo by winning a Senate seat in ultra-Republican Texas and Adam Hamilton did even better, becoming the first Democratic senator from Kansas in 94 years.

Republican congressman Warren Davidson, in Ohio, said Trump’s months-long war against Iran and global trade wars had lost the election for the party.

Young voters in particular, he said, felt “betrayed.”