Yesterday was election day here in the United States, and while some votes are still being counted, Democrats have taken the House and the Senate in a rout.
This did not happen because voters flocked to the Democrats’ agenda. They don’t have one. Pure and simple, this was a backlash against inflation, a war of choice in Iran and the general chaos of Trump.
We are back to a split system. Democrats will hold a stronger majority than most expected, but nowhere near the 67 senators needed to override a veto.
The parties need each other again.
For talent acquisition, the day-to-day is going to stay the same. Long term we are going to feel the consequences of this election in many ways.
Republicans in Congress tried three times to preempt state AI laws, replacing them with a lighter federal standard that would have tied the states’ hands. That’s unlikely to happen now, and the patchwork of local rules is going to become more relevant.
Here are two local laws that will be taking effect soon and impact employers:
The President’s $100,000 H-1B fee has been blocked by courts since July, but was extended by a presidential proclamation through September 21, 2027. This means that employers aren’t currently required to pay, but the proclamation remains on the books and an appeals court could reinstate the fee at any time. Employers paid the fee for only about 700 people, which Forbes described as a virtual prohibition on new H-1B hiring from abroad.
The Democrats do not have a veto-proof majority to overturn the proclamation, but they can use legislative shenanigans like attaching riders to hamper its implementation.
AI and data centers have received near-unconditional support from this administration, a hugely unpopular position with American voters.
Data centers were big talking points in many Senate races and in the governor’s races in Texas, Ohio, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Now that the AI backlash has been shown to carry a concrete political price, politicians are going to pay a lot more attention to it. If formerly data-center-friendly regions pump the brakes, it could slow the pace of AI development in the U.S., and give China an opening to take the lead.
Leadership at the Department of Labor and the EEOC is appointed by the administration, so the thousands of boring policies—and a few hot-button culture war fights that the President has chosen to pick—that govern workplace rules will continue to be driven from the White House.
That said, the administration is going to have to shift its own policies in response to the very clear message that they received from voters yesterday. There will be change within the administration because of this election, whether they admit it or not.
