2018 United States elections in the context of "2018 Ohio gubernatorial election"

During and between his terms as President of the United States, Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described Trump's lying as unprecedented in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods as a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found significant evidence of an intent to deceive.

Many news organizations initially resisted describing Trump's falsehoods as lies, but began to do so by June 2019. The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation. Steve Bannon, Trump's 2016 presidential campaign CEO and chief strategist during the first seven months of Trump's first presidency, said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit." In February 2025, a public relations CEO stated that the "flood the zone" tactic (also known as the firehose of falsehood) was designed to make sure no single action or event stands out above the rest by having them occur at a rapid pace, thus preventing the public from keeping up and preventing controversy or outrage over a specific action or event.

The 116th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives. It convened in Washington, D.C., on January 3, 2019, and ended on January 3, 2021, during the final two years of Donald Trump's first presidency. Senators elected to regular terms in 2014 finished their terms in this Congress, and House seats were apportioned based on the 2010 census.

In the November 2018 midterm elections, the Democratic Party won a new majority in the House, while the Republican Party increased its majority in the Senate. Consequently, this was the first split Congress since the 113th Congress of 2013–2015, and the first Republican Senate–Democratic House split since the 99th Congress of 1985–1987. This Congress was the youngest incoming class by mean age, compared to the previous three the incoming class of freshman representatives, and the most demographically diverse in history.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials AOC, is an American politician and activist who has served since 2019 as the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district. She is a member of the Democratic Party.

Born in the Bronx and raised in Yorktown Heights, New York, Ocasio-Cortez graduated with honors from Boston University, where she double-majored in international relations and economics. After moving back to the Bronx, she became an activist and worked as a waitress and bartender. On June 26, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez drew national recognition when she defeated Democratic Caucus chair and 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic Party's primary election for New York's 14th congressional district, in what was widely seen as the biggest upset victory in the 2018 midterm election primaries. She easily won the November general election and was reelected in 2020, 2022, and 2024.