Trump news: First public impeachment hearings to begin in days, as president suffers election humiliation and huge 2020 poll deficits

After the thumping at the polls in several states last night, Donald Trump and his allies are attempting to downplay those results today.

Although Mr Trump had personally campaigned in Kentucky for the losing candidate, governor Matt Bevin, the president last last night lashed out, anticipating that he will be blamed:

Meanwhile, the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna Romney McDaniel, claimed (wrongly) in a tweet that Mr Bevin trailed Democrat Andy Beshear by 17 points — suggesting that the ultimate close call showed the president had buoyed the whole affair.

Amazon deliveries, Wi-Fi and and food trucks could all soon feature in American national parks, under new plans being considered by the Trump administration. I mean...

Vincent Wood has the details.

Kentucky senator Rand Paul, just yesterday, said that he was considering whether to disclose the name of the whistleblower whose complaint sparked an impeachment inquiry into the president.

But, a fellow Republican has already jumped the gun.

"I'm more than willing to, and I probably will at some point. ... There is no law preventing anybody from saying the name," Mr Paul told reporters on Tuesday.

Just a day later, the president's adult son, Donald Trump Jr, tweeted out a link naming the man, and identifying him as a former CIA official who worked under Mr Trump and Barack Obama (The Independent, is choosing not to publish the name at this point).

Mark Zaid, the whistleblower's lawyer, says that the action will jeopardize his client:

"Identifying any name for the whistleblower will simply place that individual and their family at risk of serious harm, we will not confirm or deny any name that is published but we will note publication does nothing other than show the desperation of a partisan crowd to deflect from the substance of the whistleblower complaint. It most certainly will not relieve the president of the need to address the substantive allegations, all of which have been substantially proven to be true," he said on Tuesday to CNN's Jake Tapper.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff says that public impeachment hearings could begin as soon as next week, according to Bloomberg.

One of the more interesting local elections last night was in Northern Virginia, where Democrat Juli Briskman won a seat on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors.

Don't recognise the name? Well, you may recognise this photo:

A cyclist flips off Donald Trump's motorcade in Virginia 

That's right, the cyclist seen flipping of Donald Trump's motorcade in that photo is Ms Briskman, and she's now an elected official.

Diving into the results from yesterday a bit more, it appears that Republicans have some more electoral math to worry about than the obvious.

In both Kentucky and Virginia, where Democrats won some historic elections, the blue wave was helped at least in part by suburban voters.

The suburban push for Democrats is consistent with what we saw in 2018, where those voters pulled back from the president's record and rhetoric. It could spell out doom for Mr Trump in 2020.

This is a kind of tired storyline at this point, but Tulsi Gabbard has once again reaffirmed that she will not mount a third party bid for the presidency if she does not win her party's nomination.

That's at least according to Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez, who said on Wednesday that he had heard from the congresswoman had no intention of spoiling Democrats' chances of beating Donald Trump.

"We've worked with every campaign including the Gabbard campaign and she'st old us, and she's told the American people, 'I am not running as a third party candidate,'" Mr Perez said during a roundtable hosted by Christian Science Monitor. "We asked every candidate to take that pledge ... Tulsi took it enthusiastically ... she took an unequivocal pledge in that regard."

The issue was brought to the forefront by former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her allies, who claimed that Ms Gabbard is a "favorite of the Russians".

Here's our write up on Adam Schiff's public hearings announcement today:

Ayanna Pressley, the only member of "the squad' who had not endorsed a presidential candidate as of Tuesday, has broken with the three other prominent members of her progressive group, and endorsed Elizabeth Warren.

Ms Pressley announced her backing in a tweet posted Wednesday morning, captioned: "Big structural change can't wait."

Lindsey Graham has an interesting new defense of the president's alleged quid pro quo with Ukraine: that the White House wasn't capable of forming a quid pro quo.

Quite an interesting idea from the South Carolinian: