Democrats flip four more House seats, taking lead to nearly 100
The Democrats have flipped another four House seats, extending their lead over the Republicans in the lower chamber 251 to 155, with 29 races left to call. Here are the latest results:
Arizona’s sixth congressional district: US marine veteran Democrat JoAnna Mendoza beat two-term Republican incumbent Juan Ciscomani.
Colorado’s fifth congressional district: Democrat Jessica Killin, a former Army captain, beat first-term incumbent, Republican Jeff Crank, who was criticized by relatives of Virginia Giuffre for refusing to meet them.
North Carolina’s ninth congressional district: Democrat Richard Ojeda beat two-term Republican incumbent Richard Hudson in a seat that has been red for the last 14 years.
Ohio’s 10th congressional district: Democrat Kristina Knickerbocker beat veteran Republican congressman Mike Turner.
Key events
Trump says he met Russian envoy at White House but no one from Ukrainian delegation
Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he met with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, at the White House on Thursday but did not meet any of the senior Ukrainian officials who were also present for an event hosted by the first lady, Melania Trump.
As our colleague Andrew Roth reports, at the event to celebrate a ceasefire in an embattled Ukrainian town, Dmitriev, the sanctioned head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund who regularly negotiates for Moscow, was seated next to Davyd Arakhamia, the head of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party and a chief negotiator for Ukraine.
Asked what he discussed with Dmitriev, the president replied: “I can’t tell you what I discussed, but I’m just telling you there’s going to be an agreement.”
“It’s going to be a big agreement, and it’s going to involve more than Ukraine,” he continued. “It’s going to be a very big. It’s going to involve more than Ukraine. And I could even say it might involve all of Europe. It’s going to be a big, beautiful agreement and everyone’s going to be thrilled.”
Asked by another reporter if he met with anyone from the Ukrainian delegation, Trump replied: “No, just with the head person of Russia.”
‘Los Angeles, I am deeply honored to be your next mayor,’ Nithya Raman says in victory post
Nithya Raman declared victory in the Los Angeles mayoral race on Thursday, in a social-media video posted after the incumbent, Karen Bass, conceded.
Raman, a progressive urban planner who has served on LA’s city council since 2020 campaigned with the support of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
“Los Angeles, I am deeply honored to be your next mayor,” Raman said. “Thank you to the thousands of people who knocked on doors, sent texts, made phone calls, convinced their neighbors to believe in the promise of this big, beautiful, joyful city that we get to call home.”
“I also wanted to pay tribute to Mayor Karen Bass, someone who has given decades of her life to making this city what it is today; from her time as an emergency room nurse to starting Community Coalition, to her leadership in Sacramento and DC, and then becoming the first woman mayor of Los Angeles.” she said.
”I love this city and I love its people, and I cannot wait to get started on building a better future with all of you,” the mayor-elect added.
Trump tries to preserve his gilded Oval Office decor through executive order declaring it a national monument
Having apparently not gotten the message from voters, or Barack Obama, that his obsessive focus on transforming the White House into a version of Mar-a-Lago is deeply unpopular, Donald Trump on Thursday took action: signing an executive order declaring the gilded Oval Office and redecorated Cabinet Room “a national monument”, which, he said, “will make it impossible for anybody ever to destroy this incredible space”.
“I just thought it was very important that nobody be allowed to come in and take it down and, try and do something with it” Trump said. The landmark status, he said, would make it “in theory, impossible to knock down, change in any meaningful way”.
The executive action by Trump suggests that he is determined not to accept the criticism from Obama at campaign rallies last month that the president is more focused on home improvement projects than finding solutions to the high prices that plague Americans.
“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” Obama told voters. “I’m not making this up. He, the President of the United States, is spending time supergluing gold medallions to the mantel in the Oval Office,” Obama said in Atlanta late in the campaign. “He is literally doing arts and crafts while we are fighting a war and trying to deal with out-of-control prices.”
After being asked by a reporter about the criticism, Trump once again invoked a racist trope by suggesting that the nation’s first Black president is unclean.
“Obama doesn’t know about dirt and filth, and he doesn’t know about crack stone, and he doesn’t know about broken windows. He’s probably fine with them, but I’m not”, Trump said.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
We’re still waiting for a number of closely watched contests to be called. These include the final two US Senate races – in Missipppi and Alaska. Here Democratic candidates are hoping to oust Republican incumbents to bolster their new majority in Congress. Right now, Democrats have a 54-seat majority, as we wait for the final results.
Meanwhile, Democrats have flipped another eight House seats, strengthening their majority in the lower chamber. So far, Democrats are leading Republican 251 to 155, with 29 races left to call, as a number of GOP representatives felt the weight of the blue wave that has swept their party out of power. We’re still waiting on some key House results in toss-up districts, where Republican incumbents are hoping to hang on. These include Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s fourth congressional district, Virginia Foxx in North Carolina’s fifth, and Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey’s second. Meanwhile, Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt is hoping to keep South Carolina’s first congressional district red. This is the seat that GOP firebrand Nancy Mace currently holds.
Nithya Raman was elected to serve as the mayor of Los Angeles, eking out a narrow win over incumbent Karen Bass, in a major shake-up in local politics that reflects the growing dissatisfaction with the direction of the city. The progressive urban planner had served on LA’s city council since 2020. She caused a stir when she entered the race earlier this year hours before the filing deadline – and shortly after endorsing Bass for re-election – and her campaign was once viewed as a long shot.
Harmeet Dhillon, a key ally of Donald Trump, has resigned from her position leading the justice department’s Civil Rights division. In a statement, Blanche said that today he accepted her notice. Dhillon is the first high-ranking justice department official to leave after the midterm elections in which Democrats took control of Congress. Democrats are expected to use that power to aggressively investigate executive agencies, including the justice department.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senator-elect in Michigan, said that the new majority in the upper chamber needs “action” from their leader, in an interview in CNN. On the campaign trail, El-Sayed refused to back Senator Chuck Schumer, who currently serves as the minority leader. Speaking to CNN, El-Sayed reiterated that Senator Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat, would be an “amazing Senate majority leader”, but didn’t completely rule out supporting Schumer. “A vote is a choice between two or more options. I don’t know what those options are. But here’s what I’ll say. We need action,” El-Sayed said.
Joining the chorus of Republicans – who have blasted their party’s poor performance in the midterms – is sitting senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, who said the GOP were handed an “ass-kicking” this cycle, losing control of Congress. “It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election, it was a Watergate-level repudiation,” he said on an episode of his podcast. “Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high … Too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care.”
Colom leads Republican incumbent by 1,700 votes in nail-biting US Senate race in Mississippi
Democrat Scott Colom is now leading Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by a little more than 1,700 votes in the extremely tight competition for US Senate in Mississippi.
So far 96% of the vote has been counted, as we wait for the Associated Press to call the race.
If Colom wins, it would be an astonishing upset in a state that Donald Trump carried by 22 points in 2024. Democrats haven’t won a US Senate seat in Mississippi since 1982.
It’s been much longer – not since 1875 – that the state elected a Black person to serve in Washington.
Bills soared in Kansas as the state was buffeted by tariffs and the war in Iran and voters expressed their dissatisfaction with Donald Trump – sending a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in nearly a century.
My colleague Gaya Gupta has more:
Republicans win Tennessee’s ninth district after redistricting
Republican Brent Taylor beat Democrat Justin Pearson in Tennesee’s newly reconfigured ninth district after the Republican-dominated legislature passed redistricting maps in May.
The move broke the ninth district, which covered Memphis, into three pieces which each contained almost exactly a third of the city’s Black voters, reported my colleague George Chidi at the time.
Pearson, one of three Democratic lawmakers expelled from the state legislature for conducting a floor protest over gun legislation in 2023, described the legislation as the most significant thing Tennessee lawmakers will do in a generation and said that it was being done with perfunctory debate.
Democrats flip four more House seats, taking lead to nearly 100
The Democrats have flipped another four House seats, extending their lead over the Republicans in the lower chamber 251 to 155, with 29 races left to call. Here are the latest results:
Arizona’s sixth congressional district: US marine veteran Democrat JoAnna Mendoza beat two-term Republican incumbent Juan Ciscomani.
Colorado’s fifth congressional district: Democrat Jessica Killin, a former Army captain, beat first-term incumbent, Republican Jeff Crank, who was criticized by relatives of Virginia Giuffre for refusing to meet them.
North Carolina’s ninth congressional district: Democrat Richard Ojeda beat two-term Republican incumbent Richard Hudson in a seat that has been red for the last 14 years.
Ohio’s 10th congressional district: Democrat Kristina Knickerbocker beat veteran Republican congressman Mike Turner.
Democrat Richard Ojeda flips North Carolina House seat
Democrat Richard Ojeda has flipped North Carolina’s ninth congressional district, beating two-term Republican incumbent Richard Hudson in a seat that has been solidly red for the last 14 years.
Nithya Raman elected mayor of Los Angeles, defeating incumbent Karen Bass
Nithya Raman was elected to serve as the mayor of Los Angeles, eking out a narrow win over incumbent Karen Bass, in a major shake-up in local politics that reflects the growing dissatisfaction with the direction of the city.
The progressive urban planner had served on LA’s city council since 2020. She caused a stir when she entered the race earlier this year hours before the filing deadline – and shortly after endorsing Bass for re-election – and her campaign was once viewed as a long shot.
My colleague Dani Anguiano has more here:
Karen Bass posted a statement on social media, adding: “Thank you, Los Angeles. Serving as your mayor has been the honor of my life.”
In the months leading up to the midterm elections, Donald Trump’s administration waged an aggressive effort to sow doubt about the results, intimidate voters and election officials, and signal they would use the power of the federal government to challenge the electoral process.
But when the results came in on Tuesday night, revealing a huge blowout for the GOP, Trump did something almost unprecedented: he accepted the results. Trump said he was “absolutely willing” to accept the outcome and looked forward to working with Democrats. With the exception of the 2024 election, which he won and Republicans performed well in, Trump has raised doubt about every presidential race and midterm since his first election in 2016.
Perhaps he had no choice. “It was essentially too big to rig,” an unnamed Trump adviser told CNN. But even before the results were known, many of Trump’s election interference attempts simply never materialized.
Administration officials had declined to rule out the possibility of deploying immigration agents to the polls. There were worries that the 1,000 justice department monitors deployed to voting sites would attempt to meaningfully disrupt the voting process. Some thought Trump would try something outlandish like trying to seize voting machines or ballots. Others speculated Republicans could try a longshot maneuver to block new members of Congress from being seated on January 3.
None of that happened, and the certification of new members in January looks like it will go smoothly.
Read Sam’s full report here:
Another House race we’re keeping an eye on at the moment is Maine’s second congressional district, a Republican stronghold that Donald Trump carried in the last presidential election, despite losing the state. As of now, 95% of the vote has been counted, with GOP nominee Paul LePage leading against Democrat Matt Dunlap.
A short while ago, Dunlap conceded in the race for the seat that moderate Jared Golden holds. LePage would now be the sole Republican in the Maine congressional delegation after Senator Susan Collins, the five-term incumbent, lost her re-election bid to Troy Jackson – a major defeat after 30 years in office.
We’ll bring you the final result as soon as its announced.
Aram Roston
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told a gathering at the Democratic leaning Center for American Progress, that in spite of the Democratic party’s victories on election day, voters were still wary of the party.
“Millions of Americans voted for us because of frustration with Trump, not out of love for the Democratic Party. Many Americans across the political spectrum are still skeptical of our party and that’s OK. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to earn back their trust,” he said.
The 75-year-old lawmaker – widely seen as a centrist – warned about what he called the “false choice” in the Democratic party. “Populism and moderation are not mutually exclusive,” he said.
Schumer said messaging before the election was intentional and disciplined. He said Democratic leadership in Congress made the decision to embrace a core message while campaigning against Republicans: “Cost, chaos and corruption.”
Source: www.theguardian.com
