Interim summary: Democratic lead grows in Mississippi Senate race as Republican blame game begins
After Democrats secured historic wins in last night’s midterm elections, Republicans are beginning the blame game:
Donald Trump claimed Republicans fared poorly because he was not on the ballot – after repeatedly urging voters to pretend he was on the ballot.
JD Vance pointed to Trump’s ongoing war in Iran as the “obvious” culprit for the loss.
Pete Hegseth’s role leading the unpopular war could lead to him taking the fall – despite Trump publicly backing him. Republicans including Trump foe Thomas Massie have criticized the defense secretary.
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, said the “close to an extinction-level event for Republicans” was caused in part by his party failing to target their ad spending on issues that would motivate voters.
We’re still awaiting results in a few key races:
Currently, Democrat Scott Colom is leading his Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by just 1,138 votes with 96% of the vote counted – in what could be a historic upset in Mississippi.
In Alaksa, Democrat Mary Peltola is leading Republican Dan S. Sullivan by just 626 votes. If neither candidate receives 50% of the vote, the Alaska Senate race will move to rank-choice voting.
Meanwhile, in the Los Angeles mayoral race, the battle between the Democratic incumbent, Karen Bass, and her progressive challenger Nithya Raman, a city council member, is also still too close to call. Only 63% of the vote has been counted so far, and Raman has a narrow lead.
Voters rejected datacenters, the facilities full of semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence and a host of other online products, in elections across the country last night.
A view of a field with a sign against the construction of a data center in Leavenworth county, Kansas. Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters
Proposals regarding datacenters were on the ballot in elections in at least 40 jurisdictions across 10 states. Voters approved nearly every datacenter moratorium that was on the ballot, dozens in total, with one notable exception: Hardwood, North Dakota.
Democrat Dave Min has won his bid for re-election to the House of Representatives in California’s 47th district. Min defeated his Republican challenger Jenny Rae Le Roux.
Democrat Marni von Wilpert has won her race for the House of Representatives in California’s 48th district, flipping a seat long held by a Republican.
von Wilpert, a member of the San Diego city council, defeated Republican Jim Desmond in a contest to fill Republican congressman Darrell Issa’s seat after the 13-term congressman announced his retirement.
Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said “the scale of the Republican defeat” in the midterms “is so great that it makes the race for the GOP presidential nomination wide open.”
In a social media post, Gingrich wrote that while JD Vance might have previously been the obvious frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2028, yesterday’s election results open the door to a number of new candidates.
“The number of people who want to draft Secretary of State Marco Rubio is staggering,” he wrote. “In addition, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Ron DeSantis, Pete Hegseth, Glenn Youngkin, and a surprising number of people may decide this is their chance to take advantage of the chaos of the shocking defeat and seek to be the champion who can rescue the party and the country.”
The White House has scheduled a hearing into allegations of mortgage fraud by Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook for 14 December, the New York Times reports, citing an unnamed White House official. Donald Trump has been working to fire Cook for more than a year, in an effort that would mark the first time a president has ever removed a member of the Fed.
Here’s our latest reporting on the effort to fire Cook:
Texas senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, posted a lengthy analysis on social media of his state’s staggering shift blue in yesterday’s midterm elections, calling the results “an ass kicking” and “Watergate-level repudiation.”
“Our voters, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, showed up and voted, and rejected our candidates, voting Democrat instead,” Cruz wrote, adding “Nowhere are the consequences of this election greater than Texas.”
Cruz blamed Republicans from failing to address issues of affordability, writing, “The top issue, cost of living, is very real. Too many in politics dismissed it.”
“We will rebuild as a true blue-collar party, not by embracing socialism, but by being real free-market conservatives,” he said."
After historic Republican losses in yesterday’s midterms, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to complain about daylight savings time.
“It’s so dark outside, so early (Sunset was 5:06 P.M., and it was dark by 5:31 P.M. — Isn’t that ridiculous?). Just a few days ago it was so nice and sunny at this same time,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this prior to the Election because I didn’t want to have certain Senators lose their Race, in a landslide, but it is too bad they can’t” approve the Sunshine Protection Act.
“We have far bigger priorities, but I will keep fighting for this!” the president added.
Interim summary: Democratic lead grows in Mississippi Senate race as Republican blame game begins
After Democrats secured historic wins in last night’s midterm elections, Republicans are beginning the blame game:
Donald Trump claimed Republicans fared poorly because he was not on the ballot – after repeatedly urging voters to pretend he was on the ballot.
JD Vance pointed to Trump’s ongoing war in Iran as the “obvious” culprit for the loss.
Pete Hegseth’s role leading the unpopular war could lead to him taking the fall – despite Trump publicly backing him. Republicans including Trump foe Thomas Massie have criticized the defense secretary.
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, said the “close to an extinction-level event for Republicans” was caused in part by his party failing to target their ad spending on issues that would motivate voters.
We’re still awaiting results in a few key races:
Currently, Democrat Scott Colom is leading his Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by just 1,138 votes with 96% of the vote counted – in what could be a historic upset in Mississippi.
In Alaksa, Democrat Mary Peltola is leading Republican Dan S. Sullivan by just 626 votes. If neither candidate receives 50% of the vote, the Alaska Senate race will move to rank-choice voting.
Meanwhile, in the Los Angeles mayoral race, the battle between the Democratic incumbent, Karen Bass, and her progressive challenger Nithya Raman, a city council member, is also still too close to call. Only 63% of the vote has been counted so far, and Raman has a narrow lead.
Donald Trump is appealing a judge’s decision, dismissing his lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal over the newspaper’s publication of a bawdy birthday card the president allegedly sent Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
Trump denied the letter was real, insisting instead it had been fabricated.
Last year, the House Oversight Committee released a 238-page scrapbook given to Epstein on his 50th birthday, that appeared to contain the same note the Journal wrote about.
Pete Hegseth is increasingly looking like he may take the fall for Republicans’ midterm losses, despite Donald Trump’s vocal support for his defense secretary.
Pete Hegseth in the Oval Office of the White House on 30 October. Photograph: Annabelle Gordon/EPA
The war in Iran, which voters and Trump have named as a key reason for Republicans’ midterm losses “has been primarily a Department of War-led effort because you chose to take military action to resolve a foreign policy matter,” a former senior Pentagon official told CNN.
“If the president is serious about anyone taking responsibility for it, it’s Pete Hegseth,” one Republican close to the White House added in an interview with CNN. “Pete has been either dishonest or incorrect – neither of which are acceptable – about timelines, goals and objectives since the beginning.”
Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, has already filed eight impeachment accusations against Hegseth, and plans to soon force a House vote on the impeachment.
Trump has repeatedly defended Hegseth, and Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said, “The entire Department is unified behind the Secretary’s vision and will continue working to put our warfighters and America first,” in a statement today to USA Today.
Democrat Scott Colom secures growing lead in Mississippi Senate race
Votes for Colom are starting to outpace those for his Republican opponent in what has been an otherwise neck-and-neck race.
According to the most recent tabulation from the Associated Press, Colom leads Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith by 1,138 votes with 96% of the vote counted – still a small margin, but increasingly significant after a lead of just 28 votes yesterday.
Democrats haven’t won a US Senate seat in Mississippi since 1982, and Trump carried the state by 22 points in 2024. It’s been much longer – not since 1875 – that the state elected a Black person to that office.
Colom is a seventh-generation Mississippian, whose father was a longtime Republican who campaigned for Ronald Reagan and was friends with Thad Cochran, a longtime state politician. In 2015, he unseated a nearly 30-year incumbent when he was elected the first Black district attorney for the 16th circuit. As district attorney, he had a 94% success rate for convictions.
Although a race this close would automatically trigger a recount in many states, Mississippi has no law on the books for initiating a recount.
Haley Stevens, a Democrat who went up against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s primary before ultimately endorsing Republican Mike Rogers, said she stood by her endorsement in a lengthy post on social media today.
Stevens, who originally endorsed El-Sayed after her primary loss, wrote: “As co-chair of the House caucus on antisemitism, endorsing a man who stood with Hasan Piker and his antisemitic bile was always a tough fit for me. But I’ve been taught my whole political life that at the end of an election, you come together and support the winner, and I hoped I could help him moderate. Instead, he got worse.”
She added that “The endorsement was the outlier act. Rescinding it was not,” and said “I was elected as a Democrat, and I still believe our party should be big enough for more than one viewpoint.”
In comments to the Associated Press today, El-Sayed, who will be the first Muslim senator in the United States, said voters had rejected “a hateful, spiteful campaign” after months of attacks on his identity. “Michiganders rejected that. Every single county, every single one, pushed against that,” he said.
“Morale is as low as it can get” inside the White House, a senior official told the Associated Press today. The official added that senior aides were bracing for staff departures, Cabinet changes and Democratic investigations.
“It absolutely sucks to be here right now,” the unnamed official said.
Despite internal polling six weeks ago that warned Republicans could expect losses in both chambers of Congress, the official said, Donald Trump refused to change his policy on Iran.
“Ultimately, he just didn’t care,” the official said. “He refused to listen to anyone.”
Mississippi is facing a shockingly close race for its open Senate seat – with no law on the books for initiating a recount.
Currently, Democrat Scott Colom is leading Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by just 65 votes, with 95% of votes counted.
In many states, that close of a race would automatically trigger a recount, but Mississippi has no recount law. Derek Muller, an election law expert at the University of Notre Dame, tells the New York Times that a losing candidate may be able to challenge the inclusion of certain ballots.
The Republican senator Thom Tillis blamed Republican losses last night on the party’s “well intentioned, poorly executed policies” and certain members of the Trump administration, including Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth.
In an interview with CNN, Tillis said: “We’ve got to regroup and be ready for 2028, and we won’t be ready for 2028 if we try and re-execute what I think were well intentioned, poorly executed policies over the last 18 months.”
He added criticism of former homeland security secretary Noem, saying: “What, a $220m ad campaign with her riding on a horse, people dead in Minneapolis because she put untrained people in a horrible situation. Give me a break. That’s the sort of tone deafness that will cause ’28 to look like ’08.”
Tillis also said the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is “just not the right guy for the job”, particularly in leading the war in Iran. “Nothing personal. The guy’s just demonstrated, like Noem, that they’re not up to the task of running these large, complex organizations,” he said.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he hopes Democratic wins in the United States generate more support for Ukraine.
“I am also grateful to the Republicans, but the Democrats speak very clearly about supporting Ukraine and providing assistance to Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said in comments provided in German by German television station ZDF.
“They speak about renewing the connection between the United States and Europe … Therefore, there is hope that a balance of power will emerge and that we will receive more support.“
Zelenskyy has navigated a turbulent relationship with Donald Trump, particularly in recent weeks as the Ukrainian president said he felt personally betrayed by the United States pausing its sharing of military intelligence and waiving some sanctions on Russia to buy its diesel.
