• Mississippi Senate race: Democratic nominee Scott Colom argued today that his Republican opponent Cindy Hyde-Smith “doesn’t have” a path to victory in their unexpectedly tight contest. However, as provisional ballots are counted, Hyde-Smith’s allies think there are enough GOP-leaning districts with votes that will make a difference. CNN Sightline rates the race as neutral, with the contest too close to call.
• In the House: Democrats, who have won their largest majority in nearly 20 years, are on the verge of exceeding the 257 seats at the start of Barack Obama’s presidency and the 258 at the start of Bill Clinton’s tenure. They’ve already flipped over 40 seats.
• DOJ departures: The Justice Department’s national security chief has resigned, marking the department’s third departure since the midterms.
• The 2028 playbook: From JB Pritzker to JD Vance, potential presidential candidates put themselves on the line in the midterms.
Updates
(28)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed hope for increased bipartisan support from the US, after midterm elections saw the Democratic Party win control of both chambers of the US Congress.
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, Zelensky said he had obtained positive feedback from new Congress members following the elections, adding that they were on Ukraine’s side and would not shy away from labelling Russia as the aggressor.
Zelensky said that Ukraine was facing a difficult period with massive attacks on civilian infrastructure, including schools and energy systems, increasing the need for bipartisan support.
“We really need it, we really want it… I hope we will have stability between us and the United States, because we are real allies,” Zelensky said.
Watch Zelensky’s full interview on The Lead with Jake Tapper at 5 p.m. ET on CNN.
Mississippi Democratic Senate nominee Scott Colom says he’s willing to work with President Donald Trump and Republicans if elected, adding that he actually agrees with some of Trump’s policies.
“I always said there were things that I thought President Trump did well,” Colom added, pointing to border security, gun rights, no tax on tips and Social Security.
But he went on to stress that he disagreed with healthcare cuts and what he described as policies that helped billionaires.
The ongoing ballot-counting process in Mississippi is “entirely normal,” and “exactly what we would expect to see,” elections expert David Becker says. Similarly, continued ballot tabulation in Alaska, is “totally normal,” according to Becker, the founder of the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.
In Mississippi, affidavit or provisional ballots simply take time to work through, Becker told Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s Situation Room. Additionally, mail-in ballots that were cast on or before Election Day, but delivered by the post office up until next Tuesday, should also be counted under Mississippi law, he said.
Alaska, he says, is a unique state in that there is a lot of remote voting due to the large size of the state, in addition to a very high percentage of military voters with mail-in ballots.
“I think it’ll still take several days for them to look at all of the ballots, and that’s totally normal in Alaska,” Becker said.
He pointed out ballots are still being counted “in every single state and county” in the country. “It’s just that the races aren’t as close, and they’ve already been decided,” he said.
Democrats are looking at a historic victory and a massive House majority.
But buyer beware. Recent US history is full of change elections, as we first wrote back in 2025:
At least one lever of power has flipped between Republicans and Democrats in Washington in each of the last seven elections, the most consecutive power changes going back to before the Civil War.
In five of the last seven presidential elections, voters opted for a president from the other party. In the same time period, voters elected a new Senate majority six times and picked a new House majority five times.
The only elections this century in which the House, Senate and White House all remained under control of the same party were the only two successful presidential reelection campaigns, for George W. Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2012. Those are also the only times the same party held on to the White House this century.
Incumbent Republican Jeff Hurd will win reelection in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects.
President Donald Trump won this district by nearly 10 points in 2024.
This win comes as Democrats flipped two other GOP-held seats in Colorado’s 5th and 8th districts, while Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert is trailing her Democratic opponent, Eileen Laubacher, in the 4th District by nearly 1 point as of this writing.
Democratic Mississippi Senate nominee Scott Colom told reporters today that his Republican opponent Cindy Hyde-Smith “doesn’t have” a path to victory in the unexpectedly tight contest as he urged her to speak out.
With 96% of the votes in, Colom is slightly leading Hyde-Smith but the race is still too close to call.
With thousands of provisional ballots left to be counted, Colom said he is confident that he will win the contest..
“I’m very confident it’s moving in my direction,” Colom said, urging Hyde-Smith to “accept reality” and “the will of the voters.”
Nationwide, voters rebuked President Donald Trump’s agenda during the midterm elections on Tuesday. One of those voters, former Trump supporter Rick Frazier, said the war in Iran, rising gas prices, and the Epstein files all contributed to his decision to vote for Democrat Amy Acton in the Ohio gubernatorial race.
“I expected to get no war. I expected the Epstein thing to be cleared up, and I expected $2 gas. I expected the war in Ukraine to end. Well, none of that has happened. So, with all that being said, I’m very disappointed,” Frazier told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Situation Room.”
Ohio was one of several states that saw a blue shift on Tuesday, including major flips in Texas, Georgia and South Carolina. For Frazier, who had previously organized and rallied for Trump, it was the president’s broken promises from these rallies that he said shifted his vote.
A Texas Republican is the latest congressman blaming the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement for driving away Hispanic voters, arguing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations went too far.
Rep. Pat Fallon, who represents a heavily Republican district in Texas, said in an interview on Thursday with WABC radio that federal enforcement tactics alienated Hispanic voters and contributed to the party’s disappointing election results across the state.
Fallon said the party needed to message better with Hispanic voters.
“They should be Republican voters. They want to be Republican voters. We need to message better there,” he said.
Fallon also criticized the party’s choice of Ken Paxton as their Senate nominee, even as he described the Texas attorney general as a close friend.
“Ken Paxton, who’s a dear friend of mine, was not the candidate that we should have had there, because it could have snowballed,” he said. “There was a half a billion dollars spent that would have been better spent in Maine, would have been better spent — it looks like — in Mississippi, in South Carolina, et cetera.”
Republican Anthony Constantino will win New York’s 21st District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, keeping the vast northern New York district in GOP hands.
Constantino, who is CEO and founder of the company Sticker Mule, will defeat Democrat Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer.
He will replace GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, who launched a short-lived gubernatorial campaign in late 2025.
Constantino had already declared victory earlier in the week and lashed out against the media in a profanity-laced speech.
He thanked President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani for their support and later called out New York Republican leaders in multiple social media posts.
Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, after being reelected to Congress in South Carolina, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should be impeached.
The Democrat argued that the majority of the Senate is “upset with Hegseth” and he expressed frustration over the defense secretary’s treatment of women and Black military personnel.
Separately, Clyburn warned against any attempts to impeach Donald Trump but expressed support for investigations into the president.
“We need to get to the bottom of this corruption and clean it out. It is a growing cancer on our democracy — one family enriching itself at the expense of the American people,” he said.
John Eisenberg, who led the Justice Department’s National Security Division, announced his resignation Friday.
Three senior officials have now resigned since the midterm elections this week, which delivered a bruising loss to the president’s own party.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the resignation on X, writing that Eisenberg “served with distinction, strengthening our nation’s ability to address threats, both foreign and domestic.”
Harmeet Dhillon left her post as the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Thursday. Earlier Friday, Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney overseeing Trump’s ‘grand conspiracy’ probe into foes resigned.
The departures could provide a challenge for the administration, which will have trouble confirming new officials with a democratic Senate. But the president could install acting leaders to do the job for the rest of his term.
Read more about their resignations here.
The top Republican on the House Oversight Committee heaped blame on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following the party’s midterm rout, saying Friday that “we have no idea what the strategy is moving forward in Iran.”
“I can tell you with a high level of confidence that there’s a lot of questions about Hegseth,” Rep. James Comer of Kentucky said during a NewsNation interview. “No one’s happy about Iran, and I think Republican voters are more upset about what’s going on in Iran than the Democrat voters.”
Asked whether he supported replacing Hegseth, Comer would only say that it’s “a decision that President Trump’s going to have to make.”
The senior House Republican’s criticism is the latest blow in a growing GOP campaign to make Hegseth the scapegoat for the party’s crushing midterm losses. And it comes ahead of plans from another Kentucky Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, to trigger an impeachment vote when Congress returns next week.
Trump earlier this week acknowledged that he’s received calls from allies unhappy with the defense secretary, though he has repeatedly denied any plans to fire him.
Hegseth, for his part, has struck a defiant tone, vowing to fight the impeachment effort and insisting he plans to serve out the rest of Trump’s term.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who will chair a key Senate investigative panel when Democrats take control of Congress in January, sent letters to a slew of companies and Trump administration officials yesterday, asking them to cooperate with investigations.
The letters are a preview of what Blumenthal, who will chair the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, will prioritize once his party controls the Senate, giving it the power to issue subpoenas as part of their probes into the Trump administration. Though the recipients of the letters are not forced to reply to anything he sends as long as Democrats aren’t in control.
Blumenthal warned that the subcommittee will look into “alternative measures to obtain compliance” if the companies and officials do not provide information that the panel requested by January 4, a day after the new Congress convenes.
The companies and officials that received letters are:
Crypto companies World Liberty Financial, Fight Fight Fight LLC, Binance and Tether
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr
Several White House ballroom donors, including Amazon, Apple and Google
GOP Rep. Steve Scalise, meanwhile, who has launched a bid to be the House minority leader, sent his own letter to Republican committee chairs yesterday, telling them to prepare for the Democrats’ probes in the new Congress.
House Democrats “will use their oversight authorities to harass the President, his family, cabinet officials, and they will seek to destroy our allies. You all will be a key line of defense in this fight, and we must maximize our remaining days in power to prepare for what is coming,” Scalise said in the letter, which was obtained by CNN.
Scalise asked the chairs to consider which topics and people Democrats could investigate, and consider how recent Supreme Court decisions could impact those probes.
CNN Sightline rates the Mississippi Senate race as neutral, with the contest too close to call. Democratic candidate Scott Colom has grown his narrow lead over Republican candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith as counties bring their counts closer to completion.
About one-fifth of the estimated remaining vote comes from Hinds County, a Democratic stronghold. Rankin County, where about 1 in 8 votes are estimated to remain, voted for Hyde-Smith by a wide margin. Votes reported since Election Day in Mississippi so far have generally shifted toward Colom compared with those reported on election night itself.
Jason Reding Quiñones, the senior federal prosecutor who led a sprawling investigation into President Donald Trump’s political foes, has resigned from the Justice Department.
Quiñones resigned from his position as US Attorney in Southern Florida under pressure from department leadership, despite his willingness to pursue some of the most controversial investigations desired by the president, according to sources familiar with the matter.
He is the second department official to resign since the midterm elections this week, which delivered a bruising loss to the president’s own party. Harmeet Dhillon left her post as the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Thursday.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Quiñones departure in a social media post Friday, saying that the department is “grateful for Jason’s leadership.”
Quiñones being pushed out in Miami deals what may be the final blow to the Justice Department’s ongoing effort prosecute a wide swath of Trump’s perceived political enemies as part of a so-called “grand conspiracy.”
During his year-long tenure, Quiñones’ office won one of the most consequential criminal indictments brought by the Trump Justice Department: The indictment against former Cuban president Raúl Castro.
But other antics left him on the outs with department leadership. Quiñones was behind the effort to use a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, to pursue investigations of former government officials who were involved in probes of Trump and his campaign from 2016 to 2024.
He promised that his office could bring the case within months against former government officials who were involved in probes of Trump and his campaign from 2016 to 2024, top Justice officials blamed him when those plans failed to materialize.
Read more about Quiñones’ departure.
Following the midterms, speculation is already ramping up around the 2028 presidential election. Here’s what voters at polling locations around the country told us about who they would pick in two years.
As national party operatives, lawyers, grassroots activists and content creators descend on Mississippi to observe the vetting of thousands of provisional ballots in the tight Senate race there, here are the upcoming deadlines:
Tuesday, Nov. 10: Deadline for voters to resolve ID issues on provisional or “affidavit” ballots (It’s also the deadline for counties to receive absentee ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day.)
Friday, Nov. 13: Deadline for counties to certify their results
Thursday, Dec. 3: Deadline for Secretary of State Michael Watson to certify
Conservative media host Tucker Carlson, who broke with President Donald Trump over the Iran war, is weighing in on a difficult week for Republicans. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan reports.
Democrats have won at least 253 House seats and they’re leading in six of the outstanding House races.
That means their ultimate majority will approach and could exceed 260 House seats, depending on how things turn out.
By number of seats flipped — they’re currently at 43 and could end up around 50 — it’s not as big a shift as some other elections. In 2010, Barack Obama’s first midterm, Republicans picked up 64 House seats. And in 1994, Bill Clinton’s first midterm, Republicans picked up 54 seats. But in terms of the size of the majority, this is shaping up to be a banner year.
It would be the largest House majority since 1991, which was at the end of a decades-long era when Democrats routinely had 260 or more House seats before the 1994 “Republican Revolution.”
That’s a larger House majority than Democrats had when they passed the Affordable Care Act under Obama.
Democrats will still have to work with Republicans to pass major legislation. They will not have the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the Senate but rather will have between 54 and 56 seats when the outstanding races in Alaska and Mississippi are resolved. Plus, many of their incoming red state senators were elected with promises to intentionally work with Republicans.
It also means that soon-to-be House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have the luxury of being able to pass legislation without support from his entire caucus, meaning the most liberal or conservative members will have less power over him.
It will also still take buy-in from Republicans to get the 290 votes needed to override anticipated vetoes by President Donald Trump. In the Senate, it takes 67 votes to override a veto.
Bottom line: Democrats are looking at the kind of House majority not seen in decades in Washington — the kind of majority mandates are made of. But it’s not enough to govern on their own.
President Donald Trump has shown repeatedly this week that he simply doesn’t care that his preoccupation with construction projects is alienating Americans and hurting his party politically.
Not only did he make a bizarre visit to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday for his last public event before the Election Day 2026, but then he did a photo op in his under-construction White House ballroom the day after the election, despite the overwhelming GOP losses.
A judge’s ruling overnight has bad news for the GOP: They now face a legal battle over Trump’s coveted triumphal arch that means the subject is sure to continue occupying plenty of Trump’s mind space.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan temporarily halted construction of the arch in a ruling around midnight.
Chutkan, notably, cast doubt on the administration’s belated argument that the arch is important for national security – a legal strategy Trump has repeatedly used, including for the ballroom. She called that assertion “recent and unsupported” and noted it appeared “nowhere in the planning documents on which the project was reviewed and approved.”
The ruling means the arch is set to be the latest Trump project that is due to be the subject of an extended legal battle, much like his ballroom, the Reflecting Pool and the Kennedy Center. And it’s particularly ill-timed, given this is a moment that many in the party would prefer Trump learned his lesson and started focusing on other things like affordability.
The White House X account posted on Friday morning calling the arch “a monumental tribute to America’s first 250 years.”
After Trump went to the ballroom on Wednesday, conservative radio host Steve Deace reflected on X that whoever was responsible “should be fired and never work in politics again, and perhaps even in prison forever like on the moon.”
Polls show these projects are broadly unpopular, and Trump’s focus on them epitomizes what voters say are his misplaced priorities. The CNN Voter Poll of the midterms showed 64% of voters said Trump does not have the right priorities.
But Trump defended focusing on things like the ballroom during his appearance there Wednesday.
“It was sort of mentioned a little bit during the campaign that – about, why does Trump spend time on the White House?” Trump said. “Well, first of all, it’s very little time. Second of all, I like it. It’s good. For me, it’s relaxing. For somebody else it’s the opposite, but for me it’s really – I love construction.”
• Mississippi Senate race: Democratic nominee Scott Colom argued today that his Republican opponent Cindy Hyde-Smith “doesn’t have” a path to victory in their unexpectedly tight contest. However, as provisional ballots are counted, Hyde-Smith’s allies think there are enough GOP-leaning districts with votes that will make a difference. CNN Sightline rates the race as neutral, with the contest too close to call.
• In the House: Democrats, who have won their largest majority in nearly 20 years, are on the verge of exceeding the 257 seats at the start of Barack Obama’s presidency and the 258 at the start of Bill Clinton’s tenure. They’ve already flipped over 40 seats.
• DOJ departures: The Justice Department’s national security chief has resigned, marking the department’s third departure since the midterms.
• The 2028 playbook: From JB Pritzker to JD Vance, potential presidential candidates put themselves on the line in the midterms.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed hope for increased bipartisan support from the US, after midterm elections saw the Democratic Party win control of both chambers of the US Congress.
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, Zelensky said he had obtained positive feedback from new Congress members following the elections, adding that they were on Ukraine’s side and would not shy away from labelling Russia as the aggressor.
Zelensky said that Ukraine was facing a difficult period with massive attacks on civilian infrastructure, including schools and energy systems, increasing the need for bipartisan support.
“We really need it, we really want it… I hope we will have stability between us and the United States, because we are real allies,” Zelensky said.
Watch Zelensky’s full interview on The Lead with Jake Tapper at 5 p.m. ET on CNN.
Mississippi Democratic Senate nominee Scott Colom says he’s willing to work with President Donald Trump and Republicans if elected, adding that he actually agrees with some of Trump’s policies.
“I always said there were things that I thought President Trump did well,” Colom added, pointing to border security, gun rights, no tax on tips and Social Security.
But he went on to stress that he disagreed with healthcare cuts and what he described as policies that helped billionaires.
The ongoing ballot-counting process in Mississippi is “entirely normal,” and “exactly what we would expect to see,” elections expert David Becker says. Similarly, continued ballot tabulation in Alaska, is “totally normal,” according to Becker, the founder of the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.
In Mississippi, affidavit or provisional ballots simply take time to work through, Becker told Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s Situation Room. Additionally, mail-in ballots that were cast on or before Election Day, but delivered by the post office up until next Tuesday, should also be counted under Mississippi law, he said.
Alaska, he says, is a unique state in that there is a lot of remote voting due to the large size of the state, in addition to a very high percentage of military voters with mail-in ballots.
“I think it’ll still take several days for them to look at all of the ballots, and that’s totally normal in Alaska,” Becker said.
He pointed out ballots are still being counted “in every single state and county” in the country. “It’s just that the races aren’t as close, and they’ve already been decided,” he said.
Democrats are looking at a historic victory and a massive House majority.
But buyer beware. Recent US history is full of change elections, as we first wrote back in 2025:
At least one lever of power has flipped between Republicans and Democrats in Washington in each of the last seven elections, the most consecutive power changes going back to before the Civil War.
In five of the last seven presidential elections, voters opted for a president from the other party. In the same time period, voters elected a new Senate majority six times and picked a new House majority five times.
The only elections this century in which the House, Senate and White House all remained under control of the same party were the only two successful presidential reelection campaigns, for George W. Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2012. Those are also the only times the same party held on to the White House this century.
Incumbent Republican Jeff Hurd will win reelection in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects.
President Donald Trump won this district by nearly 10 points in 2024.
This win comes as Democrats flipped two other GOP-held seats in Colorado’s 5th and 8th districts, while Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert is trailing her Democratic opponent, Eileen Laubacher, in the 4th District by nearly 1 point as of this writing.
Democratic Mississippi Senate nominee Scott Colom told reporters today that his Republican opponent Cindy Hyde-Smith “doesn’t have” a path to victory in the unexpectedly tight contest as he urged her to speak out.
With 96% of the votes in, Colom is slightly leading Hyde-Smith but the race is still too close to call.
With thousands of provisional ballots left to be counted, Colom said he is confident that he will win the contest..
“I’m very confident it’s moving in my direction,” Colom said, urging Hyde-Smith to “accept reality” and “the will of the voters.”
Nationwide, voters rebuked President Donald Trump’s agenda during the midterm elections on Tuesday. One of those voters, former Trump supporter Rick Frazier, said the war in Iran, rising gas prices, and the Epstein files all contributed to his decision to vote for Democrat Amy Acton in the Ohio gubernatorial race.
“I expected to get no war. I expected the Epstein thing to be cleared up, and I expected $2 gas. I expected the war in Ukraine to end. Well, none of that has happened. So, with all that being said, I’m very disappointed,” Frazier told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Situation Room.”
Ohio was one of several states that saw a blue shift on Tuesday, including major flips in Texas, Georgia and South Carolina. For Frazier, who had previously organized and rallied for Trump, it was the president’s broken promises from these rallies that he said shifted his vote.
A Texas Republican is the latest congressman blaming the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement for driving away Hispanic voters, arguing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations went too far.
Rep. Pat Fallon, who represents a heavily Republican district in Texas, said in an interview on Thursday with WABC radio that federal enforcement tactics alienated Hispanic voters and contributed to the party’s disappointing election results across the state.
Fallon said the party needed to message better with Hispanic voters.
“They should be Republican voters. They want to be Republican voters. We need to message better there,” he said.
Fallon also criticized the party’s choice of Ken Paxton as their Senate nominee, even as he described the Texas attorney general as a close friend.
“Ken Paxton, who’s a dear friend of mine, was not the candidate that we should have had there, because it could have snowballed,” he said. “There was a half a billion dollars spent that would have been better spent in Maine, would have been better spent — it looks like — in Mississippi, in South Carolina, et cetera.”
Republican Anthony Constantino will win New York’s 21st District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, keeping the vast northern New York district in GOP hands.
Constantino, who is CEO and founder of the company Sticker Mule, will defeat Democrat Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer.
He will replace GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, who launched a short-lived gubernatorial campaign in late 2025.
Constantino had already declared victory earlier in the week and lashed out against the media in a profanity-laced speech.
He thanked President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani for their support and later called out New York Republican leaders in multiple social media posts.
Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, after being reelected to Congress in South Carolina, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should be impeached.
The Democrat argued that the majority of the Senate is “upset with Hegseth” and he expressed frustration over the defense secretary’s treatment of women and Black military personnel.
Separately, Clyburn warned against any attempts to impeach Donald Trump but expressed support for investigations into the president.
“We need to get to the bottom of this corruption and clean it out. It is a growing cancer on our democracy — one family enriching itself at the expense of the American people,” he said.
John Eisenberg, who led the Justice Department’s National Security Division, announced his resignation Friday.
Three senior officials have now resigned since the midterm elections this week, which delivered a bruising loss to the president’s own party.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the resignation on X, writing that Eisenberg “served with distinction, strengthening our nation’s ability to address threats, both foreign and domestic.”
Harmeet Dhillon left her post as the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Thursday. Earlier Friday, Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney overseeing Trump’s ‘grand conspiracy’ probe into foes resigned.
The departures could provide a challenge for the administration, which will have trouble confirming new officials with a democratic Senate. But the president could install acting leaders to do the job for the rest of his term.
Read more about their resignations here.
The top Republican on the House Oversight Committee heaped blame on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following the party’s midterm rout, saying Friday that “we have no idea what the strategy is moving forward in Iran.”
“I can tell you with a high level of confidence that there’s a lot of questions about Hegseth,” Rep. James Comer of Kentucky said during a NewsNation interview. “No one’s happy about Iran, and I think Republican voters are more upset about what’s going on in Iran than the Democrat voters.”
Asked whether he supported replacing Hegseth, Comer would only say that it’s “a decision that President Trump’s going to have to make.”
The senior House Republican’s criticism is the latest blow in a growing GOP campaign to make Hegseth the scapegoat for the party’s crushing midterm losses. And it comes ahead of plans from another Kentucky Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, to trigger an impeachment vote when Congress returns next week.
Trump earlier this week acknowledged that he’s received calls from allies unhappy with the defense secretary, though he has repeatedly denied any plans to fire him.
Hegseth, for his part, has struck a defiant tone, vowing to fight the impeachment effort and insisting he plans to serve out the rest of Trump’s term.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who will chair a key Senate investigative panel when Democrats take control of Congress in January, sent letters to a slew of companies and Trump administration officials yesterday, asking them to cooperate with investigations.
The letters are a preview of what Blumenthal, who will chair the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, will prioritize once his party controls the Senate, giving it the power to issue subpoenas as part of their probes into the Trump administration. Though the recipients of the letters are not forced to reply to anything he sends as long as Democrats aren’t in control.
Blumenthal warned that the subcommittee will look into “alternative measures to obtain compliance” if the companies and officials do not provide information that the panel requested by January 4, a day after the new Congress convenes.
The companies and officials that received letters are:
Crypto companies World Liberty Financial, Fight Fight Fight LLC, Binance and Tether
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr
Several White House ballroom donors, including Amazon, Apple and Google
GOP Rep. Steve Scalise, meanwhile, who has launched a bid to be the House minority leader, sent his own letter to Republican committee chairs yesterday, telling them to prepare for the Democrats’ probes in the new Congress.
House Democrats “will use their oversight authorities to harass the President, his family, cabinet officials, and they will seek to destroy our allies. You all will be a key line of defense in this fight, and we must maximize our remaining days in power to prepare for what is coming,” Scalise said in the letter, which was obtained by CNN.
Scalise asked the chairs to consider which topics and people Democrats could investigate, and consider how recent Supreme Court decisions could impact those probes.
CNN Sightline rates the Mississippi Senate race as neutral, with the contest too close to call. Democratic candidate Scott Colom has grown his narrow lead over Republican candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith as counties bring their counts closer to completion.
About one-fifth of the estimated remaining vote comes from Hinds County, a Democratic stronghold. Rankin County, where about 1 in 8 votes are estimated to remain, voted for Hyde-Smith by a wide margin. Votes reported since Election Day in Mississippi so far have generally shifted toward Colom compared with those reported on election night itself.
Jason Reding Quiñones, the senior federal prosecutor who led a sprawling investigation into President Donald Trump’s political foes, has resigned from the Justice Department.
Quiñones resigned from his position as US Attorney in Southern Florida under pressure from department leadership, despite his willingness to pursue some of the most controversial investigations desired by the president, according to sources familiar with the matter.
He is the second department official to resign since the midterm elections this week, which delivered a bruising loss to the president’s own party. Harmeet Dhillon left her post as the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Thursday.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Quiñones departure in a social media post Friday, saying that the department is “grateful for Jason’s leadership.”
Quiñones being pushed out in Miami deals what may be the final blow to the Justice Department’s ongoing effort prosecute a wide swath of Trump’s perceived political enemies as part of a so-called “grand conspiracy.”
During his year-long tenure, Quiñones’ office won one of the most consequential criminal indictments brought by the Trump Justice Department: The indictment against former Cuban president Raúl Castro.
But other antics left him on the outs with department leadership. Quiñones was behind the effort to use a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, to pursue investigations of former government officials who were involved in probes of Trump and his campaign from 2016 to 2024.
He promised that his office could bring the case within months against former government officials who were involved in probes of Trump and his campaign from 2016 to 2024, top Justice officials blamed him when those plans failed to materialize.
Read more about Quiñones’ departure.
Following the midterms, speculation is already ramping up around the 2028 presidential election. Here’s what voters at polling locations around the country told us about who they would pick in two years.
As national party operatives, lawyers, grassroots activists and content creators descend on Mississippi to observe the vetting of thousands of provisional ballots in the tight Senate race there, here are the upcoming deadlines:
Tuesday, Nov. 10: Deadline for voters to resolve ID issues on provisional or “affidavit” ballots (It’s also the deadline for counties to receive absentee ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day.)
Friday, Nov. 13: Deadline for counties to certify their results
Thursday, Dec. 3: Deadline for Secretary of State Michael Watson to certify
Conservative media host Tucker Carlson, who broke with President Donald Trump over the Iran war, is weighing in on a difficult week for Republicans. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan reports.
Democrats have won at least 253 House seats and they’re leading in six of the outstanding House races.
That means their ultimate majority will approach and could exceed 260 House seats, depending on how things turn out.
By number of seats flipped — they’re currently at 43 and could end up around 50 — it’s not as big a shift as some other elections. In 2010, Barack Obama’s first midterm, Republicans picked up 64 House seats. And in 1994, Bill Clinton’s first midterm, Republicans picked up 54 seats. But in terms of the size of the majority, this is shaping up to be a banner year.
It would be the largest House majority since 1991, which was at the end of a decades-long era when Democrats routinely had 260 or more House seats before the 1994 “Republican Revolution.”
That’s a larger House majority than Democrats had when they passed the Affordable Care Act under Obama.
Democrats will still have to work with Republicans to pass major legislation. They will not have the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the Senate but rather will have between 54 and 56 seats when the outstanding races in Alaska and Mississippi are resolved. Plus, many of their incoming red state senators were elected with promises to intentionally work with Republicans.
It also means that soon-to-be House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have the luxury of being able to pass legislation without support from his entire caucus, meaning the most liberal or conservative members will have less power over him.
It will also still take buy-in from Republicans to get the 290 votes needed to override anticipated vetoes by President Donald Trump. In the Senate, it takes 67 votes to override a veto.
Bottom line: Democrats are looking at the kind of House majority not seen in decades in Washington — the kind of majority mandates are made of. But it’s not enough to govern on their own.
President Donald Trump has shown repeatedly this week that he simply doesn’t care that his preoccupation with construction projects is alienating Americans and hurting his party politically.
Not only did he make a bizarre visit to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday for his last public event before the Election Day 2026, but then he did a photo op in his under-construction White House ballroom the day after the election, despite the overwhelming GOP losses.
A judge’s ruling overnight has bad news for the GOP: They now face a legal battle over Trump’s coveted triumphal arch that means the subject is sure to continue occupying plenty of Trump’s mind space.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan temporarily halted construction of the arch in a ruling around midnight.
Chutkan, notably, cast doubt on the administration’s belated argument that the arch is important for national security – a legal strategy Trump has repeatedly used, including for the ballroom. She called that assertion “recent and unsupported” and noted it appeared “nowhere in the planning documents on which the project was reviewed and approved.”
The ruling means the arch is set to be the latest Trump project that is due to be the subject of an extended legal battle, much like his ballroom, the Reflecting Pool and the Kennedy Center. And it’s particularly ill-timed, given this is a moment that many in the party would prefer Trump learned his lesson and started focusing on other things like affordability.
The White House X account posted on Friday morning calling the arch “a monumental tribute to America’s first 250 years.”
After Trump went to the ballroom on Wednesday, conservative radio host Steve Deace reflected on X that whoever was responsible “should be fired and never work in politics again, and perhaps even in prison forever like on the moon.”
Polls show these projects are broadly unpopular, and Trump’s focus on them epitomizes what voters say are his misplaced priorities. The CNN Voter Poll of the midterms showed 64% of voters said Trump does not have the right priorities.
But Trump defended focusing on things like the ballroom during his appearance there Wednesday.
“It was sort of mentioned a little bit during the campaign that – about, why does Trump spend time on the White House?” Trump said. “Well, first of all, it’s very little time. Second of all, I like it. It’s good. For me, it’s relaxing. For somebody else it’s the opposite, but for me it’s really – I love construction.”
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