• What we’re tracking: Democrats flipped four additional seats in the House, CNN projects and could win their largest House majority since the early 1990s. In the Senate, two contests have yet to be called: Mississippi and Alaska.
• Blaming the war: Many Republicans are moving swiftly to pin blame on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the war with Iran, which both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance said contributed to the GOP shellacking in the midterms. Trump said he fields calls from people unhappy with Hegseth but still intends to keep him.
• New oversight: Senate Democrats have issued document preservation letters ahead of expected investigations into the Trump administration. And the Department of Homeland Security is bracing for an onslaught of congressional oversight efforts, according to current and former officials.
• El-Sayed targets RFK Jr.: In an interview with CNN, Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed said he wants to investigate Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over staffing cuts.
Updates
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Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor will win the House seat in Tennessee’s redrawn 9th Congressional District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, flipping a seat long held by Democrats and targeted by GOP redistricting earlier in the year.
Meanwhile, Democrats picked up another four seats in the House, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, bringing their total to 249.
Catch up on the most recent calls in the House:
Three North Carolina flips: CNN’s Decision Desk projects that in North Carolina, Democrat Paul Barringer will flip the 13th District, which President Donald Trump won in 2024 by more than 16 points. Democrat Cyril Jefferson will unseat freshman GOP Rep. Addison McDowell in the 6th District. And Democrat LaKesha Womack will oust incumbent Republican Rep. Tim Moore after just one term in North Carolina’s 14th District.
Virginia flip: Democrat Shannon Taylor will defeat longtime Republican Rep. Rob Wittman in the state’s 1st Congressional District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, flipping a district Trump carried by 5 points in 2024.
GOP defense: Republican Rep. John McGuire will secure a second term in Virginia’s 5th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, fending off Democratic former Rep. Tom Perriello.
Tennessee redistricting: Despite Republicans’ successful pickup of Tennessee’s 9th, it remains unclear whether they’ll achieve their redistricting goal of a 9-0 sweep of the state’s House seats. The Democratic candidate in the 4th District is leading by a razor-thin margin over the Republican incumbent.
More results: CNN’s Decision Desk just called several other House races, and dozens remain. Keep up to date on all results with this map and see who’s leading in outstanding races with our live-updating House tracker.
CNN’s Elise Hammond, Dejania Oliver, Elliott Proctor and Saher Mir contributed reporting.
A Republican congressman from a deeply red district in Indiana singled out the party’s approach to immigration as a key factor in its Tuesday election losses, blaming both the Trump administration’s focus on deportations and the perception of immigration enforcement operations disrupting communities for driving away both Latino voters and the general public.
Speaking on Indiana local radio, Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman singled out White House adviser Stephen Miller in warning that the public had grown tired of seeing ICE operations disrupt communities.
While Stutzman maintained that Republicans were right to secure the southern border, he argued that the constant emphasis on deportations had become a political liability.
The congressman’s comments were a pointed rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration messaging, particularly Miller’s public role in promoting its deportation agenda, even as he defended stricter border enforcement.
“But if you’re gonna just constantly talk about (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) being out into communities and it looked like it was disruption. So that’s what the American people finally decided they didn’t like,” he added.
Stutzman added the Republican Party had failed to deliver on lowering costs.
“There’s still this piece of higher costs that never got addressed fast enough,” he said. “And you know, whether it was healthcare, utilities, and then the cost of food at the grocery store, there’s more to fix.”
Democrat LaKesha Womack will win North Carolina’s 14th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, ousting incumbent Republican Rep. Tim Moore after just one term.
Womack, a strategist and ordained minister, regains Democratic control of the seat after a 2023 redistricting push reshaped the district to be more Republican friendly.
Democrat Cyril Jefferson will win North Carolina’s 6th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, unseating freshman GOP Rep. Addison McDowell.
Jefferson, the mayor of High Point, flips the seat back to Democratic control after former Rep. Kathy Manning decided not to run for reelection in 2024 after Republicans redrew the district.
Democrat Paul Barringer will win North Carolina’s 13th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, defeating freshman GOP Rep. Brad Knott.
The lawyer and healthcare consultant’s win gives the Democrats another key pickup as they grow their House majority.
As Democrats have pushed deeper into red territory this election cycle, Barringer’s win comes in a district that President Donald Trump won in 2024 by more than 16 points.
Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed said he is looking forward to working with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance to serve his state, reiterating his campaign priorities — getting money out of politics, putting money in pockets, and passing “Medicare for All.”
But he criticized their political conduct “outside of their actual role.”
Republican Rep. John McGuire will secure a second term in Virginia’s 5th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, fending off Democratic former Rep. Tom Perriello.
While President Donald Trump won the district by 12 points in 2024, Democrats had hoped Perriello’s comeback bid and the national headwinds facing Republicans would make the race more competitive.
Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor will win in Tennessee’s redrawn 9th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, flipping a seat that was long held by Democrats.
The district is a key pickup for Republicans, who saw the redrawn district — now extending into middle Tennessee — as a prime target.
Taylor defeated Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson, who rose to prominence calling for stronger gun controls after a 2023 school shooting.
Democrat Shannon Taylor will defeat longtime Republican Rep. Rob Wittman in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, flipping a district President Donald Trump carried by 5 points in 2024.
Wittman, who has represented the district since 2007, won reelection by nearly 13 points in 2024. Taylor is commonwealth attorney in Henrico County, Virginia, becoming the first woman elected to the role in 2011.
A coalition of college Republican groups is blaming President Donald Trump’s administration and the GOP for Republicans’ midterm losses.
“The voters who delivered President Trump his historic landslide victory in 2024 were not given what they were promised,” the statement said.
The Republican Party failed to do what was “promised” and “manipulated and insulted its base for sounding the alarms for two years,” the group wrote.
The coalition is calling on Trump to “purge his administration of those who have not and will not deliver on the mandate voters gave him in 2024.” It cited the Iran war, prices facing young Americans, and what it called an abandonment of America First principles, like mass deportations.
Democrats are walking a fine line on their intent to investigate the Trump administration.
On election night, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California, made a splash by issuing a terse, two-word statement: “Lawyer up.”
The clear message: We’re girding the investigate the Trump administration.
But other Democrats are offering a more nuanced message – often seeking to emphasize that, unlike President Donald Trump, they’re not out for retribution.
“The American people don’t want us to get even; they want us to get things done on their behalf because life is way too expensive,” the likely next speaker of the House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, told MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday.
Added Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico in a Wednesday interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett: “They didn’t send us to Washington for political retribution; they sent us to Washington to lower costs, to root out corruption, to get this economy back on track. And that needs to be our focus.”
And even Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, one of the more combative major Democratic candidates, told “Morning Joe” on Thursday that he’s willing to work with Trump if the president is willing.
“It’s not about retribution. It should never be about retribution,” El-Sayed said. “It’s about enforcing the rule of law and, most importantly, delivering for the American public.”
El-Sayed also told CNN’s Kate Bolduan that he wants to investigate Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
El-Sayed’s comments get at the rhetorical balancing act here. Democrats are signaling that will investigate the Trump administration, but they also want to emphasize they won’t be consumed by it – and that they will focus on kitchen-table issues.
But that could create some tension with some portions of the party who see what Trump is doing and think accountability should be a major priority.
Garcia said at a press conference Wednesday in Huntington Beach, California, that Democrats can walk and chew gum.
“We need to both move forward and pass new laws and lower the costs,” Garcia said. “There also has to be accountability for the crimes that are being committed, because there is a link.
After unseating the longtime Republican incumbent to win a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 19-year-old Democrat Daniel Darris-O’Connor will become one of the youngest lawmakers in state history when he takes office in January.
Hear what he had to say about his age and what inspired him to get involved in politics as early as middle school:
Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a key member of the foreign affairs and judiciary committees, is projected to win reelection in his Florida district, one of 15 districts targeted by GOP redistricting efforts.
Republicans launched a historic mid-decade redistricting war last year, but their strategy seems to have backfired. Democrats are expected to maintain control of at least 11 of the 15 districts targeted by GOP redistricting efforts and have flipped all six of their redistricting targets away from Republicans.
“The American people said enough. They’ve had enough of this,” he said. “This was America weighing in in dramatic fashion.”
Moskowitz dismissed Vice President JD Vance blaming of the Iran war for the midterm outcomes.
“Take some responsibility,” he said. “You guys said affordability was a hoax. You said that everything was great. The Iran war would only take six weeks. You denied the struggle of the American people. You didn’t want to admit that people are facing increased costs.”
Mississippi Democratic Senate nominee Scott Colom said that while “there are always issues” with provisional ballots, he is confident about his chances of winning the unexpectedly tight contest because those ballots tend to favor Democrats.
The race could come down to roughly 15,000 provisional ballots, according to Colom’s campaign, still pending verification. But in the meantime, both sides have expressed confidence they will prevail.
Voter advocates and legal observers expect it could take until next week, at the earliest, for initial indications of how many of those provisional ballots — known in the state as “affidavit ballots” — will go into the final count after being vetted. Several counties in Mississippi have already started that process.
Colom told reporters at a diner in Jackson, Mississippi, that he’s known the race has been competitive for months in the deep-red state.
CNN’s Annie Grayer, Fredreka Schouten and Tierney Sneed contributed to this post.
Republican Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan could gain thousands of votes on Democrat Mary Peltola if and when the state gets into its ranked-choice voting tabulations, according to a new analysis from the Alaska Beacon.
The question is whether it would be enough.
The Beacon did an automated analysis of a data file showing how more than 200,000 voters ranked their choices in the state’s Senate races, seeking to find out who supporters of the 3rd- and 4th-place candidates ranked below their top choice. (Those votes will flow to one of the top two candidates if people ranked them.)
If found that Sullivan would gain more than 2,700 votes when Republican Gerald Heikes and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. are eliminated.
The number comes with caveats, in that it doesn’t include all ballots in the race, where only about 75% of the vote has been counted. But it includes a big chunk of them and suggests Sullivan would gain substantial ground in ranked-choice tabulations.
In fact, it would more than offset Sullivan’s current 637-vote deficit.
But it’s likely that Sullivan’s deficit will grow as the final quarter of the vote is counted. That’s because the bulk of it is mail ballots, and those tend to favor Democrats.
So the thing to watch in the coming days is whether Peltola creeps up close to 50% – in which case the ranked-choice tabulations don’t matter – or at least builds a lead 3,000 or 4,000 votes. CNN Sightline currently says Peltola is favored.
Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed responded to voters who withheld support over his stance on Israel and said he is committed to the safety of Jewish communities.
“Well, I am for love and against hate,” El-Sayed told CNN. “I understand what it’s like to be demonized because of how you pray. And I want a Michigan where nobody feels that way, where you drop your kid off to day school or the synagogue and you know that they’re going to get home safely and be respected in their community. That’s something that we can all work on together.”
He was reacting to clips of voters who said they split their tickets, including one who questioned his support for the Jewish community and another who cited opposition to hate.
El-Sayed said he believes voters’ frustration with him largely stems from his position on Israel. He argued that criticizing US tax dollars funding Israel while supporting the safety of Jewish communities is not mutually exclusive.
“But I am not going to back down on the question of whether or not our tax dollars should be used to subsidize genocide or apartheid or war. I think we have to be able to differentiate between the safety and security of the Jewish community in Michigan and across the United States from our foreign policy approach to the government of Israel,” El-Sayed said.
Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed told CNN this morning that he wants to investigate Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., over staffing cuts at the FDA and CDC that he says has contributed to food recalls.
El-Sayed told CNN’s Kate Bolduan he wants to understand “the decision-making that’s gone on and what we need to do to solve the problem.”
El-Sayed argued that staffing cuts at the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped the agencies from adequately preventing and responding to the cyclospora outbreak over the summer. He also raised recent recalls of blueberries, blackberries and meat.
El-Sayed later pointed to Kennedy’s “anti-science” approach as HHS secretary to argue that any nomination the Trump administration puts forward should be scrutinized.
It’s looking like Democrats could win their largest House majority since the early 1990s — with possibly more than 260 seats, according to a CNN review of outstanding election results.
As things currently stand, CNN has projected Democrats have won 245 seats — a net gain of 34 seats. Republicans are nearly 100 seats behind, at 147 seats.
And Democrats are currently ahead in many of the remaining 43 races.
They hold substantial leads in Arizona’s 1st and 6th Districts, with more than 80% of ballots counted.
They also lead in around a dozen races by between 1 and 5 points, but there are enough ballots out that the races haven’t been called. (That includes around four races in North Carolina, each where they lead by two points.)
And they lead by less than a percentage point in five districts: Colorado’s 4th, Florida’s 9th, Minnesota’s 1st, North Carolina’s 5th and Tennessee’s 4th.
All told, they lead in 264 districts. If they won them all, they would have a 264-171 majority. That would be the biggest majority since 1991-93, when Democrats held 267 seats.
They got up to 257 seats in the 2008 wave that swept Barack Obama into office.
The total number of seats flipped will likely be less than in the 2010 election, when Republicans flipped more than 60. But a big reason the GOP was able to flip that many seats was because they began with so few (thanks to Democrats’ huge post-2008 majority) and had lots of red territory to pick off.
In 2026, by contrast, the House started nearly evenly split. And Democrats still racked up major — and apparently historic — gains.
Democrat JD Ford, who unseated GOP Rep. Victoria Spartz in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, told CNN he agrees with Vice President JD Vance that the war with Iran contributed to Republican midterm losses.
“Surprisingly, I actually agree with the vice president,” Ford told CNN’s Kate Bolduan. “And, what I would say to that is that people in the 5th district connected the dots between the high costs of groceries and the high cost of gas to what was going on over in Iran.”
Ford said residents in his district are questioning why the US is at war with Iran “with no clear plan of what we’re doing there” and asking how the conflict could be safely wound down.
“And we’ve got to do something about that when we get to Congress in January,” he said.
Asked whether he would support impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Ford said he is aware that GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky plans to trigger a vote on the issue.
“If that petition is still there, we’ll definitely take a look at that,” Ford said, adding that his main focus would be the key issues he campaigned on. “It’s going to be, you know, lowering the cost of gas, groceries, utilities. It’s going to be tackling our health care system. And these are the big-ticket items that I — that I heard all across the congressional district.”
President Donald Trump told ABC News on Thursday that he has been fielding calls from people who are unhappy with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but still has “every intention to keep him.”
“I get these calls, you know, about him. I don’t understand why,” Trump said in a phone call with ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
It comes after Vice President JD Vance said yesterday that the Iran war is the cause for sweeping Republican losses in the midterms, and CNN reported that some allies see Hegseth as potentially vulnerable.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie also said he plans to trigger a vote to impeach Hegseth next week, which is expected to pass, according to multiple GOP sources.
Karl said that Trump acknowledged confirming a potential new Defense Secretary would be easier before Democrats take over Congress in January.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he doesn’t have any plans to replace Hegseth.
• What we’re tracking: Democrats flipped four additional seats in the House, CNN projects and could win their largest House majority since the early 1990s. In the Senate, two contests have yet to be called: Mississippi and Alaska.
• Blaming the war: Many Republicans are moving swiftly to pin blame on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the war with Iran, which both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance said contributed to the GOP shellacking in the midterms. Trump said he fields calls from people unhappy with Hegseth but still intends to keep him.
• New oversight: Senate Democrats have issued document preservation letters ahead of expected investigations into the Trump administration. And the Department of Homeland Security is bracing for an onslaught of congressional oversight efforts, according to current and former officials.
• El-Sayed targets RFK Jr.: In an interview with CNN, Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed said he wants to investigate Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over staffing cuts.
Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor will win the House seat in Tennessee’s redrawn 9th Congressional District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, flipping a seat long held by Democrats and targeted by GOP redistricting earlier in the year.
Meanwhile, Democrats picked up another four seats in the House, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, bringing their total to 249.
Catch up on the most recent calls in the House:
Three North Carolina flips: CNN’s Decision Desk projects that in North Carolina, Democrat Paul Barringer will flip the 13th District, which President Donald Trump won in 2024 by more than 16 points. Democrat Cyril Jefferson will unseat freshman GOP Rep. Addison McDowell in the 6th District. And Democrat LaKesha Womack will oust incumbent Republican Rep. Tim Moore after just one term in North Carolina’s 14th District.
Virginia flip: Democrat Shannon Taylor will defeat longtime Republican Rep. Rob Wittman in the state’s 1st Congressional District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, flipping a district Trump carried by 5 points in 2024.
GOP defense: Republican Rep. John McGuire will secure a second term in Virginia’s 5th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, fending off Democratic former Rep. Tom Perriello.
Tennessee redistricting: Despite Republicans’ successful pickup of Tennessee’s 9th, it remains unclear whether they’ll achieve their redistricting goal of a 9-0 sweep of the state’s House seats. The Democratic candidate in the 4th District is leading by a razor-thin margin over the Republican incumbent.
More results: CNN’s Decision Desk just called several other House races, and dozens remain. Keep up to date on all results with this map and see who’s leading in outstanding races with our live-updating House tracker.
CNN’s Elise Hammond, Dejania Oliver, Elliott Proctor and Saher Mir contributed reporting.
A Republican congressman from a deeply red district in Indiana singled out the party’s approach to immigration as a key factor in its Tuesday election losses, blaming both the Trump administration’s focus on deportations and the perception of immigration enforcement operations disrupting communities for driving away both Latino voters and the general public.
Speaking on Indiana local radio, Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman singled out White House adviser Stephen Miller in warning that the public had grown tired of seeing ICE operations disrupt communities.
While Stutzman maintained that Republicans were right to secure the southern border, he argued that the constant emphasis on deportations had become a political liability.
The congressman’s comments were a pointed rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration messaging, particularly Miller’s public role in promoting its deportation agenda, even as he defended stricter border enforcement.
“But if you’re gonna just constantly talk about (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) being out into communities and it looked like it was disruption. So that’s what the American people finally decided they didn’t like,” he added.
Stutzman added the Republican Party had failed to deliver on lowering costs.
“There’s still this piece of higher costs that never got addressed fast enough,” he said. “And you know, whether it was healthcare, utilities, and then the cost of food at the grocery store, there’s more to fix.”
Democrat LaKesha Womack will win North Carolina’s 14th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, ousting incumbent Republican Rep. Tim Moore after just one term.
Womack, a strategist and ordained minister, regains Democratic control of the seat after a 2023 redistricting push reshaped the district to be more Republican friendly.
Democrat Cyril Jefferson will win North Carolina’s 6th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, unseating freshman GOP Rep. Addison McDowell.
Jefferson, the mayor of High Point, flips the seat back to Democratic control after former Rep. Kathy Manning decided not to run for reelection in 2024 after Republicans redrew the district.
Democrat Paul Barringer will win North Carolina’s 13th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, defeating freshman GOP Rep. Brad Knott.
The lawyer and healthcare consultant’s win gives the Democrats another key pickup as they grow their House majority.
As Democrats have pushed deeper into red territory this election cycle, Barringer’s win comes in a district that President Donald Trump won in 2024 by more than 16 points.
Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed said he is looking forward to working with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance to serve his state, reiterating his campaign priorities — getting money out of politics, putting money in pockets, and passing “Medicare for All.”
But he criticized their political conduct “outside of their actual role.”
Republican Rep. John McGuire will secure a second term in Virginia’s 5th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, fending off Democratic former Rep. Tom Perriello.
While President Donald Trump won the district by 12 points in 2024, Democrats had hoped Perriello’s comeback bid and the national headwinds facing Republicans would make the race more competitive.
Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor will win in Tennessee’s redrawn 9th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, flipping a seat that was long held by Democrats.
The district is a key pickup for Republicans, who saw the redrawn district — now extending into middle Tennessee — as a prime target.
Taylor defeated Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson, who rose to prominence calling for stronger gun controls after a 2023 school shooting.
Democrat Shannon Taylor will defeat longtime Republican Rep. Rob Wittman in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, flipping a district President Donald Trump carried by 5 points in 2024.
Wittman, who has represented the district since 2007, won reelection by nearly 13 points in 2024. Taylor is commonwealth attorney in Henrico County, Virginia, becoming the first woman elected to the role in 2011.
A coalition of college Republican groups is blaming President Donald Trump’s administration and the GOP for Republicans’ midterm losses.
“The voters who delivered President Trump his historic landslide victory in 2024 were not given what they were promised,” the statement said.
The Republican Party failed to do what was “promised” and “manipulated and insulted its base for sounding the alarms for two years,” the group wrote.
The coalition is calling on Trump to “purge his administration of those who have not and will not deliver on the mandate voters gave him in 2024.” It cited the Iran war, prices facing young Americans, and what it called an abandonment of America First principles, like mass deportations.
Democrats are walking a fine line on their intent to investigate the Trump administration.
On election night, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California, made a splash by issuing a terse, two-word statement: “Lawyer up.”
The clear message: We’re girding the investigate the Trump administration.
But other Democrats are offering a more nuanced message – often seeking to emphasize that, unlike President Donald Trump, they’re not out for retribution.
“The American people don’t want us to get even; they want us to get things done on their behalf because life is way too expensive,” the likely next speaker of the House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, told MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday.
Added Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico in a Wednesday interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett: “They didn’t send us to Washington for political retribution; they sent us to Washington to lower costs, to root out corruption, to get this economy back on track. And that needs to be our focus.”
And even Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, one of the more combative major Democratic candidates, told “Morning Joe” on Thursday that he’s willing to work with Trump if the president is willing.
“It’s not about retribution. It should never be about retribution,” El-Sayed said. “It’s about enforcing the rule of law and, most importantly, delivering for the American public.”
El-Sayed also told CNN’s Kate Bolduan that he wants to investigate Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
El-Sayed’s comments get at the rhetorical balancing act here. Democrats are signaling that will investigate the Trump administration, but they also want to emphasize they won’t be consumed by it – and that they will focus on kitchen-table issues.
But that could create some tension with some portions of the party who see what Trump is doing and think accountability should be a major priority.
Garcia said at a press conference Wednesday in Huntington Beach, California, that Democrats can walk and chew gum.
“We need to both move forward and pass new laws and lower the costs,” Garcia said. “There also has to be accountability for the crimes that are being committed, because there is a link.
After unseating the longtime Republican incumbent to win a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 19-year-old Democrat Daniel Darris-O’Connor will become one of the youngest lawmakers in state history when he takes office in January.
Hear what he had to say about his age and what inspired him to get involved in politics as early as middle school:
Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a key member of the foreign affairs and judiciary committees, is projected to win reelection in his Florida district, one of 15 districts targeted by GOP redistricting efforts.
Republicans launched a historic mid-decade redistricting war last year, but their strategy seems to have backfired. Democrats are expected to maintain control of at least 11 of the 15 districts targeted by GOP redistricting efforts and have flipped all six of their redistricting targets away from Republicans.
“The American people said enough. They’ve had enough of this,” he said. “This was America weighing in in dramatic fashion.”
Moskowitz dismissed Vice President JD Vance blaming of the Iran war for the midterm outcomes.
“Take some responsibility,” he said. “You guys said affordability was a hoax. You said that everything was great. The Iran war would only take six weeks. You denied the struggle of the American people. You didn’t want to admit that people are facing increased costs.”
Mississippi Democratic Senate nominee Scott Colom said that while “there are always issues” with provisional ballots, he is confident about his chances of winning the unexpectedly tight contest because those ballots tend to favor Democrats.
The race could come down to roughly 15,000 provisional ballots, according to Colom’s campaign, still pending verification. But in the meantime, both sides have expressed confidence they will prevail.
Voter advocates and legal observers expect it could take until next week, at the earliest, for initial indications of how many of those provisional ballots — known in the state as “affidavit ballots” — will go into the final count after being vetted. Several counties in Mississippi have already started that process.
Colom told reporters at a diner in Jackson, Mississippi, that he’s known the race has been competitive for months in the deep-red state.
CNN’s Annie Grayer, Fredreka Schouten and Tierney Sneed contributed to this post.
Republican Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan could gain thousands of votes on Democrat Mary Peltola if and when the state gets into its ranked-choice voting tabulations, according to a new analysis from the Alaska Beacon.
The question is whether it would be enough.
The Beacon did an automated analysis of a data file showing how more than 200,000 voters ranked their choices in the state’s Senate races, seeking to find out who supporters of the 3rd- and 4th-place candidates ranked below their top choice. (Those votes will flow to one of the top two candidates if people ranked them.)
If found that Sullivan would gain more than 2,700 votes when Republican Gerald Heikes and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. are eliminated.
The number comes with caveats, in that it doesn’t include all ballots in the race, where only about 75% of the vote has been counted. But it includes a big chunk of them and suggests Sullivan would gain substantial ground in ranked-choice tabulations.
In fact, it would more than offset Sullivan’s current 637-vote deficit.
But it’s likely that Sullivan’s deficit will grow as the final quarter of the vote is counted. That’s because the bulk of it is mail ballots, and those tend to favor Democrats.
So the thing to watch in the coming days is whether Peltola creeps up close to 50% – in which case the ranked-choice tabulations don’t matter – or at least builds a lead 3,000 or 4,000 votes. CNN Sightline currently says Peltola is favored.
Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed responded to voters who withheld support over his stance on Israel and said he is committed to the safety of Jewish communities.
“Well, I am for love and against hate,” El-Sayed told CNN. “I understand what it’s like to be demonized because of how you pray. And I want a Michigan where nobody feels that way, where you drop your kid off to day school or the synagogue and you know that they’re going to get home safely and be respected in their community. That’s something that we can all work on together.”
He was reacting to clips of voters who said they split their tickets, including one who questioned his support for the Jewish community and another who cited opposition to hate.
El-Sayed said he believes voters’ frustration with him largely stems from his position on Israel. He argued that criticizing US tax dollars funding Israel while supporting the safety of Jewish communities is not mutually exclusive.
“But I am not going to back down on the question of whether or not our tax dollars should be used to subsidize genocide or apartheid or war. I think we have to be able to differentiate between the safety and security of the Jewish community in Michigan and across the United States from our foreign policy approach to the government of Israel,” El-Sayed said.
Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed told CNN this morning that he wants to investigate Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., over staffing cuts at the FDA and CDC that he says has contributed to food recalls.
El-Sayed told CNN’s Kate Bolduan he wants to understand “the decision-making that’s gone on and what we need to do to solve the problem.”
El-Sayed argued that staffing cuts at the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped the agencies from adequately preventing and responding to the cyclospora outbreak over the summer. He also raised recent recalls of blueberries, blackberries and meat.
El-Sayed later pointed to Kennedy’s “anti-science” approach as HHS secretary to argue that any nomination the Trump administration puts forward should be scrutinized.
It’s looking like Democrats could win their largest House majority since the early 1990s — with possibly more than 260 seats, according to a CNN review of outstanding election results.
As things currently stand, CNN has projected Democrats have won 245 seats — a net gain of 34 seats. Republicans are nearly 100 seats behind, at 147 seats.
And Democrats are currently ahead in many of the remaining 43 races.
They hold substantial leads in Arizona’s 1st and 6th Districts, with more than 80% of ballots counted.
They also lead in around a dozen races by between 1 and 5 points, but there are enough ballots out that the races haven’t been called. (That includes around four races in North Carolina, each where they lead by two points.)
And they lead by less than a percentage point in five districts: Colorado’s 4th, Florida’s 9th, Minnesota’s 1st, North Carolina’s 5th and Tennessee’s 4th.
All told, they lead in 264 districts. If they won them all, they would have a 264-171 majority. That would be the biggest majority since 1991-93, when Democrats held 267 seats.
They got up to 257 seats in the 2008 wave that swept Barack Obama into office.
The total number of seats flipped will likely be less than in the 2010 election, when Republicans flipped more than 60. But a big reason the GOP was able to flip that many seats was because they began with so few (thanks to Democrats’ huge post-2008 majority) and had lots of red territory to pick off.
In 2026, by contrast, the House started nearly evenly split. And Democrats still racked up major — and apparently historic — gains.
Democrat JD Ford, who unseated GOP Rep. Victoria Spartz in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, told CNN he agrees with Vice President JD Vance that the war with Iran contributed to Republican midterm losses.
“Surprisingly, I actually agree with the vice president,” Ford told CNN’s Kate Bolduan. “And, what I would say to that is that people in the 5th district connected the dots between the high costs of groceries and the high cost of gas to what was going on over in Iran.”
Ford said residents in his district are questioning why the US is at war with Iran “with no clear plan of what we’re doing there” and asking how the conflict could be safely wound down.
“And we’ve got to do something about that when we get to Congress in January,” he said.
Asked whether he would support impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Ford said he is aware that GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky plans to trigger a vote on the issue.
“If that petition is still there, we’ll definitely take a look at that,” Ford said, adding that his main focus would be the key issues he campaigned on. “It’s going to be, you know, lowering the cost of gas, groceries, utilities. It’s going to be tackling our health care system. And these are the big-ticket items that I — that I heard all across the congressional district.”
President Donald Trump told ABC News on Thursday that he has been fielding calls from people who are unhappy with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but still has “every intention to keep him.”
“I get these calls, you know, about him. I don’t understand why,” Trump said in a phone call with ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
It comes after Vice President JD Vance said yesterday that the Iran war is the cause for sweeping Republican losses in the midterms, and CNN reported that some allies see Hegseth as potentially vulnerable.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie also said he plans to trigger a vote to impeach Hegseth next week, which is expected to pass, according to multiple GOP sources.
Karl said that Trump acknowledged confirming a potential new Defense Secretary would be easier before Democrats take over Congress in January.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he doesn’t have any plans to replace Hegseth.
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