Closing summary
As we close this blog, Republicans need one more seat to clinch control of the US House of Representatives and former president Donald Trump is preparing for a major announcement in Florida that most believe will be his intention to run for the White House again – in the 2024 election.
The Guardian is launching a brand new blog now to take you through the evening’s news, as it happens, in the run-up to the Trump event at his Mar-a-Lago residence and resort in Palm Beach, where we have reporters stationed and also watching from afar.
It’s been a lively day in US political news and of course it’s far from over.
Here’s where things stand:
Joe Biden has asked House speaker Nancy Pelosi to stay on in Congress and continue to hold a leadership role even if, as is soon expected, Republican control of the House in the midterms means her days as speaker will be numbered, sources tell Politico and Reuters.
A federal judge has ruled that a Covid-19-era order used to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants back across the southern US border to Mexico is unlawful, threatening to upend border policy.
The Biden administration is requesting another big infusion of aid from Congress to help Ukraine weather the Russian invasion, and also to fight Covid-19.
House Republicans have named Kevin McCarthy their candidate for speaker, should they win a majority in the chamber, which could happen very soon, with the GOP needing just one more seat win in the midterms to clinch control.
Arizona’s Democratic senator Mark Kelly said his Republican opponent Blake Masters conceded in a phone call that he had lost the race in the midterm elections.
Liz Cheney had the last word in a spat with Arizona’s defeated GOP governor candidate Kari Lake, but warned of the continued threat to democracy posed by many Republicans in Congress.
Rupert Murdoch is reportedly sick of Trump and may switch his allegiance to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a development that could have big implications for the ex-president’s new White House campaign.
Only a handful of House races remain uncalled, and the GOP is one seat away from winning control of the chamber. It’s possible one of several races in California could deliver Republicans a majority today, while more results are expected in a crucial Colorado race tomorrow.
Alex Villanueva, the embattled sheriff of Los Angeles county, has conceded to Robert Luna, the former police chief of Long Beach, ending the scandal-plagued tenure of a law enforcement leader who critics had called the “Donald Trump of LA”.
Villanueva conceded this afternoon, one week after the election, saying: “I want to wish the incoming sheriff well. The safety of the community depends on him succeeding,” the Los Angeles Times reported. His concession comes as Luna’s lead has continued to grow, with the challenger earning 60% of the vote compared to the incumbent’s 40%.
Over the course of his four-year term, Villanueva repeatedly attracted national attention with a series of misconduct, abuse and corruption scandals at the department, which is the largest county sheriff’s agency in the US.
He became known for lashing out at politicians, community leaders, journalists, whistleblowers, watchdogs and other law enforcement officials who tried exposing problems at the agency. Luna has pledged to reform the department and jail system and end the “dysfunction and chaos” of Villanueva’s tenure, though under Luna, the Long Beach police department also had its own scandals.
This is only the second time in more than a century that LA residents have ousted an incumbent sheriff. For more background on Villanueva, here is our previous story on the race.
Updated
Biden asking Pelosi to continue in leadership role in Congress - report
As Democrats stand on the brink of losing control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, Joe Biden has asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stay on in Congress and continue to hold a leadership role, Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources.
This news is just emerging. But of course if the GOP grabs the House, that will mean Pelosi handing the speaker’s gavel to whomever the Republicans vote to be the speaker when they take control in January.
Kevin McCarthy will continue leading the Republicans in the House and was nominated to become Speaker in the event the GOP win the House, but that doesn’t yet mean he’ll win the necessary 218 votes in the expected January 3 floor vote ascend to the role of Speaker, much as he would like to be.
When Pelosi was asked recently if she’d retire if the Democrats lost control of the House, and following the vicious assault on her husband Paul Pelosi last month by an unhinged right-wing suspect who put him in the hospital in California with a broken skull, Pelosi, 82, indicated that she might consider her position in Congress, depending on how the midterm elections panned out.
Well, they panned out better than expected for Democrats, despite the imminent loss of the House. Paul Pelosi is home from hospital and Nancy Pelosi popped up at the Cop27 climate talks in Egypt last week.
Now it appears that Biden wants to keep her influential hand on the Democratic tiller in Congress in some way, pre-empting any possible retirement.
Steny Hoyer is currently House majority leader. Reuters adds that a Politico columnist first reported the conversation and the sources confirmed the accuracy of the account.
Updated
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will support proposed federal legislation to codify the right to same-sex marriage.
A vote is due in the US Senate tomorrow on the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act that would enshrine marriage equality into federal law with regard to same-sex and interracial marriage.
In a classic tap dance, the Utah-based Mormon faith reiterated that it considers same-sex relationships to be “against God’s commandments” but that they would support the right to marriage under certain conditions, including respect for their right of religious belief on the matter.
This is the church’s latest step to stake out a more welcoming stance toward the LGBTQ+ community while holding firm to its belief that same-sex relationships are sinful, the Associated Press reports.
Patrick Mason, a professor of religious studies at Utah State University, said the church’s position was both a departure from and continuation of its past stances respecting laws yet working to safeguard religious liberty and ensuring they won’t be forced to perform same-sex marriages or grant them official church sanction.
In 2016, the church declared that same-sex attraction was not a sin – while maintaining that acting on it was.
Axios reports that Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin, who, together with Republican Susan Collins of Maine, is leading the legislative effort on the Democratic side, believes the bill has the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.
The news site further reports that Baldwin, Collins, Rob Portman of Ohio, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Thom Tillis of North Carolina issued a statement Monday saying they reached a deal on “commonsense” changes to the bill to protect religious freedom. The changes were first reported by Axios.
Updated
Freshly re-elected US senator for Wisconsin, the Republican Ron Johnson has indicated he will back Florida’s Rick Scott over longtime senate leader Mitch McConnell in tomorrow’s leadership vote, it’s reported tonight.
Johnson has told the conservative news site the Daily Signal about his pick to unseat McConnell in what has the potential to be an acrimonious situation.
NEW: @RonJohnsonWI tells me he is nominating Rick Scott to unseat Mitch McConnell. https://t.co/CRHsGg70XO
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) November 15, 2022
Updated
Court rules Covid-era Title 42 border expulsion policy unlawful
A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that a Covid-19-era order used to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants back across the southern US border to Mexico was unlawful, a ruling that could have major implications for border management, Reuters reports.
In a 49-page opinion, US district court judge Emmit Sullivan said the policy was “arbitrary and capricious” and violated federal regulatory law.
We’ll have more details shortly.
Title 42 is a public health mandate utilized by Donald Trump that has persisted in the Biden administration, barring migrants and asylum seekers from entering the country at land borders.
That means, with exceptions, that the federal authorities at the border can summarily expel most migrants without granting them access to the US legal system to make a case for being able to stay in the US.
Updated
Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation in Poland, the White House has said, and will speak with Polish president Andrzej Duda soon, Reuters reports.
The US president, who is in Bali, Indonesia, for the G20 talks, is being kept up to speed on the latest alarming developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine since, earlier today, Poland raised its military readiness after two died in a blast within its borders following Russian strikes across Ukraine.
Biden is apparently talking with the head of Poland’s national security bureau, Jacek Siewiera, right now.
The Guardian is blogging developments in the war, live, and you can find all that coverage here.
Updated
Senate Republicans are holding their leadership vote tomorrow, following House Republicans’ vote today that kept Kevin McCarthy on top.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, whose prospect of becoming majority leader next year were dashed by Democrats’ retaining control of the upper chamber in the midterm elections, is projecting confidence.
This despite an apparent challenge coming from Florida senator Rick Scott.
“I want to repeat again, I have the votes, I will be elected.”
— Heather Caygle (@heatherscope) November 15, 2022
McConnell says issue is whether they hold elections tomorrow or not. Says they have another discussion about that pic.twitter.com/loTCjy65MJ
A judge overturned Georgia’s ban on abortion starting around six weeks into a pregnancy, ruling today that it violated the US constitution and US supreme court precedent when it was enacted and was therefore void.
Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney’s ruling took effect immediately statewide, though the state attorney general’s office said it appealed it. The ban had been in effect since July, the Associated Press reports.
It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present (even though that is a misnomer).
Cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells within an embryo that will eventually become the heart as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. That means most abortions in Georgia were effectively banned at a point before many people even knew they were pregnant.
McBurney’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed in July by doctors and advocacy groups that sought to strike down the ban on multiple grounds, including that it violates the Georgia constitution’s right to privacy and liberty by forcing pregnancy and childbirth on women in the state. McBurney did not rule on that claim.
Instead, his decision agreed with a different argument made in the lawsuit that the ban was invalid because when it was signed into law in 2019, US supreme court precedent allowed abortion well past six weeks.
Georgia’s law was passed by state lawmakers and signed by Governor Brian Kemp in 2019 but had been blocked from taking effect until the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, which had protected the right to an abortion in the US for nearly 50 years.
The 11th US circuit court of appeals allowed Georgia to begin enforcing its abortion law just over three weeks after the high court’s decision in June.
Abortion clinics remained open, but providers said they were turning many people away because cardiac activity had been detected. They could then either travel to another state for an abortion or continue with their pregnancies.
Updated
Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, is exulting in the fact that Democrats have kept control of the Senate, and said Donald Trump’s Maga ideology is to blame for the GOP’s struggles in last week’s election:
Sen. Schumer: "I have a plea for the Republicans and advice: If you embrace MAGA, you're going to keep losing. You're going to lose more." pic.twitter.com/IcDLt5a0XI
— CSPAN (@cspan) November 15, 2022
The Guardian’s US politics blog is now being handed over Joanna Walters, who will keep you abreast of the rest of today’s news.
CNN has obtained a letter from Rick Scott to other Senate Republicans, in which he makes his pitch to be their leader in the chamber:
Here’s the letter Rick Scott sent to his colleagues saying he would challenge Mitch McConnell for GOP leader pic.twitter.com/BP3rk4UtXz
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 15, 2022
While he doesn’t attack Mitch McConnell by name, it’s clear Scott has issues with how the Kentucky senator has led the party. For instance, Scott says that “some believe we should not make deals with Chuck Schumer”, in reference to McConnell’s occasion bipartisan agreements with the top Senate Democrat. He also notes that “some say we should work to united Republicans and not Democrats”, another indication that Scott could perhaps take a more hardline approach in negotiating with Joe Biden’s party, should he win the leadership post.
There’s rancor among Senate Republicans after they failed to win a majority in last week’s midterm elections, with Florida senator Rick Scott announcing a challenge to Mitch McConnell to lead the party in Congress’s upper chamber, Politico reports.
McConnell is the Senate’s current minority leader and Scott is chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is in charge of election efforts. The two men have been at odds over the GOP’s poor results in last Tuesday’s election, and Politico reports Scott was encouraged to challenge McConnell by Donald Trump.
The challenge is the first McConnell has faced in his 15 years leading Senate Republicans, but the Kentucky lawmaker believes he has enough votes to beat Scott, Politico says. McConnell and Trump have a bad relationship, even though the senator has overseen some of the party’s biggest victories in the Senate, including installing the three conservative supreme court justices appointed by the former president who were pivotal in overturning Roe v Wade.
White House asks Congress for $37bn in new Ukraine aid
The Biden administration is requesting another big infusion of aid from Congress to help Ukraine weather the Russian invasion, and also to fight Covid-19, NBC News reports:
JUST IN: White House seeking $37.7 billion in supplemental aid for Ukraine, for continued military, intelligence support. Also seeks another $10 billion to fund ongoing fight against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.
— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) November 15, 2022
Lawmakers have reconvened this week for the first time since the midterm elections, which appear to have delivered control of the House to Republicans. They’re expected to tackle a number of Democatic priorities before Congress’s mandates expires at the end of the year.
Updated
House Republicans nominate McCarthy for speaker
House Republicans have named Kevin McCarthy their candidate for speaker, should they win a majority in the chamber, Punchbowl News reports:
🚨 MCCARTHY WINS
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 15, 2022
Kevin McCarthy of California beat Andy Biggs to become the GOP nominee for speaker of the House.
He now has to spend the next seven weeks working to get 218 supporters to win the floor vote. That will be Jan. 3.
McCarthy won 188-31 https://t.co/XQ2MrPAQHc
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 15, 2022
The Californian would take over from Democrat Nancy Pelosi if the GOP gains enough seats to win a majority. While all the ballots from last Tuesday’s midterm election have not been counted, the Republicans appear to be on course to do that.
McCarthy won despite a challenge from Andy Biggs, an Arizona lawmaker running to his right.
Arizona Republican Masters concedes in Senate race, Kelly says
Arizona’s Democratic senator Mark Kelly says his Republican opponent Blake Masters conceded in a phone call, Politico reports:
Sen. Mark Kelly says he talked to Blake Masters today and Masters conceded the Arizona Senate race. Kelly says it was a “good conversation” and Masters told him “congratulations”
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) November 15, 2022
The Associated Press called the race for Kelly last week. The seat was considered crucial to Democrats’ goal of keeping control of Congress’s upper chamber for another two years.
If Democrats lose the majority in the House, Nancy Pelosi will have to make a decision.
Pelosi has been a fixture in American politics for nearly two decades, becoming the first woman to lead either chamber of Congress and to serve as speaker of the house. But she’s 82, and unless something big happens, the GOP appears to be course to take control of the House once all the ballots from last week’s election are counted.
Representing deep-blue San Francisco, it’s unlikely Pelosi will ever lose re-election, but her days controling the chamber appear to be numbered. That leaves her with a number of options. She could stay in the game as House minority leader, a position she previously held from 2011 to 2019, when Democrats were in the minority. She could begin laying the groundwork for her successor, perhaps by announcing her intention to retire.
Then there’s a third option, which the New York Times reports in a piece examining the issue Pelosi may be leaning towards:
Now the question of will she stay or will she go has given way to a potential third option that some people close to Ms. Pelosi, 82, argue is a serious possibility for her: stepping down from leadership but remaining in Congress in a sort of emeritus role that would allow her to offer counsel to her colleagues and support the agenda of President Biden, 79, whom she has urged to run for re-election in 2024.
Such an arrangement would allow Ms. Pelosi to manage her own exit from the political scene while passing the torch to a new generation of leaders that many Democrats have argued for years was long overdue to take over from the three octogenarians currently running the House. She has hinted at just such a possibility.
Updated
David DePape, who is accused of attacking Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, last month, pleaded not guilty to federal charges today, KRON reports.
He faces a charge of “assault on an immediate family member of a United States official with intent to retaliate against the official on account of their performance of official duties”, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
DePape is also charged with “one count of attempted kidnapping of a US official”, for which he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
DePape previously pleaded not guilty to state charges over the attack in the Pelosis’ San Francisco residence.
Updated
In a move that won’t surprise those who never believed her to be a true Democrat anyway, the former congresswoman and 2020 presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has signed up to work as a paid contributor for the Republican-friendly Fox News network, just weeks after announcing her departure from the Democratic party.
Fox on Tuesday confirmed Gabbard’s hiring for multiple media outlets after it was first reported on by the Los Angeles Times. Gabbard, a vocal critic of numerous progressive causes despite her prior political alignment, is scheduled to begin appearing on the network’s programs next week, the reports about her hiring at Fox added.
After winning her US House of Representatives seat in 2012, Gabbard became the first Samoan-American voting member and Hindu elected to Congress. But her views often clashed with the Democratic party’s. And in 2016, she announced she was leaving the party’s national committee to endorse Bernie Sanders for president instead of Hillary Clinton, who of course won the nomination at stake before losing to Donald Trump and the Republican forces backing him.
Meanwhile, Gabbard’s attitudes on foreign policy have often favored authoritarian figures disavowed by the Democrats.
On 11 October, she formally resigned from the party and called Democrats an “elitist cabal of warmongers”. She later appeared at a campaign rally supporting Republican congressman Lee Zeldin’s unsuccessful run to unseat New York’s Democratic gubernatorial incumbent Kathy Hochul during the 8 November midterms.
Updated
The Republican party of Harris county, Texas, which includes the city of Houston, has reportedly filed a lawsuit against local elections administrators over alleged voting issues that occurred on polling day for the 8 November congressional midterms.
County Democratic party chairperson Odus Evbagharu has issued a statement dismissing the suit as “political theater,” the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday.
According to the Chronicle, the Harris county Republican party’s attorney, Andy Taylor, alleged that double voting may have occurred and provisional ballots weren’t properly segregated when cast after 7pm in accordance with a court order that extended voting hours until 8pm.
The Republicans’ gubernatorial incumbent candidate, Greg Abbott, won re-election during the midterms. But ballots cast in Harris county favored Abbott’s Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, by a margin of about 104,000, before the latest Republican attempt to cast doubt about the integrity of voting in a jurisdiction that did not support their candidate.
The Harris county government’s judge – or top executive – Lena Hidalgo is a Democrat.
The day so far
Donald Trump may announce another presidential run tonight, but not everybody is happy about it. The former president’s brand appears to have suffered after his handpicked candidates performed poorly in last week’s midterm elections, though a poll indicates he still remains the most popular person in the Republican party.
Here’s what else has happened today:
Liz Cheney had the last word in a spat with Arizona’s defeated GOP governor candidate Kari Lake, but warned of the continued threat to democracy posed by many Republicans in Congress.
Rupert Murdoch is reportedly sick of Trump and may switch his allegiance to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a development that could have big implications for the ex-president’s new White House campaign.
Only a handful of House races remain uncalled, and the GOP is one seat away from winning control of the chamber. It’s possible one of several races in California could deliver Republicans a majority today, while more results are expected in a crucial Colorado race tomorrow.
Back to Lauren Boebert’s race for a moment. While the firebrand conservative Republican appears on track to win another term in the House, it’s going to be a narrow one, and few saw that coming.
Her western Colorado district has tended to vote Republican, and analysts viewed a victory by Democrat Adam Frisch as unlikely. The Wall Street Journal went to her district to figure out what was behind his unexpectedly stiff challenge. Here’s what they found:
Several supporters of Mr. Frisch, including voters registered unaffiliated and Republican, said that Mr. Frisch had won them over with his measured message, and that he has been more present than Ms. Boebert within the district. Some said they were deeply affected by the Jan. 6 attack, in which a mob of Trump supporters disrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential-election victory.
Mr. Frisch said he was fed up with extremism in politics when he began considering a run against Ms. Boebert last fall.
The former Aspen city councilman and onetime financial trader sat down and began to crunch numbers on the farthest right and farthest left politicians in the country. He discovered that Ms. Boebert, who won her 2020 race by six points, was the most vulnerable, with—as a point of comparison—a far narrower margin of victory than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.).
Mr. Frisch, 55, became convinced that it was possible for someone to build a coalition to beat Ms. Boebert, and his family urged him to get in the race.
Political analysts attributed Mr. Frisch’s surprise momentum to Ms. Boebert’s close alignment with Mr. Trump, her reputation for attention-getting statements and a general fatigue within her district of headlines about her. That left an opening for Mr. Frisch and grass-roots groups to cobble together an alliance of Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans to compete.
“If Lauren Boebert had been an ordinary Republican, this race would not be competitive,” said Laura Chapin, a Democratic political consultant in Denver.
Benjamin Stout, a spokesman for Ms. Boebert, said she outperformed other statewide Republicans within the district and said the majority of Republicans have stuck with her. He pointed to Mr. Frisch’s campaign as a conservative, emphasizing support for business and energy, as proof of support for Republican principles.
“He just copped her policies and ran on them,” Mr. Stout said.
Control of the House is potentially just one race call away from being decided – assuming the winner is a Republican.
The GOP has won 217 of the 218 seats needed to create a majority in Congress’ lower chamber, while Democrats have 205 seats. All it will take is one more victory for Republicans to retake the chamber for the first time since 2019. The question is: where?
An obvious choice would be Colorado’s third district, where Lauren Boebert, one of the chamber’s most controversial lawmakers, is in an unexpectedly stiff battle for re-election against Democrat Adam Frisch. There are only a few ballots left to count in this race, but according to Colorado Public Radio, don’t expect the outcome to be decided today: the next results won’t be published until Wednesday.
Based on this chart from the New York Times, that makes several uncalled races in California the best possibilities for learning today which party controls the House.
Updated
Nevada Republican Laxalt concedes Senate race
Republican Adam Laxalt has conceded Nevada’s Senate race and acknowledged his loss to Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Tim 4:7) pic.twitter.com/5lUGKKTcRK
— Adam Paul Laxalt (@AdamLaxalt) November 15, 2022
Cortez Masto’s victory in the race guarantees Joe Biden’s allies control of the Senate for another two years. However, election season isn’t quite over. On 6 December, voters in Georgia will cast ballots in a run-off election to determine whether Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock will return to the Senate, or be replaced by Republican Herschel Walker.
Updated
Donald Trump’s looming re-election bid has been hit a significant defection after the influential owner of Fox News reportedly told the former president he’s switched allegiances to Ron DeSantis, Mark Sweney reports:
Rupert Murdoch has reportedly warned Donald Trump his media empire will not back any attempt to return to the White House, as former supporters turn to the youthful Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
After the Republican party’s disappointing performance in the US midterm elections, in particular the poor showing by candidates backed by Trump, Murdoch’s rightwing media empire appears to be seeking a clean break from the former president’s damaged reputation and perceived waning political power.
Last week, Murdoch’s influential media empire, including right-leaning Fox News, his flagship paper the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, each rounded on Trump, calling him a loser and a flop responsible for dragging the Republicans into “one political fiasco after another”.
Updated
Here’s another tepid endorsement of Donald Trump from a Republican senator.
This time it’s John Cornyn of Texas, as per NBC News:
Senator Cornyn (R-TX) says he doesn’t expect Trump to be the GOP nominee for 2024, but if he is, Cornyn says he’ll support him
— Kate Santaliz (@kate_santaliz) November 15, 2022
Speaking at a Washington Post event today, Liz Cheney called voters’ rejection of candidates who deny the outcome of the 2020 election in last Tuesday’s election a victory for democracy:
.@RepLizCheney on the midterms: “We prevented people from taking office who had said they wouldn’t honor the outcomes of elections... What that really means is that in 2024, the American people will actually get to choose their president.” #PostLive pic.twitter.com/IJg3Gx7Gfl
— Washington Post Live (@PostLive) November 15, 2022
She also accused many of her fellow Republicans in Congress, particularly the party’s leaders, as having their head in the sand when it comes to standing up to Trump:
.@RepLizCheney tells @pkcapitol: “There are not enough members who fully recognize that as members of Congress... we can’t be bystanders… The inclination to try to be a bystander goes to the highest levels of the Republican leadership in the Senate… in the House it’s worse.” pic.twitter.com/jI1cKHtVkN
— Washington Post Live (@PostLive) November 15, 2022
This appearance is in some ways an exit interview for Cheney. She lost the Republican primary for her Wyoming House seat in August, and won’t return to Congress next year.
It’s not just the House where Republicans are performing poorly.
Last night, the Associated Press projected that Democrat Katie Hobbs triumphed over Trump-endorsed Republican Kari Lake in Arizona’s governor’s race.
It was a moment to savor for Liz Cheney, the conservative Republican House representative and Trump foe who ran television ads encouraging voters in Arizona to reject Lake. Last month, the Arizona Republican released a snarky letter in response to Cheney’s ads – but on Twitter, Cheney may well have had the last word:
You’re welcome, @KariLake. https://t.co/5jVFIprwxS
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) November 15, 2022
Donald Trump endorsed an extensive number of Republicans in House elections, and while ballots are still being counted, it appears that wasn’t always a good thing.
Writing in the Washington Post, Philip Wallach, a resident scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, finds Trump’s chosen Republicans underperformed in competitive House races:
In competitive House districts, Trump-endorsed Rs ran 7 pts worse than unendorsed, relative to expectations. Trumpy candidates cost the GOP much-needed seats, most likely including NC-13, OH-9, OH-13, PA-8, and WA-3. Maybe also MI-3, NH-1. Probably AK. https://t.co/EswljxQTBM
— Philip Wallach (@PhilipWallach) November 15, 2022
Here’s more of his argument:
We can put a number on it by seeing how Trump-supported candidates did relative to those Republicans he did not endorse. If we look at all 401 contests in which a single Democrat faced a single Republican, there is not much difference. Relative to baseline expectations derived from their districts’ recent voting patterns (as calculated by the Cook Partisan Voting Index), 144 Trump-endorsed candidates exceeded their baselines by an average of 1.52 points. In 257 races where Trump did not endorse a general-election candidate, Republicans exceeded their baseline by 1.46 points.
But that similarity is driven mainly by Trump’s endorsements of many Republicans cruising to easy reelection in uncompetitive districts. If we focus exclusively on districts where the margin of victory was less than 15 points, such that the seat was conceivably in the balance, the picture that emerges is quite different.
In these 114 districts, candidates bearing Trump endorsements underperformed their baseline by a whopping five points, while Republicans who were without Trump’s blessing overperformed their baseline by 2.2 points — a remarkable difference of more than seven points.
That said, the GOP is still on course to win a majority in the chamber – just not a particularly big one.
Updated
At least one Republican senator has already chosen their side in the rivalry between Trump and DeSantis.
Yesterday, Wyoming’s Cynthia Lummis said she regarded the Florida governor as leader of the Republican party, Politico reports:
!!! I asked Sen. Lummis if she will endorse Trump
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) November 14, 2022
"I don't think that's the right question. I think the question is who is the current leader of the Republican Party. Oh, I know who it is: Ron DeSantis"
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has more on the tensions within the Republican party over Donald Trump’s imminent announcement of a new campaign for the White House:
Donald Trump is expected to announce his 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday night as planned, according to multiple sources close to the former US president, inserting himself into the center of national politics as he attempts to box out potential rivals seeking the Republican nomination.
Trump will deliver at 9pm ET a speech from the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he recently hosted a subdued midterm elections watch party, and detail several policy goals that aides hope could become central themes of the presidential campaign.
Trump’s remarks were being finalized late into the night with a pair of speechwriters and his political team, the sources said, with aides keen for the former president to convey a degree of seriousness as he seeks voters to elevate him to a second term in the White House.
The political team at Mar-a-Lago are aware nonetheless that Trump has a penchant for veering off script and delivering news as he pleases, often fixating on grievances over debunked election fraud claims that have historically done him no favors.
Still, Trump appears to know that after the disappointing Republican results in the midterm elections, he is perhaps at his most politically vulnerable since the January 6 Capitol attack, and faces a critical moment to ensure he does not get discarded by the rest of the GOP.
After years with Donald Trump as the undisputed head of their party, many Republicans are grappling with the rise of Ron DeSantis and whether to switch their support to the Florida governor. The Guardian’s Chris McGreal takes a closer look at their rivalry:
Terri Burl was an early member of Women for Trump. As chair of her local Republican party branch in northern Wisconsin, she twice campaigned vigorously for his election in the key swing state. By the time Trump left office, Burl rated him the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. Maybe even better.
But now Burl has had enough.
She views the prospect of Trump announcing another run for the presidency – as he is expected to do in Florida on Tuesday evening – with trepidation. Burl predicts “a lot of blood on the floor” if it comes to a fight with rightwing Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination, and defeat in the 2024 election if the former US president is the candidate.
Donald Trump will at 9pm today make a “big announcement” – probably of another presidential campaign – at his Mar-a-Lago resort. If you’re a Republican, it will indeed be big.
The former president is at the center of an array of investigations by local and federal authorities and just had a number of his handpicked candidates rejected by voters in the midterms, but a poll released today shows he’s still the most popular man in the GOP.
If the primary were held today, 47% of Republicans and independents who lean towards the party would support Trump, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, who won a resounding reelection victory on Tuesday, would get 33% support. Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence would get only 5% support. No other candidates came close.
The figures underscore the durability of Trump’s appeal to Republican voters, despite all that has happened since he took over the GOP in 2016 and won the White House later that year. It also cuts into the idea that Republicans’ struggles in Tuesday’s vote are a sign of voters souring on his brand.
That said, the survey reinforces the belief that voters see DeSantis as an increasingly palatable alternative to Trump. He’s jumped in popularity since the most recent Morning Consult poll, when he was at 26% support. In that survey, Trump was at 48% support, just a point from where he is now.
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GOP on verge of claiming House majority, Trump set to enter fray
Good morning, US politics blog readers. As votes were being counted over the past week, Democrats have wondered if their surprising strength among voters could deal them an against-all-odds victory in the House of Representatives. We appear to be nearing the answer to that question: no. While it will surely be smaller than they hoped for, Republicans are closing in on winning a majority in Congress’ lower chamber for the first time since 2019. Their victory could be confirmed in the hours to come. Meanwhile, at 9pm eastern time, former president Donald Trump is scheduled to make an announcement that will likely be the start of a new presidential campaign.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Joe Biden appears to have wrapped up his day at the G20 in Indonesia, which may weigh in on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The House and Senate are in session, with the House Homeland Security Committee holding a hearing on global terrorism threats featuring FBI director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell will speak to reporters at 10 am eastern time.
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