Scott Colom leading Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in razor-thin race; president’s ally Jason Reding Quiñones steps down
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Democratic candidate Scott Colom speaks to the media at a diner in Jackson, Mississippi. Photograph: Edgar Su/ReutersView image in fullscreenDemocratic candidate Scott Colom speaks to the media at a diner in Jackson, Mississippi. Photograph: Edgar Su/ReutersFrom 2h agoAs of 11:56am ET, Colom has received 466,959 votes, while his opponent, Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith has received 465,023, according to the Associated Press.
On Thursday night, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson said that 6,936 affidavit ballots have now been processed, with roughly 80% of them accepted.
He said that there are roughly 3,300 absentee mail-in ballots still out.
After Democrats secured several historic statewide wins in Texas in the midterm elections, Houston mayor John Whitmire, is one of the first local officials to announce a policy shift amid the Lone Star state’s blue wave.
At a press conference Friday, Whitmire announced an executive order that says Houston police will now limit their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during routine traffic stops.
Officers in the country’s fourth-largest city will no longer alert ICE about if they stop an unauthorized migrant.
Whitmire said that federal agents will only be notified when an immigrant poses “a danger”, not “those that are going about their family business, work and education”.
He added there would also be no contact with ICE “over nonviolent, non-jailable offenses”.
“You write a citation or you warn them and they go about their way,” the mayor said.
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Houston sparked backlash after an ICE officer struck a man with a car in October. The agent was subsquently indicted by a grand jury last month.
In July an ICE officer also fatally shot a Mexican homebuilder in Houston, and Whitmire called for an independent investigation of federal authorities’ action.
The relationship between local police and federal immigration enforcement has been a flashpoint of contention in several Democratic-run cities throughout the US, after Trump administration deputized several local police to carry out immigration enforcement across the country.
Houston has often been caught in the cross-hairs when Greg Abbott, the incumbent Republican governor who lost his bid for a fourth-term this week to Democrat Gina Hinojosa, threatened to withhold funding to Houston if the city’s police officers did not hold those wanted for ICE beyond the time it takes to complete a traffic stop.
My colleague David Smith joined him, along with Tara Setmayer, a co-founder and CEO of the Seneca project; the Guardian’s global editor, Devika Bhat; Adam Smith, a professor of US politics and political history at the University of Oxford; and the clinical psychologist, author and political commentator Mary Trump.
1:01:51As of 11:56am ET, Colom has received 466,959 votes, while his opponent, Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith has received 465,023, according to the Associated Press.
On Thursday night, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson said that 6,936 affidavit ballots have now been processed, with roughly 80% of them accepted.
He said that there are roughly 3,300 absentee mail-in ballots still out.
Acton, the governor-elect of Ohio, said on Friday that she has “no intention” of speaking to her Republican opponent, Ramaswamy, after his campaign aired an attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother.
“I have no intention of speaking to him,” Acton said. “I do believe that leaders’ words matter, and we need to hold folks accountable.”
Acton said that Ramaswamy running the ad “was a terrible and despicable thing to do, and I think he did it because they were struggling in their campaign.”
At this time, Democrats hold 253 seats in the House, and Republicans hold 160.
There are 22 House seats that have not yet been called.
Republican Mark Lamb has been elected to represent Arizona’s 5th House district.
The Associated Press called the race at 11.25am ET this morning. Lamb, who was backed by Trump, defeated Democrat Elizabeth Lee.
He will succeed Representative Andy Biggs.
Weiner has been elected to represent California’s 11th Congressional District.
The Associated Press called the race at 11:25am ET this morning. He will fill the seat held by Pelosi, who is retiring from Congress at the end of the year.
Republican Anthony Constantino has won the race for New York’s 21st Congressional District.
The Associated Press declared Constantino the winner at 11:23 am ET. He defeated Democrat Blake Gendebien.
Constantino will replace Republican Representative Elise Stefanik.
The Associated Press has called the race for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, declaring Republican incumbent Jeff Hurd the winner.
Hurd was first elected to the House in 2024.
The AP declared Hurd the winner at 11:24 am ET.
Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, has come out in support of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, amid threats of impeachment from some congressional lawmakers.
“Pete Hegseth is a ROCK SOLID patriot” Zeldin said on Friday morning. Hegseth, he claimee, has “selflessly lived his life willing to sacrifice everything in defense of the rest of us.”
“Our nation is made stronger by Pete’s continued service” his statement added.
It comes as Hegseth appears likely to face a congressional impeachment effort in the coming weeks following the midterm elections, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have increasingly criticized his leadership decisions, including his decision to purge top generals, and his handling of the Iran war.
In a post on social media this week, Republican Representative Thomas Massie said: “There is one contingency in which I won’t reintroduce the articles of impeachment: Hegseth resigns.”
On Thursday, Trump defended Hegseth and said that he was doing a “fantastic job”. Hegseth also released a video this week dismissing the impeachment effort.
Jason Reding Quiñones, a fierce ally of Donald Trump and the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has resigned from the justice department.
He announced his departure on social media, thanking Donald Trump for his “trust”. The outgoing prosecutor notably launched an investigation into intelligence officials who launched an inquiry into how Russia boosted Trump in the 2016 presidential election. This despite the fact that ex-FBI and intelligence officials were investigated and effectively exonerated by two special counsels and a Republican-led Senate panel.
Quiñones’ departure comes just a day after Todd Blanche, the attorney general, announced that Harmeet Dhillon, the justice department lawyer who led the Civil Rights division, had resigned. Dhillon was the first high-ranking justice department official to leave after the midterm elections in which Democrats took control of Congress. Democrats are expected to use that power to aggressively investigate executive agencies, including the justice department.
A federal judge in the early hours of Friday blocked any construction work from beginning on Donald Trump’s towering triumphal arch for 14 days, a major setback for one of the president’s most prominent projects in his vision to remake the nation’s capital.
The temporary restraining order was issued by US district judge Tanya Chutkan in a Washington DC court that has regularly proved to be a thorn in the US president’s side, such as in previous cases involving election subversion and the January 6 insurrection by Trump supporters.
The new ruling followed a series of steps taken on Thursday by the government, including the final approval of the 250ft-high (76 meter) arch by the National Capital Planning Commission in an 8-4 vote after a nine-hour hearing where dozens of witnesses opposed the construction.
The arch is one of several projects around Washington that Trump has undertaken as he remakes the city, from renovating one of its storied public golf courses to threatening to demolish the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Those projects could soon face greater scrutiny after the Democrats gained control of Congress.
Democrat Scott Colom, a district attorney, is leading Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by a little more than 1,800 votes in the shockingly competitive US Senate race in Mississippi.
As of now 96% of the vote has been counted, but the Associated Press has yet to call the contest. Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by, and received within five business days of the election. This means we might not get the final result until early next week.
If Colom wins, it would be an astonishing defeat of a senator who is serving her first full-term, in a state where a Democrat hasn’t won a US Senate seat since 1982. Colom would also be the first Black senator from Mississippi since the Reconstruction Era, after the Civil War. Trump won the Magnolia state by 22 points in 2024.
Today, our team of Guardian political reporters will also be answering your questions about the historic blue wave that swept through these midterm elections.
We’ll dig in to how Democrats managed to pull off this seismic win for control of Congress, and what’s next for the party and for Donald Trump.
Submit your questions and join us from noon ET.
Flávio Bolsonaro, the far-right politician who lost Brazil’s presidential election last month, has insisted his defeat is not “the end for Brazil” as he battles to maintain political relevance after fleeing to the US.
Bolsonaro absconded early last week shortly after losing the 25 October election to the leftwing incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by more than 4m votes.
On Thursday night Bolsonaro made his first major public appearance since arriving in the US, speaking at a rightwing gathering at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property where he claimed “great things” were still to come.
“I know this wasn’t the end for Brazil and I know it wasn’t the end for America,” Bolsonaro, 45, told a gala dinner at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)’s four-day “gathering of visionaries” event, where the former British prime minister Liz Truss is also due to speak.
“Even when what seems like the end isn’t what we’d hoped for, we must thank God and have even more faith that this isn’t yet the end,” he added. “No one shuts the door that he opens – and the door he shuts, no one opens.”
Earlier, in his first post-election interview, Bolsonaro made a series of unsubstantiated claims about election fraud and insisted he received “help from absolutely no one” to flee.
“It was all me,” Bolsonaro told the New York Times, contradicting reports that he was helped by the Trump adviser Jason Miller and Santiago Caputo, a close aide to Argentina’s rightwing president, Javier Milei.
He said he would “take to the grave” the full story of how he had fled Brazil, where he faces federal police investigations for money laundering and corruption. Bolsonaro is a member of congress who has held elected office for more than 20 years but he will lose parliamentary immunity early next year when his term ends, meaning he could then be prosecuted.
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