Democrats blast Trump’s decision to make Stephen Miller his chief of staff as president defends picking loyal ‘MVP’ - as it happened

This concludes our live coverage of the second and final Trump administration at the end of a momentous week. We leave you with the news: The elevation of Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s brutal and unpopular mass deportation agenda, to White House chief of staff suggests that the president has no intention of rolling back the crackdown, even after voters delivered a sweeping rebuke by electing Democrats to every House seat along the US border with Mexico.

While Trump’s hardline supporters were thrilled, there was bipartisan dismay at the news. “Stephen Miller belongs nowhere near the Oval Office,”the NAACP president said. “He belongs before a judge. He’s a thug who will be remembered as the architect of Trump’s vile and authoritarian regime.” Republican congressman Marlin Stutzman, who said on Wednesday, “I think Stephen Miller should be fired this morning”, told Semafor appointing Miller was a “horrible decision.” Senator Chris Murphy was released from a hospital on Friday following treatment for a stroke and plans to spend several weeks at a rehabilitation center as he works to recover, the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement.

Multiple reporters said that the phrase “wartime consigliere” had been used by the White House to describe Miller, which is a reference to what a close adviser to mafia boss is called in The Godfather. The phrase has been used repeatedly in recent years by people close to Trump to describe what he is looking for in a right-hand man, who will use slash-and-burn tactics to defend him at all costs.

As social networks continue to fill with anger at the selection of Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff, the White House released a taxpayer-funded ad to promote the Trump aide, in the form of a hype video starring the man himself posted on official government social media accounts.

The Associated Press reports that the US secret service said a suspect has been taken into custody and charged after officers found him in a vehicle near the White House with multiple guns, claiming he heard voices in his head telling him to kill Donald Trump.

The arrest Thursday night happened after secret service officers approached a man “acting suspicious” in a parked car, according to a Homeland Security statement. US officials said the suspect – identified as Ronny Yordrix Guanipa Chrinos – went on to describe voices in his head that were telling him to come to the nation’s capital and kill the Republican president.

Progressive Democrat Aisha Wahab has been re-elected to Congress to represent California’s 14th congressional district, defeating fellow Democrat Melissa Hernandez, for a House seat formerly held by Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April over sexual misconduct allegations he has denied.

Wahab, a former California state senator, previously won a special election to serve out the rest of Swalwell’s term in August, when she also beat Hernandez, the president of the board of directors for the Bay Area Rapid Transit agency. After his speech in Florida on Friday, a reporter asked Donald Trump about a phrase White House officials are using to explain his choice of Stephen Miller as his new chief of staff.

“Mr President, there’s people describing Stephen Miller as your ‘wartime consigliere’ – do you agree with that characterization?” the reporter asked. “Well, he’s a great fighter,” Trump replied. “He’s been with me right from the beginning, 2015, he was with me from before 2016, 2015, and he’s very loyal, smart, does a great job.

He’s been an MVP every year. He’s been just great. So we’re very happy with him – and he’s gotten great reviews.” That final remark was perhaps an indication of just how cloistered the president is, given that there has been widespread anger at dismay at his choice of Miller from Democrats and some Republicans, but the White House issued a press release on the appointment which claimed “The news was met with widespread praise”, followed by quotes lauding Miller from five dozen current and former administration officials, Republican lawmakers and pundits.

Multiple reporters said that the phrase “wartime consigliere” had been used to describe Miller by White House sources on Friday, which is a reference to what a close adviser to mafia boss is called in The Godfather. The phrase has been used repeatedly in recent years by people close to Trump to describe what he is looking for in a right-hand man, who will use slash-and-burn tactics to defend him at all costs.

In 2020, Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida at the time who was later Trump’s first choice to be attorney general in his second term, told the New York Times that Trump’s choice of Mark Meadows as his fourth White House chief of staff was “a great move” since “he’s a great wartime consigliere and we’re heading into election season.” In 2023, as Trump faced multiple criminal investigations, Steve Bannon described his legal adviser Boris Epshteyn as “a wartime consigliere.” The role Trump seems to be looking to fill is one that was first played in his life by Roy Cohn, his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had been a top aide to senator Joseph McCarthy during investigations into supposed communist infiltration of the US government in the 1950s.

It was Cohn who had first advised Trump in 1973 to respond to the federal government’s allegation that Trump and his father had violated laws against racial discrimination in housing by refusing to rent to Black tenants, by going on the offensive and countersuing the government for $100bn.

In 2017, when the support for Trump’s campaign from the Russian government was under investigation, Trump was enraged that his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, decided to recuse himself instead of undermining the probe. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” the president reportedly asked aides.

On Tuesday, voters resoundingly rebuked Donald Trump and his brutal mass deportation campaign that sent military tanks and masked agents though residential streets. But on Friday, the president doubled down. He named Stephen Miller – the architect of the administration’s most aggressive immigration policies – as his chief of staff.

It was never likely that Trump – who rose to political prominence on the promise that he would expel immigrants en masse from the US – would dampen his agenda, even after voters rejected Republican candidates up and down the ballot, near and far from the southern border, in blue and deep-red states.

But the elevation of Miller – a zealous, anti-immigrant crusader who has been by Trump’s side since the president’s first term – is an ominous signal that the deportation machine that Trump has built up over the past two years will be driving ahead at full speed.

Miller more than any single other person is responsible for unleashing a series of violent immigration raids across US cities this year and last, for sending hordes of masked agents in military gear through residential streets to round up undocumented immigrants.

He has pushed the administration to all but shut down legal immigration as well. In his previous roles – as a deputy chief of staff and policy adviser – he has stuck close to Trump’s side and stoked the president’s most extreme instincts. “The elevation of Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff signals a doubling down on the administration’s cruelest impulses,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, the co-chief executive of Raíces, a Texas-based humanitarian aid and immigration services non-profit.

“Miller’s promotion guarantees an acceleration of mass deportations and of brute force unleashed within our neighborhoods.” After immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a nurse, amid immigration raids in Minneapolis, it was Miller, according to the Wall Street Journal, who raised the idea that Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to send in military troops.

The US Department of Justice moved on Friday to dismiss the lawsuit it brought against the state of California, in which it sought to keep roughly 20,000 ballots it alleged went to noncitizens from being counted. The supreme court ruled against the Trump administration on Monday, after several lower courts sided with California officials, who argued the federal government was seeking to interfere in state-run elections.

The request to dismiss the case comes three days after the final votes were cast in the midterm elections and about a week before a scheduled hearing where a special master would have been asked to evaluate the accuracy of the list provided by the federal government.

California officials argued that the list is out of date and includes legitimate voters — a sentiment that the federal judge presiding over the case echoed in his blistering order denying the federal government’s request. Democrat Nancy Lacore won her party’s 254th seat in the House, defeating Republican Jenny Costa Honeycutt in the race to replace Republican Nancy Mace in representing South Carolina’s first congressional district.

Lacore is a former Navy vice admiral who served as chief of the Navy Reserve before she was fired last year without explanation by the former Fox News weekend host Donald Trump chose as defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. Lacore’s victory ensures that the Democrats will have at least 254 seats in the next Congress, with 19 races still to be called, nine of which are led by Democrats.

Republican have currently won 162 seats. Mace chose to run for governor instead of re-election to the House, but finished a distant fifth in the Republican primary in June before starting a podcast, Get Maced, that she recently used to promote the racist conspiracy theory that “Radical Islam Is CONQUERING America From Within”.

Reading aloud from prepared remarks to NASA officials at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Friday, Donald Trump ran through a list of what he called evidence that Americans were “the greatest pioneers explorers, inventors and innovators who ever lived.” “America is the nation that dreamed and created the modern world,” Trump said, peering at a teleprompter from beneath a USA cap.

“We laid the railroads, harnessed electricity and invented the lightbulb, the telephone, the airplane, the assembly line, the television, the microchip, the personal computer, the internet, GPS, the smartphone, and almost every other thing- think of it – almost every other thing that’s worth mentioning.” He then looked out at the audience and veered off-script to comment: “That’s a cool list, though, when you think, huh?

How about a little piece of each of them? Wouldn’t that be nice? You wouldn’t be sitting here right now. You’d be someplace else.” The president then returned to his prepared remarks, looking back at the teleprompter and saying: “We charted the human genome to cure diseases,” but stumbled badly over the word “genome” which he pronounced “guh-nome”.

Despite Trump’s attempt to claim that the US deserves credit for sequencing all the DNA in human chromosomes, the Human Genome Project was, in fact, the work of an international network of geneticists. The president made the flub minutes after boasting about the fact that his uncle, John Trump, had been a long-tenured professor at MIT.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that his uncle’s intelligence and scientific knowledge was passed on to him through his genes, giving him an innate understanding of complex scientific questions, from the novel coronavirus that caused a global pandemic in 2020 to nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump, remarkably, gave yet another speech on Friday, delivering remarks at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida in his official capacity as president, which were, nonetheless, threaded through with partisan political talking points.

The president emerged to the theme tune from his rallies, God Bless the USA, and mimed dancing, before starting his speech by celebrating the victories of two Florida Republicans, Byron Donalds, the governor-elect, and senator Ashley Moody. The pair were the only two candidates Trump rallied for in the past month who won competitive races.

He then praised members of his administration who were present, singling out the US ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, for “the way you took on, the Cubans”. Waltz was recently engaged in a spat with a Cuban official at the UN which played on heavy rotation on Fox News, the president’s window on the world.

Trump then suggested that he was glad that the US stock market plunged after the Republican wipeout at the ballot box, on fears that companies building AI data centers might not be as free to push ahead with regulation by a Democratic Congress. “Yesterday, you know, our country lost $3 trillion, all because of an election,” Trump said.

“If we were to gain $3 trillion, I probably would have been more unhappy. But you know what that means; that means that they thought somebody else did well in an election.” “By the way, I was not on the ballot, just in case you had any question,” he added. “Because if we were on the ballot, we would’ve won but we weren’t.” Senator Chris Murphy was released from a hospital on Friday following treatment for a stroke and plans to spend several weeks at a rehabilitation center as he works to recover, the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement.

“Thank you for the outpouring of support my family and I have received over the last few days,” Murphy said. “I want to be direct with you, so here is my diagnosis. Last Saturday afternoon, I felt something was not right with my body and called 9-1-1 out of an abundance of caution, and I’m glad I did.

I was diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of my brain.” “The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far. In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today,” he continued.

The senator also released a statement from Dr Jose Suarez, the chief of neurosciences critical care at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. “Senator Murphy experienced a small hemorrhagic stroke. He has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” the doctor said.

The morning after the midterm wave that swept away dozens of his colleagues, congressman Marlin Stutzman, an Indiana Republican who held his seat, told voters that Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda was a major factor, and called on the president to fire its architect, Stephen Miller.

“The press ran with it, the Democrats ran with it, and it looked bad on us – the deportation effort,” Stutzman said on Wednesday. “President Obama deported more illegals than what President Trump has. But you know what? he didn’t he didn’t go out and talk about it the way that, you know, we did.

I mean, frankly, I think Stephen Miller should be fired this morning. I mean, there needs to be some changs at hte White House.” Asked by Semafor on Friday what he made of Trump’s decision to not fire but promote Miller, Stutzman told the outlet it was a “horrible decision.” Several newly elected Democrats and Senator Bernie Sanders have renewed calls for datacenter moratoriums in the days after the US midterm elections.

The sweeping Democratic victory, which was buoyed in part by backlash to the tech industry, has added momentum to efforts to slow down the multi-trillion-dollar buildout of the controversial facilities. On the social media platform X, Sanders posted a call for an immediate national datacenter moratorium this week.

“Americans don’t want Big Tech oligarchs wrecking the environment, gutting jobs and threatening humanity’s future,” Sanders said on Wednesday. Sanders was joined by several Democrats, including Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona – a state where Elon Musk’s SpaceX has proposed a datacenter project that would span more than 700 acres.

“Top of the Democratic agenda on day 1 needs to be a pause on advanced AI development, regulation of this out of control industry, and a ban on artificial superintelligence,” Ansari posted Wednesday on X. Musk mocked her post in a retweet, and the two sparred, with Ansari forecasting congressional hearings, telling the centi-billionaire: “See you soon.” The pushback to the buildout of datacenters, which tech companies need to power the AI products that have become central to their businesses, was one of the most visible issues of the midterms.

Opposition to datacenters figured heavily in campaigns across the US, while voters passed dozens of local ballot measures aimed at restricting datacenter projects in their states. Add congressman Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, to the ranks of those deeply alarmed at Donald Trump naming Stephen Miller his new White House chief of staff.

“Trump’s elevation of Stephen Miller doubles down on the politics of hatred, lawlessness, and failure that the American people soundly rejected three days ago,” Beyer said in a statement. He continued: “Stephen Miller is the architect of Trump’s immigration policies that plunged quiet American communities into violence.

At Miller’s direction, peaceful, law-abiding people have been seized from their families and imprisoned or deported for minor civil offenses, and American citizens who protested these actions have been beaten up and even killed by masked paramilitary thugs. Miller is also the ‘brains’ behind the illegal, extrajudicial murders of people in the Caribbean and the Pacific, many of whom may have done nothing wrong.

He frequently promised in 2024 that Trump would focus on the economy and avoid new wars, and then became an ardent defender of Trump’s foolish, unpopular attacks on Iran and other countries. “Stephen Miller embodies the worst elements of the Trump presidency. His promotion shows that Trump has learned nothing from his electoral debacle and has no intention of even trying to work constructively with the next Congress.

But Trump and his Republican allies who continue to embrace the politics of hate, division, and chaos are wildly out of step with what the American people want, and they will keep suffering more defeats until they listen.” Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Donald Trump’s first term, and wrote in an anonymous, 2018 New York Times Op-Ed article that he was “working diligently from within” the Trump administration “to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” has weighed in on the danger of a White House run by Stephen Miller.

Taylor, who later resigned to join the ranks of anti-Trump Republican memoirists and podcasters, warned on Friday: I spent two years working with Stephen Miller. His appointment as White House chief of staff is among the most dangerous personnel decisions in the history of our republic.

I say that without reservation. Republican congressman Mark Harris has narrowly won reelection to House in North Carolina’s eighth congressional district, defeating Democrat Colby Watson by just over 5,000 votes. Democrats have won nine House seats in North Carolina so far, to just one for Republicans, with four races still too close to call, including one in which a Democrat leads a Republican incumbent by just 99 votes.

The elevation of Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s brutal and unpopular mass deportation agenda, to White House chief of staff suggests that the president has no intention of rolling back the crackdown, even after voters delivered a sweeping rebuke by electing Democrats to every House seat along the US border with Mexico.

Miller’s appointment has been widely condemned by Democrats, and some Republicans, but the man himself said in a statement that he is “honored beyond words” to run the White House. “President Trump is the most transformative political leader in American History — and he has single-handedly saved America from those who would destroy it,” Miller said, referring to the incoming Democratic majority in both houses of Congress in typically extreme fashion.

“The mission now is more clear than ever: Fight with all of our soul to support our President and defend this magnificent Republic,” Miller added, in a clear signal that the final two years of Trump’s presidency will pit a maximally combative White House against Congress.

The NAACP’s president, Derrick Johnson, has this to say about the elevation of Stephen Miller, a longtime promoter of white nationalism, to the role of White House chief of staff: “Stephen Miller belongs nowhere near the Oval Office. He belongs before a judge.

He’s a thug who will be remembered as the architect of Trump’s vile and authoritarian regime.” Pete Hegseth, the embattled former Fox weekend anchor turned US defense secretary who could face an impeachment vote as soon as next week, was quick to praise new White House chief of staff Stephen Miller on social media, posting a meme of the two men together, with the caption “Stand.

Fight. Defend the Republic.” Hegseth tagged both Miller and the White House on X, Elon Musk’s rebranded, rightwing Twitter, to make sure they were aware of his post. Hegseth, who appears to be leading a coordinated social-media campaign to save his job, used the same caption for a previous post on Thursday, which featured images of himself and one of Donald Trump raising his fist moments after surviving an assassination attempt in 2024.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, quickly followed with a post welcoming Miller’s appointment as a supporter of the so-called Make America Health Again movement. “Next to me, Stephen Miller is the strongest MAHA supporter in the administration,” Kennedy wrote.

“It’s time to unleash the Kraken.” Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump’s fiercest allies and architect of the administration’s hardline deportation agenda, will now be the White House chief of staff. The role is a promotion for Miller, who currently serves as an adviser.

Trump said that Miller will start the job on Monday 9 November, less than a week after Republicans’ crushing defeat in the midterm elections. Wiles will now take a role in Trump’s political operation, which includes his Super Pac Maga Inc. On social media, she said that serving the president has been “the honor of a lifetime”.

Wiles has been in the president’s orbit for over a decade, and prior to her role at the White House, she managed, alongside Chris LaCivita, Trump’s winning 2024 presidential campaign. Trump later told reporters that he decided to promote Miller because he “wanted to make a change”.

He praised Wiles, and said that Miller had been by his side “from the beginning”. “Sometimes in life you have to make moves,” the president said. Meanwhile, Democrats blasted Trump’s decision, after Republicans faced a drubbing in the midterm elections. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said that the president “learned nothing from his historic defeat”, and Congressman Robert Garcia – poised to be the chair of the House oversight committee – advised Miller to “lawyer up”.

Garcia said that in the majority, Democrats on his panel will “continue to investigate [Stephen] Miller for his misconduct, and we will fight against his hateful policies in Congress and the courts”. As Donald Trump traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida today, he told reporters that he wants Stephen Miller to “run things well” as the new White House chief of staff.

When asked what prompted Miller’s promotion, the president said that he “wanted to make a change”. “Susie [Wiles] has done a very good job, Stephen’s been great, and we gotta make moves,” Trump said. “Sometimes in life you have to make moves.” “Stephen’s been with me from the beginning, he gets it, very good politically … a very good manager,” Trump said on his decision to pick Miller for the top job.

Miller is also traveling with Trump to Florida for the president’s remarks at the Kennedy Space Center later today. Against the backdrop of Susie Wiles’ departure from the White House, it’s worth noting that Calley Means, a former senior adviser to health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr who resigned just weeks before the US midterms, said that Wiles is the most “powerful chief of staff in modern American history” who has “taken a stranglehold on policy decisions”.

Means, an architect’s of the administration’s Make America Healthy Again (Maha) agenda, claimed that Wiles’ former work as a lobbyist at Ballard partners had compromised her support for various policies, particularly his proposals to make children’s diets healthier, in order to still receive financial boosts throughout the election cycle.

“Susie said to me many times: ‘We need money for the midterms, Calley. We need money for the midterms,’” Means said on a two-hour episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast. “It is absolutely true that [Trump’s] administration has been infiltrated by the very people that he energized voters to say he would get out of DC,” Means told Rogan.

“Everything in the political strategy was based on getting enough money for the midterms, not actually doing the things that would then energize voters enough.” Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who is poised to become the next US House speaker when Democrats retake the majority in the new year, called Stephen Miller “a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands”.

Jeffries added: “His [Miller’s] presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor. Fire him today.” Representative Robert Garcia, who is poised to be the chair of the House oversight committee in the next Congress, said that his panel will “continue to investigate [Stephen] Miller for his misconduct, and we will fight against his hateful policies in Congress and the courts”, following Miller’s elevation to White House chief of staff.

“Stephen Miller should lawyer up,” the congressman said in a statement. Several Democratic lawmakers have blasted Donald Trump’s decision to appoint one of his most controversial advisers as White House chief of staff. Stephen Miller, one of the president’s pugnacious aides who crafted the administration’s hardline immigration policy agenda, is already a vocal spokesperson for the Trump White House.

Many Democrats point out that his promotion is another “sign of Trump’s contempt for the voters”, following the Republican drubbing in the midterm elections this week. The party is set to take control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in either of Trump’s terms.

“In the aftermath of an election that was a repudiation of Trump’s corruption, wars, cruelty, and indifference to the economic pain of Americans, it’s another kick in the teeth to the American people,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said that the president “learned nothing from his historic defeat”.

“Stephen Miller is the architect of the most barbaric, inhumane policies of this administration,” Schumer said. “Trump couldn’t have made a worse choice. Our Democratic majorities will fight him every step of the way.” Democrats on the House committee for homeland security added to the chorus, calling Miller a “vile, hate-filled extremist who has made cruelty his life’s work”.

“America just rejected the fear and bigotry he peddles and Trump handed him a promotion. They have learned nothing,” the ranking members wrote on social media. Susie Wiles said on social media that today (Friday 6 November) would be her last day on the job. “Serving President Trump in the White House has been the honor of a lifetime,” she wrote in a post on X.

“I’m so proud to have been a part of what we’ve accomplished together from securing our border and cutting taxes to strengthening our economy and putting America First.” She added: “While my role may be changing, my commitment to the president and the mission never will.” Wiles has been in the president’s orbit for over a decade, and prior to her role at the White House, she managed, alongside Chris LaCivita, Trump’s winning 2024 presidential campaign.

Susie Wiles is the latest Trump ally to leave the administration. While the chief of staff role is not a Senate-confirmed position, the person (arguably) has the closest proximity to the president. Wiles’ departure comes after Karoline Leavitt, the former White House press secretary left her role in August.

Her successor Katie Zacharia only lasted five days before being ousted after a disastrous debut media briefing. Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump’s fiercest allies and architect of the administration’s deportation agenda, will now be the White House chief of staff.

The role is a promotion for Miller, who currently serves as an adviser. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Miller will start the job on Monday 9 November, less than a week after Republicans’ crushing defeat in the midterm elections. Susie Wiles, the current White House chief of staff, will now move to the president’s political operation, which includes the Trump aligned Super Pac, Maga Inc.

The president said that Wiles had done an “outstanding job” in the role. 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.

Following the Democratic tidal wave in this week’s midterm elections, Jonathan Freedland hosted a live panel to look at what happens next – for Donald Trump, the Republicans who might want to succeed him, and for Democrats looking ahead to 2028. 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.

As 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. Donald Trump will begin the day in Washington today. He has closed door meetings for much of the day, and will take part in a Diwali celebration at the White House at 1:30pm ET.

While that’s currently not open to the press we’ll let you know if that opens up. Trump will then head to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for remarks at the Kennedy Space Center at 6pm ET. We’ll bring you the latest as that gets going. The US jobs report shows that employers added 165,000 jobs in October – a significant increase, defying expectations.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate saw a slight drop to 4.1%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is set to release the latest US jobs report at 8.30am ET today. Analysts have predicted a slight increase in October job numbers, while predicting that unemployment will stay around 4.2%.

A reminder that the last report before the midterm elections saw US employers add only 29,000 jobs in September, a sharp drop from August’s gains, and unemployment rose slightly. We’ll bring you the latest as we learn more. European stock markets have fallen sharply as a rout in US tech stocks spread across the Atlantic, after the Democrats’ midterms victory sparked fears of a slowdown in the AI industry.

A sell-off on Wall Street on Thursday was followed by sharp falls in Asian stocks markets on Friday morning. The investor sentiment then reached London, where the market is poised for its worst day since March. The FTSE 100 index, which tracks blue-chip shares listed in London, was down 207 points, or 1.9%, at 10,575 points in mid-morning trading.

Germany’s Dax index fell by 1.9% in morning trading, France’s Cac 40 dropped by 1.5% and Spain’s Ibex lost 1.1%. Susannah Streeter, the chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, said: “The tech sell-off has intensified, with the pain of the brutal sell-off on Wall Street carried straight through to Asia and knocking sentiment in Europe.

“Big worries are colliding – the build-out of datacentres looks set to slow, which risks shredding the spending spree underpinning the boom, right at the time that investors have become super nervous about returns on this massive investment.” Read more: Meanwhile, Donald Trump has issued a statement on his Truth Social app calling on US states to embrace artificial intelligence (AI), or “superintelligence” as he prefers to call it, arguing that those which attract AI companies, data centres and investment stand to become enormously wealthy.

As my colleague Graeme Wearden writes, global markets have been rattled by a Wall Street selloff in AI-related stocks, amid concerns that the prospect of tighter regulation following the US midterm elections could add to worries over the sector’s mounting debt and spending.

Trump wrote: As President, I am 100% in favor of Super Intelligence (SI), and will work with the many States in the U.S. that want to become RICH by having them. They are GOLD, and only foolish leadership will say “NO” to the riches they bring!” His comments followed an earlier all-caps post in which he declared: I JUST WASN’T ON THE BALLOT.

IF I WERE, WE WOULD HAVE WON IN A LANDSLIDE!” The post-midterms market rout has been particularly painful for Elon Musk. Musk (who put $446m of support into Republican campaigns), has lost around $113bn of wealth in the last two days. This is because his two largest companies have both been badly hit in the sell-off.

Tesla fell 3.34% on Wednesday, as investors reacted to the Democrats’ electoral success, then 10.7% on Thursday. Musk owns 17.7% of the carmaker. SpaceX lost 3.8% on Wednesday, then 9% yesterday – which also hurt Musk as he owns 10.3% of it. In total, Musk’s paper wealth fell by $33.5bn on Wednesday, and then by another $79.7bn yesterday, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

Despite this, Musk is still the world’s richest person with a paper wealth of $785bn, more than double Jeff Bezos in second place with $370bn. For the latest economic and financial news, you can follow our live blog here: Tuesday night’s explosive rout of the Republican party was supercharged by the fury of Hispanic Americans who turned out in record numbers in key battlegrounds to protest the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant assault on their communities.

“Trump went against us,” said Benny Melendez from Weslaco, Texas. “He made us the target of ICE operations, so we decided to punish him by voting against his party. That’s what happened.” Melendez, the owner of a small housebuilding company in south Texas, voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election two years ago, attracted by his promise to secure the Mexican border and improve the economy.

But on Tuesday, he cast his vote for the Democrats in a display of pure anger. Two of his cousins and up to 15 of his building workers have been picked up and deported to Mexico by ICE. When Melendez voted for Trump in 2024 he expected the immigration raids would focus on those with criminal records, he said, not his relatives and employees.

“They’re taking our neighbors. They’re taking our friends. They’re they’re taking our workers, and they’re taking our family members. This is an attack against our community.” Melendez’s rage, replicated in the millions across Texas, Florida and other critical swing states, itself tells a story.

It speaks to how Trump first wooed, and then alienated, the backing of many Latino voters, effectively shooting himself in the foot. Read more: Following a difficult set of midterm results for the Republican party, Donald Trump has spent much of this week talking up his renovation projects in Washington.

Thursday brought the first official action of his post-midterms presidency – a proclamation designating the gold-adorned Oval Office and Cabinet Room as a national monument. Here’s the signing: With the dust still settling on the midterms, attention is already turning to the Republicans who might seek to lead the party into the next presidential race in 2028.

JD Vance, Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis are among those in the mix, as the Republican party begins to reckon with the fallout from its midterms performance. In this report, my colleague Ariana Baio looks at the early jockeying, the potential contenders and what the midterm results could mean for the party’s future: Welcome to our live coverage of the US midterm elections – here are some of the latest key developments.

A number of closely watched contests in the midterms are still to be called, including the final two US Senate races – in Mississippi and Alaska. The Democratic candidates are hoping to oust Republican incumbents to bolster their new majority in Congress. Right now, Democrats have a 106-seat majority in Congress as we await final results.

Democrats flipped another eight House seats, strengthening their majority in the lower chamber. Democrats are now leading Republicans 253 to 157, with 25 races left to call, as a number of GOP representatives felt the weight of the blue wave that has swept their party out of power.

Republicans held on to two House seats in the west as congressman Mike Kennedy won re-election in Utah and Amanda McKinney won in Washington. Democratic socialist Nithya Raman was elected to serve as the mayor of Los Angeles, eking out a narrow win over incumbent Karen Bass, in a major shake-up in local politics that reflects the growing dissatisfaction with the direction of the city.

The progressive urban planner had served on LA’s city council since 2020. Harmeet Dhillon, a key Trump ally, resigned from her position leading the justice department’s Civil Rights division. Attorney general Todd Blanche said he accepted her notice. Dhillon is the first high-ranking justice department official to leave after the midterm elections.

Democrats are expected to use their power in taking control of Congress to aggressively investigate executive agencies, including the justice department. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic senator-elect in Michigan, said the new majority in the upper chamber needed “action” from their leader.

On the campaign trail El-Sayed refused to back Senator Chuck Schumer, who currently serves as the minority leader. Speaking to CNN, El-Sayed reiterated that Senator Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat, would be an “amazing Senate majority leader”, but didn’t completely rule out supporting Schumer.

Joining the chorus of Republicans who blasted their party’s midterms performance is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who said the GOP were handed an “ass-kicking” in losing control of Congress. “It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election, it was a Watergate-level repudiation,” he said on his podcast.

The Nasdaq share index had its worst day in 19 months after slumping 5.5% on Thursday amid growing signs the artificial intelligence industry will face tougher regulation because of the midterm results. Donald Trump signed a proclamation that preserves the Oval Office and Cabinet Room as national monuments in his first official action after the Republican wipeout.