The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the nationwide abortion protections established by Roe v. Wade instantly turned abortion access into a state-by-state issue. It also led to a flurry of ballot measures across the country in which voters were asked to decide whether their states should protect or restrict abortion rights. In the years since, voters have generally come down in favor of protecting abortion rights.

That trend got another test this year due to abortion-related measures in four states. 

In Idaho, voters rejected a measure that would have overturned their state’s strict abortion restrictions and established a right to reproductive freedom and privacy, including abortion until fetal viability. The initiative’s failure means Idaho will not join the ranks of red states where voters used ballot measures to expand abortion rights. 

One of those red states is Missouri, where voters approved a measure in 2024 that struck down some of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws. On Tuesday, voters rejected a Republican-backed measure that would have repealed that 2024 amendment and allowed strict abortion restrictions to be put back into place. That same failed measure would also have created new limits on gender-affirming care in the state. 

Voters in two other states that already have relatively permissive laws around abortion access  — Nevada and Virginia — approved measures that will enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions, a step that will make it much harder to restrict access in the future.

The winners in four of the remaining House races were declared by the Associated Press on Friday morning, with Republicans claiming three seats.

Anthony Constantino was named the winner in New York’s 21st District, which covers large rural areas in the northeast corner of the state. Jeff Hurd won reelection to a second term representing Colorado’s Third District. Mark Lamb, a former sheriff, was elected in Arizona’s Fifth District. 

On the Democratic side, Scott Wiener was elected in California’s 11th District, the Bay Area seat being vacated by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

Just 22 of the 435 seats in the House remain undecided.

Facing intense political backlash over the U.S. war with Iran following the historic drubbing Republicans took from Democrats in this week’s midterm elections, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a defiant five-and-a-half-minute video to social media on Thursday afternoon, defending the war and dismissing a House effort to impeach him.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina who had called on President Trump to fire Hegseth, responded to the embattled defense secretary in a post on X.

“@PeteHegseth, cabinet secretaries shouldn’t be wasting taxpayer dollars on campaign style videos. Kristi Noem learned that the hard way,” Tillis wrote. “This is about you: the incompetence you’ve displayed, the bad advice you’ve given to president, and your shameful and embarassing episodes from firing our top generals to texting war plans to reporters.”

President Trump reiterated his support for data centers on Friday, suggesting that newly elected Democrats who campaigned against them are missing a financial opportunity.

“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,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “They are GOLD, and only foolish leadership will say ‘NO’ to the riches they bring!”

Democrats in several states have promised to ban or restrict data centers, sending AI-related stocks tumbling amid fears that the industry will face more regulation and scrutiny when they take office.

Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa pledged on Thursday to place an immediate moratorium on new data center construction when she’s sworn in next year.

“It is not that I hate data centers,” Hinojosa told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I hate the way they are taking advantage of Texas, and that stops when I’m governor.”

James Talarico’s campaign manager has spoken about one of the Democratic Party’s marquee midterm election victories.

Talarico defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton to become the first Texas Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate since 1988.

His campaign had an “aggressive” earned-media strategy, Talarico’s campaign manager Seth Krasne said in an interview posted by C-SPAN on X, because “most Texans” didn’t know who he was prior to the election cycle.

“Most Texans didn’t know who James was and we had to introduce him to 31 million people,” Krasne said. “So we knew we had to do everything. We couldn’t take anything for granted; we couldn’t write anyone off.”

Krasne said the campaign targeted social media in particular so that voters could get to know the Democratic candidate.

“People are on social media all the time,” he said. “They know things about celebrities and they want to know their elected officials. We spent probably $100 million on paid media in this election.”

In October, the New York Times reported that of 1,189 TikTok posts about the Texas Senate race collected over a 24-hour period in September, 70% of the videos were focused on Talarico.

Just two gubernatorial races are left to be called: Alaska and Kansas.

In Kansas, results are close, with 99% of the vote counted.

Democrat Cindy Holscher has 50.3% of the vote, while Republican Ty Masterson has 49.7%, according to Associated Press figures.

Since 1940, Kansas has voted Republican in every presidential election but one — Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 landslide. But it has elected two Democratic women governors in recent years: Kathleen Sebelius (2003-2009) and term-limited incumbent Laura Kelly (2019-2027).

The week before Election Day, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved its Kansas rating from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.”

In Alaska, three Republicans and a Democrat are running to replace Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

Democratic candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins is currently leading, with 49.1% of the vote, with 74% of the vote counted. Republican Bernadette Wilson is in second, with 29.2% of the vote, with fellow GOP candidates Dave Bronson and Treg Taylor further behind.

Nithya Raman has spoken about her unexpected victory in the Los Angeles mayoral race over incumbent Karen Bass.

Raman, a little-known Los Angeles City Council member backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, ran a campaign focused on addressing homelessness, housing costs and change at City Hall.

Raman, who has frequently been compared to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, said she had found it “deeply moving” that the city had elected an immigrant.

“I’m an immigrant to this country and this is a city of immigrants in so many ways,” she said Thursday night in Los Angeles. “Whether they came from across America or whether they came from across the world, this city has opened its arms to people to come and build their dreams here.

“And the idea that Angelenos voted for an immigrant to be their next mayor at this moment in American history is so deeply moving to me.”

Raman will become the first Indian American to lead America’s second-largest city.

In Mississippi, the race remains too tight to call, with Democrats hoping for their first Senate victory in the state since 1982.

The latest results, as of 6 a.m. ET Friday, from the Associated Press show Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has 48.9% of the vote, while Democratic challenger Scott Colom has 49% — a gap of 1,813 votes with 96% of the ballot counted.

Both sides have said they are doing everything they can to ensure a fair vote count.

Asked on Wednesday if he was preparing any potential litigation, Colom said at a news conference: “We’re prepared to litigate, though. We were prepared for this for months. We have an army of lawyers. We have local lawyers. We have everybody involved to make sure the process is followed according to the law.”

A post to Hyde-Smith’s X account on Thursday said she remained confident of winning. “Election officials are continuing the normal process of counting outstanding ballots, including absentee ballots,” she said. “They must have the time to complete that work and ensure every lawful ballot is accurately counted and every Mississippian’s voice is heard.”

The NAACP has also said in a statement it has deployed national legal, policy, and field staff to the state to “ensure every eligible vote is counted.”

Mississippi’s Secretary of State Michael Watson said Wednesday there were 3,600 outstanding absentee-by-mail ballots that must be received within five business days and an unknown number of affidavit ballots that will be processed within the 10-day window that counties have to certify their results.

Global stocks tumbled Friday amid a tech sell-off as markets digested Democrats taking sweeping control of Congress.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 5.5% Thursday, wiping out around $2.2 trillion in market value. On Friday, Japan’s Nikkei slumped 6%, its deepest one-day drop since April 2025. European stocks also fell on Friday, with losses across the board.

The declines followed a resounding Democratic midterm election victory that has stoked concerns that investment in AI will slow amid potentially tighter regulations around data centers in the U.S.

Voters delivered a blow to data center development in the midterms, siding against it in 40 of the 41 local ballot measures, according to Ballotpedia.

And, where data centers did not appear on the ballot, voters leaned toward candidates who had openly pushed back against data center development.

In Texas, for example, Democratic Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has said the state will introduce laws around data centers to protect residents.

“Data centers have moved into mostly rural communities, and there are no rules and laws to protect Texans,” she told CNN on Thursday. “We will have laws to protect Texans, and we need to stop what we are doing with data centers until we have those protections.”

In a CNBC poll, 56% of voters identified data centers as a crucial or major factor in their vote.

Republicans have less than two months left in power before the new, Democrat-led Congress is sworn in and their window of unified control in Washington, D.C., comes to an end. Even as the votes are still being counted, GOP leaders have been putting together plans for what they hope to accomplish before they lose power.

The period between the November election and the day in early January when new lawmakers are sworn in, often called the “lame duck” session, can be quite productive as lawmakers move with urgency to get things done while they still can.

Some of the most notable actions taken by Congress in modern history — the legislative response to the Watergate scandal, the Clinton impeachment, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and several Supreme Court confirmations — all happened during various lame-duck windows.

Yahoo’s Mike Bebernes takes a look at what congressional Republicans want to do and some of the possible curveballs that could derail their plans.

Democrats have secured a majority in the House already — but 25 races remain uncalled, which will determine the size of their overall majority.

In the most recent confirmed results on Thursday night, Republicans had two successes, securing wins in Washington’s Fourth District and Utah’s Fourth District.

Elsewhere, Democrat Cait Conley’s defeat over two-term Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in New York’s highly competitive 17th District was confirmed by the Associated Press. Lawler had already conceded defeat to Conley.

Currently, Democrats have 253 seats to Republicans’ 157.

All eyes have been on Alaska for the past two days as votes are slowly tallied in the state’s Senate race. As of Thursday evening, Democrat Mary Peltola was leading Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan by just over 600 votes, with 74% of votes tallied. 

But having only a quarter of the vote left uncounted does not necessarily mean a decision is imminent. That’s because Alaska uses ranked choice voting, a system that allows voters to list each of the four candidates on the ballot in order of preference.

Under ranked choice voting, any candidate who gets more than 50% of the vote in the first count is declared the winner. If no one breaks that threshold, then the person with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated. Voters who picked the eliminated candidate will have their votes transferred to their next-highest-ranked candidate who remains in the race. The process repeats until one candidate receives more than 50% of the votes remaining in the count.

At the moment, it appears that neither Peltola nor Sullivan will break 50%, which means the race could come down to ranked choice votes. The rub is that Alaska law doesn’t allow the state to begin tabulating ranked choice results until 15 days after Election Day. So if all the votes are counted and no one gets more than half, the race will remain in limbo until at least Nov. 18.

The same goes for Alaska’s gubernatorial race, where Democratic candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins holds a substantial lead but may not be able to reach 50% either. 

Before Election Day, America’s leading political prognosticators converged around a consensus forecast for the U.S. House: Democrats were going to win back control, but their new majority was likely to max out at around 235 to 240 seats. Even the most bullish among them put the odds of a 255-plus-seat majority at 10%.

But Democrats have beaten expectations. So far, they’ve amassed 253 seats in the House, sweeping every toss-up and winning almost half of the “lean” and “likely” Republican races too.

How big could their new majority get? Right now, the AP shows Democratic candidates leading by narrow margins in seven outstanding House races — and trailing by similar margins in another 16.

Those numbers suggest Democrats could reach at least 260 seats by the time the dust settles. If they do, it will be their largest majority since the early 1990s.

Democrat Ruben Gallego of Arizona told reporters on Thursday that some of the candidates his party put on the state’s ballot to effectively serve as placeholders ended up winning races they never imagined they could win. 

“We won in districts that we didn’t know existed,” he said. “We actually had to call up some of our friends that put up sacrificial lambs and tell them that they won.

“One of them remarked, ‘What are you talking about? That was not the plan,'” he added.

Though some races are still undecided, Arizona Democrats appear to be on track to hold majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature for the first time in 60 years.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar announced on Thursday in a letter to colleagues that he’s throwing his hat in the ring for House majority whip.

“With a Democratic majority, we’ll have the tools to rein in this out-of-control administration and investigate the agencies, officials and corporations that have been making life harder and more expensive for our communities,” the California Democrat wrote. “I look forward to working with each of you to deliver on our affordability agenda.”

House majority whip is the third-highest ranking position in the party’s House leadership, behind the House speaker and the majority leader.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York announced his candidacy for speaker, while Katherine Clark of Massachusetts announced her bid for majority leader.

Aguilar, Jeffries and Clark have no challengers at the moment.

With Democrats soon to have clear majorities in the House and Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer, the leader of the chamber’s Democratic caucus, said on Thursday that the party will not allow President Trump to put “a right-winger” on the Supreme Court once it assumes power.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Schumer — who is expected to again become Senate majority leader next year — would not say if he would hold a Supreme Court vacancy open until the next presidential election like former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did in 2016. (If there’s a vacancy before Democrats formally take control of the Senate in January, Trump could nominate — and the GOP could confirm — a replacement while Republicans still have a majority.)

But Schumer did say that Democrats are “not going to allow any crappy nominees” to be confirmed to the nation’s highest court while Trump is in office.

“The bottom line is we’re not going to allow a right-winger on the court,” Schumer said.

Democrats have officially won 251 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press. It’s well beyond the 218 needed to secure a majority in the chamber, and final votes are still being counted.

It’s part of the massive blue wave from Tuesday’s midterm elections, with Democrats so far flipping 41 seats.

The majority is the largest in the House since the 2008 election, when Democrats won 257 seats.

Nithya Raman, a democratic socialist, has defeated embattled incumbent Karen Bass in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, according to the Associated Press. Bass’s single term was marked by the fallout from the deadly Palisades and Eaton Fires in 2025.

Bass conceded to Raman on Thursday, writing in a statement that serving as the mayor of L.A. “has been the honor of my life.”

“Four years ago, you elected me as the first Black woman mayor in the history of Los Angeles,” Bass said. “You gave me the honor of serving the city that raised me, and every single day since, I have carried that responsibility with me.”

Raman’s campaign focused on addressing homelessness, housing costs and change at City Hall.

The city council member defeated Spencer Pratt, a Republican and former reality TV personality, in June’s nonpartisan primary.

Raman, the first Indian American to lead Los Angeles, will also prepare the city to host the 2028 Olympics.

The Mississippi Senate race remains a nail-biter and too close to call. On Thursday afternoon, Democratic candidate Scott Colom expanded his narrow lead over Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Colom was leading Hyde-Smith by 1,724 votes as of 12:45 p.m. ET, according to the Associated Press.

Colom has 49% of the vote, while Hyde-Smith has 48.9% of the vote. So far, 96% of the votes have been counted.

Alaska’s Senate race remains uncalled as of Thursday morning as the state continues to count mail-in ballots. Democrat Mary Peltola currently leads incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by 637 votes, according to the Associated Press.

Alaska uses ranked choice voting, which means the state’s elections require a candidate to earn a majority of votes to win. If no candidate has a majority of voter support, the last-ranked candidate is eliminated and Alaska is allowed to hold an instant runoff, which would take place on Nov. 18 in this case.

Voters who ranked the eliminated candidate first have their vote counted for their second choice. This continues until one candidate receives the majority of the vote.

President Trump on Thursday said Sullivan would “easily” win the Alaska Senate race if he were given the votes from the other candidate on the ballot with nearly the same name, Daniel J. Sullivan, a former teacher.

“The vote totals for the Fake Dan Sullivan, plus the other ‘slug’ that the Dems put on the Ballot, should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan, and the Election is over – He easily wins. There is no other fair solution!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

The Justice Department has accused Peltola’s campaign of ballot stacking to potentially confuse voters and siphon away votes from the Republican incumbent.

Peltola has denied being aware of the alleged scheme. “I knew nothing about any other candidates on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about,” Peltola said during an October campaign rally.

Democrats, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, have also repeatedly denied involvement in any campaign scheme. Dan J. Sullivan has also long denied he was recruited to participate in the alleged scheme.