Here's the latest
• Cabinet shake-up: Stephen Miller will replace Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff. It comes after President Donald Trump voiced fury at the strategy that led to Republicans’ catastrophic midterm losses, per people familiar with the matter. Trump has signaled he will make more personnel shuffles.
• Blue wave: Democrats are on the verge of exceeding the 257 House seats at the start of Barack Obama’s presidency and the 258 at the start of Bill Clinton’s tenure.
• Outstanding races: Votes are still being counted in Mississippi and Alaska, where Senate races remain too close to call. Democratic candidates are leading slightly in both of the contests.
Updates
(9)Van Hollen says "no coronation" for next Senate Democratic leader
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said today that there should be “no coronation” of the chamber’s next Democratic leader after the party’s sweeping gains in the midterms.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has expressed confidence that he will be reelected as majority leader. But several incoming Senate Democrats have vowed not to support him, and Van Hollen’s comments show not every returning member is immediately onboard.
The mention of Schumer’s name drew boos inside the ballroom at Crooked Con.
Looking to the coming days, Van Hollen said it was “really important that people withhold commitments” until they can speak to newly elected Senate Democrats and learn lessons from them. The Maryland Democrat said his highest priority was understanding how the party will use its new power in the Senate to end the war in Iran.
"Monumental": Incoming Georgia officials reflect slate of Black women winning statewide
Democrats’ massive wins in the midterms delivered a historic milestone in Georgia, where a slate of Black women led by Gov.-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms will soon occupy seven of the state’s top eight executive offices.
Joining CNN’s Victor Blackwell this morning in a joint interview with Attorney General-elect Tanya Miller, incoming Secretary of State Penny Brown Reynolds called the outcome “monumental.”
But Miller added that the women won their races by focusing on competence, not identity. “We ran on qualifications. We ran on policy ideas.”
President Donald Trump has repeatedly berated female reporters of color and targeted prominent Black women in positions of power for scrutiny, like Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Reynolds said the pair of Georgia executives “will be the Secretary of State and Attorney General long after Donald Trump is gone. And so he has another two years to go. His concerns about us is irrelevant to us.”
Following midterms losses, Iran's hardliners want Trump to pay a steeper price to end war
Iranian hardliners who believe Tehran has already emerged victorious in its war with the United States are seizing on President Donald Trump’s midterm losses to demand that he pay a steeper price for an exit from the conflict: a “new world order” that favors the Islamic Republic.
The influential group of conservatives intensified their rhetoric this week, publicly demanding that Washington not be offered compromises in ongoing negotiations.
After the midterm elections saw Trump’s Republican Party suffer a major defeat, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei warned in a message Wednesday against the “slightest inclination towards submission” – a caution hardliners believe was directed to Iran’s negotiators.
Trump acknowledged in a call with Fox News that the war in Iran was partly to blame for the Republicans’ midterm losses but Vice President JD Vance was more explicit, saying in a lengthy X post Wednesday that “the reason we lost is the war.”
Those admissions appear to have galvanized Iranian hardliners with conservative politicians and media outlets celebrating Trump’s midterm loss as a win for Iran. A hardline outlet, Raja News, published a column saying the US should not be given a “way out” before it “pays the price” for attacking Iran, and Trump should not be allowed to “escape with a rushed agreement.”
How data centers played a role in the Democrats' historic midterms victory
As the dust settled on Election Night, Democratic operatives working to elect James Talarico were surprised by the breadth of his victory across Texas’ 254 counties. But even then, one area stood out.
Kaufman County, southeast of Dallas, is the site of two massive data center projects that have sparked local backlash. The largest city in the county, Forney, is already working to outlaw new data centers within its city limits.
The solidly red county was one of 55 counties where a pro-Talarico super PAC, Lone Star Rising PAC, targeted voters within 5 miles of a proposed or approved data center project. The PAC sent them a series of mail pieces and digital ads blaming the project on the Republican nominee, Ken Paxton.
Talarico carried Kaufman County by 1 percentage point as he notched a striking 12-point victory statewide, helping lead Democrats to statewide victory in Texas for the first time since 1994.
It was one of many examples where backlash to data centers fueled Democrats’ staggering victories in the midterms. From statewide races to local ballot initiatives, voters demonstrated sweeping support for a tougher stance toward data centers, if not outright opposition to their continued development.
About a quarter of voters said AI and data centers were “crucial” to their vote in the midterms, trailing higher priorities such as the cost of living and corruption, according to CNN’s Voter Poll. But when voters were asked about building data centers in their communities, they were overwhelmingly opposed by a roughly 3-to-1 margin.
Read more on this in our full article here.
Where things stand in the Mississippi and Alaska Senate races that remain too close to call
Vote counting continues in Mississippi and Alaska, with their Senate races too early for CNN to call.
Here are the latest developments in these states:
Mississippi
CNN Sightline rates the Mississippi Senate race as neutral, with the contest too close to call. Democratic candidate Scott Colom has grown his narrow lead over Republican candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Several Mississippi-based organizations Friday called for greater transparency in the state’s ongoing ballot-counting process, saying they had run into issues with counties over how much of the work is supposed to be open to the public.
Meanwhile elections expert David Becker said the ongoing ballot-counting process in Mississippi is “entirely normal,” and “exactly what we would expect to see.”
Colom maintains that he is 100% confident he will become the state’s senator-elect, because outstanding ballots are in Democratic-leaning counties.
Earlier, the chairman of the Mississippi’s Republican Party claimed there are still thousands of affidavit ballots left to be counted, arguing that Hyde-Smith has plenty of time to take the lead.
Alaska
In Alaska, Sightline favors Democrat Mary Peltola, who has a very slight edge over Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan.
Days before the midterms, federal prosecutors ordered Gerald Heikes, a longshot Senate hopeful in Alaska, to appear before a grand jury with any records he has related to political groups and other candidates in the race, according to documents reviewed by CNN.
The subpoena was sent as part of an accelerating criminal probe into whether operatives aligned with Peltola sought to recruit spoilers into the race – including another candidate who shares a name with the sitting Republican senator.
The Department of Justice declined to comment for this story. Peltola has denied any knowledge of efforts to recruit other candidates.
CNN’s Tori B. Powell, August Phillips, Rebekah Reiss and Curt Devine contributed reporting.
A look at other departures during Trump's second term
President Donald Trump says he expects to make more changes to his Cabinet, after announcing yesterday that Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, would be departing her role.
Wiles’ departure came the same day Trump voiced fury at the strategy that led to Republicans decisively losing majorities in Congress in the midterms, sources said.
Here’s a look at other significant departures that have taken place during Trump’s second term:
- Abigail Slater, who ran the antitrust division for the Justice Department, was forced out by the Trump administration in February, sources told CNN. Slater was known to be pushing the administration to be aggressive on tech companies, whose leaders often have the ear of Trump.
- Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired in March amid growing scrutiny over her conduct, including her alleged romantic relationship with her chief adviser, distribution of her department’s cash and her conflicting accounts over fatal incidents involving federal immigration agents.
- Weeks later, Joe Kent, who had been serving as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced he was stepping down from his post, citing misgivings about the administration’s war with Iran.
- In early April, Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired. Trump had been frustrated with Bondi on multiple fronts, sources said, including her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and that she had not investigated or prosecuted enough of his political opponents.
- Also in April, it was announced that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer was stepping down from the Trump administration amid an internal investigation into possible misconduct.
- In August, Trump announced that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt would be leaving her role to spend more time with her family.
- Leavitt’s replacement Katie Zacharia was fired in October after five days amid several missteps and near-universal backlash to her performance. Her first press conference was described by officials as unusual, awkward, stilted and, at times, uncomfortable.
- Also in October, Kimberly Guilfoyle, the US ambassador to Greece, was forced out of her job by the White House following a string of reports about alleged misconduct.
CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo, Kaitlan Collins, Priscilla Alvarez, Kristen Holmes, Annie Grayer, Lauren Fox, Zachary Cohen, Hannah Rabinowitz, Alicia Wallace, Betsy Klein, Alayna Treene, Kit Maher, Kylie Atwood, Jennifer Hansler and Kevin Liptak contributed to this reporting.
Miller is Trump's 6th chief of staff in less than 6 years as president
President Donald Trump is moving on to his sixth chief of staff in less than six years as president after replacing Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller.
Wiles holds the record for longest tenure, at less than one year and 22 months. And the position has seen some rather interesting times:
- Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, logged the shortest tenure ever for a non-interim chief of staff, at a little more than six months. He resigned shortly after new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci called him a “f**king paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac” in an unguarded New Yorker interview and said Priebus would be “asked to resign very shortly.”
- Trump’s second chief of staff, John Kelly, was supposed to impose order on a chaotic operation but failed to do so. After leaving the White House, he called Trump a fascist.
- No. 3, Mick Mulvaney, served more than a year in the position – but never with the full job title, always as the “acting” chief of staff. And he took the job despite having called Trump a “terrible human being” during the 2016 campaign. After the 2020 election, Mulvaney as a private citizen wrote an infamous op-ed in which he assured Trump would gracefully accept defeat. (Trump did not.)
- No. 4, Mark Meadows, has been indicted in both Arizona and Georgia for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He pleaded not guilty.
- Wiles in 2025 delivered a remarkably unvarnished series of interviews to Vanity Fair which seemed to confirm many of the worst narratives about the Trump White House.
Here's some reaction to Trump's appointment of Miller as his new chief of staff
Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, is departing the role and will be replaced by Stephen Miller, a longtime aide to President Donald Trump who orchestrated his hardline immigration agenda.
The move, which came three days after Republicans suffered catastrophic losses in the midterm elections, will take effect Monday.
Miller, currently a deputy chief of staff who has been the mastermind behind some of Trump’s most polarizing priorities, has widened his portfolio over the past year to include wide swaths of domestic policy and has advocated for an expansive view of executive power. He has long been viewed as one of Trump’s most influential advisers.
Stephen Miller, longtime aide to President Donald Trump and architect of the administration’s immigration agenda, will become the White House chief of staff. Miller is set to replace Susie Wiles, who is departing the role days after the catastrophic losses for Republicans in the midterm elections. CNN Anchor and Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins report
What Trump has said about the staffing shakeup:
- More Cabinet changes to come: Trump signaled Wiles’ replacement will not be the last, telling CBS News “I do” when asked if he intended to fire people. “I think they’re good, but I’ll be doing maybe a few changes. I don’t want to mention who,” he said.
- Timing of the decision: Speaking to reporters, Trump said his chief of staff’s departure was “not because of the election.” He said: “It’s just time. Sometimes you change,” he said.
- Defending Miller’s appointment: “Stephen’s been with me from beginning. He gets it, very good politically, and he’s a very good man,” Trump said, while also praising Wiles for having done a “great job.”
Here’s what lawmakers and observers think about Miller’s appointment:
Rep. Robert Garcia: The ranking Member on the House Oversight Committee said in a statement that “Stephen Miller should lawyer up,” adding that “Oversight Democrats will continue to investigate Miller for his misconduct, and we will fight against his hateful policies in Congress and the courts.”
Former Trump administration adviser Olivia Troye: She told CNN she believes Miller is Trump’s “toughest bulldog.” Troye also described Miller as someone who’s loyal and “actually feared.”
Sen. Thom Tillis: The outgoing Republican senator slammed the appointment, calling it a “colossal mistake” and “the worst of all possible choices.” Tillis has been among a small number of Senate Republicans willing to publicly split with the White House. He has clashed directly with Trump and has been sharply critical of Miller in the past.
Georgia Governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms: The Democrat said it is “deeply disappointing” that Trump would elevate Miller, someone who she said “has been so divisive and has been behind so many of the policies that have impacted negatively Americans.”
CNN’s Annie Grayer, Alejandra Jaramillo, Rebekah Reiss and Tori B. Powell contributed reporting.
The blue wave swept Democratic governors into office in several key states
CNN is monitoring 12 key governor’s races. So far, winners have been projected in 10.
Republicans are projected to win one, while Democrats are currently projected to win nine, according to CNN’s Decision Desk.
The projected Democratic victories include flips of the governor’s office in Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Ohio and Nevada.
Correction: A previous version of this post misstated the percentage of projected Democratic governorships after the midterms. CNN has projected 10 key gubernatorial races so far.
