White House warns incoming House Oversight chair it ‘will not be extorted’

Senate Democrats will hold their leadership elections on December 1, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

House Democrats are expected to hold their leadership elections next week.

The elections will be conducted by secret ballot.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, offered a strong rebuke of the White House counsel’s letter alleging that some of the California Democrat’s forthcoming investigations may be crossing a line and even amount to illegal action.

The response comes as House Democrats are preparing to unfurl a series of investigations targeting the president, his administration and their connections to various corporations.

The work will be undertaken by several congressional committees, but the House Oversight Committee is likely to be the tip of the investigative spear for Democrats.

“The American people voted overwhelmingly for us to pass laws to root out corruption and abuse. The Trump Administration continues to weaponize the government with threats of unconstitutional attacks on Congress. We are a co-equal branch of government and will not be deterred by baseless threats from a weaponized DOJ or from the President’s lawyers,” Garcia said.

Democrat Raymond Smith will flip North Carolina’s 3rd district, CNN’s Decision Desk projects.

He will unseat GOP Rep. Greg Murphy, who has held the seat since 2019.

Smith took a narrow 293-vote lead Tuesday after provisional ballots were counted, and while the race is likely to end close enough that Murphy could request a recount, he conceded the race Wednesday and his chief of staff confirmed to CNN he would not call for one.

Smith is an Army veteran and educator who ran on issues like affordability and strengthening public education.

His win is part of a blue wave this midterm election cycle, with Democrats regaining control of the House of Representatives and Senate. CNN projected on election night that Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s popular former Democratic governor, would win the state’s open Senate seat.

Rep. Robert Garcia gives remarks to media outside the House Democratic Caucus meeting in the Longworth House office building in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

The White House has warned the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee that the Trump administration “will not be extorted” as it cautions against forthcoming congressional investigations.

“The Trump Administration expects members of Congress to discharge their investigative functions within settled constitutional limits,” said the White House letter to Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, which was obtained by CNN and dated Monday. According to a source familiar with the matter, however, Garcia has not received the letter from the White House.

The letter signed by White House counsel Will Scharf also states that threatening executive branch officials to discourage them from public service could amount to “blatant criminality.”

Scharf goes on to say that congressional investigations “must further a legitimate legislative task” and “Congress cannot employ them to exercise powers of criminal prosecution assigned to the Executive and the Judiciary.”

Garcia has vowed to take an “aggressive” oversight approach, despite Trump pushing his administration to look into Democrats who are investigating him. As the midterm results became clear last week, Garcia posted on X: “LAWYER UP.”

“The days of us not fighting back are over. This idea that we’re every single time not going to actually take on that fight is over. We’ve got to be in the fight and be aggressive,” Garcia told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” over the weekend.

The California Democrat accused Attorney General Todd Blanche of “threatening” lawmakers on the panel with investigations in an attempt to stop them from conducting oversight, adding, “they can come after us however they want. We’re not going to be intimidated.”

This post has been updated with additional information. CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed to this report.

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US-bound migrants in Mexico hopeful after US midterm results - despite US warnings

A migrant caravan of about 2,000 people left Mexico’s city of Tapachula, with some members of the caravan bound for the US. Some migrants hope the recent Democratic midterm win will ease US border controls imposed by President Donald Trump. But the US is warning that its immigration policies have not changed.

0:54 • Source: CNN

US-bound migrants in Mexico hopeful after US midterm results - despite US warnings

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Hundreds of people from South and Central America are walking from southern Mexico to the north of the country, in the hope that the historic Democratic win in last week’s midterms means that US border controls are eased.

The people are walking despite the fact that, two days after Election Day, the American Embassy in El Salvador posted a stern reminder on social media:

House Republicans were divided after Rep. Jim Jordan, a Trump ally and firebrand, emerged as the winner of a closed-door meeting to vote on the next leader of their conference.

Rep. David Joyce said he talked to both Jordan and Scalise before Tuesday’s leadership election and warned, “we can’t double down on stupid” when asked what message was sent with the ascendance of Jordan and Stephen Miller into powerful roles. Miller is the new White House Chief of Staff.

“What happened to us was a message clear and very loud that people don’t like the way we’re been moving in the wrong direction, and you can’t lie to people about the things that they feel,” he said, urging Republicans to “create a plan of action to move forward.”

Asked if he voted for Jordan to be GOP leader, Joyce responded, “I support the ticket has been elected.”

Rep. Tom McClintock of California said he was “ecstatic” after Jordan’s win.

Asked if he was ok with Jordan aligning himself with Trump, McClintock responded, “my loyalty’s never been to an individual; it’s always been to the principles of the American founding, which are also the principles of the Republican Party. We’ve always done best when we’ve adhered to those principles.”

Rep. Brian Mast said he thought Jordan was “our best messenger.”

“If you look at our conference; we’re a significantly more conservative conference than what we were coming into this, and I think if you look at that, you’re going to see us push our conservative values,” he told CNN.

Democrats lost a vote on Tuesday night that would have triggered an impeachment vote on Pete Hegseth because, in part, several of their own members were stuck in traffic.

But Democrats have pointed out that they would have lost the vote anyways, even if those members did make it to the floor for the vote.

Because Republicans control the floor, they could have held open the vote as long as possible for their own members — some of whom also missed the vote — to arrive.

Another vote later on Tuesday night proved that Republicans did have members in town who missed the first vote. The final vote, if all those members had made it to the floor, however, would have still failed 216 to 215.

Only one Republican — Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie who introduced impeachment articles against Hegseth — voted in favor of advancing the impeachment vote.

Both parties had been initially expecting more GOP defections after last week’s midterm election losses.

As soon as this year’s winners are sworn in, roughly 75% of all Americans will have Democratic governors — a shakeup that reflects the party’s dominance in the nation’s most populous states and could have a seismic impact on everything from redistricting and the Electoral College to health care and tax policies, education funding and more.

At least 28 states will now have Democratic governors. It will be 29 if Democratic state Sen. Cindy Holscher wins the still-uncalled race in Kansas — extending for a third term the party’s governorship of a state that votes reliably red in presidential races.

Alaska, where votes are still being counted, could become the 30th Democratic win.

Democrats also won several key downballot statewide offices and gained hundreds of seats in state legislative chambers across the country.

Democrats will hold the governor’s offices in 13 of the 14 most populated states — including Texas, the biggest prize of all in the 2026 midterm elections. In addition to the Lone Star State, Democrats also flipped the GOP-held governorships in Georgia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada — and could soon add Alaska to that list.

Republicans retain the job in just one big state: Florida. After that, the next-largest states with Republican governors, by population, are Tennessee, Indiana and Missouri.

Read more about the scope of the Democrats’ wins here.

The House of Representatives voted yesterday evening to send an effort to impeach Pete Hegseth to committee, effectively killing the movement to oust the defense secretary before the end of the year.

The vote was 211-204. While Republicans will still be in charge of both chambers until the new Congress is sworn in January, Democrats in part gave House GOP leaders a window to sideline the impeachment effort due to absences. Eleven House Democrats did not vote on the measure, more than the seven-vote margin.

Some of the Democrats were unable to be there due to a traffic incident. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, was in San Francisco for a Veterans Day event.

Seven House Republicans also did not vote on the measure which was led by GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky – the only Republican member to vote against tabling the measure.

Here’s an overview of how the votes went. Red dots represent Republican votes, blue dots represent Democrat votes, and the yellow dot represents independent California Rep. Kevin Kiley.

You can see the full list of names here.

64% of CNN poll respondents are 'taking more of a wait-and-see attitude' as to who will be next into the White House.

If the 2026 midterms were an opportunity for voters to express their feelings about President Donald Trump’s administration, the election in two years will be their first opportunity to cast a vote for president without his name on the ballot.

Trump is constitutionally barred from running again, which means, as the lame duck portion of his presidency comes into view, it’s not too early to start thinking about who might replace him.

A little more than half of Americans, 54%, have given at least some thought to the coming presidential race, according to a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS in the month before the midterm election. Fewer, 40%, said they’re looking forward to it, with 27% saying they’re dreading it and the rest expressing neither outlook.

About a third of Americans, 35%, said there’s a specific candidate they’d like to see run, compared to 64% who are taking more of a wait-and-see attitude.

No major candidate has yet declared a campaign, although the first of those could come sooner than many people think.

Read more about the poll here and see who the potential 2028 contenders are here.