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The Democratic blame game is at a fever pitch after Vice President Kamala Harris was swiftly defeated by President-elect Donald Trump at the ballot box in an election that had been anticipated to drag out for days as polling indicated the match-up was razor-thin. 

Trump sailed to victory in the early morning hours last Wednesday, after locking down key battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania and Georgia and clearing 270 electoral votes. He concluded the race with 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226, and won the popular vote. 

In the final days of the campaigning cycle, polling indicated that the results for the election would likely be very close, which could have resulted in state recounts and lawsuits before the winner was announced. 

Following Trump’s clear victory, Democrats across the nation issued statements accepting the results and congratulating the president. Fallout from the devastating loss, however, has reverberated across the party as members point fingers at each other for the Trump win. 

5 MISTAKES THAT DOOMED KAMALA HARRIS’ CAMPAIGN AGAINST TRUMP

Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi spar over claims Dems ‘abandoned working class’

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders pinned blame for the loss on the Democratic Party for “abandoning” the working class, sparking rebuke from former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. 

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change,” Sanders posted to X last week, accompanied by a press release on the election results. “And they’re right.”

NANCY PELOSI FIRES BACK AT BERNIE SANDERS FOR COMMENTS ON DEMS’ SWEEPING ELECTION LOSS: NO ‘RESPECT’

Pelosi responded that the party has not left the working class behind in favor of kowtowing to “big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party,” as Sanders had argued in his press release. 

“With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him [Sanders], for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class families. That’s where we are,” Pelosi told The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast on Saturday.

“Under President Biden, you see the rescue package, money in the pockets of people, the shots in the arm, children in school safely, working people back to work. What did Trump do when he was president? One bill that gave a tax cut to the richest people in America,” she continued. 

Sanders doubled down on his remarks Sunday, telling NBC’s Kristen Welker that “the working people of this country are extremely angry.” 

“Nancy is a friend of mine,” Sanders said. “But here is the reality. In the Senate in the last two years, we have not even brought forth legislation to raise the minimum wage to a living wage despite the fact that some 20 million people in this country are working for less than $15 an hour.” 

SANDERS DOUBLES DOWN ON HIS CRITICISM OF DEMOCRATS, FIRES BACK AT PELOSI’S PUSHBACK

“Bottom line, if you’re a working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the max, taking on powerful special interests and fighting for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no,” Sanders said.

Harris, Biden campaigns pin blame on each other 

The Harris campaign and Biden campaign have reportedly pinned blame for the loss on each other, Axios reported last week. 

“The 107-day Harris campaign was nearly flawless. The Biden campaign that preceded it was the opposite,” one Harris campaign member told the outlet. 

“We did what we could. I think the odds against us were insurmountable,” another individual involved with the Harris campaign said, referring to President Biden’s exit from the presidential race in July and his low approval ratings. 

Biden dropped out of the race over the summer following his disastrous debate performance against Trump, where he frequently lost his train of thought and stumbled over his words. The debate opened the floodgates to both conservatives and traditional Democrat allies calling on the president to pass the torch to a younger generation as concerns mounted surrounding his mental acuity and his age. 

THE ‘SQUAD,’ WARREN AND SANDERS AMONG PROMINENT POLITICAL FIGURES WHO CRUISED TO RE-ELECTION VICTORIES

Many of those who worked on the Biden campaign also joined the Harris campaign following the president’s endorsement of his VP to take up the mantle as Democratic presidential candidate. 

A person who worked on the Biden campaign shot back in comment to Axios that the Harris team was to blame: “How did you spend $1 billion and not win? What the f—?”

“The Harris team benched [Biden], and then they lost, so now the people who represent Biden are saying, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have benched him,'” another person familiar with the dynamics between the teams said. 

White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the outlet, “Anyone criticizing the vice president’s campaign is at odds with President Biden.”

Pelosi points to Biden for loss 

Pelosi appeared to pin blame for the loss on the president, claiming that Biden had dropped out of the race too late in the game and that that hadn’t provided an opportunity for an open primary. 

“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” she told the New York Times podcast. 

“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” Pelosi continued. “. . . Because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.” 

TRUMP WINS ARIZONA TO SWEEP SWING STATES AND SECURE 312 TOTAL ELECTORAL VOTES

Biden dropped out of the presidential race on a Sunday afternoon in July via a social media post. He endorsed Harris minutes later in a follow-up X post, sparking other Democrats to rally around the VP. 

Pelosi did defend Biden in June, when the Wall Street Journal ran an article doubting Biden’s mental fitness as president.

​​”Many of us spent time with @WSJ to share on the record our first-hand experiences with @POTUS, where we see his wisdom, experience, strength and strategic thinking,” Pelosi wrote on X at the time. “Instead, the Journal ignored testimony by Democrats, focused on attacks by Republicans and printed a hit piece.”

Pelosi, as well as other high-profile Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, also notably called on Biden to run for a second term ahead of the 2024 cycle kicking off in earnest. 

Obama to blame?

Other Democrats and insiders pointed to former President Barack Obama for the loss, after Obama reportedly worked in the background over the summer to encourage Biden’s ouster from the race. 

A handful of Obama’s allies and former advisers helped lead the charge in calling on Biden to drop out of the 2024 race earlier this summer, including former Obama adviser David Axelrod saying that Biden was “not winning this race;” longtime Obama friend George Clooney calling on the president to drop out of the race in a bombshell op-ed; and Jon Favreau, who served as former director of speech writing for Obama, also calling on Biden to drop out of the race ahead of his eventual departure. 

“There is no singular reason why we lost, but a big reason is because the Obama advisers publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn’t even want Kamala Harris as the nominee, and then signed up as the saviors of the campaign, only to run outdated Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama,” one former Biden staffer told Politico.

DNC National Finance Committee member and Harris campaign fundraiser Lindy Li told Fox News this weekend that Obama’s seemingly delayed endorsement of Harris after Biden dropped out added to Harris’ defeat. 

​​”I want to point out they waited three days – Michelle and Barack Obama waited three days to endorse Kamala Harris,” Li said on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Saturday. “It was the silence heard round the world.”

“The truth is, this is just an epic disaster – this is a $1 billion disaster,” Li added during the interview. 

‘ABANDON HARRIS’ MOVEMENT FLIPPED DEARBORN TO TRUMP ON ELECTION DAY

Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, with the Obamas endorsing Harris in a video message posted to social media on July 26, five days after Biden’s announcement. The silence was not lost on the media, as headlines spread across the nation on Obama’s “silence.” 

David Axelrod says Dem Party morphing into ‘smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party’

Similar to Sanders, longtime Democratic strategist David Axelrod appeared to pin blame for the loss on the Democratic Party’s shift away from blue-collar, middle class voters. 

“You can’t approach working people like missionaries and say, ‘We’re here to help you become more like us.’ There’s a kind of unspoken disdain, unintended disdain in that,” the CNN contributor said last week. 

“The only group … Democrats won among were people who make more than $100,000 a year,” Axelrod said. “You can’t win national elections that way, and it certainly shouldn’t be that way for a party that fashions itself as the party of working people.”

“I think Biden has done programmatically some good things for working people. But the party itself has increasingly become a smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party, and it lends itself to the kind of backlash that we’ve seen,” he continued.

Claims of underwhelming VP choice 

After Biden’s exit from the race, Harris simultaneously launched her campaign as well as her search for a running mate, combing through a list of high-profile Democrats and lesser-known allies before choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Democrats ultimately rallied behind Walz, but another choice, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, was viewed by many as the better candidate to get the Democratic Party across the finish line victoriously.

‘SHOULD HAVE BEEN JOSH SHAPIRO’: HARRIS’ VP CONTENDERS PASSED OVER FOR WALZ DODGE MASSIVE CAMPAIGN LOSS

“As a founding member of She Shoulda Picked Shapiro, I think it’s relatively clear now that she made a mistake,” statistician Nate Silver told the New York Times ahead of Election Day. 

“Pennsylvania seems to be lagging a little behind the other blue-wall states. Meanwhile, Walz was mediocre in the debate, and he’s been mediocre and nervous in his public appearances.”

Li told Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich from Howard University, where Harris held her election night party, that Shapiro would likely have aided the Harris campaign’s efforts to notch a massive victory. 

“One of the things that are top of mind is the choice of Tim Walz as vice presidential candidate,” Li said. “A lot of people are saying tonight that it should have been Josh Shapiro. Frankly, people have been saying that for months.”

Considering Pennsylvania’s battleground-state status, the popular first-term governor was viewed as a potential key for the Harris campaign to reach the coveted 270 electoral votes to lock up the election. Shapiro, who is Jewish, was also touted as a potential bridge for the Harris campaign to court Jewish voters amid backlash over her previous comments defending anti-Israel protesters who rocked college campuses last year during the war in Israel.

James Carville says Harris campaign fail could boil down to one interview 

Longtime Democratic political consultant James Carville said the Harris campaign’s loss could boil down to her interview on “The View,” when co-host Sunny Hostin asked Harris to identify an example of anything she would have done differently from Biden. 

“I think if this campaign is reducible to one moment, we are in a 65% wrong-track country. The country wants something different. And she’s asked, as is so often the case, in a friendly audience, on ‘The View,’ ‘How would you be different than Biden?’ That’s the one question that you exist to answer, alright? That is it. That’s the money question. That’s the one you want,” Carville said on “The Bulwark Podcast” on Saturday. 

JAMES CARVILLE SAYS KAMALA HARRIS’ FAILED CAMPAIGN COULD BE REDUCED TO SUNNY HOSTIN’S QUESTION ON ‘THE VIEW’

“That’s the one that everybody wants to know the answer to. And you freeze. You literally freeze and say, ‘Well, I can’t think of anything,’” Carville continued. 

Hostin had asked Harris in the October interview, “If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” 

“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris answered.

Harris’ comment stands in stark contrast to how voters were feeling: They were unhappy with the current administration’s leadership.  

Preliminary data from the Fox News Voter Analysis, a survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide, found that the majority of voters headed into the polls believing that the country was headed in the wrong direction. 

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Voters, ahead of casting their ballots, reported that the country was on the wrong track (70%, up from 60% who felt that way four years ago) and that they were seeking something different. Most wanted a change in how the country is run, with roughly a quarter seeking complete and total upheaval.

Fox News Digital’s Taylor Penley and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report. 

Vice President Kamala Harris paid Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions $1 million, just one example of millions the campaign spent on various entertainers during the vice president’s failed bid for president.

The Harris campaign paid $1 million to Winfrey’s company on October 15, according to a report in the Washington Examiner, coming after a star-studded town hall that Winfrey hosted for the vice president in September.

Winfrey also appeared at Harris’ final rally in Philadelphia on the eve of Election Day, with the talk-show star offering a rare endorsement of a presidential candidate.

HARRIS CAMPAIGN REPORTEDLY SPENT 6 FIGURES ON ‘CALL HER DADDY’ PODCAST WITH FEWER THAN 1 MILLION YOUTUBE VIEWS

“We’re voting for values and integrity,” Winfrey said at the rally. “We’re voting for healing over hate.”

But Winfrey wasn’t the only star the Harris campaign spent big money on, with the Washington Examiner report also revealing that the campaign spent big on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. 

“A source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner that the Harris campaign spent six figures on building a set for Harris’s appearance on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast with host Alex Cooper,” the Examiner wrote. “The interview came out in October and was reportedly filmed in a hotel room in Washington, D.C.”

HARRIS CAMPAIGN AND ALLIES SPENT MORE THAN $1.4B ON POLITICAL ADS IN LOSING RACE AGAINST TRUMP

The campaign also spent up to $20 million on swing state concerns on the eve of the election, according to a report in the New York Post, a sum that could have been more if a planned performance by Alanis Morissette had not been scrapped.

The campaign had seven swing-state concerts on Monday, the report noted, including performances by Jon Bon Jovi in Detroit, Christina Aguilera in Las Vegas, Katy Perry in Pittsburgh and Lady Gaga in Philadelphia, and a 2 Chainz performance at a rally three days before the election in Atlanta.

“Money can’t buy you love or a good candidate,” Republican political strategist Brad Todd told the Examiner, with regard to the massive spending.

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“Advertising is a pretty important source of information for swing voters,” Todd said. “It no doubt matters, but it’s not enough. It doesn’t matter if you have the wrong message and it’s not delivered in a compelling way. What her campaign was missing was any effort to break with the unpopular administration she has been a part of.”

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.

FIRST ON FOX: Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., responded to President-Elect Donald Trump’s newly announced litmus test for those vying to be the next GOP leader, exclusively telling Fox News Digital that he was open to it and that “all options are on the table.”

Trump said on Sunday that whoever the new leader is “must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner.”

Recess appointments refer to the president’s ability to fill federal vacancies that occur while the Senate is in recess. This power is outlined in the Recess Appointments Clause of the Constitution. For the president to unilaterally make these appointments, the Congress must be in recess. 

CORNYN TOUTS LIFETIME FUNDRAISING PROWESS FOR GOP IN FINAL CASE TO SUCCEED MCCONNELL

“I’ve spent eight months carefully listening to my colleagues about their vision for the next chapter of the Senate Republican Conference, especially as we hit the ground running with President Trump,” Thune told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement. 

“One thing is clear: We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s cabinet and other nominees in place as soon as possible to start delivering on the mandate we’ve been sent to execute, and all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments. We cannot let Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats block the will of the American people,” he continued. 

TIM SCOTT LAUNCHES BID TO CHAIR NRSC AS GOP SEEKS TO CAPITALIZE ON NEW MINORITY GAINS

Trump’s request for the new GOP Senate leader to agree to recess appointments comes after his struggle with a divided Congress in 2020, which would not adjourn when he asked them so that he could push through key appointments amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

TOP REPUBLICAN PRIVATELY BACKING THUNE TO SUCCEED MCCONNELL IN GOP LEADER RACE

“If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress,” he threatened at the time. “The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro-forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam that they do.”

RICK SCOTT SEES RED WAVE AS ‘BEST CASE SCENARIO’ FOR SENATE LEADER BID AS HE LOBBIES TRUMP FOR SUPPORT

One of Thune’s opponents in the race, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., quickly agreed with Trump, writing on X, “100% agree. I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible.” 

He is also competing against Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. 

Cornyn has not yet responded directly to the latest ask from Trump, but he shared on X on Saturday, “The first order of business in the new Senate should be confirming President Trump’s cabinet. If I am the majority leader, I will keep the Senate in session until those confirmations occur.”

“No weekends, no breaks. Democrats can cooperate in the best interest of the country, or continue the resistance, which will eventually be ground down. Take your pick,” he said. 

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The election will be conducted by secret ballot on Nov. 13. 

Trump has not made any endorsement in the race and has not said whether he plans to. 

Florida Sen. Rick Scott touted his experience in business when asked why his Republican colleagues should back him for Senate Majority Leader.

“I built businesses all my life,” Scott said during an appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. “I built the largest hospital company, I built a variety of manufacturing companies, I ran the state of Florida.”

The comments come as Scott finds himself in a three-way race to become the GOP Senate leader, battling fellow Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota for the job held by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., since 2007.

Scott, whose bid for the position is seen as a long shot by some observers, has earned the endorsement of Republican Sens. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida.

“I will be voting for my Florida colleague @ScottforFlorida to be our next Senate GOP leader,” Rubio said on X on Sunday.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY ‘DELIGHTED’ TO BACK SEN. JOHN CORNYN FOR SENATE MAJORITY LEADER

But the Florida Republican is also seen by some as the friendliest candidate to President-elect Trump, something Hagerty noted when making his endorsement of Scott.

“Any leader of this new majority must be able to work hand-in-hand with President Trump to advance his America First agenda,” Hagerty posted to X on Sunday. “That’s why I want to see a Senate Majority Leader who can join me in embracing the Trump agenda, which will unify Senate Republicans. On Wednesday, I will be voting for Rick Scott.”

Scott himself hinted at the alignment with Trump during his appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures,” arguing that the Republican Senate should reflect the will of the voters.

“Washington ought to represent the Republican voters around the country,” Scott said. 

“We have a mandate for change … who is going to represent all the Republican voters? I ran two years ago because I knew we needed to make a change in the Senate.” he continued, referring to his failed 2022 attempt to oust McConnell for the Senate GOP’s top job “I’ve talked to my colleagues, I think everybody realizes we need to make a change. So the question is going to be: Who is going to make sure we get those things done?”

CORNYN TOUTS LIFETIME FUNDRAISING PROWESS FOR GOP IN FINAL CASE TO SUCCEED MCCONNELL

Scott has expressed hope that Trump will publicly endorse his bid for the top job, though some reports have indicated the president-elect has been hesitant to weigh in on the race.

Thune, meanwhile, has encouraged Trump to stay out of the race.

“Obviously, if he wants to, he could exert a considerable amount of influence on that, but honestly, I think my preference would be, and I think it’s probably in his best interest, to stay out of that,” Thune, who has at times had a rocky relationship with Trump, said during an appearance on CNBC last week.

“These Senate secret ballot elections are probably best left to senators, and he’s got to work with all of us when it’s all said and done,” Thune, who currently serves as Senate minority whip, added, “but whatever he decides to do, that’s going to be his prerogative, as we know.”

RICK SCOTT SEES RED WAVE AS ‘BEST CASE SCENARIO’ FOR SENATE LEADER BID AS HE LOBBIES TRUMP FOR SUPPORT

Cornyn, who also previously served as the Senate’s GOP Whip, has touted he held the role when Trump’s tax cuts were passed through the Senate, arguing he would once again be able to work with the president-elect to help pass his agenda.

Republicans return to Washington this week, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is expected to host a forum with the candidates on Tuesday. The election, which is done by secret ballot, will take place on Wednesday with incoming GOP Sens.-elect Bernie Moreno of Ohio, Tim Sheehy of Montana and Jim Justice of West Virginia also being able to participate in the vote.

Only a simple majority is required for a winner to be chosen. If no candidate achieves a simple majority in the first round of ballots, the candidate with the least number of votes will be eliminated and there will be another round of voting between the top two candidates.

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Scott argued that a vote for him on Wednesday would be a vote for a candidate who could “bring people together.”

“What it’s going to take is somebody is going to take the time to sit down and bring people together. We’ve got to get, for a lot of things, 60 votes in the Senate, so we’ve got to have somebody that’s going to sit down with Democrats and say, ‘How do we balance a budget? How do we do these things?’” Scott said. “That’s all I’ve done. I’m a deal guy. That’s what I did all my life.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James has a long history of slamming President-elect Donald Trump, vowing in her first campaign to “take on Donald Trump” if elected, only to double down on the rhetoric after his massive election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris last week.  

“She’s got serious Trump derangement syndrome,” Trump said at the start of the year as he faced a civil fraud trial brought by the New York attorney general. He has repeatedly accused James of suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” throughout a bevy of New York court cases brought against him by James and other Democrats in New York. 

A staunch supporter of the president-elect who has been floated as a potential AG contender has already put James on notice to end her “lawfare” against the 45th and upcoming 47th president in a fiery interview after Trump’s win. 

“Let me just say this to Big Tish James, the New York Attorney General. . . . I dare you to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term,” Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, said on the “The Benny Show” podcast last week. “Because listen here, sweetheart, we’re not messing around this time. And we will put your fat a– in prison for conspiracy against rights, and I promise you that.” 

NEW YORK APPEALS COURT APPEARS RECEPTIVE TO REVERSING OR REDUCING $454M TRUMP CIVIL FRAUD JUDGMENT

Fox News Digital pored through James’ history as New York attorney general candidate, compiling the highlights of her legal battles against Trump over the last nearly seven years. 

The Campaign to Take On Trump 

James, a former city council member in New York and public defender, launched her run for New York AG during the 2018 cycle, while emphasizing that if she were elected, she would aggressively pursue charges against Trump. 

“I’m running for attorney general because I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president when our fundamental rights are at stake. From the Muslim ban, to efforts to deport immigrants, to denying transgender students the ability to choose whatever bathroom they want, rolling back regulations to protect our planet, colluding with foreign powers, putting profits over people, dividing us in ways we haven’t seen in generations,” James declared in September of 2018. 

“And what is fueling this campaign, what is fueling my soul right now, is Trump and his abuses, abuses against immigrants, against women, against our environment. We need an attorney general who will stand up to Donald Trump,” she said during a debate in August of that same year. 

James won her election that year, about two years into Trump’s first administration, and took a victory lap while vowing to expose the “con man.” 

“New Yorkers, we can spot a con man. We can spot a carnival barker, a fearmonger a mile away and he should know that we here in New York, and I in particular, we are not scared of you,” she said. “As the new attorney general of his home state, I will be shining a light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn. I will hold him accountable using the unbending power of the law.”

TRUMP’S $454M JUDGMENT BOND SLASHED BY MORE THAN HALF IN APPEALS COURT RULING

Trump and his team immediately slammed James’ apparent fixation on pursuing him, with Trump saying on X at the time that a candidate who “openly campaigned on a GET TRUMP agenda” was elected New York’s top cop and that he would “never be treated fairly by these people – a total double standard of justice.”

Trump civil fraud case 

About three months into taking office, James announced an investigation into the Trump Organization, claiming there was evidence indicating that the president and his company had falsely valued assets to obtain loans, insurance coverage and tax deductions. The investigation was launched after Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who had previously served federal prison time for violating campaign finance laws, testified before Congress that Trump Org. had exaggerated the value of his assets. 

James officially sued Trump, Trump Organization and its senior leadership for allegedly falsely inflating “his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, to induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums, and to gain tax benefits, among other things.”

“For too long, powerful, wealthy people in this country have operated as if the rules do not apply to them. Donald Trump stands out as among the most egregious examples of this misconduct,” James said in a press release. “With the help of his children and senior executives at the Trump Organization, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system. In fact, the very foundation of his purported net worth is rooted in incredible fraud and illegality. Mr. Trump thought he could get away with the art of the steal, but today, that ends.”

Trump charged that James had launched a “witch hunt” against him after her explicitly campaigning on a platform to prosecute the president. 

TRUMP VOWS TO FIGHT NEW YORK AG CASE ‘ALL THE WAY UP TO THE US SUPREME COURT,’ AS DEADLINE TO POST $454M LOOMS

“Another Witch Hunt by a racist Attorney General, Letitia James, who failed in her run for Governor, getting almost zero support from the public, and now is doing poorly against Law & Order AG candidate, highly respected Michael Henry,” Trump wrote on Truth Social following the lawsuit. 

“I never thought this case would be brought – until I saw her really bad poll numbers. She is a fraud who campaigned on a ‘get Trump’ platform, despite the fact that the city is one of the crime and murder disasters of the world under her watch!” he added.

Trump and his family denied any wrongdoing, with the former president saying his assets had been undervalued. 

Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in September of last year in the non-jury trial that Trump and his organization had committed fraud while building his real estate business by deceiving banks, insurers and others by overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth. He was initially ordered to pay a penalty of $355 million, which quickly increased to over $450 million due to interest accruals of approximately $112,000 a day. 

He was ordered to pay a $454 million sum in February of this year. 

Trump appealed the ruling. His attorneys called New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling “draconian, unlawful and unconstitutional.” 

A panel of five judges on the appellate court, notably, appeared receptive to reversing or reducing the $454 million civil fraud judgment against Trump during court proceedings in September of this year. 

Trump attorney D. John Sauer argued that James’ lawsuit stretched New York consumer protection laws and said there were “no victims” and “no complaints” of Trump’s business from lenders and insurers. He added that if the verdict is not overturned, “people can’t do business in real estate” without fear. 

Judge Peter H. Moulton questioned whether James’ lawsuit had turned into “something it was not meant to do.” 

The judge added that the “immense penalty in this case is troubling.”

The court is still considering the appeal. 

TRUMP BARRED FROM OPERATING BUSINESS, ORDERED TO PAY OVER $350 MILLION IN NY CIVIL FRAUD CASE

Trump has said he will fight the case “all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.” 

Front-row court seat, declares she’s ready to ‘seize’ Trump’s iconic buildings 

James frequently sat in the courtroom throughout the civil fraud proceedings, at one point even appearing to smirk at Donald Trump Jr. 

James was caught on camera appearing gleeful as Donald Trump Jr. took the stand at his father’s civil trial in November, after frequently sitting in the court amid proceedings. 

WHERE DO TRUMP’S LEGAL CASES STAND AFTER MASSIVE ELECTION WIN?

“It is so inappropriate and so highly unusual. Attorneys general do not attend trials. They just don’t,” Fox News Legal Editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn said on “Fox & Friends” when asked about James’ recurring presence in the courtroom last year. 

James also slammed Trump in comments to the press during the trial. 

“Trump’s comments were offensive, baseless, they were void of any facts and or any evidence. What they were were comments that unfortunately fomented violence, comments that I would describe as race-baiting, comments that unfortunately appeals to the bottom of our humanity,” James told the media in a press conference outside of the courtroom in October of last year. 

JONATHAN TURLEY: TRUMP’S VICTORY PUTS AN END TO DEMOCRAT ATTACKS ON ONE BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT

“This case was brought simply because it was a case where individuals were engaged in patent practice of fraud, and I will not sit idly by and allow anyone to subvert the law, and lastly I will not be bullied, and so Mr. Trump is no longer here. The Donald Trump show is over. This was nothing more than a political stunt,” James added.

After the judge’s ruling, James told the media in February of this year that she was ready to seize Trump’s New York City buildings, such as Trump Tower. 

“If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” James said in an interview with ABC News. 

TRUMP SUES CBS NEWS FOR $10 BILLION ALLEGING ‘DECEPTIVE DOCTORING’ OF HARRIS’ ’60 MINUTES’ INTERVIEW

An appeals court slashed Trump’s bond payment in March, and the former president paid $175 million, which thwarted the state’s attempt to seize his properties while he appeals the case. 

Trump Manhattan trial 

Trump has battled a handful of lawsuits originating in New York amid and following his first term in the White House, including in 2019 when the New York Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of the NY-based charity the Donald J. Trump Foundation, and various cases where the state and city sued him over policies, such as the administration’s push to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg emerged as another Trump foe, leading the charge in his criminal trial earlier this year after charging Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records. 

Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records following his Manhattan criminal trial in May. Bragg’s office worked to prove that Trump had falsified the business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to quiet her claims of an alleged affair with Trump in 2006. Trump has maintained his innocence in the case, and he has argued that it was “lawfare” promoted by the Biden administration and Democrats to injure his re-election efforts. 

WHERE DOES TRUMP’S NEW YORK SENTENCING STAND AFTER MASSIVE ELECTION WIN?

Trump’s sentencing currently hangs in the balance, after his lawyers asked presiding Judge Juan Merchan to overturn the former president’s guilty verdict in New York v. Trump after the Supreme Court ruled in July that former presidents have substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts in office, but not for unofficial acts. Merchan is expected to rule by Nov. 12 as to where the charges stand, while Trump’s sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 26. 

Despite not taking the lead on the case, James celebrated Trump’s guilty verdict, tweeting her common saying aimed at Trump, “No one is above the law,” shortly following the jury’s decision. 

James and Gov. Hochul vow to continue pursuing Trump after massive victory 

James and Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vowed to fight back against any potential “revenge or retribution” from the Trump administration after his massive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump sailed to victory on the night of the election after locking down most battleground states, such as Pennsylvania and Georgia. 

“We did not expect this result, but we are prepared to respond to this result. And my office has been preparing for several months because we’ve been here before,” James said. “We faced this challenge before, and we used the rule of law to fight back. And we are prepared to fight back once again because, as the attorney general of this great state, it is my job to protect and defend the rights of New Yorkers and the rule of law. And I will not shrink from that responsibility.”

Between 2019 and 2021, James said, her office took nearly 100 legal actions against Trump’s previous administration.

“We’re ready to respond to any attempts to cut or eliminate any funding to the great state of New York, as the governor outlined,” James said. “So, despite what has happened on the national stage, we will continue to stand tall in the face of injustice, revenge or retribution.”

Both Hochul and James congratulated Trump before launching warnings at the president-elect. 

TRUMP’S ‘MODERN DAY SALEM WITCH TRIAL’ VERDICT SIGNALS ‘OPEN SEASON’ ON FORMER PRESIDENTS: EXPERTS

“I want to be very clear that while we honor the results of this election and will work with anyone who wants to be a partner in achieving the goals of our administration in our state, that does not mean we’ll accept an agenda from Washington that strips away the rights that New Yorkers have long enjoyed,” Hochul said during the presser. 

“Our team will do whatever we have to do to identify any possible threats to these rights that we hold dear in the state of New York and protect New Yorkers,” Hochul said. “This will include legislation, rulemaking, appropriations and partnerships with our congressional delegation and including the Biden administration at this time.”

Legal experts and supporters of the president-elect have meanwhile said his massive victory last week likely marked the end to “lawfare.” 

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“Letitia James tried lawfare. The Democrat Party tried lawfare, and they lost, so now they need to go home,” Fox News’ Kaylee McEnany said last week. “That strategy did not work. Letitia James brought a case, the civil fraud case. It was unprecedented, our own Brain Room said, ‘We cannot find any example of a similar suit against a crime that was victimless.’ They could not find precedent for this. So she tried this, and the naked political reason was this was politically motivated. She called Trump a con man, all sorts of names. She ran on this, and what she’s doing now is exactly what Gavin Newsom is doing, exactly what Kamala Harris did yesterday, and now her. They all want to be the leader of the resistance.”

“Lawfare was terrible for the country. The resounding win Americans have given Trump should be its death knell,” Fox contributor and former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andrew McCarthy also wrote in an op-ed for Fox News Digital last week. 

Fierce Trump ally Mike Davis said the upcoming administration will likely have no patience for “lawfare.” 

“I can imagine that the Trump 47 Justice Department is not going to have any patience for this Democrat lawfare over the next four years,” he told Newsmax. 

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman, Greg Wehner and Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report. 

Members of the Los Angeles City Council say they are working to expedite a law declaring Los Angeles a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants following President-elect Trump’s victory last week.

The law would ban federal immigration officials from accessing city databases and ban city resources from being used for immigration enforcement. The ordnance was originally passed last year, but it has faced a lengthy legal review and has yet to take effect.

City Council member Hugo Soto-Martínez, who supports expediting the process, also called on President Biden to renew a program that allows illegal immigrants from Central America to stay in Los Angeles, according to the LA Times.

“More than anything, people are angry,” Soto-Martínez told the Times. “They’re agitated and they’re ready to fight back, just like we did in 2016.”

PROPOSITION 36 OVERWHELMINGLY PASSES IN CALIFORNIA, REVERSING SOME SOROS-BACKED SOFT-ON-CRIME POLICIES

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

California officials appear to be preparing to push back on the upcoming Trump administration from top to bottom. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday he is calling an emergency special session to bolster the state’s legal response to any future attacks from the Trump administration.

The special session will focus on safeguarding “civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, and immigrant families,” Newsom’s office said in a press release.

“California is ready to fight,” Newsom said on X. “Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action – we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked.”

NATHAN HOCHMAN OUSTS EMBATTLED LIBERAL PROSECUTOR GEORGE GASCON AS LA COUNTY DA AMID CRIME CONCERNS

His action comes just a day after Newsom said he “will seek to work with the incoming president.”

The special session will convene on Monday, Dec. 2.

Newsom is urging his state legislature to earmark more funds for the California Department of Justice and other state agencies with additional resources to mount legal challenges.

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“The funding will support the ability to immediately file litigation and seek injunctive relief against unlawful federal actions,” Newsom’s office said.

During Trump’s first term, Newsom launched lawsuits against the federal government more than 100 times.

Fox News’ Jamie Joseph contributed to this report.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to President-elect Donald Trump places the Democratic Party in an awkward position of having no clear leader in the months to come.

Once President Biden and Harris leave office in January, Democrats will be without a figurehead, proving an opportunity for some of the party’s top personalities to fill the void.

Here are the most likely candidates:

Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could play a major role in shepherding the Democratic Party through the next four years. He has led Democrats in the Senate for decades, and with Rep. Nancy Pelosi stepping back from leadership in Congress, he is the most senior Democrat left in the branch.

He will now have to contend once again with a Republican majority in the Senate, however.

SHUTDOWN STANDOFF LOOMS IN CONGRESS’ FINAL WEEKS BEFORE TRUMP’S RETURN TO WHITE HOUSE

Hakeem Jeffries

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., presents a younger alternative to Schumer as Pelosi’s successor in the House of Representatives. Jeffries is sure to play a central role in Democrats’ efforts to hamper the Trump administration and congressional Republicans over the next four years.

ALL EYES ON CALIFORNIA AS HOUSE MAJORITY STILL HINGES ON TIGHT RACES

Gavin Newsom

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is widely thought to have national ambitions, and the void left by Biden and Harris could be the opportunity he’s been looking for. Newsom loudly ruled himself out from contesting Biden’s re-election campaign early in the 2024 cycle, and he is already making plays to position himself as a standout leader against Trump.

Josh Shapiro

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro could also position himself as a Democratic leader. Spurned by Harris as a VP pick, he is now free from the political fallout from her loss that has also disqualified Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Shapiro enjoys an over-60% approval rating in Pennsylvania, arguably the most important state for winning the presidency.

Pete Buttigieg

While “Mayor Pete” has played a relatively quiet role under the Biden administration as transportation secretary, the Biden-Harris departure could give him an opportunity to resume his meteoric rise within the Democratic Party.

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Buttigieg secured a position in the party’s top tier with his performance in the 2019 Democratic primary, but it remains unclear what role he will play after the Biden administration comes to a close.

More than 40% of Californians voted for President-elect Trump this year, making it the most votes for a GOP presidential candidate in the blue state since George W. Bush re-election in 2004. 

Experts say Californians aren’t as far left “as Newsom thinks,” citing several state ballot measures that swung conservative, followed by the ousting of progressive Soros-backed Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon.

Though Trump lost California to Vice President Kamala Harris, his electoral showing in the Golden State increased significantly; he got 31% of the vote in 2016 and 34% in 2020. Even with something of a conservative exodus driving many residents to red states like Florida and Texas, Trump increased his percentage of the state vote by six points.

In absolute terms, Trump’s vote numbers from California come in third behind his showings in Texas and Florida.

“Trump built a cross party, multi party coalition,” Susan Shelley, VP of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “He’s built a movement that crosses party lines, and it’s reaching people who have not benefited from the policies that have been put forward.” 

PROPOSITION 36 OVERWHELMINGLY PASSES IN CALIFORNIA, REVERSING SOME SOROS-BACKED SOFT-ON-CRIME POLICIES

Regarding California’s clean-energy mandates, Shelley said, “People have paid dearly for this, and that’s what crosses party lines.”

“Everybody’s electricity bill is higher because of the climate policies,” Shelley said. “And Trump is promising to do more domestic energy production to bring down the cost of energy, and he has a track record now of having done this as president for four years.”

“The legislature is much, much more liberal, much more much further to the left than the voters are. And you can see that in the results in the propositions,” Shelley, who is also a columnist, said. 

Proposition 36, which would reverse some soft-on-crime policies authored by L.A. DA George Gascon and re-establish felony offenses for certain drug and theft crimes, was overwhelmingly passed by California voters. 

Another tax-related measure, Proposition 5, also failed. Critics of the measure said it would likely have led to higher property taxes, because it would have lowered the threshold to local bond issues, which are backed by tax dollars.

Gascon, L.A.  County’s district attorney since 2020, was also voted out. Independent candidate Nathan Hochman, a former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, will replace him.

“I think he knows that California is shifting and needs help,” Shelley said. “And he has spoken many times about California’s election process, mailing out 22 million ballots. He has concerns about that. He’s spoken about voter ID laws. Whether he’ll do anything about that as President, I don’t know, but he certainly has indicated that he knows Californians are not as liberal as Gavin Newsom presents them to be.”

DONALD TRUMP WINS 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

California was also ground zero for several culture wars in children’s education and transgender issues, such as sex change surgeries for incarcerated people on the taxpayer dollar. 

Lance Christensen, a California Policy Center political expert, told Fox News Digital these issues also played a role in earning Trump more votes in the Golden State.

“I think people got tired of the rope-a-dope stuff that Governor Newsom was doing over the last several years,” Christensen said. “And they saw him doing that because of an enabling power from the Biden-Harris administration. And when they realized that the insane progressive policies that were happening in California were being amplified in D.C., I don’t think they felt like there was a good backstop.”

BLUE STATE GOVERNOR SUMMONS LEGISLATURE IN RESPONSE TO TRUMP WIN: ‘READY TO FIGHT’

In July, Newsom signed a new law banning school districts from notifying parents if their child uses different pronouns or identifies as a gender that is different from what’s on their school record. 

The law created significant pushback from California parents who spent months protesting the new law at local school district meetings, and one school district went so far as to sue Newsom over the law.

“A lot of the social and cultural issues, the ethnic studies, the gender stuff, the hyper-sexuality that was happening in a lot of our schools, and they just didn’t want that nationwide, especially with issues like Title Nine, where more and more women feel disenfranchised by the Biden administration,” Christensen said.

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“I think that you’re seeing a shift in the partisan landscape of California, and it won’t be dramatic, and it won’t necessarily be consistent across the board, but I think there’s a march towards some sort of sanity when it comes to politics that won’t necessarily be a red-blue divide,” he said.

On Thursday, Newsom called a special emergency session for December with the state’s legislature in response to Trump’s victory and bolster the blue state’s legal response to any future attacks.

“California is ready to fight,” Newsom said on X. “Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action – we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked.”

His action comes just a day after Newsom said he “will seek to work with the incoming president.”

The year 2027 has become a fixation for Washington. It’s the year that U.S. intelligence projects China will be ready and capable for an invasion of Taiwan. 

It could happen sooner, as evidenced by military drills in the South China Sea. Or, it could not happen at all. 

But President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday leaves the Taiwanese wondering whether the U.S. would come to their defense under a new, non-interventionist-minded administration. 

Trump’s public comments might suggest that he would not be willing to put boots on the ground to face another global superpower in defense of a tiny island democracy. 

“I think Taiwan should pay us for defense,” Trump told Bloomberg Businessweek in June. 

“You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything,” he added.

In October, he once again complained about U.S. aid to Taiwan and accused the nation of “stealing” the U.S. microchip industry. “You know, Taiwan, they stole our chip business,” Trump said during his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.

“They want us to protect, and they want protection. They don’t pay us money for the protection, you know. The mob makes you pay money, right? But with these countries that we protect, I got hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO countries that were never paying us.”

Trump’s close advisors are far more hawkish on the Taiwan matter than the president-elect’s comments would suggest he is, according to Lyle Goldstein, director for Asia engagement at Defense Priorities. 

“During Trump’s last four years there was quite a robust stance in favor of defending Taiwan through various measures taken chiefly, I think, through his advisors,” said Goldstein. 

XI JINPING WARNS TRUMP US WOULD ‘LOSE FROM CONFRONTATION’ WITH CHINA AS RENEWED TRADE WAR LOOMS

Asked in October if he would defend Taiwan in a China invasion, Trump told the Wall Street Journal: “I wouldn’t have to, because he respects me and he knows I’m f––– crazy.”

Asked how he would convince Xi to avoid such an invasion, Trump responded: “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you” — meaning impose tariffs — “at 150% to 200%.” 

He may even ban trade between the two nations. 

He spoke highly of his relationship with Xi. “I had a very strong relationship with him. He was actually a really good, I don’t want to say friend — I don’t want to act foolish, ‘He was my friend’ — but I got along with him great. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago with me, so we got to know each other great. He’s a very fierce person.”

The U.S. routinely sends military equipment to Taiwan, and that is expected to continue through the next administration. In October, the Biden administration approved $2 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, including radar systems and three National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems. 

With rapidly improving drone capabilities, the U.S. could come to Taiwan’s aid in an invasion without deploying troops to the region.

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told The Washington Post at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Shangri-La Dialogue Summit.

In doing so, he said, “I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.” 

But there is hope among restraint groups that Trump will be focused on economic warfare with China – rather than military. Trump has threatened a blanket 60% tariff on Chinese goods. 

BIDEN FINALIZES CRACKDOWN ON US MILITARY TECH INVESTMENTS IN CHINA WITH ONE WEEK TO LAME DUCK SESSION

“I think his approach on China will be very tough on the economic side,” said Goldstein. “But — I’m hoping anyway — easing tensions on the diplomatic and military side.“

“We don’t have that alliance with Taiwan,” Goldstein went on. “We have an alliance with Japan. And with the Philippines. We may want to double down on guarding our allies . . . the Taiwan issue is a powder keg — it’s exceedingly dangerous. And we should play very cautiously here.”

The U.S. has long recognized a One China policy and pursued a policy of strategic ambiguity, refusing to reveal whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense in an all-out war. 

Biden seemed to want to declare his intention to defend Taiwan from China. His staff was forced to walk back a series of off-the-cuff statements that seemed to undermine strategic ambiguity. 

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“The U.S. is standing up for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” the president said at West Point in May. He added pointedly: “I’ve always been willing to use force when required to protect our nation, our allies, our core interests.” 

FIRST ON FOX: Leading pro-life activist groups are already shifting from celebrating former President Donald Trump’s victory to drawing up plans for his second term, Fox News Digital has learned.

A memorandum shared exclusively with Fox News Digital by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA), one of the country’s largest and most influential pro-life groups, lays out the group’s plans and priorities for the upcoming administration in what they hope will serve as the beginning of a roadmap for pro-life victories in the years to come.

It states that while Democrats spent $570 million on abortion advertising, Trump’s blowout victory is evidence that the American people do not support the unrestricted abortion access endorsed by Vice President Kamala Harris and many top Democrats.

“Democrats’ abortion fearmongering campaign was a spectacular failure in the first presidential election since the reversal of Roe,” the memo says. “Meanwhile, President T

rump did what he’s done better than anyone since 2016: he effectively cast the Democrats as the real extremists on abortion who support abortion even in the seventh, eighth and ninth month of pregnancy and even refuse to support giving basic medical care to children who survive attempted abortions.”

CALIFORNIA’S SHOCKING 2024 ELECTORAL MAP FLIP A ‘WAKEUP FOR DEMOCRATS’ 

“With victory in hand,” the memo asks: “What’s next?”

First, the memo states that the Trump administration must immediately undo every abortion policy instituted over the last four years under the Biden-Harris administration.

“The accomplishments from President Trump’s first term become the baseline for the second term,” the memo continues. “However, in order to even get to the baseline, there is much that must be undone from the Biden-Harris regime, which worked tirelessly to promote abortion in every nook and cranny of the federal government. It all must be undone.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of SBA, told Fox News Digital that her group will push for the “cleansing” of tax funding of abortion during the first 100 days of the Trump administration through the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services and other government agencies, as well as through grants to groups like Planned Parenthood.

Dannenfelser added that the Trump administration should clarify what resources and options are available to women who do not want to choose abortion during the first 100 days. She also said Trump should reinstate the “Mexico City Policy” that prohibits the government from pushing or paying for abortion internationally.

GOP CONGRESSMAN-ELECT REVEALS AMBITIOUS 100-DAY PLAN FOR TRUMP ADMIN: ‘NOT GOING TO GET FOOLED AGAIN’

Dannenfelser did not take a national abortion limit off the table, though she admitted it is “not a day one” issue.

While the pro-life movement had a lot to celebrate this past week, seven states passed sweeping amendments to enshrine abortion into their state law, significantly expanding abortion in those states. This followed a series of similar amendments being passed by voters in California, Ohio, Michigan and Vermont.

Dannenfelser acknowledged that she understands Americans are not ready to accept the protection of all unborn life after 50 years under Roe v. Wade, but said she believes there should be at least a “minimum standard” of protection for the unborn across the nation. 

SBA noted in its memo that “to go on offense and truly defeat the abortion industry in the long term, we must strengthen the pro-life, pro-woman, pro-family resolve of the Republican Party, centered on the unalienable right to life for the unborn child that exists under the 14th Amendment.”

Dannenfelser said that the job of the pro-life movement over the next few years will be to help advance the cultural conversation about what minimum standards the country should enact to protect unborn life.

She pointed to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who she said provides a model of a leader who is effectively engaging in and promoting cultural conversation about abortion.

Florida, along with South Dakota and Nebraska, became the first states to defeat any abortion initiative since the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Dannenfelser said that DeSantis’ leadership “showed exactly what you do” to win pro-life victories.

“You don’t pretend it’s not happening; you go on offense against extremism,” she said. “DeSantis showed that when you go full-on, you defy all the prognosticators and fend off that horrible initiative.” 

SBA is not the only pro-life group mobilizing since Trump’s victory. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America (SFLA), told Fox News Digital that her group has also developed a plan titled “Make America Pro-Life Again” that “encompasses both federal action as well as state actions.”

For the early days of the administration, Hawkins said SFLA would prioritize four main policies: 1) Appointing pro-life officials to federal agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, FDA and DOJ, 2) Releasing pro-life activists imprisoned under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, completely defunding Planned Parenthood and to investigate the harmful chemicals used by chemical abortion pills.

Hawkins also said that she will continue to advocate for abortion restrictions on the federal level, but like Dannenfelser, she granted that will not be likely to happen soon.

For now, she said that Trump’s “day one” priority should be defunding Planned Parenthood.

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“Students for Life America has always been very clear; abortion is 100% federal. The pro-life movement is clear that abortion is 100% federal. Why? Because your right to not be killed because you’re simply inconvenient to another does not begin and end at state lines,” she told Fox News Digital. “We disagree with President Trump on this point. However, we are able to work with President Trump at this point and the first thing he must do is defund and debar Planned Parenthood.”

Also looming large behind both these groups’ plans is the possibility of a Supreme Court justice retiring or passing away. Neither Dannenfelser nor Hawkins divulged who they might support for a Supreme Court nomination, but, like before, Hawkins said she expects Trump to appoint justices supporting the unborn.

“Our ask of President Trump in 2015 and 2016 will be the same ask of President Trump in 2025 or whenever that happens in this administration, that if there is a Supreme Court vacancy, no matter if it’s a Sotomayor or it’s a Justice Thomas, that the person that he nominates, the person that will be confirmed by the US Senate, will not be an abortion activist, they will be a constitutionalist, and they’ll know what’s in the Constitution and what’s not in the Constitution. One of the things that’s not in the Constitution is the right to end the life of an inconvenient human child.” 

President-elect Trump can be expected to stick to his previous judicial philosophies when looking for a potential Supreme Court nominee if a justice retired from the high court, experts say. 

Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, all three of whom were under the age of 55 at the time of their appointments. Likewise, Trump appointed more than 50 federal appellate judges during his first term.

Politicians and media personalities have called for the older justices on the court to step down, particularly justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, in anticipation of a Trump presidency. Such calls were also directed toward justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan prior to the general election. Politico recently reported Democrats are discussing whether Sotomayor should resign during their two remaining months in control of the Senate. 

JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR FACES PRESSURE TO RETIRE AHEAD OF TRUMP TAKING OFFICE: REPORT

“No one other than justices Thomas and Alito knows when or if they will retire, and talking about them like meat that has reached its expiration date is unwise, uninformed and, frankly, just crass,” conservative legal activist Leonard Leo told Fox News Digital in a statement. “Justices Thomas and Alito have given their lives to our country and our Constitution and should be treated with more dignity and respect than they are getting from some pundits.” 

Trump may have the opportunity to further bolster the conservative majority by appointing younger justices if any justices retire.

“I think you can start counting down the days until Thomas retires,” said Devon Ombres, senior director of courts and legal policy at CAPAction. When asked where Sotomayor and Kagan stand, Ombres said, “They’re not leaving now.”

“We’re starting to already see conservative activists take the jump in favor of having justices Alito and Thomas retire so that President Trump can replace them with nominees in their 50s as a way of preserving conservative majorities for the next 15 to 20 years on the court,” John Yoo, the Emanuel Heller professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, told Fox News Digital.

Yoo noted, however, that even if such retirements were to take place, the balance of the court as it stands now would remain the same. 

‘IDEOLOGICAL BALANCE’: SUPREME COURT’S CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY TO STAY NO MATTER WHO WINS ELECTION, EXPERTS SAY

“It’s not clear to me that they should retire,” Yoo said. “They’re in their mid-70s, and they both seem to be in good health. And they’re both at the top of their game.”

Yoo added that if there was a retirment, Trump would likely look to the appellate judges he appointed during his first term as potential nominees. 

“I think Trump, given his practices, would probably favor appointing people that he had appointed already to the circuit courts,” Yoo said. “And he has a lot to pick from because he picked a lot of young conservatives.”

Ombres specifically noted judges James C. Ho and Stuart Kyle Duncan on the Fifth Circuit as potential Trump nominees to the Supreme Court. Of the 17 active judges on the court, six were Trump appointees.

HERE ARE THE MOST TALKED-ABOUT CANDIDATES FOR TOP POSTS IN TRUMP’S ADMINISTRATION 

While Yoo did not pick out particular names, he predict4ed Trump will continue to fall back on certain judges. 

“Going by who Trump picked already, he picked people who seemed committed to originalism, people who had Justice Department backgrounds. He picked some people like that.”

In anticipation of his first administration in 2016, Trump released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees. It was later expanded ahead of the general election that year and once again in 2017. The list proved to be a tactic to ease the minds of Republicans concerned about Trump’s capacity to appoint conservative justices to the court. 

Yoo said he does not expect Trump will repeat himself this time around with an updated list. 

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“I think last time he did it, he was trying to win over the Republican Party, and he was an outsider. Nobody knew whether he was conservative or not. And, so, he put out that list,” Yoo said. “And, so, it’s actually quite clever of Trump at that time to release the names and stick to them as people he would appoint to the Supreme Court because it really committed him in the minds of conservatives. 

“And he kept his word. And I think that he doesn’t need to now because people can see his track record.”

President-elect Trump is set to meet President Biden at the Oval Office on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced Saturday.

The announcement comes as the pair work towards a transition of power which will conclude with Trump being sworn in as the 47th president on Jan. 20, 2025.

“At President Biden’s invitation, President Biden and President-elect Trump will meet in the Oval Office on Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. Additional details to follow,” Jean-Pierre announced in a short statement. 

DEMOCRATS LOOKING TO POINT FINGERS AFTER ‘HUMILIATING’ ELECTION DEFEAT SHOULD START WITH MEDIA: WSJ COLUMNIST

President Biden addressed the nation from the Rose Garden on Thursday after his Vice President Kamala Harris conceded the 2024 presidential election to President-elect Trump and pledged to a ‘peaceful and orderly’ transfer of power. Trump did not host Biden in 2020 as the 45th president contested the results. 

It has been tradition that the current first lady also hosts the incoming first lady at the White House.

Trump has been busy working on his transition team since he was declared the winner early Wednesday, making a historic appointment by naming Susie Wiles as the first female chief of staff.

“Susie Wiles just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history, and was an integral part of both my 2016 and 2020 successful campaigns,” Trump said in a statement. “Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again…. I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”

Trump’s transition team is being headed by professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon and billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick.

Meanwhile, the Trump-Vance campaign on Saturday announced the formation of the “Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc.,” a 501(c)(4) organization that will plan inaugural events. 

The organization will be co-chaired by longtime friends and supporters of President-elect Trump, Steve Witkoff and Senator Kelly Loeffler. 

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“On Election Night, we made history and I have the extraordinary honor of having been elected the 47th President of the United States thanks to tens of millions of hardworking Americans across the nation who supported our America First agenda,” President Trump said in a statement.

“The Trump Vance Inaugural Committee will honor this magnificent victory in a celebration of the American People and our nation. This will be the kick-off to my administration, which will deliver on bold promises to Make America Great Again.”

“Together, we will celebrate this moment, steeped on history and tradition, and then get to work to achieve the most incredible future for our people, restoring strength, success, and common sense to the Oval Office.” 

Biden on Saturday deflected a question that was shouted by a reporter as he left church in Delaware about whether Trump is “still a threat to democracy.”

“I am going to see him on Wednesday,” Biden answered before getting into an SUV, also ignoring questions about what they would discuss. 

Democratic Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is projected to win re-election in Washington state’s closely watched 3rd Congressional District.

Gluesenkamp Perez has defeated Republican challenger Joe Kent for the second time in two House cycles, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

Gluesenkamp Perez, who was elected to represent the 3rd District in the southwest part of the state bordering Portland, Oregon, was widely viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the House after winning her 2022 race by less than 2 points.

VOTERS SPEAK OUT IN KEY SWING DISTRICT THAT COULD DETERMINE CONTROL OF HOUSE: ‘KICKED’ TO THE ‘CURB’

Gluesenkamp Perez, running in a district with a significant Republican voter presence, notably declined to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Republican-leaning district featuring sprawling farmlands as well as the suburbs of Portland, narrowly went for Trump in 2020, making it a crucial target for the GOP this year.

Gluesenkamp Perez had sought to showcase herself as an independent-minded moderate. Her actions during her tenure have ranged from co-sponsoring a bill to protect medication abortion to voting in favor of a resolution rebuking Harris’ role in the handling of the U.S.-Mexico border. She was also ranked by the Lugar Center and the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy as having one of the most bipartisan voting records in the U.S. House.

MIKE JOHNSON KICKS OFF SWING-STATE TOUR AS GOP CLINGS TO HOUSE CONTROL

Kent, a former Green Beret, blamed his opponent on the campaign trail for her support of a variety of Biden policy items and cited inflation and illegal immigration as top concerns.

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Two years ago, Gluesenkamp Perez came out of nowhere to win a congressional seat against Kent, who had Trump’s backing in a district that hadn’t been in Democratic hands for over a decade. She took over a seat held by a more moderate Republican who lost the primary in part because she voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The House of Representatives Oversight Committee has launched an investigation into the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after an employee was terminated for instructing hurricane relief workers in Florida to avoid homes with Trump flags.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairperson of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, announced Saturday he sent FEMA Director Deanne Criswell a letter requesting she testify at a hearing to answer questions about the agency’s response to hurricanes Helene and Milton.

In the letter, Comer said the hearing would “permit members to investigate recent reports that a FEMA official instructed relief workers to bypass hurricane-impacted homes displaying campaign signs for President Trump.”

“In the wake of the recent major disasters that impacted Americans of all political persuasions, it is critical that FEMA adheres to its disaster relief mission,” he wrote.

FEMA OFFICIAL DIRECTED HURRICANE RELIEF WORKERS TO AVOID HOMES WITH TRUMP SIGNS AS AGENCY CONDUCTS CLEANUP

The Oversight Committee’s investigation followed Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s announcement Friday that he was launching an investigation into the agency.

“The blatant weaponization of government by partisan activists in the federal bureaucracy is yet another reason why the Biden-Harris administration is in its final days,” DeSantis said. “At my direction, the Division of Emergency Management is launching an investigation into the federal government’s targeted discrimination of Floridians who support Donald Trump.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: UNDERSTANDING FEMA’S DISASTER BUDGET IN HURRICANE MILTON AFTERMATH

“New leadership is on the way to D.C., and I’m optimistic that these partisan bureaucrats will be fired.”

The investigations were promptly launched after FEMA confirmed to Fox News Digital that an employee had instructed aid workers to deny relief to residents who had Trump campaign signs at their homes. The Daily Wire was the first to report it.

FEMA OFFICIAL FIRED FOR DIRECTING HURRICANE RELIEF AWAY FROM TRUMP SUPPORTERS’ HOMES

“We take our mission to help everyone before, during and after disasters seriously. This employee has been terminated, and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel,” Criswell said. “I will continue to do everything I can to make sure this never happens again.”

WATCH:

A FEMA spokesperson told Fox News Friday the agency is “deeply disturbed” by the employee’s actions and that it was an “isolated incident.” 

“FEMA helps all survivors regardless of their political preference or affiliation,” the spokesperson said.

“The employee who issued this guidance had no authority and was given no direction to tell teams to avoid these homes, and we are reaching out to the people who may have not been reached as a result of this incident,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the agency has helped more than 365,000 households affected by hurricanes Helene and Milton in Florida and provided nearly $900 million in direct assistance to survivors.”

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“We are horrified that this took place and therefore have taken extreme actions to correct this situation and have ensured that the matter was addressed at all levels.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to FEMA for comment.

Nikki Haley, a Republican who ran against President-elect Trump months ago, responded after he publicly announced that she would not be joining his administration.

Responding in an equally public format, Haley wrote that she wishes him “great success.”

“I was proud to work with President Trump defending America at the United Nations,” she wrote in a X post Saturday. 

“I wish him, and all who serve, great success in moving us forward to a stronger, safer America over the next four years,” she said.

TRUMP RULES OUT TWO GOP STALWARTS FROM JOINING HIS ADMINISTRATION: ‘WILL NOT BE INVITING’

Haley’s gracious response came after Trump took to Truth Social to frankly state that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, as well as former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo would not be participating in his new cabinet. 

The announcement came after rumors have swirled regarding President-elect Trump’s cabinet members.

NIKKI HALEY PENS SUPPORTIVE OP-ED IN FAVOR OF TRUMP AHEAD OF ELECTION DAY: ‘EASY CALL’

“I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,” the president-elect posted on Truth Social early Saturday evening. 

“I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country,” he continued. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Haley during her run for the Republican candidate attempted to cast herself as an alternative to Trump, but eventually penned a supportive op-ed about the presidential candidate two days before Election Day.

The former South Carolina governor wrote the recently-published opinion piece, which is titled “Trump Isn’t Perfect, but He’s the Better Choice.”

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“I don’t agree with Mr. Trump 100% of the time,” Haley conceded. “But I do agree with him most of the time, and I disagree with Ms. Harris nearly all the time. That makes this an easy call.”

Fox News Digital’s Andrea Margolis contributed to this report.

President-elect Trump has officially won Arizona, avenging his 2020 election loss in the crucial swing state.

The race in Arizona was called by the Associated Press on Saturday evening. With Arizona, Trump has secured 11 more electoral votes, and has won 312 electoral votes in total. His opponent, Vice President Harris, only garnered 226 electoral votes.

Trump’s Arizona pick-up ends the battle for swing states in the 2024 presidential election. In addition to Arizona, he picked up electoral votes in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

President Biden won the state of Arizona by less than one-half of 1% in the 2020 election and the results in the key area of Maricopa County were also slim, with Biden beating Trump by 2%.

Before Biden won Arizona in 2020, Republicans had carried the state every year since 1996.

BATTLEGROUND SERIES: ARIZONA’S 11 ELECTORAL VOTES HINGE ON KEY SWING COUNTY BIDEN WON BY A HAIR IN 2020

Immigration was arguably the most highly important issue in Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico. 

“We have to have swifter incarceration at the border,” Mary from Phoenix told Fox News Digital last month. “And if there’s a suspicion that they’re going to commit a crime, lock them up.”

HARRIS RIPPED FOR ‘WORD SALAD’ AFTER HECKLER INTERRUPTION DURING CAMPAIGN SPEECH: ‘THE GIBBERISH NEVER ENDS’

Others in Arizona agreed with Harris’ message in her numerous trips to the state that Trump represents a threat to “Democracy.”

“Kamala, Kamala, Kamala!” a Tempe man named Bob told Fox News Digital. “The rich have been riding a wave of tax cuts and not responsibility, and the Supreme Court’s been taking away the rights of the government agencies that regulate things. So we need to get that back in line and Kamala is going to do that instead of putting more Federalist judges up there.” 

Arizona is also home to a higher proportion of Hispanic voters than the rest of the country, and while they favored Biden by 19 points in the last election, they had shown signs of shifting toward Trump leading up to the election.

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The Grand Canyon State is also voting for a new senator after independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema decided not to run for re-election this year. The Republican candidate is Kari Lake, a former TV news host who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022. The Democrats have fielded Rep. Ruben Gallego, a former Marine who represents Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District.

Fox News Digital’s Remy Numa and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report

President-elect Trump has repeatedly said he wants to unite the country when he serves his second term as president. On Saturday, he came up with a new idea to do just that, saying he’d pay off the Democrats’ debts.

The Harris-Walz campaign is reportedly $20 million in debt, having raised more than $1 billion and had $118 million in the bank as of Oct. 16, according to Politico reporter Christopher Cadelago. 

In the name of unity, or more likely in an epic troll, Trump says people should chip in and bail out the vice president’s campaign. 

DEMOCRATS LOOKING TO POINT FINGERS AFTER ‘HUMILIATING’ ELECTION DEFEAT SHOULD START WITH MEDIA: WSJ COLUMNIST

“I am very surprised that the Democrats, who fought a hard and valiant fight in the 2020 (sic) Presidential Election, raising a record amount of money, didn’t have lots of $’s left over,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth.

“Now they are being squeezed by vendors and others. Whatever we can do to help them during this difficult period, I would strongly recommend we, as a Party and for the sake of desperately needed UNITY, do.

“We have a lot of money left over in that our biggest asset in the campaign was ‘Earned Media,’ and that doesn’t cost very much. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Earned media is essentially free media coverage, which Trump says he got in abundance throughout his historic campaign. Trump’s earned media came in the form of viral social media posts, doing free interviews and hosting dozens of rallies that generated their own news stories and headlines. 

TRUMP’S VICTORY DOESN’T GO OVER WELL WITH LIBERAL MEDIA: ‘I’M GONNA THROW UP

Questions are being raised as to how the Harris-Walz campaign could spend so much money yet suffer such a resounding defeat to the former president, who won a landslide victory, sweeping all battleground states as well as the popular vote. Fox News Digital has reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign to confirm the $20 million figure but has not received a response. 

The Washington Examiner published a report Friday with details on how the Harris campaign spent its $1 billion war chest, with one particular expenditure raising some eyebrows.

“The Harris campaign spent six figures on building a set for her appearance on the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast with host Alex Cooper,” The Examiner wrote. “The interview came out in October and was reportedly filmed in a hotel room in Washington, D.C.”

Yet the episode failed to break an audience of 1 million. It’s had 822,000 views since being uploaded Oct. 6, compared to Trump’s Oct. 25 appearance on Rogan that has well over 47 million views on YouTube.

Harris campaign fundraiser Lindy Li told “Fox & Friends Weekend” the campaign ended in an “epic disaster.”

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“The truth is, this is just an epic disaster. This is a $1 billion disaster,” Li declared Saturday morning, summing up the result of the Harris campaign.

The DNC member noted she raised money for the campaign based on the understanding the election was a “margin of error race.”

“I raised millions of that. I have friends that I have to be accountable to and to explain what happened because I told them it was a margin of error race. I was promised, [Harris campaign chair] Jen O’Malley Dillon promised all of us that Harris would win. She even put videos out that Harris would win. I believed her, my donors believed her. And so they wrote massive checks.”

Fox News’ Gabriel Hays and Alexander Hall contributed to this report. 

President-elect Trump’s 2024 vote totals have officially surpassed his total vote count from 2020, according to numbers from The Associated Press.

Trump’s popular vote total, 74,372,005 votes and counting, surpasses his 2020 total of 74,223,975 despite certain states like California and Arizona still tabulating votes.

According to the AP, Maryland, Oregon, Arizona, Utah, Alaska and California have still not finished counting votes. California specifically had only counted 63% of its votes as of 5 p.m. ET, according to The Associated Press.

It is unclear when these states will finish their counts. Approximately 5 million votes or so remain to be counted.

FORMER GEORGIA SENATOR KELLY LOEFFLER TO SERVE ON TRUMP’S INAUGURAL COMMITTEE

Trump’s definitive victory in Tuesday’s election gives him 301 Electoral College votes over Vice President Harris’ 226, according to The Associated Press.

PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP TO MEET BIDEN IN OVAL OFFICE WEDNESDAY

In the 2016 election, Trump did not win the popular vote but won 304 Electoral College votes compared to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 227.

Republicans winning the presidency and the projected GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress should give Trump more authority to achieve his policy goals in his second term.

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The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

President-elect Donald Trump announced in a public social media post Saturday that he will not be inviting two members of his former administration back to the White House.

Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were both mentioned in the post. The Republicans had been considered two strong candidates for Trump’s new Cabinet.

“I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,” the president-elect posted on Truth Social early Saturday evening. 

Despite the harsh nature of the announcement, Trump added that he enjoyed working with them.

FORMER GEORGIA SENATOR KELLY LOEFFLER TO SERVE ON TRUMP’S INAUGURAL COMMITTEE

“I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country,” he continued. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Haley, who ran against Trump in the Republican primary earlier this year, has been both publicly supportive and critical of the president-elect in the past. Last week, she wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in support of his presidential campaign.

“I don’t agree with Mr. Trump 100% of the time,” Haley wrote. “But I do agree with him most of the time, and I disagree with Ms. Harris nearly all the time. That makes this an easy call.”

NEW YORK DEMOCRAT RIPS ‘FAR LEFT’ FOR TRUMP VICTORY: ‘IVORY-TOWERED NONSENSE’

Pompeo, while not one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, has also expressed support for the president-elect in the past. In an open letter with over 400 signatories, including Gold Star families and national security officials, Pompeo endorsed Trump for president.

“From a world at peace under President Trump, we are closer to a third world war than ever before under the Biden-Harris Administration,” the letter, which was written in October, stated. “With multiple escalating wars around the world, an open border that allows terrorists to flood into the American homeland, and malign actors like China operating unabated, U.S. national security has been profoundly damaged by the failed policies of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.”

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Fox News Digital reached out to Haley and Pompeo for comment, but did not immediately hear back. 

Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

The race for the majority in the House of Representatives is on with each party vying for power and key races yet to be called.

As of Saturday, Republicans held 212 seats and Democrats held 200. A party needs 218 seats for a majority.

The path to victory for a Democratic majority in the House is narrowing, with the party needing to sweep the most contested races to win power. 

Many undeclared seats are in the western U.S. or in swing districts, including Arizona, Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Louisiana, Ohio, Maryland, New York, Maine and Alaska.

ALL EYES ON CALIFORNIA AS HOUSE MAJORITY STILL HINGES ON TIGHT RACES

Key House of Representative Races:

Alaska’s at-large congressional district:

Democratic incumbent Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola is in a tight race in Alaska’s at-large congressional district, where she is trailing Republican entrepreneur Nick Begich.

As of Saturday evening, Begich was leading Peltola 49.49% to 45.42% with 76.5% of the vote counted.

Arizona’s 6th Congressional District:

The race in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District is tight, with the Republican candidate barely leading. 

Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani, a first-term lawmaker, was leading former Democratic state lawmaker Kirsten Engel by just 1,795 votes as of Saturday evening. According to Fox News’ Decision Desk, 75.64% of the vote has been counted.

California’s 13th Congressional District:

Republican Rep. John Duarte is leading former Democratic state Assembly member Adam Gray in California’s 13th Congressional District, but the highly contested race remains uncalled as of Saturday.

With 61.7% of the vote, Duarte, a first-term lawmaker, was ahead of Gray. Duarte took the lead with 52% of the vote, and Gray trailed with 48.75% with 61.73% of the vote counted.

SHUTDOWN STANDOFF LOOMS IN CONGRESS’ FINAL WEEKS BEFORE TRUMP’S RETURN TO WHITE HOUSE

California’s 47th Congressional District:

The race to succeed outgoing Democratic Rep. Katie Porter in California’s 47th Congressional District is also razor-thin.

Republican Scott Baugh, a former Assembly member, and state Sen. Dave Min, a Democrat, are vying for the open seat.

Min has 50% of the vote to Baugh’s 49.8% with 79% of the votes counted.

Colorado’s 8th Congressional District

Rep. Yadira Caraveo, a Democrat, is trailing Republican state Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District.

With 86% of the votes counted, Evans was ahead of Caraveo. The lead, if sustained, would be a flip for Republicans.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said the House is poised to remain in GOP hands, and he has launched his bid to retain the gavel.

Democrats are holding out hope they could win by a razor-thin majority. 

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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., wrote on X Thursday it “has yet to be decided who will control” the House next year, pointing to ongoing ballot counting in Oregon, Arizona and California.