MAGA Republican Wins Montana Senate—Flipping Yet Another Seat for GOP

Despite his many scandals, Republican Tim Sheehy has defeated Democrat Jon Tester and flipped Montana’s only blue Democratic Senate seat—delivering an even stronger Senate majority to Mitch McConnell.

Sheehy leads Tester 52.9 to 45.4 percent, according to the Associated Press, which called the race on Wednesday morning, with 85 percent of votes reported.

The news is a major win for Republicans, who now hold a 10-seat majority in the Senate, with six races remaining to be called. Trump won the state in 2016 and 2020 and yet again this year.

Sheehy’s campaign was one disaster after the next. You might remember Sheehy’s disparaging comments about Native Americans and young women, or his mysterious story about a gunshot wound he received in battle.

In August, a local news outlet released recordings in which Sheehy made several racist remarks about the Crow Reservation at private fundraisers last year. In one clip, Sheehy called an event with the Native community “a great way to bond with all the Indians out there, while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.” Sheehy acknowledged the comments were insensitive—but refused to apologize despite Native leaders’ demands. Native voters make up about 6 percent of Montana’s electorate, and played a large part in voter mobilization efforts.

Sheehy then attracted even more ire from his state’s voters when he called women under 25 “single-issue” voters who are “indoctrinated” on the topic of abortion. “That’s all they want to talk about. They are single-issue voters. “It’s all about pro-choice, pro-choice,” Sheehy whined at a meet and greet last year.

And just days before the election, Sheehy admitted there are no medical records to back up his story that he was shot in combat in Afghanistan. A former national park ranger went public stating that in reality, Sheehy shot himself at the Glacier National Park in 2015.

While Sheehy campaigned on being a Navy Seal and successful businessman, he is additionally being sued by his former employees for allegedly scamming them out of millions, while at the same time losing his company $77 million.

But big business came in to save the day for Sheehy. Twelve billionaires gave more than $1 million to help boost the Republican. These included members of the Walton family, organizations linked to Charles Koch, and the founder of the Jimmy John’s sandwich chain. Additionally, the CEO of the private equity group Blackstone Group donated $5 million alone to a group that funneled money into efforts to defeat Tester. Blackstone not so coincidentally owns the Wyoming oil and gas pipeline company Tallgrass Energy, of which Sheehy’s brother is the president.

All of Sheehy’s strange stories, coupled with Montana’s rapidly changing demographics, ultimately weren’t enough to catapult Tester to victory over the Republican and his billionaire friends.

Donald Trump was elected president of the United States early Wednesday morning, making him the first convicted felon who will be sworn into office.

Trump beat Kamala Harris after he won Wisconsin, putting his total number of votes in the Electoral College at 277, surpassing the 270 required to clinch the presidency. Harris earned a total of 224 electoral votes. 

The president-elect has promised to be a dictator “on day one,” close the U.S. borders, and enact the largest mass deportation scheme in U.S. history, which could lead to millions of people across the country—including families and children—being displaced and forced out. 

Trump enthusiastically made racist attacks against undocumented immigrants the centerpiece of his grievance campaign. For months, he painted a false trend of “migrant crime,” touting a fake correlation between undocumented immigration and rates of violent crime. He spread lies about legal immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets and foreign gangs violently overtaking apartment buildings, and falsely claimed that hundreds of American towns and cities had been “invaded and conquered” by immigrants. 

Trump has promised to address inflation by imposing extreme tariffs on all foreign goods, which market experts say will all but demolish the American economy. While Trump promised to lower costs, companies are already preparing to hike prices to offset the economic turmoil caused by his tariffs. Consumers are currently enjoying the lowest inflation rates in four years.

Trump has made scores of other “day one” promises, including banning transgender athletes from sports teams that match their gender identity, repealing Joe Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, and cutting funds to schools teaching “critical race theory.” While not all of these goals are realistic, they present an image of what Trump plans for his second term in the White House. 

His forthcoming administration promises the likes of billionaire technocrat Elon Musk, anti-vaxxer and whale decapitator Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and even far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer in its ranks.

Trump has called his political opponents “vermin,” and those who disagree with him “the enemy within.” He called Democrats “evil,” “sick,” and “vicious” while feigning outrage over their “divisive” and “disgusting” rhetoric. Trump has threatened to turn the U.S. military on American citizens and imprison anyone who prevented him from taking office. 

In the last six months, a 78-year-old Trump has shown significant cognitive decline, delivering rambling, incoherent diatribes in lieu of stump speeches. He appeared tired, slurred his words, confused subjects, and strayed so far off topic that his campaign had to invent a term to spin the verbal diarrhea: the weave. While attacking Harris, who is more than 10 years his junior, over her mental fitness, he has refused to share his own medical records. 

While Trump’s victory casts many aspects of American life into utter chaos, it will also do the same to his many ongoing legal battles, which are likely to draw to a close, at least for now.  

Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felony charges in his hush-money case earlier this year, was tentatively scheduled for sentencing on November 26. His attorneys had requested that their client’s conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity for “official acts,” and want to see the charges against Trump dropped or have some evidence omitted in a new trial. Presiding Judge Juan Merchan is expected to make a decision on that request on November 12. He may choose to follow through with his sentencing, which will likely be appealed. 

While special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case is expected to continue moving forward in the short term, Trump has promised to fire Smith on his first day in office, and even threatened to deport him. Even if he doesn’t, whoever Trump appoints as attorney general, upon entering office will sink that case. The same fate is likely for Trump’s classified documents case, which Smith has appealed after it was tossed out by Judge Aileen Cannon in July. 

Trump’s election interference case in Georgia, where he was indicted as part of a sprawling conspiracy to overturn the state’s election results, has been delayed until December, and will probably be stayed until he leaves office in 2028. 

Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania in the 2024 general election, the Associated Press projects.

The win gives Trump Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, giving him a grand total of 267 electoral college votes—a measly three votes away from the 270 needed to win back to the White House. Pennsylvania was a must-win state, and Kamala Harris, who has 214 electoral votes, is now all but guaranteed to lose.

The former president and convicted felon has already pulled off victories in the battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia. Results in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada have yet to be announced.

Trump is the only Republican to win Pennsylvania since 1988, as the former president also narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton there in 2016 by just over 44,000 votes. This time, Trump is leading by 193,937 votes, according to the AP’s count thus far. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the state by just over 81,000 votes.

This story has been updated.

Former President Donald Trump has won Georgia in the 2024 presidential election and taken its 16 electoral votes, according to CNN and MSNBC.

The state was highly coveted by both Trump and Kamala Harris, and Trump’s win gives the former president a total of 246 electoral votes, closer to the 270 total needed to win the White House. Kamala Harris has 189 votes.

Trump is leading 50.8 percent to Harris’s 48.5 percent according to the AP’s count thus far, possibly thanks a pro-Trump takeover of the state elections board. Trump also had bad blood with the state’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state, but still got Kemp’s endorsement in the end. 

Trump’s victory returns the state to a Republican presidential candidate, as was the case when he won the Peach State in 2016. In 2020, Joe Biden pulled off a rare victory when he won the state by 11,779 votes, or a 0.2 percent margin. Republicans had won the state in every other presidential election since 1984, with the exception of 1992, when southern Democrat Bill Clinton was on the ballot.

Trump will be glad to have won Georgia, especially after his fake elector scheme failed in 2020. The former president and convicted felon has already pulled off victories in the battleground state of North Carolina. Results in the remaining battleground states have yet to be announced.

In a rebuke of the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign of Gaza and Lebanon, the city of Dearborn, Michigan, has broken in favor of Donald Trump, with 39.6 percent of votes cast.

Dearborn is the largest majority Arab American city in the country, and as of 11:35 p.m. EST Trump had 46.8 percent of the vote compared to 27.8 percent of the vote for Harris and 22 percent for Green Party Candidate Jill Stein. In 2020, Joe Biden won the city with a 74.2 percent of the vote, compared to 24.2 percent for Trump.

Over the past year, there were concerns that Democrats would lose ground with the state’s Arab American and Muslim populations due to the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza over the past year. In Dearborn, those concerns appear to have some merit and show that Democrats should not have dismissed Arab American and Muslim voters. The Harris campaign refused to have an Arab speaker at the Democratic National Convention in August, and just last week, the party sent Bill Clinton to the state, where he drew a huge backlash for saying Israel was “forced” by Hamas to kill civilians in Gaza. *

Stein made inroads in the city, holding a campaign event there in September and supporting an immediate cease-fire in the war, saying, “We do not need and will not tolerate genocide in Gaza.”

Overall in Michigan, the Associated Press shows Harris trailing with 1,408,266 votes, or 45.9 percent compared to Trump’s 1,604,225 votes, or 52.3 percent.

* This piece has been corrected to note that Muslim speakers were not missing at the DNC

Texas elected Julie Johnson to replace Representative Colin Allred on Tuesday, marking the first time that the Lone Star State has chosen an openly LGBTQ person to represent it in Congress.

The Democrat won Texas’s 32nd Congressional District by a landslide, pulling more than 60 percent of the vote against Republican Darrell Day, reported The Dallas Morning News. She will represent parts of Collin, Dallas, and Denton Counties.

But Johnson’s win isn’t just a local victory for LGBTQ Texans—it’s also a regional one. Johnson’s election makes her the first queer representative in Washington from the South, according to Austin-based KUT News.

“Tonight, Team Julie made history,” Johnson wrote in a post after the results were called. “I am incredibly honored and humbled that you have elected me to be your Representative for the 32nd district. Together, we have shattered barriers and proven that representation matters.”

“This is just the beginning of the work ahead, but tonight, let’s celebrate this historic moment and our progress together,” Johnson wrote, thanking the “countless individuals” who “fought for equality and inclusion.”

“Rest assured, I am committed to continuing this journey with the same passion and dedication, and I will not rest until we achieve our shared goals,” she added.

Kamala Harris has secured victory in the integral blue dot of Nebraska, bringing her one step closer to her 270 to win. 

Harris won the single electoral vote from Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district, the Associated Press called Tuesday evening.

The blue dot was important to Harris’s campaign, and she now has 210 electoral college votes to Trump’s 230 votes, as both candidates race toward the 270 votes needed for victory. Trump has already pulled off a victory in the battleground states of North Carolina. Results in the other battleground states have yet to be announced. 

Omaha has been a pain in Republicans’ sides throughout the election cycle. Nebraska is one of only two states with a split electoral vote system, giving those living in the state’s largest city a special role in determining the presidential election. That’s why MAGA sought to change the state to a winner-take-all system earlier this year. 

While Harris and Tim Walz, who is from the state, won the district’s one electoral vote, Trump will take Nebraska’s remaining four.   

Democrats were perhaps buoyed to go to the polls thanks to Nebraska’s two abortion-related, and slightly confusingly worded, ballot questions. Also perhaps aiding in Harris’s victory, thousands of Nebraska’s former felons, many of whom live in or near Omaha, were enfranchised less than three weeks before the election. 

As results continue to trickle in, Walz should take a second to celebrate his home state win.

Republicans have taken control of the U.S. Senate, according to the Associated Press.

Republicans held 51 seats Tuesday night and Democrats held 42. There are still seven seats to be called.

The House majority has not yet been determined.

Ahead of the election, several GOP contenders found themselves struggling in states where the top of the ticket, Donald Trump, saw considerable enthusiasm.

Republican senators found themselves met by aggressive opponents. In Nebraska, Senator Deb Fischer found a tough contender in independent candidate Dan Osborn. Meanwhile, Texas Democratic candidate Colin Allred appeared to gain traction ahead of the election in his race against Republican Senator Ted Cruz.

Fischer and Cruz ultimately kept their seats.

And Republican challengers seemed to falter against Democratic incumbents. In Arizona, Kari Lake previously trailed Democratic Representative Rueben Gallego by multiple points, even as Kamala Harris and Trump found themselves tied. Ohio’s Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown held a lead against Bernie Moreno. And in Montana, Republican challenger Tim Sheehy held only a slim four-point lead over Senator John Tester, even though Trump led Harris by 17 points in the Treasure State.

Brown lost his seat. Gallego and Tester’s races have not yet been called.

Republican Senator Deb Fischer won her re-election Tuesday night, dashing Democratic votes that independent Dan Osborn would successfully oust her from office. 

Fischer won against the former leader 51.5-48.5 percent, with 72 percent reporting, according to the Associated Press.

Osborn, who led 500 workers at his Kellogg’s plant through a three-month strike to end a two-tiered benefits system and stop plant closings, led an impressive campaign against Fsicher, who has held the Senate seat since 2013. The Democratic Party did not field a candidate in the race, but given Osborn’s political views, his win was expected to be a serious setback for the GOP.

With Fischer’s victory, Republicans have secured control of the Senate. They currently have 51 seats to Democrats’ 42 seats, with seven seats still remaining to be called.

Osborn refused to seek an endorsement from any political party including the Democrats, citing his desire not to be beholden to the money or special interests behind them. “I want to be clear that I’m an independent,” Osborn told the Nebraska Examiner in May. “I want to stay true to who I am.”

Still, his pro-labor stances were expected to have him caucusing with the Democrats similar to Independent Senator Bernie Sanders.

“I hadn’t been a very political person until corporate greed came knocking on my door a few years ago, when I was president of my local union, and we went out on strike, at a time where the company was making record profits,” Osborn told Semafor in September.

With Fischer’s victory, Democrats’ hopes to retake the Senate comes to a sad end.

Missouri overturned a total abortion ban Tuesday, with the majority of the state voting to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.

Roughly 53.2 percent of the state voted in favor of Amendment 3, achieving the simple majority necessary to protect reproductive freedom in Missouri, including an individual’s decision to have an abortion up to the point of viability.

Fetal viability typically occurs during the second trimester, between 23 and 24 weeks of pregnancy, but the ballot measure has a different definition for the developmental stage. Instead, it describes fetal viability as “the point in pregnancy when, in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional” there is a “significant likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”

The measure, called the Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative, solidifies that the government has no role in a person’s “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions. It undoes the Show-Me State’s total abortion ban, which took effect one hour after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“The right to reproductive freedom shall not be denied, interfered with, delayed, or otherwise restricted unless the Government demonstrates that such action is justified by a compelling governmental interest achieved by the least restrictive means,” the ballot measure read in part. “Any denial, interference, delay, or restriction of the right to reproductive freedom shall be presumed invalid.”

Governmental interest was specified as compelling only if it had the limited effect of “improving or maintaining the health of a person seeking care” and was consistent with “widely accepted” evidence-based medicine and does not “infringe on that person’s autonomous decision-making.”

Missouri is one of 10 states that have placed abortion on the ballot this year—the most to appear in a single year in U.S. history.