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Laxalt says 'victory window' has narrowed in Nevada Senate race as count continues

Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, said on Saturday that his “victory window” has narrowed, as recent ballot releases have continued to break in favor of incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.).

Laxalt is leading by just over 850 votes as of Saturday morning, after initially taking an assertive lead over Cortez Masto in Tuesday’s midterm elections. On Friday night, the vote difference briefly dropped below 800 ballots.

“Here is where we are — we are up only 862 votes,” Laxalt said in a tweet on Saturday morning. “Multiple days in a row, the mostly mail in ballots counted continue to break in higher DEM margins than we calculated. This has narrowed our victory window.”

The Republican candidate said he believes the close Senate race will likely come down to about 20,000 to 30,000 early ballots that were dropped off in Clark County on Election Day. Nevada allows voters to hand in their absentee ballots in-person on Election Day.

“If they are GOP precincts or slightly DEM leaning then we can still win,” Laxalt added. “If they continue to trend heavy DEM then she will overtake us.”

The Nevada race will be key in determining control of the Senate, especially after the Arizona Senate race was called for Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly on Friday night. If Democrats win Nevada, they will maintain their narrow majority in the upper chamber with Vice President Harris’s tie-breaking vote and have a chance to expand it in Georgia, where Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Republican Herschel Walker will compete in a runoff election in December.

However, if Republicans win the Silver State, control of the Senate will once again come down to Georgia.

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Sen. Rick Scott calls 2022 election a 'complete disappointment'

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said on Friday that the 2022 midterm elections were a “complete disappointment” for Republicans, lamenting low voter turnout on Election Day.

“Here’s what happened to us. Election Day, our voters didn’t show up. We didn’t get enough voters. It was a complete disappointment,” Scott told Fox News host Sean Hannity during his prime-time show.

Hannity asked Scott, “Where did all this pie-in-the-sky talk about a wave and a tsunami election come from? Because I never saw it.”

The senator, who also heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that Republicans were trending toward success in the polls leading up to the election but that ultimately GOP voters did not show up.

“I think we’ve got to reflect now. What didn’t happen?” said Scott. “I think we didn’t have enough of a positive message. We said everything about how bad the Biden agenda was. It’s bad, the Democrats are radical, but we have to have a plan of what we stand for.”

The comments from Scott come amid reports that the Florida senator would run for GOP leader, challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has held the position for years.

Republicans were expected to make significant gains in the 2022 midterm elections as Americans struggle with high prices eating up their paychecks. The party was expected to claim the House majority by wide margins, and polling showed the GOP had a chance to claim the Senate as well.

Control of both chambers of Congress is not yet known, but it appears that Democrats, who won the seat that will be vacated by retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), outperformed low expectations.

On Friday, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called for a pause on the Senate GOP leadership vote after news emerged that Scott would launch a bid to replace McConnell.

And on Friday night, Arizona Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters, who lost his challenge to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), slammed McConnell, saying that senators in his party should not elect McConnell as leader.

Scott told Hannity on Friday night that the party shouldn’t “attack” Republicans who deviate from the mainstream but should instead be willing to “have a conversation about these things.”

Scott also made multiple plugs for Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker, who will fight it out in a runoff election against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) in December.

“We have got to do everything we can to help Herschel,” he said.

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Why people worried about the fate of democracy see hope in the midterms

Concerns over the future of American democracy rivaled the economy as a driving force for many voters who cast a ballot in the midterms, a sign that the Jan. 6 insurrection — and the response to it — remain fresh on voters’ minds. 

Voters expressed high confidence in Tuesday’s election processes even amid early complaints from former President Trump relaying baseless claims of fraud. 

But for all their faith in a free and fair election this year, an Associated Press poll of those exiting the voting booth found that 44 percent said the future of democracy was one of their primary voting considerations. 

“This is the first national election following a violent attempt to overthrow the government,” said Donald Sherman, chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).  

“So it shouldn’t shock anyone that voters came out to express support for protecting our democracy because we were very close to losing it.” 

The picture is more complex, however, when it comes to a sea of GOP candidates echoing former President Trump’s false claim the 2020 election was stolen by widespread fraud. 

Voters largely rejected election bids from some of the most vocal election deniers running for office — avoiding a worst case scenario feared by those tracking such campaigns.

But voters also elected to the U.S. House nearly 150 people who have at least questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election, according to a count from The Washington Post. 

And some could still clinch victories to major offices, like Kari Lake, a Republican seeking the governorship in Arizona; Mark Finchem, a GOP candidate for Arizona’s secretary of state; and Adam Laxalt, the GOP candidate running to represent Nevada in the U.S. Senate. 

Still, the overall dynamic is one that voting rights’ groups see as largely heartening. 

“While officials across the country are still counting the votes, we know that in many of the most competitive, high-profile races, the American people rejected candidates who lie about our elections and seek to undermine the rule of law,” said Nick Penniman, founder of Issue One, a democracy group focused on campaign finance issues. 

“It should now be clear to all that the highest level of election administration in the states is no place for election conspiracy theories.” 

Democrats bolstered far-right candidates in the primaries in the hopes of creating a clear choice for voters — a much criticized strategy that appears to have worked.

JR Majewski, who was a January 6 rally participant and subscriber to the QAnon conspiracy theory, lost his race to Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio). Dan Bolduc, who pushed Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen, lost to Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.). Yesli Vega lost to Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.). 

At the state level, election deniers did score key wins, with 14 candidates set to assume roles in overseeing elections as either a secretary of state, attorney general or governor. That includes attorney general candidates in Florida and Ohio.

Joanna Lydgate, president of States United Democracy Center, a bipartisan election protection group, said election deniers won just a fraction of races for secretary of state, but election deniers in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — all key states won by President Biden in 2020 — rejected candidates with such views. 

“It’s just a very clear sign that to the extent that a democracy was on people’s minds it was a fear of our democracy being hijacked, being attacked,” she said.  

Lydgate said the dynamic was most clear in secretary of state races. 

“Where the messaging was most focused on the fact that this is the person who’s going to control your vote, people voted really differently in those races. Voters pretty resoundingly rejected election deniers,” she said. 

“To me that really shows voters understand the stakes. They refuse to let election deniers take their votes away. They said ‘no’ to those lies, and it’s really just such a strong validation of the fact that democracy in America is alive and well.”  

Sherman said one factor was simply the extent to which candidates made election denialism a central part of their platform. 

“What seemed clear is that election denial was not something that could be scaled,” he said. 

Sherman pointed to differences in candidates like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania.

While Sherman described Johnson as “absolutely an election denier” — his office at one point tried to aid in submitting a false election certificate for his state — the issue wasn’t as front and center to his campaign as it was for Mastriano, who was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack after he communicated with Trump about plans to send a false slate of electors to the certification of votes. 

“I think the Mastriano and the Johnson results speak to sort of how some failed miserably by centering election denialism as the basis for their candidacy, versus some that have tried to delicately skate around [the topic] and eked out a victory,” he said. 

In polling leading up to the election, concerns over democracy paled in comparison to rising inflation and other economic anxieties.   

But its presence in polling at all reflects growing fears around an issue that hasn’t been a central focus of prior elections. 

President Biden gave two speeches ahead of the midterms focused on the threats to democracy, which he described as “under assault.” 

“Here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people,” Biden said in a September speech from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  

“They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.” 

In a second speech less than a week before the midterms, Biden against addressed democracy concerns, this time opening by pointing to the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).  

“We must vote knowing what’s at stake. And not just the policy of the moment but institutions that have held us together as we’ve sought a more perfect union are also at stake. We must vote knowing who we have been, what we’re at risk of becoming,” he said. 

Biden got heat for his September speech, with some concerned he might energize the MAGA base at a time when Democrats could ill afford any snafus going into the 2022 elections. But he appears to have tapped into an issue of importance for many voters, even if the economy was the top priority for most.  

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.), the head of the Democrats’ campaign arm who lost his own reelection bid on Tuesday, said it’s too early to determine what issues drove voters in different contests this cycle. 

But Maloney also argued that the midterm results, more broadly, are living proof that the country’s democratic traditions remain intact, even despite the forces trying to tear them down. 

“I don’t think the American people have given up on democracy. And I think that with all of the headwinds, and all of the damage from the pandemic and the Trump years, there’s still a beating heart to American democracy. And I think you saw it last night,” he said at a press conference the day after the election. 

Lydgate, though herself reassured by Tuesday’s results, warned that narratives about stolen elections continue to resonate with some, while election deniers themselves still hold some key positions. 

“We also can’t ignore that a number of election deniers did secure seats, and that’s the predictable result of more than two years of really dangerous lies about our elections,” she said. 

“This is still going to be a huge fight for our democracy.” 

Mike Lillis contributed. 

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Fox News faces post-midterm choice between Trump, DeSantis

Top talent on Fox News and leading figures in conservative media more generally have a choice to make in the coming months: Who would be the best Republican to support in a potential clash for the 2024 GOP nomination for president — former President Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis?

Trump is expected to announce a third run for president on Tuesday, while DeSantis this week delivered Republicans one of the most sweeping statewide victories in Florida in recent memory. 

During his time in the White House, Trump could count on Fox and its top hosts for near constant coverage and partisan approval. 

But there have been signs of a shift away from Trump at Fox for months, and the network’s praise of DeSantis leading up to and following his dominating reelection victory has raised questions about who it might throw its weight behind in 2024. 

“When Rupert Murdoch talks, people listen. So, what happens at Fox matters a lot, especially for Republican Party politics,” said Darrell West, vice president of governance studies at The Brookings Institution. “They have a direct pipeline to the base, so how they feel about Trump, how they feel about other candidates will matter a lot.” 

DeSantis’s convincing victory in Florida got heavy coverage on Fox this week, with hosts and guests citing it as a bright spot and cause for optimism for Republicans moving forward.  

Separately, a number of Trump-backed candidates lost key races, stirring questions about whether it’s time for the GOP to move away from Trump.

Attacks by Trump on DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin also have not gone over well with many Republicans. Both DeSantis and Youngkin are seen as potential rivals to Trump in a 2024 contest.

“Trump may be ready to play dirty to win the GOP nomination in 2024. If he does, he will not only cement the disdain with which many in his party view him today, he will once again scorch Republican chances of defeating Democrats,” wrote columnist Liz Peek in an op-ed published on FoxNews.com this week. “Let us hope that the millions of Americans who have supported Trump in 2016 and again in 2020 begin to see that his time has passed. If they like his policies, they need to move their allegiance to Ron DeSantis, who has never lost a campaign, and who emerged the big winner in these midterms.” 

Most of Fox’s hosts so far have side-stepped the “Trump or DeSantis” question buzzing through Republican circles. 

“There are 72 million people in this country that make up this movement. It is a conservative movement and it’s not tied to any one person,” Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s former White House press secretary and now a regular pundit on Fox, said on Thursday. “This time around, these 72 million people, they will decide where their home is, they will decide. No pundit will say it’s Trump, it’s DeSantis.” 

Fox’s influential prime-time evening hosts, each of whom draw in an audience of millions each night, did not explicitly blame Trump for the GOP’s losses in the 2022 midterms, but have spent time applauding DeSantis’s resounding victory in Florida. 

Tucker Carlson, the network’s top-rated weeknight host, on Wednesday evening replayed a clip from a months-old interview he conducted with DeSantis, saying he “thought it was relevant” to his victory this week. 

“Many others are saying that Donald Trump is the reason why Republicans didn’t do as well as they thought they would. That’s a more complicated question. The truth is we can’t see the entire picture this early,” Carlson said during his show. “The truth is Trump has always been a mixed blessing politically. The downsides are marbled in with the upsides, but in this case he’s certainly not the single cause of anything.” 

In a recent interview with The Hill conducted before this week’s elections, Laura Ingraham, a known pro-Trump commentator on Fox, deflected a question about Trump vs. DeSantis, instead saying the future of the GOP would be about populism more generally.  

She reiterated that sentiment on her first show after the election this week, but also offered a subtle jab at the former president. 

“The populist movement is about ideas. It’s not about any one person. If the voters conclude that you’re putting your own ego or your own grudges ahead of what’s good for the country, they’re going to look elsewhere, period,” Ingraham said on Wednesday. 

Criticism of Trump and an embrace of DeSantis has been less subtle at some media entities owned by Rupert Murdoch.

“What will Democrats do when Donald Trump isn’t around to lose elections? We have to wonder because on Tuesday Democrats succeeded again in making the former President a central campaign issue, and Mr. Trump helped them do it,” the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal wrote in an entry this week dubbing Trump “the biggest loser” of the 2022 midterms. 

On the morning after his victory in Florida, the New York Post, another right-leaning Murdoch-owned tabloid, displayed a photo of DeSantis across its cover with the screaming headline “DEFUTURE.” 

Trump’s relationship with the Murdochs grew famously frosty toward the end of his presidency, with the former president exploding at Fox News on election night 2020 over its relatively early race call of Arizona for President Biden. 

The former president attacked Murdoch’s media empire and Fox News directly again this week, complaining about its coverage of DeSantis. 

“This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. 

A representative for News Corp. declined to comment. 

Political experts say a war between Trump and DeSantis is not an entirely bad thing for Fox News, even if such a showdown could be risky for the Republican Party still fighting for control of Congress. 

“Two conservative candidates fighting over their airwaves is good for viewership, we know that conflict is popular,” said Jennifer Lawless, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia. “There is the possibility that Donald Trump could ultimately remind people what they like about him — and what they hate about him — as a candidate and that could affect what happens in the Georgia runoff. … It would behoove the Republican Party to push this fight off until at least January.” 

New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who is known for having a wide array of credible sources inside Trump’s circle, noted recently that Trump can’t “count on Fox the same way” in 2022.

“I think that, you know, Rupert Murdoch, and I read about this, was pretty sick of Trump after Nov. 3, 2020, and said to a confidant, ‘We should throw this guy over.’ So I don’t think he can count on Fox the same way and Fox is clearly DeSantis-curious, right?” Haberman said during remarks on a recent podcast. “You’re seeing a fair amount of that if there is that primary.”

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Biden eagerly watches as Trump flails at DeSantis

No one is enjoying the public fight between former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis more than President Biden, who if he chooses to run for another term may be battling one of the two Republicans.  

Biden, showing some confidence after a better-than-expected midterm performance by Democrats in the House and Senate, has gleefully dubbed one “the former defeated President” and the other “Donald Trump incarnate.” 

“It will be fun watching them take on each other,” Biden said Wednesday at a news conference following Tuesday’s elections.  

Biden’s pithy answer came after NBC’s Kristen Welker asked him which man would be a more formidable opponent in the 2024 election, following DeSantis’s landslide victory on Tuesday’s midterms and the more uneven approach of a number of candidates backed by Trump.   

Those results have prompted a debate within the GOP over whether it’s time for Trump to step aside.  

A number of Republicans, viewing the results of the midterms, now see DeSantis as the stronger presidential candidate. They fear that if Trump ends up winning the GOP nomination, the party will lose the White House in 2024. Even conservative outlets appeared to turn on the former president: The New York Post’s front page on Wednesday morning featured a photo of DeSantis and his family with a banner headline reading “DeFUTURE.”

Trump has responded to the midterms — and the good reviews for DeSantis — by publicly going after the Florida governor. In messages on Truth Social on Thursday, the former president described DeSantis as an “average” governor and disloyal. DeSantis did not fire back publicly.  

Biden allies say the Trump attacks on DeSantis are good news for the White House.  

“Oh, this is a ‘Let’s get out the popcorn’ moment for him for sure,” said one ally to the president. “It is for all of us. But no one is loving this more than Biden.” 

Robert Wolf, the major Democratic donor who served as the chairman and CEO of UBS Americas, added that Biden has earned this moment.  

“It’s gonna be a bit of a food fight and he deserves to enjoy it, period,” Wolf said on Friday. “He’s got an extra hop in his step, and now he’s going to watch a Republican primary that’s going to be insane.”  

The simmering battle between Trump and DeSantis spilled out into the open before Election Day, largely because of the former president.  

Trump first swiped at the Florida governor during a rally last weekend in Pennsylvania, mocking him as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”  

While the attack fell flat with many conservatives, who viewed it as petty with DeSantis running for reelection in a contest days later, Trump has only upped the ante since DeSantis’s huge victory over Democratic former Gov. Charlie Crist.  

Trump has suggested DeSantis was ungrateful for the former president’s support in 2018 and has indicated he might share unflattering information about the Florida governor if DeSantis tried to primary Trump. 

DeSantis has not publicly responded to any of Trump’s musings, but discord among the potential 2024 GOP candidates is welcome news for Biden, who was already enjoying the fruits of a better-than-expected showing for Democrats in the midterm elections. 

One Democratic strategist who worked on midterm races called the GOP infighting the “icing on the cake” after the midterms. The strategist also said it will take some of the pressure off Biden to immediately announce his own plans for 2024. 

Susan Del Percio, the longtime Republican strategist who opposes Trump, said the Republican spat takes the spotlight off of Biden ahead of a lame-duck congressional session where Democrats could check a few boxes legislatively.  

At the same time, she said, it’s a moment for Biden to have a quiet laugh.  

“You guys have made me miserable. Hahaha. Now go have at it,” she said of what the president must be thinking.  

Biden has spent much of the past couple of years using Trump as a foil. But more recently —particularly as he campaigned in Florida ahead of the midterms — he has increasingly thrown DeSantis into the mix.  

The president and his team have sparred with DeSantis throughout the past year, trading barbs over the Florida governor outlawing mask mandates in the state, signing legislation barring talk of sexuality and gender identity in the classroom and putting migrants on flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.  

After it was reported DeSantis would send migrants to Biden’s home state of Delaware, the president quipped that DeSantis “should come visit.” 

Anita Dunn, a top White House adviser, said at an event last week that DeSantis was a “divider” who sees the world differently from Biden. 

But as Trump has emerged as the most outspoken critic of DeSantis, Republicans are sounding the alarm that any feud will only serve to benefit Democrats, especially as the party looks ahead to a Dec. 6 Senate runoff election in Georgia that could determine which party controls the chamber. 

“Any talk about 2024 prior to 2022 is not helpful,” former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News. “It energizes Democrats when you have a Trump vs DeSantis battle.” 

All week, Democrats were feeling increasingly energized by the brewing spat between Trump and DeSantis.  

“Oh yes, Florida Man 1 and Florida Man 2 having foreplay — of course you’ll watch,” said Democratic consultant Tracy Sefl. “And you can fairly suspect this ends with them declaring their passionate love.” 

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Mark Kelly defeats Blake Masters in Arizona Senate race

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is projected to win reelection to the Senate, defeating Republican Blake Masters in one of the preeminent battleground contests on the midterm map this year and putting Democrats one step closer to securing their majority.

Kelly, who is completing the final two years of the late Sen. John McCain’s (R) term, held a steady lead over Masters, a protege of PayPal founder Peter Thiel, since the early August primary, though his lead slimmed in the final weeks. 

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) was projected to win his Senate race against Republican Blake Masters in one of the biggest battleground contests this election cycle. (Greg Nash)

His ultimate victory is a key hold for Democrats as they await the results of Senate races in Nevada, which is undergoing a similarly drawn-out counting process, and Georgia, which has gone to a Dec. 6 runoff. It also marks a defeat of one of the most closely watched candidates elevated by former President Trump.

Kelly, a retired astronaut and husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), was buoyed throughout by a juggernaut of a fundraising operation. According to his Federal Election Commission filing on Oct. 19, the final financial snapshot of his campaign, Kelly raised more than $80 million for the run, a number that allowed him to flood the airwaves throughout the three-plus month stretch between the primary and Tuesday’s election.

By contrast, Masters only raised $8 million, with more than half of that total being raised by July 13 to help him win the primary over businessman Jim Lamon and state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, forcing him to rely on outside money to help boost him in the final months of the campaign. 

Masters struggled to bring in donations throughout the campaign, raising only $8 million. By contrast, Kelly raised over $80 million. (Associated Press)

After receiving $15 million in outside money from Peter Thiel to help guide him through the primary, a battle between Thiel and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) emerged over who was going to help Masters financially in the final stretch of the campaign. After Thiel proposed that each spend $5 million to help the GOP nominee, talks broke down and the Senate Leadership Fund decided not to engage further. 

Signaling troubles, the Senate Leadership Fund canceled nearly $10 million in ads in late September, leaving other GOP groups to pick up the slack. Among those was the Club For Growth, which spent an additional $5.5 million on Oct. 28 to boost Masters.

Notably, Masters not only lost to Kelly, but was unable to keep pace in the polls with Republican Kari Lake, who became the driving force behind the GOP ticket in the state over the final months. Trump, who endorsed both candidates, referenced Lake when talking to Masters over the phone days after he took part in a debate with Kelly and did not give a satisfactory answer on election fraud in the eyes of Trump.

Former President Trump, who endorsed Masters, criticized him in a phone conversation with the candidate after he was unimpressed by Masters’ answer on election fraud during his debate with Kelly. (Associated Press)

“I heard you did great on the debate but [had] a bad election answer. … You got a lot of support. You gotta stay with those people,” Trump told Masters on the call before referencing Lake as an example. 

“Look at Kari. Kari’s winning with very little money. If they say, ‘How is your family?’ She says, ‘The election was rigged and stolen,’” the former president told Masters. “You’ll lose if you go soft. You’re gonna lose that base.”

Democrats in Arizona can now turn their attention to reprising their 2020 presidential success in 2024 in what has turned into one of the top swing states in the country. 

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Trump sues to block Jan. 6 committee subpoena

Former President Trump sued to block a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack on Friday night, as deadlines approach for him to produce documents and sit for a deposition.

The committee unanimously voted to subpoena the former president during its public hearing last month. 

After Trump missed a deadline to produce documents last week, the Jan. 6 committee agreed to provide a one-week extension. The subpoena also requested that the former president appear for a deposition next Monday.

However, Friday’s filing argued that the subpoena was invalid, claiming that Trump has “absolute immunity from being compelled to testify before Congress” as a former president. Trump also argued that the subpoena was an “unwarranted intrusion on the institution of the Presidency” and that it sought information protected by executive privilege.

“As a result of the Committee’s self-described ‘unprecedented’ action, President Trump has been put in the untenable position of choosing between preserving his rights and the constitutional prerogatives of the Executive Branch, or risking enforcement of the Subpoena issued to him,” the filing claimed.

Trump was widely expected to fight the subpoena from the beginning given his hostility toward the committee, which he has frequently called a “witch hunt.”

The filing comes as the former president appears set to announce his 2024 presidential campaign next Tuesday.

— Updated at 9:47 p.m.

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Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak ousted in Nevada

Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) was projected to lose reelection in the race for the Nevada governor’s mansion, making his Republican challenger, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, the first candidate to knock out a Democratic incumbent in a gubernatorial race this cycle.

The Associated Press called the race for Lombardo shortly before 9 p.m. ET. Sisolak had conceded in a statement before the call was made.

“While votes are still coming in — and we need every ballot tallied and every voice heard — it appears we will fall a percentage point or so short of winning,” he said.

Lombardo had hammered Sisolak over crime during the fiercely fought race, echoing a strategy used by Republicans across the country in the lead-up to Nov. 8.

Additionally, the Republican seized on concerns over skyrocketing inflation and the possibility of a major recession. He was endorsed by former President Trump, who campaigned for him and GOP Senate candidate Adam Laxalt in Las Vegas over the summer.

Lombardo’s win could end up being the biggest bright spot for his party in the Silver State.

Laxalt currently holds a slim lead over Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, though her allies expect her to overtake him as more votes come in. Meanwhile, three Democratic House incumbents won their respective races in Nevada, while in the secretary of state race, GOP candidate Jim Marchant was expected to lose to Democrat Cisco Aguilar.

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NASA gambled with its moon rocket. It may pay off

NASA gambled with its multi-billion dollar moon rocket and it may have paid off for the U.S. space agency. With Hurricane Nicole hitting Florida just days before the massive rocket was set to launch, the agency made the call to leave the rocket perched atop its launch pad to brave the storm.

Now that crews have been able to safely assess the state of the 212-foot-tall Space Launch System (SLS) and its Orion crew capsule, they say it’s full steam ahead for the first phase of NASA’s Artemis mission, with an expected launch next week with liftoff set for 1:04 a.m. EST on Wednesday morning.

“There’s nothing preventing us from getting to a launch attempt on Nov. 16,” Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development said during a media briefing on Friday. 

NASA has spent billions building the most powerful rocket in the world as part of its Artemis lunar program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar soil in 2025. But the rocket has been plagued by delays: in construction, in testing and now in the launch. 

The rocket first rolled to its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center’s historic Pad 39B in mid-August as part of a launch dress rehearsal, but a hydrogen leak forced it to return to the vehicle assembly building (VAB).

A few weeks later, it returned to the pad and another leak was detected during fueling. This time, the team opted to make repairs on site. When NASA was ready to try again, another issue scrubbed the launch. And then Hurricane Ian rolled in, sending the rocket back into the VAB. 

As Hurricane Nicole headed for Florida this week, NASA decided to gamble and leave its mega moon rocket exposed to the elements. 

According to Free, wind measurements were taken at several different levels on the SLS during the storm, and none of the measurements exceeded certification limits. That means that even though the rocket was exposed to the brunt force of Hurricane Nicole, all of the data indicates that the rocket was able to withstand it just fine. 

Free admitted that it wasn’t ideal leaving the rocket on the pad, but the agency didn’t see any other choice. He said that if the agency had known the storm would eventually become a hurricane, the rocket would have never rolled out on Nov. 4. 

Forecasts at that time, however, only predicted a 30 percent chance of it becoming a named storm — either a tropical storm or hurricane — with estimated wind gusts no higher than 74 km per hour, which were within the rocket’s limits. 

So the call was made to stay on the launch pad. 

“From our perspective we were within our certification and [ultimately] stayed within our certification limits, with the winds that we saw from the hurricane,” Free said. “We obviously would not have wanted to stay out there, but we could not make it back to the VAB and be safe.” 

Free said that sensors were installed at multiple levels on the mobile launcher to record wind data. There was minor damage reported, but the crews are working over the weekend to fix. In the meantime, the team is going to power up the vehicle today to continue its assessments. 

Why risk a multi-billion rocket that’s already years behind schedule and billions over budget?

Because it was the safest thing to do, says Jim Free. Hurricane Nicole had a wide wind field and in order to transport the rocket safely back to its garage within the VAB, NASA would have had to make the decision on Sunday, just days after rolling its rocket to the pad — a feat which is risky on a normal day, as the rocket is only capable of rolling to and from the launch pad so many times before launch. That’s because the act of moving a rocket as massive as the SLS can put stress on the vehicle, so NASA limits the number of times it can be moved. 

“We took the decision to keep Orion and SLS at the launch pad very seriously, reviewing the data in front of us and making the best decision possible with high uncertainty in predicting the weather four days out,” Free said.

 “With the unexpected change to the forecast, returning to the Vehicle Assembly Building was deemed to be too risky in high winds, and the team decided the launch pad was the safest place for the rocket to weather the storm.”

The agency’s bet has seemed to pay off as Free says the team is proceeding to a launch on Nov. 16. He said the 19th and the 25th would be available as backup dates if needed. 

The flight is a crucial test of the SLS and Orion systems and will pave the way for future missions to carry astronauts around the moon and ultimately to the lunar surface — something that hasn’t been done since 1972. As part of its Artemis 1 mission, the SLS will launch an Orion capsule on a multi-week journey around the moon. That is, if it can get off the ground. 

Source: TEST FEED1