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Trump apologizes to Melania, Hannity for 'fictional stories' over Oz backing

Former President Trump on Thursday apologized to his wife Melania Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity for reports circulating about their reaction to his endorsement of Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, dismissing the accounts as “fictional stories.”

“I’d like to apologize to Melania and Sean Hannity for all of the Fake News and fictional stories (made up out of thin air, with no sources despite them claiming there are!), being dumped on you by reporters and ‘News’ Organizations who know these stories are not true,” Trump said on Truth Social.

“The Fake News Media is ‘Crazed’ and totally out of control. I only wish the public could understand how really corrupt and crooked they are. They MAKE UP stories and then push them down your throats. Our Country is in big trouble!” Trump added. 

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who has closely followed the former president for years, said Wednesday that Trump spent the day after the midterms “furious” after congressional Republicans failed to produce a “red wave” of significant wins over Democrats.

In Pennsylvania, Trump-backed Oz lost one of the cycle’s most closely watch battles, with Democratic nominee John Fetterman successfully flipping a seat currently held by the GOP.

“Trump is indeed furious this morning, particularly about Mehmet Oz, and is blaming everyone who advised him to back Oz — including his wife, describing it as not her best decision, according to people close to him,” Haberman wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

ABC News also reported that Trump was angry with Hannity for pushing him to back Oz.

“Worth remembering that Trump is a grown man who endorsed Oz over the objection of some of the people closest to him,” Haberman said. 

Some in Trump’s orbit are pushing him to reschedule the expected announcement of his 2024 presidential plans next week, though that would mean “acknowledging he’s wounded” by the midterm results, Haberman noted.

An unnamed Trump adviser said it would be “too humiliating to delay” the announcement after Tuesday’s turnout, CNN’s Jim Acosta shared in a tweet, adding the adviser said “Trump is livid” and “screaming at everyone” after his favored candidates failed to deliver big wins on Tuesday.

Trump has insisted the GOP’s midterm results were a “very big victory” despite being “somewhat disappointing.” The former president has repeatedly teased launching another White House bid and has an announcement scheduled at his Mar-a-Lago resort next Tuesday.

Source: TEST FEED1

Here are the counties to watch as Lake and Hobbs go down to wire in Arizona

Democrat Katie Hobbs and Republican Kari Lake are separated by less than a percentage point in Arizona’s too-close-to-call gubernatorial race, and hundreds of thousands of votes are yet to be counted.

Eyes are turning to county election officials as they parse through remaining ballots over the next few days, with an estimated 31 percent of the state’s total votes yet to be counted as of Thursday morning.

Hobbs holds a slim lead of 0.6 percentage points, or roughly 13,000 votes, in the race.

The state’s Senate race also has not yet been called, although Sen. Mark Kelly (D) leads Republican Blake Masters by a more comfortable 5-point margin, or roughly 95,000 votes.

The vast majority of Arizona’s 15 counties have yet to report some of their votes, according to The New York Times’s estimates, but two counties in particular will comprise a substantial share of the remaining ballots: Maricopa County and Pima County.

Maricopa County

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and much of the surrounding area, typically gets outsized attention in the battleground state’s elections because of its size, and this year is no different.

Maricopa is the state’s largest county, comprising nearly 62 percent of Arizona’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

That makes Arizona a highly centralized state, with Maricopa ranking third among the roughly 3,000 counties nationwide with regards to the share of their state’s population.

The county’s margin is critical to determining the winner of the state. 

Former President Trump won Arizona in 2016 as he led in Maricopa County by 3 percentage points. Four years later, Trump narrowly lost the state to President Biden and trailed by 2 points in the county.

Hobbs and Kelly led their GOP opponents in the county by about 4 and 5 percentage points as of Thursday morning, respectively.

Officials in Maricopa County estimated on Wednesday that roughly 428,000 ballots had yet to be counted there, suggesting nearly all will be tabulated by Friday evening. 

The county’s recorder said those remaining ballots include 136,000 early votes dropped off between Friday and Monday and 275,000 that were dropped off on Election Day itself. 

Election officials on Wednesday evening reported the results of 62,034 of those outstanding ballots, and both Hobbs and Kelly slightly outran their Republican opponents in the new batch.

The remaining Maricopa ballots also include 17,000 in-person Election Day votes that were set aside due to printing issues at about a quarter of Maricopa’s polling places, which caused malfunctions with voting machines.

County election officials say the votes, which represent about 7 percent of those cast on Tuesday in person, were sent to a central facility for tabulation and will still be counted, but election fraud conspiracies quickly spread.

Republicans had attempted to extend voting in Maricopa at an emergency court hearing on Tuesday night because of the issues, but a state judge denied the motion, saying he had seen no evidence that anyone was denied an opportunity to vote.

Lake has railed against the malfunctions, blaming it on “incompetence” among election officials at her election night rally.

Maricopa Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates pushed back on Lake’s criticisms on Wednesday.

“I do not believe that what happened yesterday can be fairly called incompetence or corruption in any way,” Gates told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. 

Pima County

Pima County, which is located south of Maricopa County, comprises about 14 percent of Arizona’s population, making it the state’s second largest county by population.

The New York Times estimates 63 percent of the vote in the county has been reported, a figure that trails every other county in the state.

Pima County is historically Democratic-leaning. Biden won the county by 19 points in 2020, and Hillary Clinton did so by 13 points four years earlier.

Hobbs and Kelly were leading by 20 and 24 points in Pima as of Thursday morning, respectively.

Officials in Pima said late Wednesday afternoon that they have yet to report the results of 159,570 ballots.

The vast majority of those votes — about 156,000 — include early ballots and 2,400 are provisional ballots. Election officials said they have 1,170 other ballots yet to be counted, although it’s unclear how they were submitted.

The delays in reporting the remaining results are in part because of verification procedures. Election officials individually verify signatures on submitted mail ballots against those in the voter registration system.

The remaining ballots in Maricopa and Pima counties combined represent roughly 62 percent of the remaining votes, per Associated Press’s estimates.

Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly told reporters vote counting in Pima could stretch into next week.

“We’re looking at the 14^th or 15^th those are the days that we’re optimistically looking. The 14^th but realistically, likely the 15^th,” she said, KGUN reported.

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Paul Ryan: Republicans are suffering from 'Trump hangover'

Former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who had an uneasy relationship with former President Trump during his time in the House leadership, on Wednesday said Trump is causing political problems for Republicans and dragging down GOP candidates.  

Ryan warned that his party has to do “a lot of soul searching” to figure out why a red wave didn’t form on Election Day, as many Republican strategists and even Democrats had expected, given President Biden’s low job approval ratings.  

Ryan told a reporter for WISN 12 News that his party is suffering from a “Trump hangover” and said that the former president’s continued prominence on the national political scene is causing problems for GOP candidates.  

“I think Trump’s kind of a drag on our ticket. I think Donald Trump gives us problems politically,” he said during an interview in Janesville, Wis., his hometown.  

“We lost the House, the Senate and the White House in two years when Trump was on the ballot, or in office,” he said. “I think we just have some Trump hangover. I think he’s a drag on our office, on our races.”  

Ryan also predicted that Trump will not win the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 because too many Republicans don’t think he can win a general election. 

“I assume he’s going to announce, but I honestly don’t think he’ll get the nomination at the end of the day,” he said. “We want to win. We want to win the White House and we know with Trump we’re so much more likely to lose. Just look at the difference between votes, between Trump candidates and non-Trump aligned candidates.  

“It’s really clear to me and the evidence is pretty stark that if we have a nominee not named Trump, we’re so much more likely to win the White House than if our candidate’s named Trump,” he added.   

A Republican strategist close to Trump, however, dismissed the criticism as something that wouldn’t hurt the former president’s popularity with voters.  

“Every time President Trump gets attacked by an establishment figure like Paul Ryan or [Senate Republican Leader] Mitch McConnell [R-Ky.], it makes Donald Trump stronger because the reason he’s so popular among the base is because he had a successful agenda,” the source said.  

“He secured the border, solved our immigration problems, with no help from Congress,” the strategist added, pointing to Trump’s diplomacy with Mexico and Central American countries to stem the flow of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border.  

Ryan also said he was “very happy” to see Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) reelected to a third term but he had hoped that more Republican candidates would win.  

“It was a mixed blessing night, but we should have done better than we did,” he said.  

Republicans were expecting to pick up 15 to 30 House seats amid polls showing that more than 70 percent of voters are dissatisfied or angry over the way things are going in the country today.

Local officials are still counting the votes in 28 districts but NBC News projects that Republicans are likely to pick up only nine seats.  

Ryan said Republican Party leaders need to undertake a careful review of the disappointing results to learn lessons ahead of the 2024 presidential election.  

“I think we’re going to have to do a lot of soul searching and head scratching, looking through and parsing the numbers as to why we didn’t perform as well as we would have liked to,” he said.  

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Inflation fell to 7.7 percent annual increase in October

Consumer prices rose at slower rates in October, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department.

The annual inflation rate fell to 7.7 percent in October from 8.2 percent in September, according to the consumer price index (CPI), a closely watched inflation gauge. Economists expected the annual inflation rate to fall to 7.9 percent, according to consensus projections.

Prices rose 0.4 percent last month alone, according to the CPI, also rising slower than the 0.6-percent monthly increase projected by economists. Without food and energy prices, which are more volatile, the CPI rose just 0.3 percent, the slowest monthly increase since July, and 6.3 percent over the past year.

The October CPI report is an encouraging sign for the U.S. economy as policymakers rush to bring down inflation without causing a recession. While decline in inflation will not be enough to keep the Federal Reserve from raising rates, it may allow the bank to do so at a slower pace.

Rising prices for shelter, gasoline and food were the biggest contributors to overall increase in prices last month, with shelter costs alone responsible for roughly half of October inflation.

Shelter makes up roughly 40 percent of the CPI in any given month, giving rents and housing costs major influence over inflation picture. Even so, economists warn that the CPI for shelter often takes several months to catch up to declines or increases in rents, meaning the true cost of housing could be lower that it appears in the Thursday report.

Food prices also rose at a brisk 0.6 percent pace in October and are up 10.9 percent over the past year, but the pace of food price growth has fallen off since the start of 2022. Grocery prices also rose 0.4 percent in October, down from a 0.7 percent gain in September.

American households may have seen some relief from a steep drop in prices for used cars and trucks, which fell 2.4 percent last month alone. Apparel prices fell 0.7 percent and energy services fell 1.2 percent on the month thanks to a 4.6 percent plunge in piped gas service. Gasoline prices, however, rose 4.4 percent on the month.

Updated at 9:10 a.m.

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The Hill's Morning Report — Biden claims win while anticipating divided government

Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.

President Biden was smiling at the White House on Wednesday because the midterms could have been a lot worse for Democrats.

“It’s a moving target but it’s going to be very close,” the president said less than 24 hours after the first polls closed in an off-year election that has defied historic trends and invited both parties to come up with the political equivalent of Rorschach test interpretations of what voters really want.

A House GOP majority could conceivably amount to single digits once all ballots are counted, a far cry from a predicted “red wave” and wobbly terrain for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who announced on Wednesday his bid to be Speaker (Fox News).  

Biden told reporters he planned to talk to Republican leaders on Wednesday evening and invite lawmakers to meet at the White House later this month.

“Regardless of what the final tally of these elections show, I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues,” he told reporters during a post-election news conference.

The president described his outlook as open and optimistic while defending the policies of his first two years in office. He outlined where he would not compromise, including with policies that aggravate inflation, undercut his party’s climate change agenda, hand tax cuts to the wealthy and big companies, or make “fundamental” changes to Social Security and Medicare.

Biden also vowed to veto any national ban on abortion.

“I’m pretty well convinced that we’re going to get a lot done,” he said without offering evidence to back that up. Challenged to explain his vision of bipartisan collaboration in a Capitol Hill environment he has previously described as bitterly partisan, Biden waved off some of the far-right lawmakers McCarthy may be tasked to manage.

“I don’t think we’re going to break the fever for the super-mega MAGA Republicans,” Biden said, “but they’re a minority of the party.”

▪ The Hill: When will we know who controls the House?

▪ The New York Times: With the House majority in play, a new class takes shape.

Republicans could wind up with enough of a margin to block major legislation, yank administration officials into uncomfortable made-for-TV investigative hearings and road-test Republican messaging ahead of the 2024 presidential contest, a race Biden said he intends to enter, perhaps with an announcement early next year (The Hill). He will celebrate his 80th birthday on Nov. 20.

Next year’s majority in the Senate, which Democrats currently hold with 50 votes plus Vice President Harris, remains in limbo until the outcome is known in three races, most prominently the Georgia contest between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and GOP challenger Herschel Walker. Neither candidate captured a majority on Election Day and Georgia voters will be asked to turn out for a Dec. 6 runoff, which could determine which party holds the Senate reins (The Hill).

One or the other party would need to win pending Senate races in Arizona and Nevada to control the Senate without a victory in Georgia.

▪ The Hill: Ballot counting will continue through next week in the Nevada race between Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.

▪ NBC News: In Arizona, Sen. Mark Kelly (D) leads GOP challenger Blake Masters with 70 percent of ballots tallied as of this morning. 

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Polls during this midterm cycle were flawed in overstating Republican support. Across the eight most competitive Senate races, Democratic candidates on average did about three points better than the final poll averages calculated by RealClearPolitics. And a number of those averages camouflage a wide disparity among individual polls.

▪ The Hill: GOP points fingers after red wave fails to materialize.  

The Pennsylvania open-seat Senate race, which Biden worked hard to flip into his party’s column, is the banner victory for Lt. Gov. John Fetterman that cheered Democrats on Wednesday and sent fans of Republican challenger and TV personality Mehmet Oz into a funk. The Hill’s Al Weaver goes deep inside the Keystone State contest with experts from the state to explain what happened. Oz conceded the race on Wednesday. 

The Hill: House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Wednesday announced a bid to become House majority leader.

Related Articles

▪ The Hill’s Niall Stanage offers his take on midterm winners and losers. 

▪ Pluribus News: In a political hole since 2010, state Democrats on Tuesday began digging out.

▪ The Hill’s Mike Lillis reports that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who this week will be in Egypt for the United Nations climate summit COP27, is not feeling pressured to announce whether she will stay or retire from the House after Democrats on Tuesday made strong election night showings around the country.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ MORE POLITICS

Former President Trump had hoped to ride a wave of Republican victories in Tuesday’s midterms into a triumphant launch for another White House term, but the election results may end up boosting the presidential campaign of another politician: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

DeSantis coasted to victory in Florida with a double-digit margin, flipping traditionally Democratic Miami-Dade County in the process in one of the few clear bright spots for the GOP on an otherwise underwhelming night (The Guardian and The Hill).

While Trump did score some Senate wins — Rep. Ted Budd (R) defeated Democrat Cheri Beasley in North Carolina, while Trump-backed Republican J.D. Vance defeated a stronger-than-expected challenge from Rep. Tim Ryan (D) in Ohio — the victories have so far been limited to red states (CNN). Vance, notably, thanked dozens of people in his victory speech, but did not mention Trump (The Washington Post).

In purple and blue states, however, Trump saw losses across the board. Oz lost in the Pennsylvania Senate race after the former president helped carry the candidate across the finish line in a competitive primary earlier this year. Additionally, Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin lost their races, and high-profile Trump endorsements in Arizona and Georgia are still locked in close races as of Thursday morning. 

The losses extend to the House, where Trump-backed candidates lost competitive contests that the GOP deemed critical to building a significant majority in the lower chamber.

In New Hampshire, former Trump aide Karoline Leavitt lost to Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas (WMUR). In North Carolina, Trump-backed Republican Bo Hines lost to Democrat Wiley Nickel (Axios), and in Ohio, Democratic state Rep. Emilia Sykes defeated Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert (Akron Beacon Journal).

“Candidate quality matters,” Erick Erickson, a longtime GOP commentator, told the Post of what he called a disappointing showing for Trump. “They weren’t good candidates. They had more allegiance to him than anything else. The GOP might still win both [chambers] but this is not the night they expected.”

Trump’s evening was particularly bad when viewed through the lens of DeSantis’s resounding 19-point win, which outpaced Trump’s own margin of victory in the Sunshine State in 2020.

“We not only won an election. We have rewritten the political map,” DeSantis on Tuesday told supporters during his victory speech, where some attendees urged him to consider a White House bid by chanting, “Two more years!”

The reaction within the GOP has only further fueled momentum for DeSantis to run for president and take on Trump next year. Trump, meanwhile, has already signaled he’s ready to face the governor with attacks, calling DeSantis “DeSanctimonious” at a recent rally (NPR). 

Some Republican leaders are moving on from the former president and embracing DeSantis as the party’s best hope for retaking the White House in 2024 (Bloomberg News). Some of Trump’s longtime allies are now encouraging him to delay the announcement of this candidacy he had planned for next week (The Washington Post).

One person familiar with the discussions told the Post that Trump was polling advisers for their opinions but had not made up his mind.

“Republican chairmen across a wide spectrum of states were counting on Donald Trump to deliver victory for them last night and he didn’t, they are let down,” David Urban, a top adviser to Trump in 2016, told the Post on Wednesday. “It is clear the center of gravity of the Republican Party is in the state of Florida, and I don’t mean Mar-a-Lago.”

Biden on Wednesday shrugged off the prospect of facing either Trump or DeSantis in a potential 2024 match-up (The Hill).

“It will be fun watching them take on each other,” he said at a news conference where he spoke about the outcome of the midterm elections.

▪ New York Magazine: The Republican elite moves against Trump and behind DeSantis.

▪ The New York Times: Trump under fire from within GOP after midterms.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL   

Russia’s defense minister announced Wednesday that he was ordering troops withdrawn from the strategically important southern city of Kherson, a potential blow to President Vladimir Putin’s war effort. But Ukrainian officials have expressed skepticism that the Russians will leave (The New York Times).

“We have signs they are pulling out,” Roman Kostenko, a colonel in the army and chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s parliament, told the Times. “They blew up bridges that would have allowed our forces to advance. We see them leaving population centers, but in some they leave soldiers behind to cover their movements.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Wednesday that it could take Russia “weeks” to pull troops out of Kherson, but “early indicators are that they are doing what they say they are doing” (BBC).

Speaking at a Wednesday press conference, Biden said Russia’s decision to withdraw from Kherson shows its military has “some real problems.” He added he’s been expecting the move for “some time” and that it would allow both sides to “recalibrate their positions” over the winter (BBC).

Asked about continued funding for Ukraine if Republicans take over the House — and McCarthy, who has argued for less aid, assumes the Speakership — Biden said he expects it to continue without interruption. “And by the way, we’ve not given Ukraine a blank check,” Biden added, noting the White House had refused to provide some of the equipment and assistance requested by Ukrainian leaders, including U.S. aircraft (Reuters).

WNBA star Brittney Griner, who has been detained in Russia since February for entering the country with cannabis oil cartridges, is being moved to a penal colony, her legal team said Wednesday. Griner in August was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison, and a judge rejected her appeal late last month (The Washington Post).

Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in a tweet Wednesday that “we strongly protest the movement of Brittney Griner to a remote penal colony and the Russian government’s use of wrongful detentions.”

▪ The Washington Post: U.S. citizen gunned down in Iraq under mysterious circumstances.

▪ Reuters: North Korea fires another missile as South Korea salvages parts of Soviet-era weapon.

▪ The New York Times: Jordan Is running out of water, a grim glimpse of the future.

➤ TECH & JOBS

Meta will lay off more than 11,000 employees, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told workers in a Wednesday message, reducing the company’s workforce by about 13 percent. The layoffs will affect workers across the company’s products — Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp — as well as the virtual reality business Reality Labs and Meta’s business teams.

“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg told employees. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

Zuckerberg added that the company will hire fewer people next year and is extending its hiring freeze into the first quarter of 2023 (NBC News).

▪ Yahoo Finance: Twitter, Meta, Lyft and more: Another wave of layoffs hits tech.

▪ Business Insider: Why tech layoffs are happening all at once — and why the next few weeks could be the worst of them.

Asked at a Wednesday press conference whether tech billionaire and new Twitter CEO Elon Musk posed a threat to national security, Biden said that Musk’s foreign relationships are worth scrutiny.

“Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at,” Biden said. “Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate — I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting it’s worth being looked at and that’s all I’ll say.”

While Musk has invested billions of his personal wealth into his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, he also raised funding from outside equity and debt financing partners. Additionally, he asked some major existing shareholders to roll their stakes into his holding company.

Longtime shareholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns tens of millions of shares of Twitter, making the Saudi royal family the second-largest shareholder in the social network, which is now privately held. The kingdom of Qatar also participated in Musk’s Twitter deal (CNBC and The Hill).

OPINION

■  Why is America always divided 50–50? by Annie Lowrey, staff writer, The Atlantic. https://bit.ly/3huCqwC 

■  Republicans did not read the room, by Michelle Goldberg, columnist, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3Upj8Yi

WHERE AND WHEN

👉 YOU’RE INVITED: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill has launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE. 

The House meets at noon for a pro forma session. Members are scheduled to return to the Capitol on Monday. ​​

The Senate convenes at 3 p.m. for a pro forma session. Senators make their way back to Washington on Monday. 

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9:30 a.m. He will depart the White House for a political event at Howard Theatre in Washington, joined by first lady Jill Biden. The president departs the White House at 9:45 p.m. for Egypt to participate on Friday at COP27, the United Nations climate change conference. Biden will then travel to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the annual U.S.-ASEAN Summit. He will be there until Sunday and then head to the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia. 

Vice President Harris will join Biden at 3 p.m. to speak at a political event at the Howard Theatre in Washington, joined by second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in New Delhi, India, to participate in meetings of the U.S.-India Economic and Financial Partnership.

Economic indicators: The Bureau of Labor Statistics at 8:30 a.m. will report on the consumer price index in October. The Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. will report on filings for unemployment benefits in the week ending Nov. 5.

The White House daily briefing is scheduled at 12:45 p.m. and will include White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in addition to the press secretary.

ELSEWHERE

➤ WEATHER WATCH

Hurricane Nicole, which had been a tropical storm early on Wednesday while taking aim at the Bahamas, made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane along Florida’s east coast early today and then weakened back to a tropical storm with sustained winds of about 70 mph (ABC News and The Weather Channel). 

Early today, at least 45 of Florida’s 67 counties were under a state of emergency. A hurricane warning from Boca Raton to the Flagler-Volusia County line in eastern Florida was changed to a tropical storm warning. A tropical storm warning south of Boca Raton to Hallandale Beach, Fla., was also discontinued, along with a hurricane watch for Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Nicole forced the closure of theme parks and airports while prompting evacuation orders that included Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.

The National Hurricane Center said the eye of the sprawling storm made landfall on Great Abaco island in the Bahamas on Wednesday with estimated maximum sustained winds of 70 mph. Nicole is the first storm to hit the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that devastated the archipelago in 2019, before hitting the Sunshine State (The Hill).

Communities along Florida’s Gulf Coast, including Fort Myers, are still recovering from Hurricane Ian, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 28 and crossed the state before moving north along the Atlantic Ocean.

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH 

Researchers have long known that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to be prescribed lifesaving addiction treatment options than white people.

But a new data analysis published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry shows that even when Black and Hispanic patients start a prescription for buprenorphine — the most popular medication to help those in recovery fight cravings — the duration of their treatment is typically shorter than that of white patients (The New York Times).

“Bottom line, these types of disparities are likely going to translate into worse clinical outcomes,” Bradley Stein, the director of the RAND Opioid Policy Center and a senior physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, told the Times. “That matters.”

▪ The Hill: The World Health Organization reports 90 percent drop in world COVID-19 deaths since February.

▪ Time: The latest COVID-19 variants can evade vaccine protection, according to new data.

Information about COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot availability can be found at Vaccines.gov.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,073,934. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,504 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

THE CLOSER

Take Our Morning Report Quiz

And finally … It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Inspired by barrier-breaking winners during this midterm elections, we’re eager for some smart guesses about congressional firsts.

Email your responses to asimendinger@thehill.com and/or kkarisch@thehill.com, and please add “Quiz” to subject lines. Winners who submit correct answers will enjoy some richly deserved newsletter fame on Friday.

When were women first permitted to wear trousers on the Senate floor?

1. 1982

2. 1993

3. 1970

4. 1965

During what era were African Americans first elected to Congress?

1. The Antebellum

2. Roaring ‘20s

3. Reconstruction

4. World War I

Who was the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress?

1. Dianne Feinstein

2. Margaret Chase Smith

3. Jeannette Rankin

4. Rebecca L. Felton

Who was the first member of the House of Representatives to later serve as president?

1. John Quincy Adams

2. Andrew Jackson

3. James Monroe

4. James Madison

Stay Engaged

We want to hear from you! Email: Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch. Follow us on Twitter (@asimendinger and @kristinakarisch) and suggest this newsletter to friends!

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Abortion rights advocates look to expand on key midterm wins

Voters across the country handed decisive victories to abortion rights advocates on Tuesday, as results from elections just months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade showed access to abortion was a key issue for voters. Abortion rights groups are already looking to replicate their successes in 2024, while anti-abortion activists are regrouping. 

Every state that put abortion on the ballot voted in favor of making sure the procedure is protected in some way, including Republican-leaning Kentucky. Voters there rejected a ballot measure aimed at denying any constitutional protections for abortion.

Abortion is still banned in the state, but the defeat of the ballot measure could give advocates challenging the law in court an opening to get it overturned. Had the measure passed, it would have amended the state constitution to clarify that it does not protect the right to abortion, making legal challenges to the law virtually impossible. 

In Michigan, voters decisively approved a measure to put language guaranteeing the right to an abortion into the state constitution.

Abortion is legal in the state, but only because of temporary orders from judges. If the measure had failed, there was a possibility a 1931 law that bans abortion with no exceptions, including for rape or incest, and makes performing abortions a felony would take effect.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) won reelection Tuesday campaigning as a champion of abortion rights and painted the state as one that would serve as a haven for people living in neighboring states like Indiana and Ohio that have strict abortion limits. 

“Abortion was, is, and will remain legal in Michigan,” Whitmer tweeted on Wednesday.

In Pennsylvania, Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro (D), who won his race by double-digits, has vowed to veto any anti-abortion legislation. Democrats were also on track to win control of the state House of Representatives, which would effectively block state Republicans from introducing a constitutional amendment banning abortions.

Abortion rights advocates were energized earlier this summer when voters in Kansas rejected an attempt to strip abortion protections from the state constitution, the first statewide vote on abortion since the Supreme Court’s decision.  

They saw a second victory the following month when Democrat Pat Ryan, campaigning almost exclusively on abortion rights, won a special U.S. House election in New York. But in the months since, the economy had eclipsed abortion as the issue voters cared most about, according to polls, and conventional wisdom became that abortion would not be enough to propel Democrats to victory. 

Advocates said Tuesday’s results show what happened in Kansas was not a fluke, and they want to make Michigan a bellwether. 

This election cycle is the first time abortion rights groups have sponsored state ballot measures since 1992. According to data from Ballotpedia, 85 percent of the abortion-related measures on state ballots have been proposed by anti-abortion groups.

“We now see a clear path forward for defending the right to choice: through ballot measures,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a progressive group that helps organize ballot measures. 

“When voters have a chance to decide on this issue, they choose to protect their rights. Everyone deserves access to reproductive care, and we’re looking forward to building off this momentum to pass ballot measures to protect abortion rights wherever we can,” Hall said in a statement. 

Sarah Standiford, national campaigns director at the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said the Supreme Court’s decision was fresh in voters’ minds. They were angry over the loss of abortion rights, and she doesn’t see that changing. 

“The dynamics did change after the Supreme Court ended a federal right to abortion, and that wave of anger and energy propelled interest in the election and it’s led to increases in voter registration, higher turnout, resounding victories, starting with Kansas and special elections over the summer and into what happened [Tuesday],” Standiford said.

“We will continue to propel and accelerate that interest. Voters overwhelmingly believe that personal, private medical decisions should be made by themselves, their families and their physicians, and not by politicians,” Standiford said. 

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than half of Democratic voters as well as female voters under age 50 said the Supreme Court overturning Roe had a “major impact” on which candidates they voted for.  

An NBC News exit poll found that 61 percent of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry about the Supreme Court overturning Roe with its June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Of that group, 71 percent identified as Democrats.  

Advocates said concern over abortion rights transcends political parties. 

“In Kansas, there was no way for us to get to 50 percent without a coalition that included Republicans and unaffiliated, independent voters,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. 

“Abortion was a driving issue for our base, but also for some independents, and even some Republican suburban women. … Republicans would be very, very smart to pay attention to that, not push egregious abortion bans in states where they think they have an advantage,” Timmaraju said. 

Maya Rupert, an executive at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said abortion access shouldn’t be viewed as a Democratic-only issue anymore. 

“For a very long time, we’ve talked about abortion like it was this sort of uniquely partisan issue. And what voters are showing us is that it’s not,” Rupert said. “Across the country, across different states, geographies and party lines, when abortion was on the ballot, people voted for it, for access.” 

On the other side of the issue, one of the leading anti-abortion groups is also looking ahead to 2024.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said the anti-abortion movement is much more successful when there is a strong candidate to personify the message, instead of a ballot measure. 

Dannenfelser said Republicans knew that Democrats would be energized because of the Supreme Court’s decision, and the candidates should have embraced it.  

The Supreme Court’s ruling led to a patchwork of state laws across the country, some of which are being litigated on a constantly changing basis. 

Melissa Fowler, chief program officer at the National Abortion Federation, said she was encouraged by the midterm results, but managing the fallout post-Roe will take time.  

 “It’s going to take more than one election or any one court decision to really undo the harm that we’ve seen since the Dobbs decision and to build a future where there’s even more access than there was before Roe vs. Wade,” Fowler said.  

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Winners and losers of the 2022 midterm elections

The results of Tuesday’s midterm elections are reverberating even as some important races — and control of Capitol Hill — remain in doubt. 

Beyond those who simply won or lost their own races, here are some key figures who came out ahead, or behind, after voters cast their verdicts. 

WINNERS 

President Biden 

Biden’s political obituary has been written many times over the years, dating back to his first run for the presidency a generation ago. He bounces back again and again. 

Going into Tuesday, there were dire expectations for Democrats. 

It was considered very plausible that the president’s party could lose 25 or 30 seats in the House and be relegated to a clear minority in the Senate. 

Such an outcome would have been cast as a public repudiation of Biden, increasing pressure on him to step aside rather than seek a second term. 

But none of it happened. 

Whatever the final results, Biden has fared far better in his first midterms than the two most recent Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, did in theirs. 

That’s vindication, of a kind, for Biden’s much-criticized but steady, low-wattage approach. 

It also relieves a lot of the pressure regarding 2024. He’ll be the Democratic nominee if he wants to be. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) 

DeSantis was the big Republican winner on an otherwise disappointing night for the GOP. 

The Florida governor won a second term by a resounding margin of around 20 points — in a state that was, at least until this Election Day, still considered a battleground, albeit a Republican-leaning one. 

DeSantis, who enrages liberals with his stances on migration, voting regulations and education, showed his electoral appeal in other ways too. He carried the heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade County in South Florida, for example. 

DeSantis is widely assumed to be eying a 2024 presidential bid. He would be the most serious rival to former President Trump if both men enter the race. 

He helped his case immeasurably on Tuesday. 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) 

The Speaker, like the president, was being largely written off until voters actually cast their ballots. 

Her near-20-year run leading House Democrats might still come to an end — but, if it does, it will be a decision of Pelosi’s own choosing rather than one that is forced upon her. 

Democrats are still expected to fall into the minority in the lower chamber. But Democrats will hold on to more seats than they thought.

Pelosi has also publicly said that the home invasion and attack on her husband at their San Francisco home will be a factor in her decision on whether to stay in the House — despite an agreement with other Democrats meant to end her Speakership. Paul Pelosi was hit in the head with a hammer by the intruder, who had asked if “Nancy” was home.

It wouldn’t be all that surprising if Pelosi decided to stay in the House. 

Abortion rights activists 

Proponents of abortion rights probably don’t feel much like winners as a year that saw the overturning of Roe v. Wade nears its close. 

But Election Day gave them considerable comfort. 

Many states will be protected from the most prohibitive effects of the June Supreme Court ruling. 

Some vigorous supporters of abortion rights were reelected as governor on Tuesday, notably Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and New York’s Kathy Hochul. 

In another major development, five states held ballot measures, different in their specific wording but all centered on the abortion question. The pro-abortion rights side won at least four of them — no surprise in liberal redoubts California and Vermont but much more striking in Kentucky and, to some degree, Michigan. The liberal side is also in the lead in the fifth state, Montana. 

Taken together, the results are a clear demonstration of where the public stands on the issue — even if a majority of Supreme Court justices don’t see things the same way. 

MIXED 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) 

To say Tuesday offered a mixed bag for McCarthy would be putting it mildly. 

On one hand, it seems more likely than not that the GOP will eventually end up holding the House majority — theoretically putting McCarthy within reach of the Speaker’s gavel that he has long coveted. 

But the GOP majority, if it comes into existence at all, will be very thin. That makes even McCarthy’s elevation as Speaker uncertain. And, if he does secure the spot, he will have to contend with members of his own party who know just how much leverage they hold — and intend to use it. 

Meanwhile, there is already some carping about McCarthy’s leadership and strategy — including the apparent failure of his “Commitment to America” to fire voters’ imaginations. 

Election denialism 

The verdict on the vexing issues of election denialism, threats to democracy and flat-out conspiracy theories was, ultimately, ambiguous. 

Several people who hew to those kinds of views lost, including Doug Mastriano (R), who was heavily defeated by Democrat Josh Shapiro in the race to be Pennsylvania’s governor, and Don Bolduc, who failed to run Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) anywhere near as close as some Republicans had hoped. 

At time of writing, Kari Lake, though very competitive in the Arizona gubernatorial race, is narrowly trailing in a race that polls had predicted she would win.

All of that being said, the sheer spread of election denialism, and the extent to which it has become normalized within the GOP, are worrisome signs for American democracy. 

A Washington Post analysis in October found 291 Republican candidates for House, Senate or “key statewide offices” had “denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election.” 

LOSERS 

Former President Trump 

Tuesday was a pretty dismal night for the former president. 

It wasn’t only that some of his most high-profile picks lost, such as Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, or are trailing, like Lake and Blake Masters in Arizona. 

It’s that the results writ large amount to a bad verdict on his overall effect on the GOP’s direction and brand. Trumpism had a very poor day at the polls. 

DeSantis’s impressive victory only deepened the gloom for the former president, who is apparently threatened enough by the Florida governor to have recently bestowed a nickname upon him. 

The expectation is still that Trump will launch a 2024 presidential campaign later this month. 

But he had hoped to pick up a tailwind with strong results on Tuesday. 

The opposite happened. 

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) 

Maloney lost his bid for reelection to Republican Mike Lawler, a state assemblyman, in New York’s 17th District. 

That made him one of the most high-profile Democratic losers of the night. It was a bitter irony for Maloney, given that the nationwide results would otherwise have been a feather in his cap as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

Maloney has served in Congress for 10 years, but his controversial move to a new district after New York’s congressional map was redrawn ended in failure.

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DeSantis may face renewed pressure to take on Trump

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is expected to come under increasing pressure to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 after rolling to a reelection victory Tuesday on a night when much of the GOP was licking its wounds.   

 Chants of “two more years” rang out at his victory rally late Tuesday, a nod to his status as the rising GOP national star and the one Republican who many believe could conquer former President Trump in a primary fight.   

Many Republicans also see DeSantis as a stronger general election candidate than Trump, whether that contest is against President Biden or some other Democrat. 

“DeSantis made a convincing case that he, rather than Trump, gives Republicans the best chance to defeat Biden (or some other Democrat) in 2024,” Scott Jennings, a former adviser to former President George W. Bush and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), wrote in a CNN op-ed on Wednesday.  

In coasting to victory in Florida, DeSantis flipped traditionally Democratic Miami-Dade County en route to a 20-point win.  

Trump, meanwhile, saw Mehmet Oz (R) lose in Pennsylvania’s Senate race after the former president helped carry him across the finish line in a competitive primary earlier this year. Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin lost their races, and high-profile Trump endorsees in Arizona and Georgia were locked in close races. 

One GOP strategist who worked on midterm races this cycle said DeSantis “must run” in 2024, saying he has a good argument based on his four years as governor and sweeping reelection win. 

Trump is poised to announce his own bid for the White House next week, but he may enter that contest in a more vulnerable position than before, given DeSantis’s growing muscle.  

The cover of the right-leaning New York Post on Wednesday read: “DEFUTURE: Young GOP star romps to victory in Florida.”  

Fox News carried DeSantis’s victory speech live, covered the governor’s win extensively on Wednesday and published an op-ed on Wednesday titled “Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party leader.” 

Tuesday was a mixed night at best for “MAGA” Republicans, while more establishment GOP figures like New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp easily won reelection — despite drawing Trump’s ire at times. Senate candidates in those states who were backed by Trump ran several points behind the governors atop the ticket. 

Republican operatives and commentators who are eager to move past Trump have warned against a repeat scenario of 2016, when a large field of Republican candidates failed to quickly coalesce behind a single alternative and allowed Trump to win the nomination. 

In DeSantis, they may have found their preferred candidate to rally behind, even as the likes of former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin loom as potential alternatives. 

“I would say it’s not just as simple as to say now it clearly is DeSantis,” said Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee spokesperson. “DeSantis had a great night, no doubt about it. So did [Ohio Gov.] Mike DeWine. This should give any Republican who’s looking at [2024] a reason to very seriously consider jumping in.” 

Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host based in Georgia, said Wednesday there is an opening for donors to rally around another GOP candidate for 2024. 

“Small-dollar donors are ripe for a DeSantis play,” Erickson said. 

DeSantis has not publicly discussed any potential presidential bid, though during a debate last month he dodged questions about whether he would commit to serving his full term as governor. 

Trump, meanwhile, has made no secret of his plans to seek another term in the White House. He repeatedly teased a third campaign during rallies in the closing stretch of the midterms and set an announcement for Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where he is expected to officially launch his 2024 bid. 

But the former president’s plans to ride a red wave to consolidate his hold on the GOP and clear the primary field may now face a setback. 

In Tuesday night’s results, some Republicans saw a clear mandate for the party to move on from Trump, who was a prominent fixture on the campaign trail in the last week and whose talk of a possible 2024 bid grabbed headlines days before Election Day. 

“Last night was the biggest indicator that Donald Trump should not be the Republican nominee in 2024. He cost the GOP winnable seats by boosting poor quality candidates,” Sarah Matthews, a former Trump press aide who resigned over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, tweeted Wednesday. 

Former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany went as far as to suggest the former president should delay his announcement until after a Georgia runoff in December that could determine control of the Senate. 

Pressed on whether Trump should campaign in the state for Herschel Walker, who ran at the former president’s urging, McEnany demurred. 

“I think we’ve got to make strategic calculations,” she said. “Gov. DeSantis, I think he should be welcome to the state, given what happened last night. You’ve got to look at the realities on the ground.”

Source: TEST FEED1

What will Pelosi do now? 'The choice is hers to make'

As speculation builds around what Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will do next year, many Democrats say the party’s surprisingly strong performance in this week’s midterms yields a simple answer: Whatever she wants.

Pelosi, who has served as the Democratic leader for the past two decades, has previously pledged to withdraw from the top of the party at the end of this term, clearing space for a younger crop of ambitious lawmakers to climb into the leadership ranks. And a number of Democrats intend to hold her to the promise.

Yet the unexpectedly strong turn for House Democrats in Tuesday’s elections has strengthened Pelosi’s hand as questions churn around her political fate, according to sources on and off of Capitol Hill. The party’s good night, many Democrats said afterwards, means Pelosi can remain the top leader — if she so chooses.

“She’s in the power position. We overperformed, and the wave never materialized,” said Ashley Etienne, a former Pelosi aide. “So, the choice is hers to make.”

While Republicans remain the favorites to control the lower chamber next year, Democrats stunned the political world Tuesday by clinging to dozens of seats in tough battleground districts and deflecting the type of midterm wave that routinely hammers the party of the incumbent president.

The development has buoyed Democrats, who have been on the ropes for most of the cycle amid a volatile economy, and frustrated Republicans who were hoping a considerable majority would help them neutralize President Biden through the second half of his first term.

No single figure was more crucial to the Democrats’ defense than Pelosi, who had blanketed the country over the course of the cycle showering enormous amounts of campaign cash — from a massive haul of roughly $276 million raised — onto vulnerable lawmakers.

As GOP leaders spent Wednesday sniping over what went wrong with their campaign strategy, Democrats were coming around to a more unified sentiment: Pelosi is now in a place to decide her own future, on her own terms.

“She will be asked to come back, and she will stay if she wants,” said a second former leadership aide, who spoke anonymously to discuss a sensitive topic.

A Democratic lawmaker delivered a similar assessment, noting that Pelosi’s ability to raise money for the party — more than $1.2 billion since she entered leadership — is unprecedented in Congress, and gives her outsized leverage to decide her own political fate.

“She earned her ticket to stay 10 years ago when she was raising more money than any Speaker had ever raised before,” the lawmaker said on background. “In respect for all that she has been to the Democratic Caucus and how she has led … she needs to be able to make the decision when she wants to leave.”

Pelosi is famously guarded about her future, and this year has been no exception.

The Speaker has repeatedly deflected questions about whether she’ll seek to remain in power next year. And that reticence has continued even in the wake of the violent assault on her husband, Paul Pelosi, late last month.

The Speaker has said only that her decision “will be affected” by the attack. But that’s only fueled more conjecture: Will she bow out of Congress to join her recovering husband? Or stay in place to send the message that no act of political violence can push her out?

“I’m sure that her decision is going to weigh the impacts on her family,” said the lawmaker, “but that would not be a reason for her to bail out.”

Heading into Tuesday’s elections, Democrats were not optimistic about their chances.

They have razor-thin margins in both chambers. Historical trends have predicted that the party of the president routinely loses seats in the midterms, frequently in wave numbers. Biden’s approval numbers have been below 50 percent for more than a year. And economic anxieties, particularly surrounding inflation and gas prices, were expected to overshadow other issues on voters’ minds to the detriment of the Democrats, who control all levers of power in Washington.

However, Democrats defied most of the predictions for Tuesday, securing victories in battleground districts across the country and denying Republicans a huge majority if the House does change hands after all the outstanding races are decided.

On Wednesday — a day when Republicans hoped to be popping champagne, launching leadership races and sharpening plans to confront Biden on countless key issues next year — they were forced instead to ponder the reasons for their lackluster performance.

All of that is helping Pelosi.

If Republicans had prevailed clearly and quickly Tuesday night, there would have been immediate pressure on the Speaker to announce her intentions for next year. Instead, she announced she was leaving the country for a climate summit in Egypt.

Pelosi is not guaranteed a leadership spot in the next Congress. The younger, restless lawmakers who want the chance to join the party brass will likely revolt if she seeks another term at the top. But the race for leader in the minority is very different from the contest for Speaker, requiring support from a majority of the party, not a majority of the full House — a much lower bar.

Whatever Pelosi decides, her supporters and detractors are in agreement on one thing: No one will know until she wants them to.

“This really solidifies her legacy as the most accomplished Speaker in U.S. history, by all measures — all measures. There’s no question,” Etienne said. “Two things I know about Pelosi though, the decision will be made on her terms, and she’s going to keep us guessing.”

Mychael Schnell contributed.

Source: TEST FEED1