US midterm elections 2022: focus on Nevada after Democrat Mark Kelly wins key Senate seat – live

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The day before your daughter’s wedding would usually be a time to check on last minute arrangements. Have the flowers arrived? Is my suit pressed? Is my father of the bride speech ready?

Donald Trump, however, was mostly busy elsewhere on Friday, the eve of Saturday’s wedding of his youngest daughter Tiffany Trump to Michael Boulos at the family’s Mar a Lago resort in Florida.

As the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, as well as continuing to fire off furious social media messages following the Republicans’ disappointing performance in the midterms, Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to block the House January 6 select committee’s subpoena demanding testimony in the investigation into Capitol attack.

The suit appears to reflect an attempt by the former president to delay compliance with the sprawling subpoena, in an effort that could culminate in a constitutional showdown with the House of Representatives before the US supreme court.

“Former President Trump turns to the courts to preserve his rights and Executive Branch independence consistently upheld by the courts and endorsed by the Department of Justice,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in a 41-page submission filed in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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Police say there was no powder in a “suspicious” envelope opened earlier this week at the campaign headquarters of Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona.

Phoenix police spokesperson Donna Rossi said that “the state lab tested the items turned over to them,” the Arizona Republic reported. The lab “determined there was no substance inside.”

Phoenix police and fire officials said they were called to the building around 2am Sunday, on a report of an envelope containing suspicious white powder. Lake closed the office temporarily.

Police said at the time there were no reports of injuries or illness, though Lake’s campaign had said the staff member who opened the envelope was under medical supervision, the Associated Press reported.

Democrat Katie Hobbs held a narrow lead over Lake, a Donald Trump acolyte and election denier, as counting continued in the key battleground state on Saturday morning.

The supreme court’s June decision to strip federal abortion rights was a key election issue for many midterm voters. My colleague Lauren Gambino looks at how it held back a Republican “red wave”:

This summer, after a tectonic decision by the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade eliminated the nearly 50-year constitutional right to abortion, Joe Biden predicted American women would revolt. Republicans, however, saw a “red wave” brewing, fueled by widespread economic discontent.

On Thursday, after Democrats defied historical expectations in the first major election of the post-Roe era, Biden effectively declared: “I told ya so.”

“Women in America made their voices heard, man,” the president told a crowd of supporters at the Howard Theater in Washington on Thursday. “Y’all showed up and beat the hell out of them.”

The 2022 midterm elections were expected to usher in staggering losses for Democrats. The party in power typically fares poorly, and with Biden’s approval ratings mired in the low 40s, Republicans were expected to make significant gains.

That is not how the results unfolded. As the vote count continues in several key races, Republicans appear on track to win a far narrower House majority than they hoped, while Democrats may retain control of the Senate.

As a fuller portrait of the results emerges, advocates, Democrats and even some Republicans say one thing is clear: abortion proved a defining issue. Fury over the loss of federal abortion protections galvanized women and young people and delivered a string of unexpected victories for Democrats and new protections for reproductive rights.

“You cannot have half of the population have their body autonomy put under threat and not expect it to be mobilizing,” said Heidi Sieck, the CEO and co-founder of #VoteProChoice. “And that’s what we saw across the board with young people showing up, women showing up, newly registered women being more than two-thirds of the newly registered voters.”

Exit polls conducted for news networks by Edison Research showed that abortion was the top issue for many Americans, especially young people under the age of 30. And about 60% of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry with the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe, according to exit polls conducted by AP Votecast.

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Ever heard a tale about a reality television star deciding to change career, mounting an unexpected run for political office, then winning?

It’s happened again in Kentucky, where Republican Nick Wilson, a former champion of the Survivor game show, will sit in the state’s House of Representatives after being elected unopposed in his district.

In parallels (kind of) to Donald Trump‘s political career, Wilson, 32, banked $1m as the champion of Survivor’s David v Goliath edition in 2018, outlasting a large field of fellow contestants, but wasn’t so successful in his second attempt on a reunion show in 2020, when he was unceremoniously voted out by his tribe.

Wilson, a former assistant commonwealth attorney for Whitley county, replaces retiring Republican Regina Huff, who endorsed him.

While we were largely focused on the US Senate race in Arizona, other contests in the state have also been closely watched.

As my colleague Ed Pilkington writes, the victory of Adrian Fontes, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state, may come to be seen as one of the most significant results of the 2022 elections in terms of the future of American democracy.

Fontes beat Mark Finchem, a rabid election denier and member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia who was present at the US Capitol on the day of the 6 January 2021 insurrection.

Finchem has made repeated efforts to overturn Joe Biden‘s win in Arizona in the 2020 election, in favor of his idol Donald Trump.

By frustrating Finchem’s efforts to secure the secretary of state position, Fontes, a former Marine, has prevented both local and federal election administration in Arizona falling into the hands of an avid opponent of democratic norms.

Had Finchem come out on top, as some polls suggested he might in the final stretch of the campaign, he would have been placed to radically alter Arizona’s handling of elections and could even have subverted the outcome of the 2024 presidential battle.

“I promise always to honor and defend the ideal of fair and honest elections with the voters of Arizona and I will help reignite the flame of unity in our Republic,” Fontes tweeted after his victory was confirmed last night.

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Good morning US politics blog readers, and welcome to a rare weekend edition covering the ongoing midterm election!

It could be a decisive day for control of the US Senate, where the results in only two states – Nevada and Georgia – are still outstanding, and the balance of power in the chamber remains delicately poised at 49-49.

With the race in Georgia heading to a 6 December runoff, and Democrat Mark Kelly having been declared the victor in Arizona late on Friday, that leaves all eyes on the pivotal Nevada nailbiter between the incumbent Democrat, Catherine Cortez Masto, and her Republican challenger, Adam Laxalt.

Even if we don’t get a result today, we are expecting to see more votes tallied in a race Laxalt led by a mere 862 at breakfast time from almost a million counted.

A Cortez Masto victory would keep the Senate in Democrat hands for the next two years, as the party would have the tie-breaking vote of vice-president Kamala Harris. Republicans must win both Nevada and Georgia to wrest control.

Counting also continues in various races for the House of Representatives, where Republicans are closing on a narrower victory than expected.

We’ll bring you all the developments as they come in through the day. While we wait, here’s a primer on the state of play in Nevada and elsewhere: