Trump attempts to cast doubt on Democrats midterm election victory, questioning early vote numbers and ballot machines – live

Meanwhile, the incoming class of freshmen senators who won their elections last week are on Capitol Hill for orientation meetings. This includes several Democrats who made history with their election victories.

Here are some pictures of them arriving.

After initially saying he would accept the results of the midterm elections, that saw Democrats flip dozens of seats and win control of Congress, Donald Trump has begun to cast doubt on the Republican drubbing.

“Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest,” he wrote on Truth Social. “How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote.”

The president also repeated his baseless aspersions that that voting machines are unreliable. “It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” Trump wrote.

Voting rights experts were initially concerned that the president and Republican allies would contest the midterm results, but after the seismic victory from Democrats last week Trump appeared to concede.

After last week’s elections, Trump said and his administration “look forward” to working with Democrats as they prepare to take control of both chambers of Congress. “We’ll probably work something out,” he told the New York Times.

In that same interview, he told the Times that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results of the midterm elections.

House and Senate lawmakers are back in Washington after Democrats’ swept Republicans out of Congress in the midterm elections. This means that the remaining weeks in-session are likely to be ineffective as the GOP prepare to lost control. However, members do have one key deadline –11 December.

This is when government funding, which was extended by a continuing resolution in September, lapses. Both chambers will have to hammer out another stopgap spending fill to avert a shutdown before Democrats take control in the new year.

We’re also bringing you the latest as we get the final US House race results – where currently Democrats have a 92-seat majority. There are 19 races that still have to be called, so as we get the latest result counts we’ll provide an update.

Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, currently the House minority leader who is poised to become new Speaker next year, told CBS News that the Trump administration will hold a closed-door congressional briefing today to discuss Jensen Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy.

Last week the Republican chairs of three key House committees also called on Huang to appear before lawmakers in a closed-door hearing on 18 November.

Nvidia announced it is launching an independent investigation following reports that Huang, its founder and CEO, had been the target of “a foreign intelligence effort”.

That effort, reports claim, led to Huang conducting a romantic relationship with a Chinese woman, Alice Huang, who was recruited to spy for China’s Ministry of State Security intelligence agency.

On Sunday Donald Trump said he had yet to speak with the Nvidia CEO. “I just know he’s a fine person, but you never know what is going on,” the president said of Huang. “I’m sure. I hope everything’s fine. He’s done such an incredible job, and so I would certainly hope he’s a fine person, in my opinion.”

We’re also keeping an eye on the latest results out of Mississippi, in the neck-and-neck US Senate race.

With 97% of the votes counted, Democrat Scott Colom is leading the Republican incumbent, Cindy Hyde-Smith by more than 2,500 votes. A reminder that election officials in the state can accept ballots until 10 November (five business days after election day) as long as they are postmarked by 3 November.

We’ll bring you the latest as we learn more.

Donald Trump is in Washington today. He’ll spend most of the day in closed door policy meetings. At 12pm ET he’ll welcome the Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, to the White House. That summit is closed to the press for the time being, but we’ll bring you the latest in case that opens up.

This meeting comes just days after Trump said that the US carried out out new “minor” strikes on Iran, targeting an Iranian air defense system, as a deal to end the conflict remains stalled.

On Sunday, the president told CNN that it is “highly unlikely” he will need to resume strikes as long as there is progress in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program and reopening the strait of Hormuz.

“The answer is highly unlikely it’s going to be necessary. They’re a failing nation. It just came out, you saw this year, 301% inflation. Highly unlikely it will be necessary. I would if necessary, but we hit them really hard. I hit them so hard. You don’t know how hard I hit them,” he said.

Don’t worry, cash-strapped Americans, “relief is on the way”, the senator Chuck Schumer promised last week in a press conference celebrating Democrats’ massive midterms win.

Winning candidates promised to cut food and healthcare costs, rein in corporations ripping off consumers and workers, curb billionaire power and make the world’s biggest economy better serve the working class.

There’s broad agreement on those lofty goals and on some short-term steps. But the big win is bringing decades-old battles to the fore, about how the US federal government should fund safety nets and check healthcare and food costs.

The “lame duck” period between an election and a new Congress’s swearing-in in early January is often a frenzy of behind-the-scenes battles and public posturing as corporate lobbyists, thinktanks, voter groups and big donors try to influence the agenda.

This time, it’s all that on steroids.

Already, JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, has issued a 75-page list of 200 policy proposals for Congress’s “day one agenda”; Columbia professor Tim Wu is pushing an “affordability bill”; Texas’s new senator James Talarico is promising universal healthcare for all; there’s an 181-page investigation memo circulating; and moderate Democrats are arguing for more incremental steps.

Meanwhile, Trump’s power to veto bills means anything the president doesn’t like will need a clutch of Republicans to pass, making things more complicated. Expect a mix of affordability bills the president will back, like curbs on private equity and credit card interest rates, and ones he will veto, which Democrats will use for anti-Republican political messaging.

Donald Trump said on Sunday that he was “only kidding” when he announced a day earlier that he had offered the job of White House press secretary to Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC):

Public health leaders and politicians who made healthcare a central part of their platforms swept into office in the US midterm elections last week, setting the stage for national, state and local changes.

Voters, faced with an unprecedented rise in vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, alongside devastating outbreaks of foodborne illnesses, chose national candidates who prioritized public health, healthcare affordability, reproductive health and the impeachment of Robert F Kennedy Jr, among other key issues.

“The American people are speaking out against President Trump and the policies that he’s been rolling out since the day he took office,” said Julie Scofield, a member of the coordinating committee at the grassroots organization Defend Public Health. “I think it’s a complete repudiation.”

Mallory Harris, a scientist in Austin, almost delayed having children because she was worried about accessing life-saving healthcare, such as vaccines and abortion, if she needed it. She had doctors check her immunity against viruses including measles, and sought assurances from her physicians that she would have access to appropriate care. Harris found out she was pregnant just as 2026 officially became the worst year for measles in the US since before she was born. Texas has no paid time off for maternity or paternity leave, but Harris and her husband will try to wait until the baby is six months old and can get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot early before starting daycare.

Dealing with public health emergencies like these have been “a top issue” for her as a voter. After the election, “it suddenly became a lot less scary”, Harris said. “We’ve seen scientists and physicians getting elected in record numbers. We saw big shifts in places that have had measles outbreaks.”

Donald Trump will meet the prime minister of key mediator Qatar on Monday as efforts to end the Iran war ramp up ⁠following last week’s midterm elections, though ⁠senior US and Gulf officials cast ​doubt on the chances of an imminent deal.

With no victory in sight more than eight months into the conflict he launched alongside Israel on 28 February, Trump has played down the likelihood of major warfare ⁠restarting soon but remains unwilling to accept an existing Iranian truce plan.

Mutual attacks continue, with the US striking Iran’s Qeshm island overnight, according to Iranian state media, and Iran attacking tankers in the Gulf and strait of Hormuz this month, while its Yemeni ⁠Houthi allies have hit Saudi Arabia.

Donald Trump said on Sunday that he “was only kidding” when he announced a day earlier that he had offered the job of White House press secretary to Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

Speaking to reporters on his way back the White House from his beach club in Florida, Trump explained the premise of his joke, that if the UFC boss, who is a devoted fan of the president, took over the briefing room, flanked by six fighters, reporters “wouldn’t mess around with him so much”.

“So I was kidding, but I think Dana likes the idea, and he is a very capable guy,” Trump added. “Of course, I was kidding. And you could see that because I put all of the great fighters as his assistants, that they’re all going to come with him … It was just a little fun.”

Earlier on Sunday, the president shared an animated AI cartoon made by one of his supporters on social media, which showed UFC fighters beating up journalists and one, Josh Hokit, repeating the racist remark about Michelle Obama he made during the UFC event at the White House on Trump’s birthday in June.

The president said that his mock announcement that White would become his spokesperson, in a social media post on Saturday, “was an example of something where I was kidding, and then people said, ‘You know, that’s actually a pretty good idea’”.

Stephen Miller, the influential architect of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, is due to start as White House chief of staff today. His promotion has horrified many, handing even more power to the president’s most controversial aide.

The 41-year-old has been with Trump since the beginning of the US president’s political career – serving as a speechwriter during his 2016 presidential campaign – and has long been seen as a hardliner on the right, serving as the driving force behind first-term Trump policies such as family separation at the US-Mexico border and the travel ban on people from many Muslim-majority countries.

Here is Miller in some of his own words:

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Donald Trump said he thinks his administration was too aggressive on deportations and that he was open to an arrangement to allow some undocumented immigrants to remain in the US.

The president said, in his first major interview since his party lost control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, that his deportation policy was part of the reason Republicans lost.

He told CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ in an interview that aired on Sunday:

I think it might be too tough, yeah. And a lot of people would say that it’s great. But a lot of people think it’s too tough.

The president’s comments were an unusually frank acknowledgment that one of the defining policies of his second administration had become a political liability. But they were seemingly at odds with his decision on Friday to elevate Stephen Miller, the architect of his immigration crackdown, to White House chief of staff.

Trump said that he thinks he could reach an agreement with the new Democratic majority, adding:

We would work something out. And I think it’s something – I think that’s something that’s actually doable.

The president claimed that his policy “both helped and hurt”, since people gave him an “A+ for closing up the border” and “very high marks for getting the bad ones out”. But he admitted: “I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally.”

His comments come as his most controversial aide Miller was due today to start his new role as chief of staff. In a social media ‌post, Trump called Miller, 41, “one of ​my most trusted advisors” and praised the outgoing Susie Wiles for doing “an ⁠outstanding job”.

Read our full report here:

In other developments:

• On the race among Republicans to succeed him for the 2028 presidential election, Trump hinted at staying neutral. Asked whether he’d endorse a potential successor, the president said “probably, not necessarily.” “We have a tremendous bench. I have so many people that I have great relationships with,” Trump said in his CBS interview.

• Trump said on Sunday that he “was only kidding” when he announced a day earlier that he had offered the job of White House press secretary to Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Speaking to reporters on his way back the White House from his beach club in Florida, Trump explained the premise of his joke, that if the UFC boss, who is a devoted fan of the president, took over the briefing room, flanked by six fighters, reporters “wouldn’t mess around with him so much”.

• Trump will meet with Qatar’s prime minister at ⁠the White House today, according to the White House schedule, as the ⁠conflict with ⁠Iran ​drags on and diplomatic efforts to end it face significant obstacles. Trump is due ⁠to meet with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, who also serves as Qatar’s foreign ⁠minister, in a closed-door meeting. Vice-president JD Vance ​is also scheduled to meet ‌with the ‌Qatari leader, according to a US official.

• A US deportation flight of Iranian nationals bound for Iran by way of Pakistan was abruptly canceled Sunday morning, according to an attorney who spoke to some of the detainees slated for repatriation. At least eight Iranians were loaded onto a plane Sunday morning in Mesa, Arizona, for a deportation flight headed to the country of Georgia, then on to Pakistan, according to Ali Rahnama, an attorney with the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund who filed emergency motions on behalf of some of the Iranian detainees. The flight was canceled without explanation, he said.