The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024
CNN
The past three weeks have shaken up the race for the White House, further complicating things at the Senate level.
The past three weeks have shaken up the race for the White House, further complicating things at the Senate level. Democrats faced a challenging path to holding their Senate majority even before President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump – and they still do. But this year’s Democratic candidates, many of them well-known incumbents, have so far been able to create some separation from the top of the ticket. The question going forward, regardless of what Biden does, is whether they can sustain it. Nine of the top 10 seats on CNN’s latest ranking of the Senate seats most likely to flip are held by Democrats (or independents who caucus with them). And assuming Republicans flip West Virginia, where Sen. Joe Manchin is retiring, the GOP just needs to win the White House or pick up one more Senate seat to win the majority. That’s a tough landscape for Democrats – especially when they’re defending seats in states that either twice voted comfortably for Trump (Montana and Ohio) or are presidential battlegrounds, and when Biden is so far defying intraparty warnings that his candidacy could cause a GOP “landslide.” Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown – the two most vulnerable incumbents running for reelection – said this week that Biden should exit the race. There’s been limited public polling of Senate races since the increasing Democratic consternation in the debate’s aftermath and virtually none since the attack on Trump in Pennsylvania last week. There has, however, been some slippage in Biden’s numbers, and Democrats are bracing for Trump, who officially claimed the GOP nomination in Milwaukee this week, to receive a post-convention polling bump. All of that raises the stakes for Senate Democrats to keep doing what they’re doing: touting their legislative accomplishments without invoking the Biden administration and using their fundraising edge to try to define their GOP challengers – often by mining their business backgrounds and out-of-state ties. Democrats have also been hitting back on attacks over the southern border by highlighting their support of bipartisan immigration legislation that Republicans killed in Congress this year.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.
Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.
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As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.