El-Sayed and Pappas make history as Haaland wins New Mexico governorship

Democrats clinch 54 Senate seats and 225 House seats in unified control

Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s closely watched U.S. Senate race to become the country’s first Muslim senator, and Chris Pappas won New Hampshire’s contest to become the first openly gay man to serve in the Senate. Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia’s governor’s race and will become the first Black female governor in the US, while Deb Haaland was elected governor of New Mexico and will become the first Native American woman to govern a US state. Democrats clinched 54 Senate seats and 225 House seats, putting both chambers under Democratic control for the remaining two years of Trump’s term.

The Guardian’s First Thing newsletter described the result as a historic and dramatic “blue wave.” Democrats flipped critical Republican seats across the country, won a string of gubernatorial races and took districts Republicans had tried to redraw. In an analysis, Rachel Leingang wrote: “Democrats of all stripes declared victory on Tuesday night: moderates, progressives, populists, Democratic socialists. And they won up and down the ballot. These victories will provide avenues for Democrats to hold Trump accountable and act as a functioning branch of government, something voters have said they’ve been missing in Trump 2.0.”

In the Senate, James Talarico won in Texas, breaking his party’s 38-year drought in the Republican stronghold. Troy Jackson defeated five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins in Maine in one of the biggest upsets. Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor and progressive insurgent, won Michigan. Jon Ossoff, whom The Guardian cited as a potential presidential contender in 2028, was re-elected to the Senate in Georgia. Pappas, a four-term Democratic congressman, won New Hampshire and became the first openly gay man to serve in the upper chamber.

Sherrod Brown will return to the Senate after Ohio voters rejected incumbent Jon Husted. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who campaigned on healthcare affordability, won South Carolina, making her the first Democrat to represent the state in the chamber for more than a quarter century. Former governor Roy Cooper defeated Michael Whatley and will be the first Democrat to represent North Carolina in the Senate in 10 years, while Adam Hamilton won Kansas to become the state’s first Democratic senator since 1932. Josh Turek won Iowa’s Senate race.

Republican Ashley Moody fended off a challenge from Democratic socialist Angie Nixon to win Florida’s special Senate election and retain her seat. In the governor’s races, Gina Hinojosa defeated three-term governor Greg Abbott, ending Republican control of the Texas governorship. The Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, won Georgia; Haaland, the interior secretary under Joe Biden, won New Mexico; and Rob Sand has been elected governor of Iowa. Amy Acton was elected governor of Ohio after a contest in which her rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, spent millions of dollars on deeply personal attack ads featuring Acton’s estranged mother, The Guardian reported.

Xavier Becerra, the Democratic former health and human services secretary, was elected governor of California. In Florida, Trump-endorsed Republican Byron Donalds defeated Democrat David Jolly and will become the state’s next governor and its first Black leader.

A Guardian photograph by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA showed Hakeem Jeffries celebrating with Katherine Clark and Suzan DelBene after Democrats took control of the House. Anil Menon voted in the midterm elections by casting an electronic ballot from the International Space Station. He said he filled out the ballot on his station computer and sent it to election officials in Harris County, Texas.

Seven planes across Europe were searched or diverted after a series of bomb threats against passenger flights, prompting questions about whether the warnings were coordinated, The Guardian reported. Donald Trump has said the US will end military aid to Israel at the end of this year, in what The Guardian described as a surprise election-day announcement.

A study has found that babies are more likely to have heart defects in parts of Louisiana affected by industrial pollution. Separately, a U.S. man has been charged with mailing hundreds of letters containing powder to officials before the midterms.

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee is in the advanced stages of setting up an entity to sell a stake in Team USA’s commercial rights in return for capital, ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday and burn up in the process.

Canva is cutting or relocating more than 1,200 jobs, representing 22% of its global workforce, as part of a restructure that includes laying off staff who helped build the Australian-founded design platform.

In the absence of a formal clinical diagnosis, most people’s understanding of the colloquial term “sad nipple syndrome” came through word of mouth or online chatter. People everywhere were searching for the reason behind their sudden bursts of anguish or homesickness that could be triggered by something as commonplace as putting on a shirt.

In recent years, some of the most vocal “tradwives” have left their husbands, renounced their religious faith and promoted financial independence. Journalist Lucy Knight seeks to find out what was behind the sudden and seismic shift. Philippe Peythieu and Véronique Augereau have brought France’s Homer and Marge to life for 38 years and told Hannah J Davies about their personal love story.

Researchers have found that gentoo penguins’ guano feeds algal blooms that absorb significantly more solar energy. Projections of Antarctic melting do not yet account for the phenomenon, which could be significant particularly as penguins move south.