The Latest: Now Democrats have to figure out ‘What’s Next’

Following a historic blue wave of midterm election wins, Democrats are gathering in Denver for a What’s Next conference hosted by a new group called Majority Democrats.

President Donald Trump wants Vice President JD Vance to talk less about the Iran war and more about corruption and crime in Democratic-controlled cities and states. Vance’s blunt post-election analysis blaming the war and its economic reverberations for the sweeping Republican losses was getting attention.

And the sweeping Democratic gains in Congress are teeing up an onslaught of expected investigations into the Justice Department, which has functioned for nearly two years as an extension of the White House, unchecked by a Republican-controlled Congress as it pursued investigations into Trump’s enemies, fired waves of career employees and defended the administration in ways that judges across the country repeatedly deemed legally dubious.

Here’s the Latest:

Trump praises Democrat Scott Colom for courting MAGA voters at his Mississippi rally

Trump on Thursday heaped praise on Mississippi’s Sen.-elect Scott Colom for courting some of his hardcore MAGA supporters in the final days of the midterm election campaign, a rare example of the Republican president showing admiration for a Democrat.

When the president traveled to Corinth, Mississippi, last month to campaign for incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, Trump denigrated Colom as a “Marxist radical,” a “fake” and a “shameless phony who pretends to be a moderate.”

But on Thursday, during an appearance on Stephen A. Smith’s “Straight Shooter” podcast, Trump acknowledged that Colom demonstrated chutzpah by showing up at the Trump rally to mingle with some of the Republican president’s staunchest “Make America Great Again” supporters.

“I heard it the other day, where I had a rally there, and we had lines that went 10 miles long, and he campaigned on that line, telling everybody on the line what a good job he did,” Trump said of Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor who capitalized on the electorate’s discontent with the economy in his successful underdog campaign. “I give him a lot of credit for that.”

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Democrats flock to Denver for a post-midterms introspection-turned-celebration

Fresh off the best electoral performance in half a century, Democratic officials and strategists converged on Denver Thursday to plot a further course for the party and revel in their gains.

The two-day What’s Next conference, hosted by a new group called Majority Democrats, was put on politicos’ calendars months ago as another stepping stone as the party charted its way out of its post-2024 political wilderness.

Now Democrats will have to figure out what to do with majorities in both chambers of Congress and control of at least 12 new state legislative chambers.

“The fever has broken. The fog has lifted,” said Mitch Landrieu, the former Democratic mayor of New Orleans. “And now it falls upon us to rebuild the foundation of this great nation and to fulfill the promise of America.”

Barely a week after voters repudiated Trump and his Republican Party, Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico said Democrats must work with him. Voters are hungry for results and can’t wait two years for Trump to leave office, he said, urging Democrats to avoid both intraparty fights and excessive caution.

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Trump’s Justice Department faces a new era of scrutiny under a Democratic-led Congress

The Justice Department has functioned for nearly two years as an extension of the White House, unchecked by a Republican-controlled Congress as it pursued investigations into President Donald Trump’s enemies, fired waves of career employees and defended administration stances that judges across the country repeatedly deemed legally dubious.

Now, sweeping Democratic gains in Congress have shifted the balance of power in Washington, teeing up an onslaught of expected investigations into those actions and others as well as scrutiny from the majority party that the current Justice Department had until now managed to skirt.

The department has, at least publicly, appeared unbowed by the altered landscape.

Attorney General Todd Blanche says the department will cooperate with Congress but has also insisted that “we will not back down” from the Republican president’s agenda. Meanwhile, a top aide told prosecutors on a call to prepare to be on “wartime” footing and a U.S. attorney publicly warned a top Democrat about planned congressional investigations.

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Trump bluntly tells JD Vance to shift focus from Iran to targeting ‘corruption and crime’ at home

President Donald Trump on Thursday directed Vice President JD Vance to shift his focus away from the Iran war and instead devote himself to fighting what the president says is corruption and crime in Democratic-controlled cities and states.

Vance, who served as the lead negotiator for a short-lived truce in the eight-month-old war, has been blunt in blaming the war — and the economic reverberations it has caused — for Republicans’ sweeping losses in last week’s midterm elections in the United States.

But Trump brusquely told the vice president in a social media post Thursday to shift his energies away from the Iran war to what he argues is a more pressing — and perhaps more politically salient — issue after Republicans were trounced at the polls.

Trump earlier this week said he believed the war “militarily is effectively over,” and appeared to double down on that message by pointedly directing Vance “to focus his complete and total attention” on his anti-fraud campaign.

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