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Democrat Josh Weil acknowledged to his supporters he fell short in the special election for Florida’s 6th Congressional District race to Republican Randy Fine.
“We built a machine and it did what it was designed to do,” Weil said at his Daytona Beach watch party. “But in the end, they out-voted us.”
“My only regret,” he added, “is the people in District 6 will get what they voted for.”
Weil said his supporters could relish that they made Republicans sweat in a deeply red district. He added that his campaign “laid the blueprint” for how Democrats can compete in GOP strongholds going forward.
“The president of the United States had to break into his schedule to … drag (Fine) across the finish line,” Weil said, referring to a tele-rally President Donald Trump held for Fine in the closing days.
“This is a district that has not had an investment (from Democrats) for a very long time,” he said, adding it was “not a red district” but a “neglected district.”
Before Weil took the stage, a spokeswoman for the campaign told CNN he had not spoken yet with Fine.
Weil, who raised nearly $10 million as of March 12, told his supporters the watch party inside Full Moon Saloon was already paid for and to “enjoy the night.”
It is now 8 p.m. ET and polls are closing in Florida’s 1st Congressional District.
Republican Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s outgoing chief financial officer, is facing Democrat Gay Valimont, an athletic trainer and gun control activist.
Patronis won the January 28 Republican primary by 56 points after Trump endorsed him in November, before he officially entered the race. Valimont, the only Democrat who qualified for the ballot, did not face a primary.
The seat became vacant after former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz was tapped as Trump’s attorney general pick in November and resigned from Congress but later withdrew his name from consideration amid controversy over a House Ethics report.
In the 6th District: CNN has projected former Florida state Sen. Randy Fine will win the special election for an open House seat in the state’s 6th Congressional District. Fine will replace national security adviser Mike Waltz and deliver much-needed reinforcements for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s narrow majority.
The court right now is weighing whether an 1849 abortion ban can still be enforced. Abortion rights was a major motivating issue for many Susan Crawford voters CNN spoke to this week.
The court could also take a look at a law known as Act 10 – which stripped thousands of public sector employees of collective bargaining rights in the state. That law sparked massive protests against state lawmakers and the governor at the time, Scott Walker.
Voting and election laws could also come before the court, as well as the potential redrawing of Wisconsin’s congressional maps – which currently favor Republicans.
And there’s a case tied to Musk that could make its way to the state’s Supreme Court. His company Tesla has filed a lawsuit in the state challenging a state law that prevents his electric vehicle company from opening company-owned stores in Wisconsin. The liberal candidate, judge Crawford, has tried to use that to argue Musk became engaged in the race due to his own business interests.
Former Florida state Sen. Randy Fine will win the special election for an open House seat in Florida’s 6th Congressional District, according to a projection from the CNN Decision Desk. The result means a sigh of relief for Republicans after late concerns emerged over their candidate’s efforts in the overwhelmingly conservative district.
Fine will replace National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and deliver much-needed reinforcements for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s narrow majority.
More on the race: Few anticipated a competitive race for Waltz’s seat when he resigned in January. President Donald Trump had won Florida’s 6th Congressional District by 30 points in November, and Fine had Trump’s backing to succeed Waltz, an endorsement that carried him through the primary with few difficulties.
But Fine’s Democratic opponent, math teacher Josh Weil, sent shockwaves from Florida to Washington last month when he reported raising $10 million. Fine, meanwhile, managed to bring in about $1 million through mid-March and entered the final weeks of the race with about $93,000 on hand before he loaned his campaign $400,000.
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker has broken the record for the longest floor speech in modern Senate history, surpassing the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s speech lasting 24 hours and 18 minutes in 1957.
Booker, whose marathon speech against the Trump administration began at 7 p.m. ET yesterday, is still speaking in protest of the Trump administration’s agenda.
The New Jersey Democrat declared he was holding the floor in the spirit of the late John Lewis, a civil rights icon and longtime US congressman, when he began his remarks last night. In contrast, Thurmond set his record speaking against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
Booker, 55, briefly mentioned Thurmond on Tuesday.
“You think we got civil rights one day because Strom Thurmond — after filibustering for 24 hours — you think we got civil rights because he came to the floor one day and said, ‘I’ve seen the light.’ No, we got civil rights because people marched for it, sweat for it and John Lewis bled for it,” Booker said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked Booker to yield for a question at 7:19 p.m. ET, asking if he knew he had broken the record. “Do you know how proud this caucus is of you?” he then asked, as House Democrats standing along the back of the chamber and Senate Democrats rose in a standing ovation.
Applause and other outbursts are not allowed by Senate rules, but the presiding officer, GOP Sen. John Curtis, said he wouldn’t stop them. Sen. Cynthia Lummis was the only other Republican in the chamber.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark were among the House members who had filed into the back of the floor and joined in the cheers.
This post has been updated with more reporting on reactions in the chamber when Booker broke the Senate record.
Two of the harshest Democratic critics of the cutbacks planned at the Department of Veterans Affairs have ramped up their efforts to fight the planned reductions at the agency.
Sen. Ruben Gallego, a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee, and ranking member Sen. Richard Blumenthal announced they will place holds on all nominations for top positions at the VA to protest the Trump administration’s plans to cut roughly 80,000 jobs at the agency.
Both senators made their announcements today, the same day the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee held a hearing to consider nominations for the positions of under secretary of veterans affairs for memorial affairs, chief financial officer and general counsel.
Responding to Gallego’s and Blumenthal’s moves, VA press secretary Peter Kasperowicz told CNN in a statement:
“Imagine how much better off Veterans would be if lawmakers like Sen. Gallego and Sen. Blumenthal cared as much about fixing VA as they do about protecting the department’s broken bureaucracy. Here are the facts: VA health care has been on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list for more than a decade, and GAO says VA faces ‘system-wide challenges in overseeing patient safety and access to care, hiring critical staff, and meeting future infrastructure needs.’”
He continued, “Under Secretary Collins, VA is working hard to fix these and other issues. Unfortunately, many in the media, government union bosses and some in Congress are fighting to keep in place the broken status quo. Our message to Veterans is simple: Despite major opposition from those who don’t want to change a thing at VA, we will reform the department to make it work better for Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors.”
Collins has repeatedly pledged that veterans’ benefits will not be affected by the staffing cuts.
Tuesday marks the first major election night of Donald Trump’s second term. The highest profile race will be in the critical swing state of Wisconsin, where voters will determine ideological control of the state Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, there will be two special congressional elections in solidly Republican Florida districts where both sides will be watching the margins for clues about party enthusiasm.
Key times: Florida is a split time zone state, so polls in the 6th district will begin closing at 7 p.m. ET and in the 1st district at 8 p.m. ET. Polls in Wisconsin close statewide at 9 p.m. ET.
More on the races: The Wisconsin Supreme Court race features Republican-backed judge Brad Schimel and Democratic-backed judge Susan Crawford to determine if the highest court in the Badger State will retain its 4-3 liberal majority.
In Florida, there are special elections in the 1st and 6th Congressional Districts to fill seats vacated by former Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz.
Trump-endorsed Republican candidates Jimmy Patronis, the state’s outgoing chief financial officer, in the 1st district and outgoing state Sen. Randy Fine in the 6th district are both favored to hold the seats and give the narrow GOP majority in the House a bit more breathing room, although some Republicans have expressed concern about Fine’s candidacy and fundraising in the closing days of the race.
Also on the ballot in Wisconsin, Democratic-backed state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly faces a conservative-backed challenge from education consultant Brittany Kinser. There’s also a measure to add a voter ID requirement to the state constitution. Photo identification is already required to vote in Wisconsin by state law
Republicans have spent the last two weeks sweating the underwhelming vote-by-mail and early voting totals for their party in the special election in Florida’s 6th Congressional District. But the mood picked up considerably Tuesday as Election Day voters skewed heavily in their favor through the late afternoon.
A Florida Republican Party official told CNN that they believed Republicans needed to outvote Democrats in the district by 13 points to feel confident in a victory. “We are far past that,” the official said.
Republicans are optimistic that their voters responded to the GOP panic over the last week and the public push from figures like President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. A national Democratic operative closely watching the race conceded to CNN that appeared to be the case.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said his party would not change its approach in governing if the race for former GOP Rep. Mike Waltz’s seat in Florida ends up much tighter than the Donald Trump’s 30-point victory in that district.
“It’s an anomaly, it doesn’t mean anything,” Johnson said if the Democrat, Josh Weil, runs competitively against former GOP state Sen. Randy Fine. “If there was some big trend going on, it would be going on in Florida’s 1st District as well. An anomaly related to that district and that dynamic — and I’m not reading much into it at all.”
Still, Johnson projected confidence, saying, “we’re not going to lose” and that Republicans would walk away with “two victories, and that’s what’s important.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats should have no business being in this race — but said that Republicans should take note.
“There’s no way that a Democratic candidate should be competitive in either of those two districts,” Jeffries said, also referring to tonight’s election to fill the seat vacated by former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz. “But the Republican extreme agenda has them on the ropes and on the run.”
Rep. Richard Hudson, who chairs the House GOP campaign arm, said if both races were narrow, then it would send a message to how Republicans should govern. He suggested the reason why the Waltz race is tighter is because Fine was slow to advertise on television.
“Well, if both races on the same night in the same state were narrow, yeah, that would send a message,” Hudson said. “There’s obviously a different message being sent here about the two candidates, two campaigns.”
The current House margin is 218 Republicans to 213 Democrats, with four vacancies. After tonight, there will be two vacancies in seats that Democrats held before their recent deaths.
President Donald Trump not only blessed Elon Musk’s super-sized role in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election today, but his advisers told him Republicans may not be able to win without it.
Here’s why: The president’s voters are among the most reliable slices of the electorate — but only when Trump’s name is on the ballot. When it’s not, they are more likely to stay home.
The president carried Wisconsin by more than 29,000 votes in November — his narrowest margin of any battleground — largely because so many Republicans shed their resistance to early voting. If conservative Judge Brad Schimel pulls out a win tonight, strategists in both parties said Trump voters who turned out early and recreated his 2024 path will be a key reason why.
And if liberal candidate Susan Crawford prevails, Trump can always assign at least part of the blame to Musk, rather than accept it himself.
Voters are casting their ballots in two special elections in Florida today, to fill vacant seats in the 1st and 6th Congressional Districts.
Here’s a rundown of who is on the ballots:
1st District: Situated on the western end of the Panhandle and anchored by Pensacola, this district is heavily Republican.
- The Republican party quickly coalesced around outgoing Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who was at one point considering a gubernatorial bid until President Donald Trump endorsed him for this seat.
- Gay Valimont, the Democratic nominee in 2024, entered that race after losing both her husband and son just seven months apart. Valimont, a former volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, lost to former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz by 32 percentage points.
- Also on the ballot is Independent Stephen Broden, who was the Constitution Party’s 2024 vice presidential nominee.
6th District: Anchored by Daytona Beach, this district voted for President Donald Trump by over 30 percentage points in November.
- Outgoing state Sen. Randy Fine, the GOP candidate, is a former gambling executive and conservative firebrand who has served in the Florida legislature since 2016. He’s developed a polarizing reputation during his time in office for sponsoring controversial bills and using inflammatory rhetoric. Click here to read more about why some Republicans have expressed concerns over Fine and his lackluster fundraising.
- Democrat Josh Weil, a teacher and single dad, has dramatically outraised his Republican opponent. As of March 12, he had raised $9.5 million to Fine’s just under a million, according to FEC fillings.
- Libertarian Andrew Parrott, and Independent Randall Terry, a perennial candidate and the Constitution Party’s 2024 presidential nominee, are also on the ballot.
Voters in Wisconsin are weighing in on a high-profile race to fill retiring liberal state Supreme Court judge Ann Walsh Bradley’s seat today, again putting Wisconsin’s highest court in the national spotlight just two years after the consequential contest in 2023 that put liberals in the majority.
It’s a race that has drawn millions of dollars in spending, attracting megadonors like Elon Musk, George Soros and Illinois Gov JB Pritzker.
Why it matters: The winner will again determine the court’s ideological lean just two years after liberals won a 4-3 majority. Whoever wins the seat will be elected to a 10-year term that could potentially include rulings on the 19th century abortion ban and a redrawing of the state’s congressional maps.
In the closing weeks, both sides have also sought to connect the state race to key national debates, looking to turn the contest into a referendum on the opening sprint of the second Trump administration.
The candidates:
- Trump-endorsed Waukesha County Circuit Court judge Brad Schimel
- Liberal Dane County Circuit Court judge Susan Crawford
- Musk-aligned PAC Building America’s Future has released ads that are critical of Crawford’s past decisions as too soft on criminals, while ads by Schimel’s campaign have said special interests are “trying to buy a Supreme Court seat” for her because Crawford “supports their radical agenda.” Meantime, pro-Crawford ads focus heavily on the 1849 abortion ban still on the books in Wisconsin and attack Schimel as “too extreme” on the issue.
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker has spoken for more than 22 hours as he continues his marathon speech on the Senate floor — the record for the second-longest speech after the Senate Historical Office corrected its list.
According to the office, after additional research today, GOP Sen. Alfonse D’Amato’s speech in 1986 is no longer considered the second-longest speech because the chamber adjourned for several hours in the middle of his remarks.
The late Sen. Strom Thurmond holds the record when he spoke on the floor for 24 hours and 18 minutes to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Booker began speaking at 7 p.m. ET yesterday in protest of the Trump administration policies. He and his staff prepared 1,164 pages of material ahead of the speech, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Booker has been delivering the speech with dozens of his supporters in the upstairs visitors’ gallery and both House and Senate Democrats on the floor taking in the moment. Republicans aren’t in the chamber — other than the presiding officer, who at the moment is Sen. John Curtis.
You can watch the speech here.
This post has been updated with additional details from inside the chamber.
Elon Musk made a last-ditch appeal to voters in Wisconsin to elect judge Brad Schimel to the state’s Supreme Court, encouraging them to leave work early and make up the cost through America PAC’s $100 giveaway.
“If you are in Wisconsin, please go and get your friends and family and take them to the polls. If it’s ever worth taking a bit of time off work to go do this, now is the time,” Musk said.
Musk made the appeal on a brief Election Day “X Spaces” discussion, which lasted about six minutes. He also said the America PAC is offering $100 to anyone who takes a photo “of someone holding up a Brad Schimel picture and a thumbs up.”
Musk said Schimel “is crucial to ensuring that the Democrats do not redraw the districts in Wisconsin and lose two Republican House seats, which then could give the House majority to the Democrats. And if that were to happen it would be a massive impediment to President Trump’s agenda.”
Stressing the significance of the election, Musk continued to speak in existential terms, arguing the results could determine the “future of the world” and “fate of western civilization.”
On Sunday, Musk appeared at a town hall in Green Bay, wearing a cheesehead, and giving out two $1 million checks to attendees.
Argentina President Javier Milei plans to travel to the United States this week, two government sources told CNN. His flight is expected to depart tomorrow and arrive in the US on Thursday.
The president does not yet have a set schedule, but the sources confirmed that he aims to meet with President Donald Trump.
Milei’s trip comes amid Argentina’s negotiations for a new loan with the International Monetary Fund for approximately $20 billion, which still requires approval from the organization’s board of directors. Milei is seeking Washington’s support to obtain the loan.
Earlier today, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Argentine Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein in Washington.
Florida voters in two congressional districts are heading to the polls for special elections to fill the seats vacated by former Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz.
Republicans are favored to win both seats and give House Speaker Mike Johnson some much-needed breathing room in a narrowly divided chamber. However, the margins will be worth watching. Democrats have generally performed well in special elections this year, including in two legislative elections in Pennsylvania on March 25.
Hanging in the balance Tuesday night is the future of President Donald Trump’s agenda — which already faces a difficult road through the House, where Republicans have a 218-213 edge over Democrats, with four vacancies, and delicate negotiations in the Senate. A defeat in Florida — while incredibly unlikely, both parties privately agree — would send nervous Republicans into full-blown panic.
But even a favorable outcome that delivers Johnson the expected reinforcements may not fully alleviate GOP apprehension. A narrower-than-anticipated victory in a deeply Republican part of Florida could signal early voter rejection of Trump’s second term and provide a boost to a Democratic Party still reeling from its defeats.
Why these elections are happening: Gaetz, who represented Florida’s 1st district from 2017 to 2024, was tapped as Trump’s attorney general pick in November and resigned from Congress but later withdrew from his name from consideration amid controversy over a House Ethics report. Waltz resigned on January 20 to become Trump’s national security adviser after serving Florida’s 6th district for three full terms.
Madison resident Susan Schultz views her vote in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race as a way to push back against President Donald Trump, telling CNN she fears the country could “lose our democracy” under his watch.
“I’m very scared and frightened. I think that we’re having a national crisis,” said Schultz, who voted for liberal candidate Susan Crawford. “There’s not enough pushback right now, like I think we should all be marching and doing whatever we can to fight back.”
Schultz, who spoke to CNN after voting at a polling location in Dane County, said she’s frustrated with Elon Musk’s involvement in the federal government and his big spending in the race.
“He’s got to go,” she said. “He wasn’t elected so why does he get to do, why does he get to do these things when we didn’t even elect him? It’s terrible.”
Other Crawford supporters in Dane County, which is typically a Democratic stronghold in the state, echoed that sentiment.
“I think it’s abhorrent. I think it’s really disgusting to try to be buying people’s votes and unconstitutional from everything I’m told,” said Jessica Roder, who said abortion rights was a top concern for her in this election.
“I just hope that Wisconsinites are able to vote based on their beliefs and not have any outside influence like money or other things influencing the election,” said Dylan Veitch, another Crawford supporter. “I think campaign finance laws should be looked at a little more carefully as well.”
Elon Musk is spending millions of dollars in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race to support the conservative candidate Brad Schimel against liberal candidate Susan Crawford.
The winner will again determine the court’s ideological lean just two years after liberals won a 4-3 majority.
On Sunday, Musk handed out two $1 million checks to attendees at a Green Bay, Wisconsin, town hall.
Crawford, the liberal-leaning candidate, is a Dane County Circuit Court judge who announced this week that her campaign had amassed more than $17 million over the last month and a half. She has significantly out raised Schimel, the Trump-endorsed Waukesha County Circuit Court judge.
But Schimel has the financial backing of several Musk-linked groups like America PAC and Building America’s Future, which have spent more than $20 million boosting Schimel’s campaign.
CNN’s Arlette Saenz explains why Musk is so interested in this race:
@cnnElon Musk is spending millions of dollars in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race to support the conservative candidate Brad Schimel against liberal candidate Susan Crawford. Musk even handed out two $1 million checks to attendees at a Green Bay, Wisconsin town hall. CNN’s Arlette Saenz reports. #elonmusk #wisconsin #cnnnews #cnn
One Wisconsin voter has lived in Elm Grove for more than 40 years. The last election she remembers with this much attention was “the last one” — in other words the November 2024 presidential election.
Voters in the state are set to weigh in on a Supreme Court race, which will determine the ideological lean of the court ahead of several possible high-stakes cases. A lot of the attention in this election has come from outside Wisconsin, and particularly Elon Musk, who deployed to the state to try and drive turnout.
“Ms. Higgins,” the voter from Elm Grove, did not want to give her full name. She told CNN she is not the biggest fan of Musk’s involvement in the election: “Maybe he should be taking care of his own business instead of everybody else’s.”
“I’ll be honest, I’ll be glad when this campaign is over with. The negativity on the TVs and in the mailing, I just threw a bunch of mailings away,” she said. “Part of me didn’t want to vote for either of them because of the fact of so much negativity toward each other,” she added.
She did not share with CNN who she voted for.
Another voter, “Bob” who also did not want to give his full name, told CNN he didn’t mind Musk’s participation.
“How much has George Soros given? How much has the Koch brothers?” he said. “You get used to it after 50 years of participating in this stuff.”
First lady Melania Trump honored the 2025 International Women of Courage Award recipients today, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, including an Israeli woman who was held hostage by Hamas.
“Love has inspired me to embrace forgiveness, nurture empathy, and exhibit bravery in the face of unforeseen obstacles,” Trump said at the State Department in a rare public appearance. “Today, we celebrate courage, a strength that is based in love.”
Speaking of the recipients, Trump said, “Their courage propels us and humanity forward by advocating to end violence against women and girls, promoting democratic governance, defending human rights, championing human education and fighting injustice.”
Melania Trump in the second term: While public appearances are rare for the first lady, Trump’s involvement with the International Women of Courage Awards is not, as she attended each year during the president’s first term.
The first lady made her first public remarks of her husband’s second term earlier this month when she lent her support to an effort to protect Americans from deepfake and revenge pornography, renewing a commitment to her first-term “Be Best platform.”
After attending the inauguration and joining her husband to tour natural disaster damage in North Carolina and California, the first lady was absent from the White House between January 24 and February 22, when she reemerged to host a dinner with the nation’s governors.
This post was updated with more details on the first lady’s past attendance at the Women of Courage Awards
