California has offered a rare ray of sunshine for Democrats in this election, as ABC News reports that Democrat George Whitesides is projected to defeat Republican Rep. Mike Garcia in the state's 27th District, handing Democrats a GOP-held House seat in the northern Los Angeles suburbs. With 88% of the expected vote reporting, Whitesides leads Garcia 51.2% to 48.8%.

Garcia is the fourth House Republican incumbent projected to lose in the 2024 election, but the first outside of New York, which is home to the other three who've gone down. To be clear, Garcia was always in a tough spot: He's routinely had to defend a district that leaned slightly toward Democrats at the presidential level, but he managed to win three times — first in a 2019 special election to pick up the seat from the Democrats, then reelection in 2020 and again in 2022 to retain it for the GOP. But Democrats finally were able to flip his seat back.

ABC News reports that Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego is projected to win Arizona's U.S. Senate race. After a large batch of votes from Maricopa County was reported tonight, Gallego leads Republican Kari Lake 50% to 48%.

This is a crucial hold for Democrats and guarantees them at least 47 seats in the next Senate (the only unresolved Senate race is now Pennsylvania, which is likely but not certain to go to Republicans). Gallego is also the fourth Senate Democrat this year to win in a state carried by Trump; my colleague Geoffrey Skelley examined this seeming spike in split-ticket voting in an article on Monday.

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Monday that he’s selected Rep. Elise Stefanik as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — meaning that voters in her upstate New York district will elect Stefanik’s replacement in Congress within months of reelecting her.

On Tuesday, Stefanik was reelected to her sixth term in Congress by a 24-point margin in a safely Republican district that Trump would have won by almost 16 percentage points in 2020. Over the years, she’s been a staunch defender of the incoming president and currently serves as the highest ranking Republican woman in the U.S. House. At one point, there was speculation that Trump was considering her for the vice presidency.

Her nomination as ambassador will require confirmation in the U.S. Senate, which Stefanik should easily pick up, as Republicans will take control of the upper chamber following Tuesday’s election. Should she be confirmed, New York state law requires that Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, must call a special election within ten days of a vacancy, and schedule the election between 70 and 80 days after declaring the vacancy.

Stefanik was first elected to the House in 2014, which at the time, made her the youngest woman elected to Congress. Over the years, though, she’s risen from a moderate New York Republican to a MAGA superstar. Stefanik was one of Trump’s strongest defenders during the 2019 impeachment proceedings and was one of many Republicans who questioned the results of the 2020 election, sharing baseless claims that the race was somehow stolen from Trump.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who also ran for the presidency, served as one of Trump’s U.N. ambassadors during his first administration. Shortly after his reelection, however, Trump confirmed that Haley would not be joining this administration this go-around.

Over the weekend, ABC News reported that Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse was projected to win reelection in Washington's 4th District. Newhouse is one of just two House Republicans still in office who voted to impeach Trump back in 2021, and it looks like both will win reelection. (David Valadao's race is still unprojected, but he is winning by a comfortable margin.)

But we already knew Newhouse's seat was a guaranteed hold for Republicans because Newhouse's opponent, Jerrod Sessler, was also a Republican. The Newhouse-Sessler race was one of seven same-party general elections for the House, a setup that's possible because of California's, Louisiana's and Washington's top-two primary systems. There were two other head-to-head matchups between Republicans on this year's ballot:

- In California's 20th District, Rep. Vince Fong is projected to defeat Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux 66% to 34%. Boudreaux withdrew from this race after Fong won a special election between the two of them earlier this year.
- In Louisiana's 4th District, Speaker Mike Johnson easily fended off teacher Joshua Morott 86% to 14%.

And here's how the Democrat-versus-Democrat races shook out:

- In California's 12th District, Bay Area Rapid Transit Board of Directors President Lateefah Simon is projected to defeat professor Jennifer Tran 64% to 36%.
- In California's 16th District, former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo is projected to hold off Assemblyman Evan Low 59% to 41%.
- In California's 34th District, Rep. Jimmy Gomez is projected to defeat David Kim 56% to 44% in what was the pair's third consecutive general-election matchup.
- Lastly, in Washington's 9th District, Rep. Adam Smith is projected to defeat nonprofit employee Melissa Chaudhry 68% to 32%.