Republicans and Democrats awaited the outcome of vote-counting for crucial U.S. House districts in California on Wednesday, as the GOP clinched majority control of the chamber next year with a race call in neighboring Arizona.

In a rematch from 2022, Rep. Ken Calvert — the longest-serving Republican in the state’s congressional delegation — defeated rival Democrat Will Rollins in the 41st District, which lies east of Los Angeles and was a top target for national Democrats.

In Southern California’s Orange County, Democrat Dave Min defeated Republican Scott Baugh in a closely divided swing district, ending Baugh’s bid to seize the seat being vacated by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter in what was once a conservative stronghold.

The 47th District, southeast of Los Angeles, was a top target for national Republicans looking to protect and possibly expand the their narrow majority.

Calvert, who was backed by President-elect Donald Trump, claimed his 17th term in a district narrowly carried by Trump in 2020.

“This is a hard-fought victory that shows voters want someone who will put results above partisan politics,” Calvert said in a post on the social platform X.

Min, also posting on X, said that in Congress he will “fight to protect our democracy, safeguard our freedoms and expand economic opportunity.”

Baugh said on the same platform that “despite running a strong campaign … that effort is going to come up a little short.”

On Tuesday, Republican Rep. David Valadao’s victory in California’s 22nd District moved Republicans within two wins of retaining the House gavel, with the tally 216-207 in favor of the GOP, as counting continued in a sliver of races across the country.

With Calvert’s win, the Republican tally reached 217. That became 218 on Wednesday night, securing a majority margin, as Rep. Juan Ciscomani won reelection to a seat representing southeastern Arizona. Some squeaker races remained in play in California.

In the 45th District, anchored in Orange County, Republican Rep. Michelle Steel’s lead over Democrat Derek Tran was whittled down to a few hundred votes as counting continued.

California is known as a liberal protectorate — Democrats hold every statewide office, dominate the Legislature and congressional delegation and outnumber registered Republicans by a staggering 2-1 ratio. Still, Republicans retain pockets of political clout in the Southern California suburbs and vast rural stretches, including the Central Valley farm belt.

Orange County was once considered conservative holy ground, where white, suburban homeowners delivered winning margins for Republicans year after year. It was a foundational block in the Reagan revolution. But the county has become more demographically diverse and Democratic over time, like much of the state.

The 47th District, which includes Huntington Beach and other famous surf breaks, has been occupied by Porter, a progressive favorite who in 2022 narrowly defeated Baugh, a former Republican legislator. Porter, known for grilling CEOs during Capitol Hill hearings, stepped aside to run for U.S. Senate, but lost in the primary.

Given the stakes in the closely divided district, the contest was especially rancorous. Min ads called Baugh a “MAGA extremist” who would endanger abortion rights. Baugh said Min’s “extreme liberal views” were out of step with the district.

A South Korean court found the former police chief of the country’s capital and two other officers not guilty over a botched response to a Halloween crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people in 2022.

The verdict by the Seoul Western District Court drew angry responses from grieving relatives and their advocates, who accused the court of refusing to hold high-level officials accountable for an incident that was largely blamed on a lack of disaster planning and an inadequate emergency response.

Kim Kwang-ho, former chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, was the most senior police officer among more than 20 police and government officials indicted over the crush in Itaewon, a popular nightlife district in Seoul. Prosecutors had sought a five-year prison term for Kim.

An investigation led by the National Police Agency found that police and local officials failed to plan effective crowd control measures even though they expected more than 100,000 people to gather for Halloween events in Itaewon.

The investigators found that Seoul police assigned just 137 officers to Itaewon on the day of the crush. Police also ignored hotline calls placed by pedestrians who warned of swelling crowds before the surge turned deadly. Once people began getting crushed in an alley near Hamilton Hotel, police failed to establish control over the site and allow paramedics to reach the injured in time.

Some experts have called the crush a “manmade disaster” that could have been prevented with relatively simple steps like employing more police and public workers to monitor bottleneck points, enforcing one-way walking lanes, and blocking narrow pathways.

The Seoul court acquitted Kim of professional negligence, saying that prosecutors failed to prove that he had violated his duties or to establish a connection between his conduct and the high toll of deaths and injuries. The court also acquitted two lower-ranking police officers who faced similar charges.

The court stated that while Kim received status updates from various departments in his agency and the Yongsan police station about the situation in Itaewon before the crush on Oct. 29, 2022, this information would not have been sufficient for him to recognize the possibility of an incident of such magnitude.

The court also noted that Kim had instructed various police stations in Seoul, including Yongsan, to establish plans to maintain safety during Halloween celebrations.

“Based solely on evidence submitted by prosecutors, it’s insufficient to conclude that the defendants’ professional negligence and its relationship to the occurrence or escalation of this incident are fully established beyond reasonable doubt,” the court said in a statement. Relatives of the victims embraced and cried outside the court after the verdict was announced.

“This court just granted immunity to the police for whenever these kinds of incidents happen again!” one of them shouted. Others scuffled with security as they tried to approach Kim’s car as he left the court.

Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families, a group representing the victims, said the ruling was “dishonest” and “impossible to understand” and called for prosecutors to appeal.

“We strongly condemn that the main officials of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, who ignored their duties for prevention, preparation and response despite anticipating that a large crowd would develop, and who have been denying their responsibility until now, are being given a free pass,” the group said.

The same court last month sentenced the former chief of Yongsan police station, Lee Im-jae, to three years in prison and convicted two of his colleagues of professional negligence resulting in death, citing their failure to properly prepare for the crowd and respond to the crush.

The court acquitted Park Hee-young, head of the Yongsan ward office, and three other ward officials, saying that they had no legal authority to control or break up crowds.

Lee and another Yongsan police official who received a one-year sentence appealed the ruling earlier this month. The other police official had received a suspended sentence.

One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.

The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.

The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends in court papers.

They allege that Google also controls the ad exchange market, which matches the buy side to the sell side.

“It’s worth saying the quiet part out loud,” Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement. “One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here.”

Google says the government’s case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock to reach audiences.

In her opening statement, Google lawyer Karen Dunn likened the government’s case to a “time capsule with with a Blackberry, an iPod and a Blockbuster video card.”

Dunn said Supreme Court precedents warn judges about “the serious risk of error or unintended consequences” when dealing with rapidly emerging technology and considering whether antitrust law requires intervention. She also warned that any action taken against Google won’t benefit small businesses but will simply allow other tech behemoths like Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok to fill the void.

According to Google’s annual reports, revenue has actually declined in recent years for Google Networks, the division of the Mountain View, California-based tech giant that includes such services as AdSense and Google Ad Manager that are at the heart of the case, from $31.7 billion in 2021 to $31.3 billion in 2023,

The trial that began Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, over the alleged ad tech monopoly was initially going to be a jury trial, but Google maneuvered to force a bench trial, writing a check to the federal government for more than $2 million to moot the only claim brought by the government that required a jury.

The case will now be decided by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton and is best known for high-profile terrorism trials including that of Sept. 11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui. Brinkema, though, also has experience with highly technical civil trials, working in a courthouse that sees an outsize number of patent infringement cases.

The Virginia case comes on the heels of a major defeat for Google over its search engine, which generates the majority of the company’s $307 billion in annual revenue. A judge in the District of Columbia declared the search engine a monopoly, maintained in part by tens of billions of dollars Google pays each year to companies like Apple to lock in Google as the default search engine presented to consumers when they buy iPhones and other gadgets.

Hundreds of protesters broke into Mexico’s Senate on Tuesday as lawmakers weighed a contentious plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary, forcing the body to take a temporary recess for the safety of the senators.

The shut down came just hours after Mexico’s ruling party, Morena, wrangled the votes it needed to jam through the proposal after one member of an opposition party flipped to support it.

That move and other political maneuvering ahead of a vote on the plan championed by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador fueled even more outrage after weeks of protests by judicial employees and law students.

Critics and observers say the plan, in which all judges would be elected, could threaten judicial independence and undermine the system of checks and balances.

Some protesters entered the Senate chambers in an effort to block the vote after they said lawmakers were not listening to their demands. Protesters broke through the door of the Senate chamber pushing aggressively, using pipes and chains. At least one person fainted after protesters broke in.

“The judiciary isn’t going to fall,” yelled the protesters, waving Mexican flags and signs against the overhaul. They were joined by a number of opposition senators as they chanted in the chamber. Others outside the court roared when newscasters announced the Senate was taking a recess.

Among them was Alejandro Navarrete, a 30-year-old judicial worker, who said that people like him working in the courts “knowing the danger the reform represents” came to call on the Senate to strike down the proposal.

“They have decided to sell out the nation, and sell out for political capital they were offered, we felt obligated to enter the Senate,” he said, carrying a Mexican flag. “Our intention is not violent, we didn’t intend to hurt them, but we intend to make it clear that the Mexican people won’t allow them to lead us into a dictatorship.”

Despite unrest in recent weeks, the plan sailed through the lower chamber of Congress last week, and was passed onto the Senate, where López Obrador’s Morena party lacked the necessary supermajority to approve it. In recent weeks, it was able to peel off two senators from an opposition party, but came into this week still missing one more.

It was unclear where that vote would come from because the country’s opposition vehemently opposes the plan. But over the weekend, observers began to speculate that a senator from the conservative National Action Party (PAN), Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez, would support Morena as he refused to answer calls from his party leadership.

On Tuesday, Yunes Márquez announced he would take leave due to health issues and be replaced by his father, Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, a former governor of Veracruz said he would vote for the plan. He said he knew the plan was “not the best” but said more laws down the line could improve it.

“Mexico is not going to be destroyed for approving this reform, nor will the reform automatically change the reality of a justice system that is calling out for fundamental change,” Yunes Linares said.

Yunes Linares strolled into the Senate chambers and was met with applause and chants of “hero!” by Morena senators and screams of “traitor!” from his own party. One PAN senator, Lilly Téllez, even threw dozens of coins at Yunes Linares, calling him a ”traitor who sold out his country” for his own benefit. A Senate vote was expected Wednesday.

The national head of PAN, Marko Cortés, claimed that it “is evident” that there was an “impunity pact” between the Yuneses and the government so he would vote in favor of the overhaul. Cortés was referring to a July arrest order for Sen. Yunes Márquez, for alleged falsification of documents and fraud related to his candidacy.

Yunes had challenged it and got a temporary suspension, calling it a political persecution by the governing Morena party, the same party his father now appears ready to support.

His father, Yunes Linares, dodged questions from the media about how he would vote but accused Cortés of “lynching” him and claimed it was “absolutely false” that he has been coerced to vote for the overhaul. He was flanked by two Morena senators as he spoke.

A Yunes vote in favor would allow the ruling party to clear the biggest hurdle in making the proposal law. If it passes the Senate, it will have to be ratified by the legislatures of 17 of Mexico’s 32 states, but the governing party is believed to have the necessary support.

Montana’s Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would allow the signatures of inactive voters to count on petitions seeking to qualify constitutional initiatives for the November ballot, including one to protect abortion rights.

District Court Judge Mike Menahan ruled last Tuesday that Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office wrongly changed election rules to reject inactive voter signatures from three ballot initiatives after the signatures had been turned in to counties and after some of the signatures had been verified. The change to longstanding practices included reprogramming the state’s election software.

Jacobsen’s office last Thursday asked the Montana Supreme Court for an emergency order to block Menahan’s ruling that gave counties until this Wednesday to verify the signatures of inactive voters that had been rejected. Lawyers for organizations supporting the ballot initiatives and the Secretary of State’s Office agreed to the terms of the temporary restraining order blocking the secretary’s changes.

Justices said Jacobsen’s office failed to meet the requirement for an emergency order, saying she had not persuaded them that Menahan was proceeding under a mistake of law.

“We further disagree with Jacobsen that the TRO is causing a gross injustice, as Jacobsen’s actions in reprogramming the petition-processing software after county election administrators had commenced processing petitions created the circumstances that gave rise to this litigation,” justices wrote.

A hearing on an injunction to block the changes is set for Friday before Menahan.

The groups that sued — Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights and Montanans for Election Reform — alleged the state for decades had accepted signatures of inactive voters, defined as people who filed universal change-of-address forms and then failed to respond to county attempts to confirm their address. They can restore their active voter status by providing their address, showing up at the polls or requesting an absentee ballot.

Backers of the initiative to protect the right to abortion access in the state constitution said more than enough signatures had been verified by Friday’s deadline for it to be included on the ballot. Backers of initiatives to create nonpartisan primaries and another to require a candidate to win a majority of the vote to win a general election have said they also expect to have enough signatures.