Former President Donald Trump's close friend Steve Witkoff and former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler have been tapped to lead the Trump inauguration efforts, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Both Witkoff and Loeffler have been among the biggest fundraisers for Trump this election cycle, hosting multiple key campaign fundraisers as well as accompanying him to campaign rallies. Witkoff was also the friend golfing with Trump during the second attempt on his life in West Palm Beach.

Trump's first inaugural committee in 2017 raised a total of $107 million from more than 1,000 individual and corporate donors, and it's expected to be a big operation this time around as well.

Inaugural committees are not bound by federal campaign contribution limits, so it's an opportunity for donors and corporate interests to express their unlimited support for the second Trump administration.

President-elect Donald Trump is the projected winner in Nevada, ABC News reports.
Trump lost in Nevada in both 2016 and 2020.

Democrats have flipped two Republican-held districts in closely watched House races in New York.

ABC News reports that Democratic candidate Laura Gillen is the projected winner in New York’s 4th Congressional District. As of 10:45 p.m. on Thursday, with 94% of the expected vote reporting, Gillen leads with 51% of the vote, while her Republican opponent, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, follows with 49%.

D’Esposito conceded earlier on Thursday. He had previously won against Gillen in 2022 by 4 points, when he flipped the Long Island-based district held previously by retiring Dem. Rep. Kathleen Rice. In 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in the same district by over 14 percentage points.

Separately, ABC News reports that Democratic candidate Josh Riley is the projected winner in New York’s 19th Congressional District. As of 10:45 p.m. Thursday, with 95% of the expected vote reporting, Riley leads with 51% of the vote, while GOP incumbent Rep. Marcus Molinaro follows with 49% of the vote.

In 2022, Molinaro defeated Riley by less than 3 percentage points, and Biden won the district in 2020 by around 5 percentage points. Over $40 million was spent by the candidates or groups supporting them in this race, according to an analysis by OpenSecrets.

Cumulatively throughout 2024, Democrats have now flipped 3 of the 4 swing seats they lost in 2022 in New York – the third being New York’s 3rd Congressional district, which Rep. Tom Suozzi won in a special election in February and held onto in the general election.

ABC News reports that incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Lawler is projected to hold onto the fourth, New York’s 17th District.

-ABC News' Emily Chang, Oren Oppenheim and Brittany Shepherd

The race for the House seat in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District will go to ranked-choice voting tabulation, the secretary of state's office announced Thursday. There will also be a potential recount, at the request of one of the candidates.

Incumbent Democrat Rep. Jared Golden was leading with 50.9% of the vote as of around 8:45 p.m. on Thursday, while his Republican opponent, Rep. Austin Theriault, followed with 49% of the vote. Less than 7,000 votes separated the two.

Maine uses ranked-choice voting in its federal races, so voters indicate their first, second and third choices, and so on. A candidate wins outright if they get over 50% of the vote initially.

If the race goes to ranked choice voting tabulation, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the votes from people who voted for that candidate are applied to their second choice. This continues until only two candidates are left; the leading candidate then wins.

Separately, Theriault's campaign announced Thursday plans to request a recount. According to the secretary of state's office, the recount would also use RCV tabulation.

-ABC News' Emily Chang and Oren Oppenheim

The 2018 cycle was a watershed year for Democratic women, who outperformed Democratic men in their primaries. And in November of that cycle, female candidates put a nail in the "women aren't electable" coffin when they were responsible for more than 60% of the congressional seats that flipped from red to blue.

In congressional races today, a number of Democratic women are challenging incumbent Republicans in seats our forecast rates as competitive, and Democrats are hoping for a similar outcome as 2018. This includes Sue Altman in New Jersey's 7th District, who is challenging Rep. Thomas Kean Jr., and Janelle Bynum in Oregon's 5th District, who is challenging Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, one of just 34 Republican women currently in the House. (If Bynum wins, she will be the first Black person to represent Oregon in Congress.) In Arizona's 6th District, Kirsten Engel is challenging Rep. Juan Ciscomani.

GOP women also have a recent track record of flipping seats: In 2020, Republicans recruited women to run against vulnerable Democrats, in a strategy to flip highly competitive House districts, and many of them did defeat Democratic incumbents. There are a couple of Republican women challenging incumbents in races that our forecast suggests could be close, like Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina's 1st District, who is challenging Rep. Donald Davis, and Yvette Herrell in New Mexico's 2nd District, who is challenging Rep. Gabriel Vasquez. Buckhout and Herrell are both running in races our forecast rates "Likely Democrat," but they are still competitive.

If these Democratic and Republican women win, it could certainly add to the number of women in Congress. However, plenty of incumbent women who represent purple districts are facing challenges of their own, like Democratic Reps. Emilia Sykes in Ohio's 13th District, Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez in Washington's 3rd, Susan Wild in Pennsylvania's 7th, and Yadira Caraveo in Colorado's 8th. Republican women at risk of losing their seats include Michelle Steel in California's 45th and Chavez-DeRemer.

At stake is not just these seats, but gender diversity in Congress, which remains low. After the 2022 election, women made up just 29% of the House and 25% of the Senate. But the partisan gap is especially stark: Democratic women make up 41% and Republican women make up just 16% of their respective parties' members of Congress.

I'll be watching these races today, to get a sense of whether either party will add more women to their caucus, and if the progress women have made over the last several cycles ( especially since 2018) will finally stall.