WASHINGTON, D.C.— Democrats defied historical trends and defeated several candidates backed by former President Donald Trump to keep control of the Senate, providing enormous relief for President Joe Biden.

The battle for the House, meanwhile, remains too close to call.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT NBCNEWS.COM

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

Pictured is famed poet Nikki Giovanni

CLEVELAND, Ohio-World renowned poet and Virginia Tech English Professor Nikki Giovanni will be the keynote speaker on Sat, Nov 12 at noon at the grand opening of the Cleveland Hough Public Library at 6530 Lexington Avenue in the historic Hough Community in Ward 7 on the city's largely Black east side where the library is located. Doors will open at 10 a.m. for festivities and Giovanni will speak at noon about her life’s work and influence on the Black Arts Movement. The grand opening will also include a Djapo Cultural Arts Institute performance, food, and family fun activities, organizers said.

The event is free and open-to-the-public.

Designed by Moody Nolan, the new Hough Campus honors the past with an eye on the future. Moody Nolan’s architects drew inspiration from the mythical Sankofa bird in Africa which looks back while moving forward. This design is in the shape of the building.

The re-imagined library will have an expanded children’s area, a teen nook, more meeting rooms, a welcoming outdoor space, and book lockers for after-hours access to materials.

The Cleveland Public Library system, which has a main library in downtown Cleveland and several branches, including the new Hough Library, is committed to re-building or renovating every neighborhood branch over the next decade. For updates on construction projects, visit courbanize.com/collections/cpl.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Republican Judges Wanda Jones and Joan Synenberg (pictured) lost their seats on the 34-member Cuyahoga County Common Pleas general division court in Tuesday's election, Jones, who is Black, losing to former Cleveland Council President Kevin Kelley, who lost a nonpartisan mayoral runoff to current Mayor Justin Bibb by a landslide last year, and Synenberg losing to west side Cleveland Ward 11 Councilman Brian Mooney, also an attorney.

Kelley and Mooney are Democrats, Kelley also a former vice chair of the county Democratic party who represented Cleveland's ward 13 from 2005-2022 .

Synenberg lost to Mooney by roughly 700 votes, according to  unofficial results of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, which sits in downtown Cleveland at east 30th and Euclid Avenue.

A former Cleveland Municipal Court judge, Synenberg has been on the common pleas bench since 2007 though she lost reelection in 2013 to current Democratic Judge Cassandra Collier Williams and was appointed back to the court by then Gov John Kasich. She later won election to a full term that concludes in January of 2023.

Jones was appointed to the court in December of 2021 to replace Joseph D. Russo, who suddenly died while in office She previously served as a judge  from January of 2019 to December of  2000, losing election to an unexpired term to Democratic Judge Richard Bell, who was elected on Tuesday to a full term relative to the seat.

Ohio judges are elected to six -year terms, and judicial races  in Ohio are nonpartisan as to how a judge's name appears on the ballot. But technically they remain political, critics argue, and if Synenberg and Jones were Republican they would have had a far better chance of convincing voters to keep them on the bench in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County. Also at issue is that voter turnout was at 47 percent in the county, which was more helpful to Democrats in getting out the Democratic vote in a Democratic town, though it was down from 63 percent in 2016 when Donald Trump ran for president.

Cuyahoga County is the second largest of Ohio's 88 counties and Cleveland, a largely Black major American city, is its largest city. It is a Democratic stronghold primarily controlled by the Dems. Republicans, however, hold every statewide office, including the governor's office, other than three seats on the Ohio Supreme Court and a U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, a seasoned member of Congress and Ohio's most prominent Democrat.

The other Senate seat is held by retiring GOP Sen Rob Portman, whom political newcomer J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist, lawyer and author, will succeed after winning Tuesday's general election over outgoing Tim Ryan, a longtime congressman out of the Youngstown area. Ryan ran for the U.S.senate rather than for a congressional seat following redistricting that shut out a great part of his congressional district.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief (Coleman is a former biology teacher and a seasoned Black journalist, and an investigative, legal, scientific, and political reporter who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio).