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      US election briefing: military officials reportedly discuss how to handle illegal orders from Trump

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      Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, according to a report from CNN. They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.On the campaign trail, Trump has mulled sending the military after his political enemies, and also to turn back migrants at the southern border. US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes. There are also fears he could gut the civil service in the Pentagon, and replace fired staff with employees selected for their loyalty to him.Meanwhile two states – the swing states of Nevada and Arizona – have yet to be called for either Harris or Trump. Should the Republicans win the electoral college votes from both states, it would mean they had a clean sweep of all seven swing states in the election. Republicans have a majority in the Senate, are ahead in the popular vote, and are ahead, though have not yet achieved a majority, in Congress, where they are six seats shy of a majority that would offer Trump even more power to enact key policies.Here’s what else happened on Friday:

      The justice department has brought charges against a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards paramilitary group for plotting to assassinate Donald Trump prior to Tuesday’s presidential election, the Associated Press reports. On the campaign trail in the lead-up to his election win, Trump survived two assassination attempts, but authorities do not believe either were linked to Iran, a longtime foe of the United States.

      Nancy Pelosi said she believed Joe Biden waited too long to exit the race, and erred in immediately endorsing Kamala Harris. In an interview with the New York Times, Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker who played a major role in pressuring Biden not to seek re-election, said: “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race.”

      Donald Trump’s incoming presidency is set to threaten millions of Americans’ healthcare plans. More than 20 million Americans rely on the individual private health insurance market for healthcare, private insurance which is subsidized by the federal government.

      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former independent presidential candidate turned Trump surrogate, is reviewing candidate resumes for the top jobs at the US government’s health agencies in Donald Trump’s new administration, a former Kennedy aide and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

      A Chinese national who had been recently released from a mental hospital was ordered to be held on trespassing charges on Friday after police say he tried to enter president-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the Associated Press reports. That entrance was in violation of a court order that he stay away from Mar-a-Lago after previous attempts.

      Democratic US Representative Andrea Salinas has won reelection in Oregon’s 6th congressional District, beating Republican Mike Erickson to earn a second term in Congress after outraising him by millions of dollars. Oregon’s newest congressional district was seen as leaning more toward Democrats, according to the Cook Political Report. That gave a slight advantage to the freshman Democratic incumbent, who also defeated Erickson in the 2022 election.

      Women have won 60 seats in the New Mexico Legislature to secure the largest female legislative majority in US history, stirring expressions of vindication and joy among candidates.

      A federal judge on Friday overturned Illinois’ ban on semiautomatic weapons, leaning on recent US supreme court rulings that strictly interpret the second amendment right to keep and bear firearms. Judge Stephen P McGlynn issued the lengthy finding in a decree that he said applied universally, not just to the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit challenging the ban.

      Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”. While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.

      Donald Trump, during a call with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, handed the phone to Elon Musk, the New York Times reported, confirming an earlier Axios story. It is not clear what the three men discussed or whether they touched on any change in US policy toward Ukraine in the wake of Trump’s election victory, the Times said.

      The Biden administration has decided to allow US defense contractors to work in Ukraine to maintain and repair Pentagon-provided weaponry, Reuters is reporting, citing US officials. The contractors would be small in number and located far from the frontlines and will not be engaged in combat, an official told the news agency.

      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case has granted a request from the special counsel’s office to pause proceedings in his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election. Jack Smith asked judge Tanya Chutkan to pause the case against the president-elect to “assess the unprecedented circumstances” in which the office finds itself. More

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      White noise: why hatred of Donald Trump fuels his success as much as his supporters’ love | Ed Coper

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      Historians will long scratch their heads that a Republican candidate who – despite an inability to string a coherent sentence together, being grossly underqualified and rife with extramarital affairs – would go on to not only win election but become one of the most popular presidents in US history.The first candidate to grasp how to use “new media” in a presidential campaign effectively and who – rather than getting to work in Washington after the election, as expected, immediately took off on vacation to play golf.Despite all this, the candidate’s popularity among his “stonehead” supporters grew and grew – “an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly unable to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.” I’m talking, of course, about Warren G Harding and his presidential victory in 1920.The poetic description of Harding’s pre-Maga fanbase comes from HL Mencken, who like Harding was a newspaper man. Mencken helped found the Baltimore Evening Sun, where the above quotes appeared, while Harding (the first and only career journalist to become US president) had cornered the Ohio newspaper market and used it to propel himself first into state office and eventually the presidency.Then, as now, the media were partisan outlets with a worldview and political agenda to push. Each candidate and party had their papers, and their market was those who shared their ideology. Then, as now, the truth mattered little to these markets and the papers were rife with unfounded gossip and hyperbolic claims about the other side.But the social media era has forced news outlets into a stark choice – publish articles that generate the most clicks, or publish articles that motivate your subscribers to pay for news. Both of these things come together at the very same point: Trump.Trump, with his bombastic headline-generating instincts, is both the most clickable and subscribe-able topic for news-consuming audiences to devour – whether you love or hate him. I sat glued to cable news coverage of the election this week as pundits thundered “Why is he so popular?!” into their 327th straight hour of blanket coverage of him.Behind it all, then as now, sits a network of industrialists fuelling a noise machine that keeps us at odds with each other as we feverishly debate Trump-mania.You may recognise some of its manifestations in your own feed here in Australia. Switch on Sky News After Dark or their YouTube feed and you could be mistaken for thinking you’d stumbled upon a Trump paean bent on reshaping Australia into Alabama.Wade into the comments section of any Facebook post talking about offshore wind in the Illawarra and you will see Maga bots sharing the same content they do in New Jersey.Check through the global membership of fossil fuel-backed Atlas network which drives the Trumpian agenda globally and you will find our homegrown Institute of Public Affairs and Advance Australia, they of the Indigenous voice No campaign. Trump is global, and your passions are part of his plan.These ingredients: partisan media ecosystems; supportive crowds whipped into frenzies; wealthy backers keen to exploit the first two ingredients for their own financial gain – these are what have delivered us Trump.Just ask Fox News, where supporters turned away in droves when the network tried to get off the Trump train, only for them to get back on it even if it meant denying the 2020 election results they knew were legitimate. That ended in a $US787m settlement with Dominion voting machines.Just ask the New York Times, which was on the verge of bankruptcy in the years leading up to 2016 until a shock Trump victory sent all the haters to rush to subscribe in defence of fact-based journalism, whose incentive is now to keep them subscribed with a steady stream of Trump schadenfreude. The Maga movement would call it a Trump Derangement Syndrome-based revenue model.Just ask Elon Musk, who has used his acquisition of a social media platform to become a cult-like figure of adoration for crypto-bros, UFC fans and Andrew Tate acolytes with his misinformation-laden Trump sycophancy.Our hatred is as much the oxygen to his fire as his supporters’ love is the fuel. Brace for another four years of obsession and obeisance, depending on which side of the fence you sit. But the net result is the same, as Mencken warned us when faced with the fact people are driven not by sense but by emotion, “the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost”. So too, it appears, will the media.

      Ed Coper is a political commentator and the author of Facts and Other Lies: Welcome to the Disinformation Age. He is the CEO of communications agency Populares, credited with helping create the ‘teal’ political movement More

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      Military officials reportedly discuss how to handle illegal orders from Trump – live

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      Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, CNN reports.They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.On the campaign trail, Trump has mulled sending the military after his political enemies, and also to turn back migrants at the southern border. US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes. There are also fears he could gut the civil service in the Pentagon, and replace fired staff with employees selected for their loyalty to him.Here’s more, from CNN:
      Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment.
      Officials are now gaming out various scenarios as they prepare for an overhaul of the Pentagon.
      “We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said.
      Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.
      “Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”
      Martin Pengelly reports for the Guardian on Nancy Pelosi’s comments that Joe Biden’s delay in withdrawing from the race blew Democrats’ chances of winning: Joe Biden’s slowness in exiting the 2024 presidential election cost the Democrats dearly, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said, days after Kamala Harris was beaten by Donald Trump.“We live with what happened,” Pelosi said.Pelosi was speaking to the Interview, a New York Times podcast, in a conversation the newspaper said would be published Saturday in full.“Had the president gotten out sooner,” Pelosi remarked, “there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.For the full story, click here:Here’s a look at where things stand:

      Speaking to the New York Times, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker who played a major role in the pressuring Joe Biden not to seek re-election, said she believed the president waited too long to exit the race, and erred in immediately endorsing Kamala Harris. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said.

      Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, CNN reports. They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.

      Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”. While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.

      Donald Trump, during a call with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, handed the phone to Elon Musk, the New York Times is also reporting, confirming an earlier Axios story. It is not clear what the three men discussed or whether they touched on any change in US policy toward Ukraine in the wake of Trump’s election victory, the Times said.

      The Biden administration has decided to allow US defense contractors to work in Ukraine to maintain and repair Pentagon-provided weaponry, Reuters is reporting, citing US officials. The contractors would be small in number and located far from the frontlines and will not be engaged in combat, an official told the news agency.

      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case has granted a request from the special counsel’s office to pause proceedings in his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election. As we reported earlier, Jack Smith asked judge Tanya Chutkan to pause the case against the president-elect to “assess the unprecedented circumstances” in which the office finds itself.
      Donald Trump yesterday announced that his campaign co-chair Susie Wiles will be his chief of staff in the White House.He’s expected to announce more appointments to prominent administration positions soon. The Guardian’s Lorenzo Tondo took a look at who might be in the running:Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, CNN reports.They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.On the campaign trail, Trump has mulled sending the military after his political enemies, and also to turn back migrants at the southern border. US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes. There are also fears he could gut the civil service in the Pentagon, and replace fired staff with employees selected for their loyalty to him.Here’s more, from CNN:
      Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment.
      Officials are now gaming out various scenarios as they prepare for an overhaul of the Pentagon.
      “We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said.
      Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.
      “Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”
      Nancy Pelosi also said she disagreed with Bernie Sanders, the progressive independent senator who said Democrats had “abandoned working-class people” after Kamala Harris’s election loss.“Bernie Sanders has not won,” Pelosi said in her interview with the New York Times.“With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic party has abandoned the working-class families.”The former speaker instead blamed cultural issues for Harris’s loss to Donald Trump. “Guns, God and gays – that’s the way they say it,” Pelosi told the Times.“Guns, that’s an issue; gays, that’s an issue, and now they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities; and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose.”Speaking to the New York Times, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker who played a major role in the pressuring Joe Biden not to seek re-election, said she believed the president waited too long to exit the race, and erred in immediately endorsing Kamala Harris.“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said. Shortly after announcing in July that he would end his bid for a second term, Biden endorsed Harris, setting the stage for her to become the Democratic nominee. Harris went on to lose the presidential election to Donald Trump on Tuesday, and in the interview conducted two days later, Pelosi said Democrats would have benefited from a primary to choose their candidate.“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said.“And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”Donald Trump has attacked California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who yesterday called the state legislature into a special session to enact laws intended to counter the Republican president-elect’s agenda.“Governor Gavin Newscum is trying to KILL our Nation’s beautiful California. For the first time ever, more people are leaving than are coming in. He is using the term ‘Trump-Proof’ as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again,’ but I just overwhelmingly won the Election,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.He also restated his support for voting laws that could make it more difficult to cast ballots: “Also, as an ‘AGENT’ for the United States of America on Voting & Elections, I will be DEMANDING THAT VOTER I.D., AND PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP, ARE A NECESSARY PART AND COMPONENT OF THE VOTING PROCESS!”Donald Trump’s transition team could announce additional White House positions as early as today, CNN is reporting.As we reported earlier, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is not expected to return to a new Trump administration but could advise on Middle East policy.The Financial Times is reporting that the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, is being tapped to be Trump’s new “energy tsar”.Burgum is Trump’s preferred candidate for the role, the paper writes, adding that former energy secretary Dan Brouillette is also a contender.Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”.While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.Black people in states including Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, the DC area and elsewhere reported receiving the messages.The messages were sent to Black adults and students, including to high schoolers in Massachusetts and New York, and students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), such as Alabama State University and other schools, including ones across Ohio, Clemson University, the University of Alabama and Missouri State.At least six middle school students in Pennsylvania received the messages, according to the AP.Authorities including the FBI and attorneys general are investigating the messages.Jim Banks, the Republican Indiana senator-elect, said he hopes that every undocumented immigrant who came to the US illegally under the Biden administration will be deported once Donald Trump is in office.“It’s my hope that we deport every single one of them that we can, and it starts with deporting violent criminals who are in the United States who came here illegally who have committed violent crimes,” Banks told CNN on Friday.“I think once you do that, President Trump is committed to making that his first and top priority when it comes to mass deportation.”Asked how those plans would be carried out, Banks said he didn’t think it would be “that complicated”.He said the American people had given Trump and the Republicans “a mandate to do everything that we can.”“The goal should be to deport every illegal in this country that we can find,” he added. More

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      Trump White House: after Susie Wiles, who else could be in the cabinet

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      The former US president Donald Trump, due to return to the White House in January, has not yet engaged in formal discussions regarding his new cabinet. Nevertheless, amid his plane journeys, television appearances and rallies, speculation and rumours have swirled around several figures who could find roles in his administration.Confirmed offers of a roleSusie WilesView image in fullscreenConfirmed role: Chief of staffTrump has named Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, the first woman to hold the influential role. She was previously the campaign manager for his successful bid for re-election. Although her political views remain somewhat ambiguous, she is seen as having led a successful and streamlined presidential race. Supporters believe she could introduce a level of organisation and discipline that was frequently absent throughout Trump’s first term, marked by a series of changes in the chief of staff role.Expected cabinet picksElon MuskView image in fullscreenPotential role: unspecifiedElon Musk, who turned into a fully fledged cheerleader for Trump and who holds billions in federal contracts, has reportedly sought a role in a second Trump administration in charge of the regulators that oversee him. Trump has appeared to rule out a cabinet role for Musk, but has said he wants the tech billionaire to have some sort of an unspecified role in his administration. The world’s wealthiest person has proposed the establishment of a Department of Government Efficiency.Robert F Kennedy JrView image in fullscreenPotential role: unspecifiedRobert F Kennedy Jr, the son of the assassinated Bobby Kennedy and nephew of JFK, whose independent campaign for president has at times reached as high as 10% of the vote, strongly believes he has a shot at a role in Trump’s cabinet after he backed the Republican. While senior members of Trump’s campaign have ruled out Kennedy getting a job in the Department of Health, Trump has said he would let him “do what he wants” with women’s healthcare if he makes it to the White House, citing how Kennedy would be able to “go wild” on food and medicines.Doug BurgumView image in fullscreenPotential role: ‘energy tsar’The Financial Times reports that Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, is being considered for an “energy tsar” role. The role and its powers have yet to be finalised. However, Trump has called the climate crisis “one of the great scams of all time” and has promised to “drill, baby, drill”. It’s expected any climate or energy secretary would be tasked with rolling back environmental regulations.In 2023, Burgum ran a short-lived campaign for the Republican nomination for president. He went on to become a highly visible, prolific Trump surrogate and advised Trump on energy policy.Mike PompeoView image in fullscreenPotential role: secretary of defenceMike Pompeo, a former CIA director and secretary of state and devoted ally of Trump, chose not to challenge his ex-boss for the Republican nomination. The staunch supporter of Israel and a sworn enemy of Iran is widely considered a key contender for a top role in the new administration, possible as secretary of defence.Richard GrenellView image in fullscreenPotential role: secretary of stateRichard Grenell, an ex-Fox News contributor who is among Trump’s closest foreign policy advisers, is probably in the running for secretary of state or other top foreign policy and national security posts. A former US ambassador to Germany and vocal backer of Trump’s America First credo on the international stage in his first term, he has advocated for setting up an autonomous zone in eastern Ukraine to end the war there, a position Kyiv considers unacceptable.Tom CottonView image in fullscreenPotential role: secretary of defenceThe far-right Republican senator from Arkansas emerged as a dark-horse contender to be Trump’s running mate in the final weeks of the vice-presidential selection process. In a notorious 2020 New York Times op-ed headlined Send In the Troops, Tom Cotton, likened Black Lives Matter protests to a rebellion and urged the government to deploy the US military against demonstrators by invoking the Insurrection Act. He is well liked among Trump donors and also seen as a contender for secretary of defence.Cotton has said he won’t take a role.Ben CarsonView image in fullscreenPotential role: secretary of housing and urban developmentA retired neurosurgeon and former US housing secretary, Ben Carson has pushed for a national abortion ban – a posture at odds with most Americans and even Donald Trump himself. During his 2016 run he ran into controversy when he likened abortion to slavery and said he wanted to see the end of Roe v Wade. When the supreme court reversed its decision in the Dobbs case, he called it “a crucial correction”. Carson could be nominated by Trump as housing and urban development secretary.Scott BessentView image in fullscreenPotential role: unspecifiedA key economic adviser to Trump and ally of JD Vance, Scott Bessent, the manager of Key Square macro hedge fund, is seen as a possible cabinet contender. The Wall Street investor and a prominent Trump fundraiser has praised Trump’s use of tariffs as a negotiating tool.Mike WaltzView image in fullscreenPotential role: secretary of defence, or secretary of stateA former US army green beret, who now serves as a congressman for Florida, Michael Waltz has solidified his reputation as a leading advocate for a tougher stance on China within the House of Representatives. He played a leading role in sponsoring legislation aimed at reducing the US’s dependence on minerals sourced from China. Waltz is known to have a solid friendship with Trump and has also voiced support for US assistance to Ukraine, while concurrently pushing for greater oversight of American taxpayer funds allocated to support Kyiv’s defence efforts. He has been tipped in the US media as a contender for either defence secretary or secretary of state.Robert LighthizerView image in fullscreenPotential role: trade or commerce secretaryRobert Lighthizer is Donald Trump’s most senior trade official. He is a firm believer in tariffs and was one of the leading figures in Trump’s trade war with China. Described by Trump as “the greatest United States trade representative in American history”, Lighthizer is almost certain to be back in the new cabinet. Though Scott Bessent and the billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson probably have a better shot at becoming treasury secretary, Lighthizer has a few outside chances: he might be able to reprise his old role as US trade representative or become the new commerce secretary.Brooke RollinsView image in fullscreenPotential role: unspecifiedA former domestic policy adviser in the White House, Brooke Rollins has a close personal relationship with Trump. Considered by many to be one of Trump’s more moderate advisers, she backed the former president’s first-term criminal justice reforms that lessened prison sentences for some relatively minor offences.Donald Trump JrView image in fullscreenPotential role: unspecifiedAlthough he has been less prominent on the campaign trail than in previous election cycles, the 47th president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, was active behind the scenes and advocated for his friend JD Vance as running mate. He has built a loyal following in the Maga universe via his Triggered podcast and has taken a role along with his brother Eric Trump in the transition process to establish a new administration. The formal co-chairs of the transition are the Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive, Howard Lutnick, and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.Stephen MillerView image in fullscreenPotential role: unspecifiedA senior policy adviser in the early part of Trump’s first term who was the chief architect of the Muslim travel ban, Stephen Miller is expected to be back in the White House for a second Trump term that the president-elect has said will bring the largest mass deportation in US history. The anti-immigration extremist is also the founder of America First Legal, a group described by him as the right’s “long-awaited answer” to the American Civil Liberties Union, and is already helping drive plans for the second Trump term.Includes reporting by Reuters More

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      ‘A big cratering’: an expert on gen Z’s surprise votes – and young women’s growing support for Trump

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      Long before voting closed in the 2024 elections, pundits predicted that young Americans would be riven by a canyon-wide gender gap. Those predictions turned out to be correct.As a whole, Kamala Harris won voters between the ages of 18 and 29 by six points. But preliminary exit polling indicates that Donald Trump opened up a 16-point gender gap between young men and young women: 56% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Trump while just 40% of their female peers did so.Even more surprisingly, Trump managed to improve on his 2020 performance among young women, despite that gap. In 2020, 33% of young women voted for him.Earlier in the campaign, polling indicated that abortion was the top issue for women under 30. Other surveys also found that young women have veered to the left, becoming, by some measures, the most progressive cohort ever measured in US history – but many did not vote like it. In fact, many appeared not to vote at all. Early estimates show that only 42% of young people turned out to vote. That’s less than in the 2020 election.The political scientist Melissa Deckman runs the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and recently published The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy. Although she’s an expert on the youth vote, and in particular on how young women vote, even she was taken aback by Tuesday’s results – and especially by the diminished turnout, as her research has found that young women are more politically engaged than ever.We discussed what we can glean from the youth vote, what it indicates about young people’s lives and what it means for the future of the United States.We’re still waiting for more detailed data on how young men and women prioritized issues in this campaign, but what do we know so far about the issues that were most important to gen Z?By and large, it was the economy. For gen Z voters who care about the economy, they really broke for Donald Trump.Abortion really dropped as being the most salient issue for younger people. I think that was the most surprising to me.If you look at the youth vote in 2022 – and this is all young voters, not just men or women – 44% said abortion was the issue they put at their top priority. Whereas this fall, the issue was only 13% [exit polling shows]. That’s a pretty big cratering.Typically, why do we see gender gaps like this?The gender gap among gen Z voters reflects the larger gender gap we’ve often seen historically in this country. Women have tended to vote for Democrats while men have tended to vote for Republicans, and we saw that same pattern among women more generally and men more generally this election cycle. Historically, that’s been because women have tended to want a larger size and scope of government. They tend to be more supportive of government programs. Men have tended to vote pocketbook issues and want less government.Why do you think we saw such a gender gap between gen Z men and women?A lot of young women came of age politically during the Trump presidency. We often in political science talk about these being “the impressionable years” – that a lot of people often develop their orientations toward government as late teens, early adults. They’re witnessing the election of Trump, who has said openly misogynistic things, who many women have [spoken out] about how they’ve been harassed and even assaulted by him. He bragged about sexual assault on that infamous Access Hollywood tape.You combine that with the #MeToo movement a couple years later, which was a larger, broader conversation about sexual harassment and its prevalence in society. That made a cognitive dissonance for these young women: America’s elected Trump in an era where we’re recognizing that sexual harassment is a problem. It made them far less likely to embrace the GOP.This generation of young women is strongly supportive of abortion legality, and they’re having fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers. All of those things together have fomented for them a gender consciousness in ways that we don’t see with older generations of American women.What’s notable about gen Z, however, is that unlike perhaps the last several election cycles – where you had a majority of young men voting for Democrats, either for Congress or for Biden in 2020 – we saw a more rightward turn in voting behavior among young men, and that’s probably driven by two things. One: the Democratic party didn’t have a convincing message for a lot of young men, especially on the economy. Secondly: Donald Trump’s decision to meet young men where they are – going on Joe Rogan – it sent the message that he cared about their votes. When you don’t have someone willing to fight for your votes and talk about your interests, you’re less interested in voting for that party.View image in fullscreenThe 2022 midterms took place only months after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in the decision Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Since then, we’ve seen more than a dozen states ban almost all abortions and heard reports of at least four women dying as a result of abortion bans. After all that, why has abortion become less important to young women?Dobbs – it was such a political earthquake. It really, really motivated young women to vote at much higher levels in that midterm election. But you also have to remember the electorate in a midterm is different than the electorate in a general election, and midterm elections tend to draw more motivated voters to begin with. To think that that was going to carry over in 2024 maybe was not the most accurate prediction.I’m really struck that gen Z stayed home in ways they didn’t in 2020. It was one of the biggest surprises for me – mainly because we’ve seen, in the last three federal election cycles, gen Z outperforming younger voters in earlier cycles.Gen Z is really mistrustful of institutions – at higher rates than an older Americans. Perhaps they felt like they’ve gone to the ballot box, they’ve tried to make these changes and they haven’t really seen enough action. Maybe this is a reflection of the fact that increasingly younger voters are are less in tune to government and don’t think government can provide them solutions to their problems.So why was the economy so important to gen Z?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEconomic anxiety is really palpable among this generation. They’re disproportionately more likely to feel the pain of the economy because they want to move out of their parents’ basement. They can’t afford rent or to buy a house. They have massive student loan debt. There’s a sense among younger people that the American dream isn’t really available for them.Even though you have, on a macro level, some indicators of the economy doing quite well – low unemployment, some growth, there’s even actually been a reduction in inflation – that doesn’t matter. Because you have younger Americans really feeling the pinch of higher prices.In many ways, maybe young voters were just like older Americans, in voting their pocketbook and being unhappy with the status quo politically.Do you think the Harris campaign then erred in centering abortion so much?Public opinion polls show that most Americans are broadly supportive of abortion legality – like more than two-thirds. It’s even higher for young women. We find about seven in 10 say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. So I don’t think it was necessarily a bad strategy.I do think, though, that it’s a strategy that assumes that abortion was the top issue that voters cared about. Perhaps focusing more on the economy and how her policies would help young people – maybe more attention should have been focused there.We expected – and my data has shown – that when gen Z women have been able to vote, they tend to have voted for Democrats, for House or Senate or president. They broke really wide for Biden in 2020.It was still a pretty big gap [in 2024]. Most young women really preferred Harris over Trump, by far.What do you think this portends for the future? Are these younger women a little bit more amenable to Republicans – or are they just amenable to Trump?That’s the million-dollar question.[On the issues] young women are really to the left, and I don’t see any evidence that any of those things will change. They’re far more likely to prioritize climate change than gen Z men are. They want to do more to mitigate gun violence. They want to have more spending on mental health. They are very, very supportive of LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice.If young people find that their economic situation hasn’t improved in four years, I could totally see them going in the other direction. I don’t see a massive switch or any kind of realignment happening necessarily.Notably, young men are more liberal [than conservative] on these same policies. But I think that young men who are disaffected, who feel like women’s gains have come at their expense – this is a common theme you hear on the manosphere – they were receptive to a change.This interview reflects two conversations and has been edited for length and clarity.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      California’s attorney general readies the fight against Trump’s extreme agenda: ‘We’re prepared’

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      California was considered a leader in fighting the most extreme policies of Donald Trump’s first administration, and after the Republican’s decisive win this week, officials in the Golden state say they are more prepared to resist Trump’s expected agenda for his second term.Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, will be a crucial figure in that effort, tasked with spearheading litigation and defending vulnerable Californians’ rights in the courtroom. It’s a tall order as the president-elect has promised policies that could threaten the state’s immigrant population, LGBTQ+ residents, climate initiatives, gun safety measures, healthcare programs and abortion rights.But Bonta, in an interview with the Guardian on Thursday, said his office was ready on every front.“I know a lot of people are anxious and worried, concerned, fearful, angry, sad,” said the Democrat, who now occupies the seat previously held by Kamala Harris. “I’m not happy with the results, but I’m energized and ready to fight … I’m ready to do my job and lean in hard and punch back and push back and fight back against any attacks from the Trump administration on California’s ongoing progress.”Bonta’s efforts could have a significant impact in the most populous and diverse state in the US, home to the fifth largest economy in the world and considered a leader on progressive policies.In Trump’s first term, Bonta recalled, California successfully fought Trump’s “public charge” rule, which sought to block green cards for immigrants who accessed certain benefits, such as food stamps. The state also sued to prevent Trump from denying funds to sanctuary cities, and helped stop the former president’s effort to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a program that protects immigrants who entered the US unauthorized as children.“Trump has a very difficult time resisting the temptation to violate the law,” said Bonta, saying he expected the president-elect to once again use executive action to make changes that require congressional action. “If he wanted to take a blowtorch to the Affordable Care Act and end it on day one by executive order … he can’t do it.” Trump recently said he had “concepts of a plan” to replace the popular Obama-era program that expanded healthcare coverage, and his victory has raised alarms among public health advocates.Bonta said he had been in discussion with attorneys general across the US – sharing briefs, memos and knowledge from their fights during Trump’s first term – and they were primed to coordinate lawsuits as needed: “It’s all hands on deck, use every tool that you have. Litigation will certainly be one of the most potent and powerful ones.“We’ve been preparing for months, in some cases years,” he continued. After Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, his staff wrote a legal brief to challenge a national abortion ban, a draft he has ready, if necessary. His staff has also monitored comments by Trump’s inner circle and reviewed Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint for his second term drafted by Trump’s allies.“We’ve got a lot in our back pocket ready to drop,” he said. “In some [cases], the whole strategy is thought through – the court we file in, when we file it, based on what action the Trump administration takes. We’ve just gotta dot the Is and cross the Ts and press print. But we are very far along, very advanced in our preparation.”Trump has threatened unprecedented mass deportations, an agenda that was partially thwarted in his first term by California and other blue states that passed sanctuary laws limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents. California Democrats will face pressure from immigrant rights’ groups to expand those sanctuary policies, which advocates say are not currently the strongest in the nation. California prisons, for example, continue to coordinate with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), which helps drive deportations, but Gavin Newsom, the state governor, has previously vetoed efforts to prevent cooperation with Ice.Bonta said officials should be exploring ways to “reinforce and strengthen” the existing sanctuary law, though he didn’t offer specifics.Newsom has called a special legislative session in December for lawmakers to discuss ways to “Trump-proof” state laws, and immigration will probably be a priority.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The federal government can’t conscript or commandeer state or local resources or law enforcement agencies to do their job [of immigration enforcement],” Bonta said, describing the current sanctuary policies. “There could be some additions that could help make that stronger.”He said he would be looking for ways to ensure the sanctuary law is properly followed and implemented across the state. Advocates are also bracing for rightwing pro-Trump sheriffs in conservative counties to potentially violate California’s sanctuary rules. Bonta said he would respond if that happens: “They are law enforcement officers. They need to enforce the law. They can’t pick and choose the laws they want to enforce … if they’re going to politicize it and break the law, then we’ll be there to hold them accountable.”Trump has also promised a major rollback of LGBTQ+ rights and some of his campaign ads have spread significant misinformation about the rights of transgender Americans, particularly around healthcare and sports. He has pledged to revoke funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to youth, punish schools that affirm trans youth and push a law stating the government doesn’t legally recognize trans people.California was the first state in 2022 to establish itself as a sanctuary for trans kids seeking healthcare, and Bonta’s office successfully sued a local school district over its policy that would have required schools to out trans and gender non-conforming students to their parents.“We’ve been fighting on so many fronts against the attacks on our transgender kids, whether fighting for them to be able to play sports … or use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity, or be able to go to a doctor’s office and have gender-affirming care,” he said. “We will continue … The courts are a good place to find relief when you target and single out someone based on their protected class.”Bonta advocated for Harris during the election and was hoping he would not need to stand up to the federal government. “I didn’t want this outcome,” he said. “I was working to have a different outcome, but I couldn’t guarantee [it] … so we needed to be prepared for the possibility of [Trump]. Unfortunately, this outcome is here. Fortunately, though, we’re ready for it, because we prepared.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Jimmy Kimmel feuds with Elon Musk: ‘At least my children like me’

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      Late-night hosts talk Elon Musk calling Jimmy Kimmel a “propaganda puppet”, how Democrats move forward and bankruptcy court for TGI Fridays.Jimmy KimmelJimmy Kimmel continued to process the election results on Thursday evening. “The crazy thing is, there are still two months before our long national nightmare even begins,” he said of Donald Trump’s victory. “It’s like we’re standing in the middle of the road waiting for a bus to hit us, but it’s still 40 miles away.”Kimmel then took aim at Trump’s richest ally, Musk, who posted on X, formerly Twitter until he bought it, that Kimmel was “an insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet”.“At least my children like me,” Kimmel retorted. “The guy who paid people $1m a day to vote for Donald Trump is calling me a propaganda puppet? Listen Kermit, you bought Twitter. You bought a social media platform that is literally a propaganda machine.“Let me tell you something,” he continued. “If I spent four weeks trying to come up with a description of Elon Musk, I don’t think I could do better than ‘insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet’.”Kimmel reminded viewers of what Trump used to say about Musk before the Tesla CEO gave him $100m. In June 2022, he posted on Truth Social about meeting with Musk, bragging: “I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg’ and he would have done it … ”“And you know what he means by beg, right?” Kimmel laughed. “I’m sure you guys will be great together now that you’re friends. I’m sure his little hand will fit nicely in your sockhole.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers lamented how the justice department is reportedly wrapping up its legal cases against Trump in wake of his second term as president. “We have a stupid system that’s basically makes getting elected president a get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said. “They’re going to have to add one to Monopoly that says ‘Run for president, win, collect $200’ and then a second card that says ‘Unless your name is Rudy Giuliani, then you’re still broke and disbarred and weird.’“So Trump’s about to skate and Republicans are demanding peace, meanwhile Democrats have descended into recriminations and finger-pointing,” he said before several clips of Democratic pundits blaming the “far left” for Kamala Harris’s defeat.“You think Kamala Harris was too far left? She campaigned with Liz Cheney!” Meyers countered. “The only way she could’ve run a more mainstream, centrist campaign was if she formed a Huey Lewis cover band with Mitt Romney and did a cameo on Law & Order. I mean, she praised Dick Cheney, for crying out loud!“It’s not an issue of left versus far left,” he later added. “You just have to make people’s lives better in a way that’s direct and easy to understand and then aggressively take credit for it.“There are lessons Democrats can take away from this election, and if they implement those lessons quickly, a lot can change,” he concluded.Stephen ColbertAnd on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert mourned a different type of loss: the potential end of TGI Fridays, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. “But if there are no more TGI Fridays, what are we going to thank God for now?” he joked. “I don’t understand – Wednesday? We’re too busy humping! God doesn’t want to see that.”According to Fortune, the restaurant chain is worried it won’t have enough cash if customers redeem the $50m in outstanding gift cards that don’t expire. “So the greatest threat TGI Fridays is facing is that someday, it might occur to people to dine there,” Colbert laughed. “So that $50m in gift cards may soon be worthless, but don’t worry you can always use them at TGI Fridays sister restaurant: Aah, It’s Monday.”In more serious news, “we still don’t know the entire parade of clowns, degenerates and in-laws that Trump will have running this country,” said Colbert, but it’s likely one will be former presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. The Kennedy scion made headlines throughout his campaign for “doing a whole bunch of crazy stuff”, including but not limited to: dumping a dead bear in Central Park as a prank, living with an emu that would regularly attack his wife, owning two ravens who would “meditate” with him, bragging about his freezer full of roadkill meat, and beheading a whale and then strapping it to the roof of his minivan for a five-hour drive home.“Now, that sounds deranged,” said Colbert, “but he actually has a good reason for all of this: a worm got into his brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” (That’s yet another reported Kennedy story.)“So, naturally, this whale-decapitating, bear-dumping, walking, talking worm cemetery is who Donald Trump wants to put in charge of our nation’s health,” Colbert lamented. More

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      Think you know how bad Trump unleashed will be? Look at the evidence: it will be even worse | Jonathan Freedland

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      Are you ready for Trump unbound? You may have thought the former and future president was already pretty unrestrained, not least because Donald Trump has never shown anything but brazen disrespect for boundaries or limits of any kind. And you would be right. But, as an earlier entertainer turned president – and Trump combines the two roles – liked to say: You ain’t seen nothing yet.That’s because the 47th president will enter the Oval Office free of almost all constraints. He will be able to do all that he promised and all that he threatened, with almost nothing and no one to stand in his way.To understand why, it pays to start with the nature of the win he secured on Tuesday. He did not eke out a narrow victory on points, as he did when he squeaked through the electoral college in 2016. This was a knockout that has Trump on course to bag every one of the battleground states and to be the winner of the popular vote, the first Republican to pull off that feat in 20 years. All of which enables him to claim what he lacked in 2016: an emphatic mandate.But even that is to understate the transformational nature of this election. Trump won big and everywhere: gaining ground in 48 of the 50 states, in counties rural, urban and suburban, across almost every demographic, including those groups such as Hispanic voters, who were once reliably Democratic. “The 2024 election marks the biggest shift to the right in our country since Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980,” according to Doug Sosnik, a former political adviser in Bill Clinton’s White House.What drove that red wave was the same anti-incumbency mood that has toppled governments all over the democratic world, including in Britain. And it is not too hard to explain. Americans are still feeling the hangover of the inflation shock that followed the Covid pandemic. Any conversation with a Trump voter, and I had many this week, would rapidly turn to high petrol prices and unsustainable grocery bills.In that climate, the impulse is to kick out the party in charge. This week, that basic urge proved stronger than any misgivings about Trump. Throw in fear of migrants and the accusation that Democrats are the party of the liberal coastal elites, in thrall to the progressive fringes and out of touch with ordinary people – both sentiments expertly inflamed by Trump – and you have the ingredients for a crushing defeat.The result is that Trump will have control not only of the White House, but also the Senate and most likely the House as well. Admittedly, Republicans had majorities on Capitol Hill when Trump took office eight years ago too, but here’s the difference. Back then, there were at least a few moderate, Trump-sceptic Republicans in Congress ready to defy the president. Not now. Trump’s hold on what has become the Maga party is total. There are next to no John McCains to give Trump the thumbs-down this time, certainly not enough to cause him trouble. What he wants, he’ll get.Which means he can nominate whoever he likes to all the key posts, knowing his yes-men in the Senate will give him the confirming nod. Last time, he felt pressure to appoint responsible adults to his cabinet or to head federal agencies, officials who then went on to dilute or even thwart his wilder schemes. This time he can surround himself with true believers, including the apostles of the notorious Project 2025 plan that Trump disavowed during the campaign but which he is now free to implement – thereby ensuring a full-spectrum takeover by Maga loyalists of the machinery of the US government.It’s no good looking to the supreme court to act as a restraining hand. Thanks to Trump, that bench now has a six-to-three rightwing majority, and it has already issued the blank cheque he craved. In a July ruling, the court granted the president sweeping immunity for his official acts. The threat of legal jeopardy that once hovered over Trump will melt away. To his delight, the multiple criminal cases against him are set to be suspended, on the principle that a sitting president cannot be indicted.What, then, will be left to hold Trump in check? It won’t be fear of losing the next election: he’s constitutionally barred from running again (though you wouldn’t bet against him testing that limit too). The conventional media will do their best, but if the Trump era has shown us anything, it’s that the information ecosystem of the US is changed utterly. Fifty years ago, if three broadcast networks and a couple of east coast newspapers declared the president a crook, that president was finished, as Richard Nixon learned to his cost. Now, the mainstream press can reveal the most damning evidence about Trump and it goes nowhere. His supporters either never hear those revelations – because they get their news from Trump-friendly TV and social media channels – or, if they do, they flatly dismiss them as lies. We truly live in the age of “alternative facts”, and that gives Trump enormous freedom. He could do heinous things in office, or simply fail as president, and tens of millions of Americans would never know about it.The prospect of Trump unchecked is not merely an offence to abstract notions of democracy. It poses multiple dangers, all of them clear and present. To take just one, there is nothing to stop the old-new president making good on his promise to put the anti-vax fanatic and conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge of public health. If that happens, there are already warnings that polio or measles could return to afflict America’s children.Or consider the climate. In Salem, Virginia, last weekend, I heard Trump hail the glories of “liquid gold”, meaning oil, leading the crowd in a chant of “Drill, baby, drill”. He promised to extract oil from the last pristine wilderness in North America, Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge. Joe Biden had moved to preserve it; Trump will send in the rigs. That will accelerate yet further the climate breakdown, a crisis that was unmistakable that day in Salem, where the temperature reached a weird 26C in November.Trump is now free to abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s wolves, free to make Nato a dead letter – which it will be the day Trump is sworn in on 20 January. We know that Trump has contempt for Nato’s core principle of mutual defence. Without that, the alliance falls apart. Yet there is no one to stop him.Ultimately that task will fall to the Democrats. Except they will soon wield no formal power in Washington. I asked one seasoned hand what practical tools the party had to restrain or even scrutinise Trump, given that they will soon lose their current ability to launch congressional investigations and convene official hearings. The answer: “They can hold press conferences.”For now, Democrats are turned inward, engaged in a round of recriminations as competing factions blame each other for Tuesday’s disaster. That process is inevitable, but the longer it goes on the more it helps Trump, by removing one more check on the power he will soon wield.We know how Trump wants to rule because he has said so, telling a Fox News interviewer he would be a dictator “on day one”. We know which leaders he admires because of the way he gushes over Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. The assumption had always been that these fantasies of his would remain just that, because of the institutional checks and balances that fetter an American president. But when Trump renews his oath on 20 January, those restraints will look either badly frayed or entirely absent. He will be Trump unbound, free to do his worst.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More