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      A Test for the System

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      Donald Trump will take office with weakened checks on his power.When the makers of “Schoolhouse Rock” set out in the 1970s to explain how the federal government works, they likened it to a three-ring circus. It was more than just a comment on the chaos of Washington — it was a metaphor for the three coequal branches of government that make our democracy what it is.“Each controls the other, you see,” the song went, “and that’s what we call checks and balances.”I’m an investigative reporter for The New York Times, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how those three branches — the basic building blocks of government — will fare with President-elect Donald Trump returning to power. He has promised to upend the system and use its power to prosecute his political enemies, and Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans warn that means he will use his second presidency to rule like an autocrat, putting extraordinary pressure on the nation’s democratic experiment.Some people I have spoken to about this, including top officials from Trump’s first administration, have faith in the three branches of government, a system built to keep presidents’ power in check.But the country’s three branches of government are in a weaker position to hold a president accountable than they were when Trump first took office in 2017, in part because of the stranglehold he has over his own party. And some of the change he has promised to bring to Washington would only further erode checks and balances.“He’s enjoying unified government but, just as importantly, the party itself has been remade in his image,” said William Howell, the dean of the new Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy in Washington.A matter of civicsThe founders wrote the Constitution purposely to prevent any single person from amassing too much power. To do this, they set up three branches of government intended not just to check each other, but to be rivals for power.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      John Dramani Mahama Is Set to Return as Ghana’s President

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      John Dramani Mahama, who served as president from 2012 to 2017, is set to return to office after his main opponent, Mahamudu Bawumia, conceded defeat.John Dramani Mahama, a former president of Ghana who was voted out of office eight years ago, staged a dramatic political comeback on Sunday after his main opponent conceded defeat in the West African country’s presidential election.While official results from the vote that took place on Saturday have yet to be released, the candidate of the governing party, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, said he had called Mr. Mahama to congratulate him on his victory.Mr. Bawumia said in a statement that data collected by his team showed that Mr. Mahama had “won the presidential election decisively.”Ghana, the largest gold producer in Africa and a key U.S. security ally in a region beset by coups and jihadist insurgencies, has been struggling with one of its worst economic crises in decades.After the government defaulted in 2022 to its international lenders, last year it contracted a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump and Harris Campaigns Met to Talk Tactics. It Wasn’t Pretty.

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      Leaders of the Trump and Harris campaigns met this week to talk tactics. It wasn’t pretty.Reader, we wrote you this newsletter in a tense room in Cambridge.The walls were covered in dark-wood paneling. A U-shaped conference table was elegantly draped with maroon tablecloths and decorated with little jars of roses and calla lilies.On one side of the table sat several senior staff members for the Biden-Harris campaign who looked a little bit as if they were undergoing a collective root canal without anesthesia. On the other side sat five leading Trump campaign staff members and allies who looked a little bit as if they were holding the dentist’s drill.After every presidential election, the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School invites campaign strategists for both general-election candidates — as well as key staff members from losing primary campaigns — to unload about what happened. The discussions, which take place on panels moderated by journalists, can get heated, as they did in 2016. Maybe some years the event feels cathartic. This year, though, the big word was flawless.Sheila Nix, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign chief of staff, used it on Thursday as each campaign outlined over dinner what had been its main strategy, saying Ms. Harris “ran a pretty flawless campaign.” And then Chris LaCivita, one of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign managers, lobbed the word back at Team Biden/Harris during one of the panels today.“Flawless execution,” he sarcastically interjected, after Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the chair of the Biden and then the Harris campaign, labored to answer a question about the fateful debate that ended President Biden’s campaign.LaCivita’s interruption got at a central tension in the aftermath of the election, one that has grated on Democrats outside the room and became a target of mockery from the Trump staff members inside it. For a campaign that lost, the Biden-Harris team has been reluctant to admit to specific mistakes — and that pattern continued today. They admitted they had lost, but their diagnosis was more about the mood of the country than tactical errors on their part. The ultimate answer may be a combination of both factors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sen. Laphonza Butler Discusses the Election During Her Last Days in Office

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      An interview with Senator Laphonza Butler, Democrat of California, during her final week in the Senate.Laphonza Butler will have served as a senator from California for only about 15 months. But she has been a close ally of Vice President Kamala Harris for 15 years.This week, I spoke with Butler, whose long partnership with Harris — they first met when Butler was a Los Angeles-based union leader — gives her an intriguing perspective on why her party lost the presidential election and how it might rebuild.Harris hasn’t said much publicly about why she lost. In Butler’s view, some of the fault starts with President Biden, who she believes broke what was a clear campaign promise by running for re-election. But just blaming Biden isn’t enough: Democrats, she says, must stop talking and start listening. Really listening.Butler was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the U.S. Senate seat left open by the death of Senator Dianne Feinstein in September 2023. Because she decided not to run for re-election, this week is her last in the body: On Monday, Representative Adam Schiff will be sworn in as the state’s newest senator.This interview was edited for length and clarity.LL: Why do you think Harris lost?LB: The American people wanted a change. They wanted a candidate who they thought represented change. And I think that might simply be it.Should Biden not have run?President Biden said initially that he was going to be a transitional leader. I think that is the expectation that people had. So in that sense, I think that he probably would have been better to remain in that posture. We can’t deny the success of his presidency. When history looks back, his presidency will be one of the most impactful in my lifetime, for sure. But I think once you sort of create an expectation with people, there is the need to hold to that.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mississippi Supreme Court District 1, Position 3 Runoff Election Results 2024

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      Source: Election results are from The Associated Press.By The New York Times election results team: Michael Andre, Emma Baker, Neil Berg, Andrew Chavez, Michael Beswetherick, Matthew Bloch, Lily Boyce, Irineo Cabreros, Nico Chilla, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Leo Dominguez, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Joyce Ho, Will Houp, Jon Huang, Junghye Kim, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Joey K. Lee, Vivian Li, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Jaymin Patel, Dan Simmons-Ritchie, Charlie Smart, Jonah Smith, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang
      Additional contributions by Grace Ashford, Luke Broadwater, Mathew Brownstein, Amanda Cordero Kenan Davis, Karoun Demirjian, Robert Draper, Catie Edmondson, Nick Fandos, Lalena Fisher, Patrick Hays, Robert Jimison, Annie Karni, Maya Miller, Julie Walton Shaver, Tracey Tully, Lisa Waananen Jones and Jessica White
      Edited by Wilson Andrews, Lindsey Rogers Cook, William P. Davis, Jonathan Ellis, Thomas Gaffney, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski, Allison McCartney and Rachel Shorey
      Source: Election results are from The Associated Press. More

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      Mississippi Runoff Election Results 2024

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      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.By The New York Times election results team: Michael Andre, Emma Baker, Neil Berg, Andrew Chavez, Michael Beswetherick, Matthew Bloch, Lily Boyce, Irineo Cabreros, Nico Chilla, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Leo Dominguez, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Joyce Ho, Will Houp, Jon Huang, Junghye Kim, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Joey K. Lee, Vivian Li, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Jaymin Patel, Dan Simmons-Ritchie, Charlie Smart, Jonah Smith, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang
      Additional contributions by Grace Ashford, Luke Broadwater, Mathew Brownstein, Amanda Cordero Kenan Davis, Karoun Demirjian, Robert Draper, Catie Edmondson, Nick Fandos, Lalena Fisher, Patrick Hays, Robert Jimison, Annie Karni, Maya Miller, Julie Walton Shaver, Tracey Tully, Lisa Waananen Jones and Jessica White
      Edited by Wilson Andrews, Lindsey Rogers Cook, William P. Davis, Jonathan Ellis, Thomas Gaffney, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski, Allison McCartney and Rachel Shorey
      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press. More

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      Uruguay’s Center Left Reclaims Power in Presidential Election

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      After a campaign notable for the amiable tone from both sides, Yamandú Orsi was named the winner.MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — A onetime mayor and history teacher defeated the candidate of the conservative coalition that has governed Uruguay for the past five years to win his country’s presidency on Sunday.Even as ballots in the closely contested runoff election were still being counted, Álvaro Delgado, the current president’s chief of staff, conceded defeat to his challenger, Yamandú Orsi.“With sadness, but without guilt, we can congratulate the winner,” Mr. Delgado said.Mr. Orsi’s center-left party, the Broad Front, released a statement saying that “joy will return” and announcing him as the winner.Election officials said that with just over half the ballots counted, Mr. Orsi had secured 784,523 votes, and Mr. Delgado 771,434.Mr. Delgado’s concession signaled an end to the short stint of the right-leaning government in Uruguay that in 2020, when President Luis Lacalle Pou took office, ended 15 years of government by the Broad Front. During that period, the Broad Front oversaw the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and the sale of marijuana.“I called Yamandú Orsi to congratulate him as president-elect of our country,” Mr. Lacalle Pou said in a statement, adding that he would “put myself at his service and begin the transition as soon as I deem it appropriate.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More