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      Car Found in Georgia Pond May Be That of a New York Couple Missing Since 1980

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      The Romers, of Scarsdale, N.Y., disappeared from a Georgia hotel. Divers who seek to solve cold cases found a vehicle similar to theirs in a pond. They also found bones.Charles Romer, a retired oil company executive from Scarsdale, N.Y., and his wife, Catherine, were driving back from their winter home in Florida in the spring of 1980 when they stopped at a Holiday Inn in Georgia.Later, the police would find their belongings unpacked in a room at the hotel, along with a half-full bottle of Scotch and some glasses. The bed was turned down. But the couple — and their late-model black Lincoln Continental — were nowhere to be found.For decades, the disappearance was shrouded in mystery, as relatives of the couple searched for answers. The police long suspected that the couple may have been killed in a brutal robbery, as Ms. Romer, a beloved socialite, had a considerable amount of valuable jewelry with her.Last week, the first big break came in the four-decade case, after volunteer divers visited Brunswick, Ga., a coastal town about 75 miles south of Savannah, and found a car similar to that of the Romers at the bottom of a pond near their hotel.The divers — who use sonar equipment to find submerged vehicles as part of an effort to find missing people — had seen the Romer case on a map of unsolved cases involving people who had disappeared with their cars. On Friday, they started scanning every body of water within several miles of the hotel where the couple had disappeared. In a 10-foot-deep pond near a parking lot of what is today the Royal Inn, they said, they found a vehicle with characteristics that matched that of the Romers — and in it human bones.“It came out of the blue,” said Lawton J. Dodd, a spokesman for the Glynn County Police Department in Georgia. “It’s a cold case that is not a cold case any longer,” he said. “The investigation’s reopened.”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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      Rudy Giuliani tells judge he can’t pay his bills in courtroom outburst

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      The former New York mayor and lawyer to Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, erupted in court on Tuesday, telling a judge: “I can’t pay my bills!”Sketches by courtroom artists, who create pictures for the media to use when cameras are not allowed in court, such as federal courts, showed a furious Giuliani, 80, pointing at the judge in his case, Lewis Liman.The hearing in federal court in Manhattan concerned a near-$150m judgment won by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia elections workers whom Giuliani defamed while advancing Trump’s lie that electoral fraud in 2020 cost him victory over Joe Biden.Liman said Giuliani had not been complying with orders to surrender assets.Giuliani said on Tuesday: “The implications you are making against me are wrong. I have no car, no credit card, no cash, everything I have is tied up, they have put stop orders on my business accounts, and I can’t pay my bills!”Giuliani’s fall has been spectacular. After making his name as a hard-charging prosecutor who took on organized crime, he was mayor for two terms, in office on 11 September 2001 and widely praised for his leadership after the terrorist attacks on the US. His 2008 presidential run flopped but Giuliani enjoyed a successful consulting and speaking career before allying himself with Trump when the property magnate entered Republican politics in 2015.Giuliani missed out on a cabinet appointment but became Trump’s personal attorney – work that fueled Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019 for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt. Giuliani then became a prime driver of Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election – work which produced criminal charges, to which he pleaded not guilty, the huge defamation judgment, and disbarments in Washington and New York.In New York on Tuesday, Giuliani’s lawyer told the judge his client had turned over assets including a Mercedes Benz sports car once owned by the film star Lauren Bacall. An attorney for Freeman and Moss said Giuliani had turned over the car but not the title to it. Attorneys for the two women have also said they have gained access to Giuliani’s $5m Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan, but have not secured “the keys, stock, or proprietary lease”.In court, the judge told Giuliani’s lawyer: “A car without a title is meaningless … your client is a competent person. He was the US attorney in the district. The notion that he can’t apply for a title certificate – ”Giuliani cut him off, saying: “I did apply for it! What am I supposed to do, make it up myself? Your implication that I have not been diligent about it is totally incorrect.”He then launched his outburst about financial problems.Giuliani’s lawyer asked Liman to extend deadlines, given he had only just started on the case after previous attorneys withdrew. Liman denied the request, saying: “You can’t restart the clock by firing one counsel and hiring another. He has already received multiple extensions, and missed multiple deadlines.”Trial is set for 16 January regarding whether Giuliani must also give Moss and Freeman his Florida home and four New York Yankees World Series commemoration rings. On Tuesday, Giuliani’s lawyer asked if the trial could be pushed back, so his client could attend inaugural events for Trump, who will be sworn in as president in Washington DC on 20 January. Liman said no.Outside court, Giuliani told reporters Liman was “going to rule against me. If you were sitting in the courtroom and couldn’t figure it out, you’re stupid.” He also said the judge’s “background is serious leftwing Democrat … about as leftwing as you get” – even while acknowledging Liman was nominated by Trump.Giuliani said he did not regret defaming Freeman and Moss.“I regret the persecution I have been put through,” he said. More

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      N.Y.C. Helped Migrant Accused of Killing Laken Riley Move to Georgia, Witness Says

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      In other testimony, law enforcement witnesses placed the suspect, José Ibarra, at the scene of Ms. Riley’s killing, mainly through cellphone and GPS tracking data.Details of how the Venezuelan migrant charged with killing Laken Riley ended up in Athens, Ga., came into sharper focus on Monday, the second day of a trial that is being closely followed by supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s planned immigration crackdown.The migrant, José Ibarra, was apprehended by the Border Patrol when he entered the country illegally in 2022 near El Paso. Like many migrants, he was released with temporary permission to stay in the country, and he headed to New York.A former roommate of Mr. Ibarra’s testified that she met Mr. Ibarra last year in New York City and traveled with him to Athens in September 2023 after Mr. Ibarra’s brother told them they could find jobs there.They lived for a while with Mr. Ibarra’s wife and mother-in-law at a Crowne Plaza hotel in Queens that had been converted to a migrant shelter, the roommate, Rosbeli Flores-Bello, said. And for a few weeks, she added, she and Mr. Ibarra lived in a car parked on the street by the hotel.Ms. Flores-Bello said that Mr. Ibarra’s brother Diego had constantly called him in New York, telling him to move to Athens because there were good work opportunities.Laken Riley was a nursing student at Augusta University in Georgia.Augusta University, via Associated PressWe 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 fake-elector scheme: where do five state investigations stand?

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      After the 2020 election, a group of 84 people in seven states signed false documents claiming to be electors for Donald Trump. This year, despite the fact that four states have brought criminal charges against the fake electors, 14 of them will now serve as real electors for the president-elect.The 14 once-fake-and-now-real electors were selected by state Republican parties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada. They will meet in their state capitols on 17 December to cast their ballots for Trump.Prosecutors in many of the states where fake electors signed false documents are moving forward with charges, as the federal charges against Trump for election subversion and other alleged crimes are up in the air after his re-election.Five of the seven states pursued charges related to the issue. Authorities in New Mexico and Pennsylvania did not pursue charges because the documents the false electors there used hedged language that attorneys said would likely spare them from criminal charges.The fake electors in some instances are high-profile Republicans: people in elected office, in official party roles, prominent members of external conservative groups.Here’s where the state cases stand.ArizonaKris Mayes, the Democratic attorney general for Arizona, said on Sunday that her office will not be dropping any charges related to the fake electors.A grand jury in Arizona charged 18 people involved in the fake electors scheme, including the 11 people who served as fake electors and Trump allies Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb and Mike Roman. Some of the fake electors are high profile: two state senators (Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern), a former state Republican party chair (Kelli Ward) and a Turning Point USA executive (Tyler Bowyer).“I have no intention of breaking that case up. I have no intention of dropping that case,” Mayes told MSNBC. “A grand jury in the state of Arizona decided that these individuals who engaged in an attempt to overthrow our democracy in 2020 should be held accountable, so we won’t be cowed, we won’t be intimidated.”Arizona charged people in April 2024, so the case is still in its early stages.GeorgiaGeorgia’s case will be the most watched, especially if all federal charges against Trump are dropped. It is the only state case where Trump himself is charged, though he will seek to have the charges dropped because of the supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling, or at least paused until he’s no longer in office. Several of the 19 people charged pleaded guilty and received probation and fines.Fake electors David Shafer, Cathleen Latham and Shawn Still were charged in the criminal racketeering case, but not all of the fake electors in Georgia were charged – many were granted immunity to cooperate with the case.The US supreme court rejected an attempt by Meadows on Tuesday to move the case to federal court.The next step is set for December: the Georgia court of appeals will hear arguments on whether prosecutor Fani Willis can continue on the case herself despite a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor on the case. A lower court previous ruled that she could continue.MichiganSixteen fake electors were charged in Michigan in mid-2023. One of them agreed to cooperate with the prosecution and had his charges dropped in return.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe case is working its way through the court process, with the last of the defendants sitting for examinations in October as the judge decides whether the case should go to trial.Six of those charged will serve as Trump’s actual electors this year. Attorneys for those fake and now real electors have said their role this year shouldn’t have any bearing on their legal cases.NevadaSix Trump electors in Nevada were charged at the end of 2023 with state forgery crimes for their roles in the scheme.In June, Clark county district court judge Mary Kay Holthu dismissed the case, saying it was in the wrong venue and should not have been filed in Las Vegas. Democratic attorney general Aaron Ford vowed to appeal the ruling, but defense attorneys have said the charges are now outside the statute of limitations.“My office’s goal remains unchanged – we will hold these fake electors accountable for their actions which contributed to the ongoing and completely unfounded current of distrust in our electoral system,” Ford said. “Our drive to seek justice does not change with election results. We are committed to see this matter through, either through winning our appeal or filing anew before the new year. This is not going away.”Two of the fake electors will again serve as Trump electors this year: Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada Republican party, and Jesse Law, chair of the Republican party of Clark county.WisconsinThe fake elector scheme allegedly began in Wisconsin, where pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro is from.Those who served as fake electors did not get criminally charged in Wisconsin, though three people involved in the scheme – Chesebro, Roman, and James Troupis – were charged in June by the state attorney general for their role in orchestrating the scheme.The state’s fake electors settled a civil lawsuit in 2023 that required them to agree not to serve as electors when elections involve Trump and to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. Some of the electors have publicly claimed they were misled about the purpose of the alternate slates. More

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      Arizona attorney general says she won’t drop Trump fake electors case

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      Allies of Donald Trump who were charged in Arizona for illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election can still expect to face justice despite his return to the White House, the state’s attorney general has said.Kris Mayes told MSNBC on Sunday that she had “no intention” of dropping the criminal case against defendants including the former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Christina Bobb, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior officials of the Arizona Republican party such as the former chair Kelli Ward and state senators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman.A grand jury in April indicted 18 people in a “fake electors” scheme that sought to falsely declare Trump the winner in the crucial swing state instead of Joe Biden. Most pleaded not guilty in May to felony charges of fraud, forgery and conspiracy.The fates of various criminal cases pending against Trump and his allies were left uncertain after his defeat of Kamala Harris in the 5 November election.For instance, the US justice department is winding down its criminal cases in federal court against Trump.And, in New York, state court judge Juan Merchan is preparing to rule on whether Trump’s conviction on charges of criminally falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels should be tossed out.But Mayes has said she intends to stay the course with her office’s case.“I have no intention of breaking that case up. I have no intention of dropping that case,” Mayes, a Democrat, told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi.“A grand jury in the state of Arizona decided that these individuals who engaged in an attempt to overthrow our democracy in 2020 should be held accountable, so we won’t be cowed, we won’t be intimidated.”In August, Loraine Pellegrino, the former president of a Republican women’s group, became the first of the defendants convicted when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document.Another of those accused, Jenna Ellis, a former Trump lawyer, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, including sitting for interviews and handing over documents, in exchange for having her charges dismissed.At the time, Mayes said Ellis’s insights were “invaluable and will greatly aid the state in proving its case in court”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlso in August, the Arizona superior court judge Bruce Cohen denied a request by the remaining defendants to have the charges dismissed as “politically motivated” and set a provisional trial date for January 2026.As a state case, anybody who is convicted in Arizona cannot be pardoned by Trump, who was referred to throughout the charging documents as an unindicted co-conspirator and as the “former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election”.The Arizona fake electors scheme was replicated in a number of swing states that ultimately all certified Biden’s victory. The most prominent took place in Georgia, where Trump is one of the defendants, although two charges against him were thrown out in September – and some of the 17 others originally charged have accepted plea deals in return for giving evidence to prosecutors.Fani Willis, the Fulton county prosecutor who brought the Georgia case, was re-elected on 5 November. But no trial date has been set, and there is doubt over its timing given that Trump will be back in the White House in January.The other defendants in the Arizona case include Kelli Ward’s husband, Michael; Robert Montgomery, former head of the Cochise county Republican party; Tyler Bowyer, the Republican national committee’s Arizona representative; Greg Safsten, former executive director of the state Republican party; and activists Samuel Moorhead and Nancy Cottle, who allegedly agreed to act as fake electors. More

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      Swing state voters process Trump win with hope and fear: ‘This is a powder keg moment’

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      “I am still processing my feelings, but what I do know is that my country keeps finding ways to break my heart,” said Adrienne Pickett, a 42-year-old single mother of two who lives in suburban Detroit.The Kamala Harris voter lives in one of seven states that helped decide the US presidential election on Tuesday. All appear to have voted in Trump’s favor by small but significant margins .Like many Democrats in these states, Pickett is coming to terms with a victory by Donald Trump and a new political reality for America. Republicans in these states are also looking ahead – some with excitement, but not all. We spoke with voters for both parties to hear their reactions.These are Pickett’s worries for the future: “We can expect exactly what Trump promised: mass deportations, pardoning criminals who destroyed the capitol and injured and killed police officers on January 6th, vendettas carried out against his perceived enemies, and maybe most frightening of all, a Project 2025 house of horrors brought to life.”In North Carolina, meanwhile, Jess St Louis, 34, a trans woman in Greensboro who canvassed during the election with the progressive group Carolina Federation, said she was nervous and scared about the future under a second Trump presidency. But she also drew comfort from the defeat on Tuesday night of the Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson who has been embroiled in a scandal over his alleged racist and sexist comments on a chat board, which he has denied.“It’s a mixed bag,” St Louis said. “I am scared, but I’m also proud about the governor’s race and about breaking the Republican supermajority in the North Carolina House. I can feel a rising tide of folks in North Carolina actually pushing back against hatred and extremism.”There had been fears that the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene would suppress turnout, in the western part of North Carolina, where 23 of the 25 stricken counties were won by Trump in 2020. But record-breaking early voting and the creation of makeshift polling stations in areas devastated by floods and landslides appeared to have mitigated the problem.While Trump grew his base in North Carolina’s large rural areas, Harris failed to build on Joe Biden’s showing in 2020 in the big cities, despite significant investment in ad spending and field operations.View image in fullscreenWinning should have felt better, thought Jen Dopke, 51, a retail worker from north-east Wisconsin, as the results came in on Tuesday night. Counting still continues Thursday, but Trump has a lead of about 1% – 30,000 votes out of 3.4m cast. Dopke hopes Trump will usher in an improved economy and end American involvement in foreign wars. But she isn’t celebrating yet.“I don’t feel like this was a big win, because we’re not all on the same page,” Dopke said. She watched nervously as people in her life blocked each other on social media the day after Trump secured a second term in office. Dopke supported Trump, but her friends who voted for Harris don’t know that, and she’s wary about them finding out — worried her support for the former president could jeopardize a friendship.“I [hear] what they’re saying, and I think, ‘I just totally don’t believe the same thing, and I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to hear where I’m coming from,’” said Dopke. “It’s terrifying to me. I don’t know what we’re going to do to come together.”Georgia proved a political comeuppance for Trump on Tuesday after his razor-thin loss by 11,799 votes in 2020. This year he was winning by well over 100,000 votes at press time.Alejandro Lopez, a military veteran and social services advocate from Stone Mountain, Georgia, said he was “pissed off at the Republican party for not holding up the rule of law against one of their own,” he said.“To have seen all these members of congress in support of a felon just made me sick to my stomach. The laws created by the US congress now seem to apply to the people and not the legislators themselves.”View image in fullscreenLopez, who has been a close observer of Georgia politics for years, was also with Democrats – in Georgia the Trump campaign pitted Latino citizens against the undocumented with a deftness that went unrecognized by the Harris campaign. Nationally, too, there was a collapse in Democratic turnout and a realignment of Latino voters from a Democratic bloc to a near 50-50 split, which provided the margin of Trump’s victory in swing states even as other demographic groups largely held steady.“I just did not see the Democrats engaging the Latino community as much,” Lopez said.He fears being targeted for his sexual orientation, ethnicity and politics.… “I will keep my nose down so not to create any attention to myself.”The Associated Press has yet to project a winner in Nevada, as the state continues to tally mail-in ballots in its most populous counties. But early results suggest it may be poised to select a Republican for president for the first time since George W Bush in 2004.James, 23, who had cast a vote for Kamala Harris – unbeknownst to his family and coworkers, who are die-hard Trump supporters – said he yearned for a time when he and his loved ones could have civilized conversations about politics.“I would love to say I think things will calm down after this,” said James, who didn’t want to provide his last name so he could avoid further conflict over politics. “But I my heart I know it won’t.”“This is a powder keg moment,” he added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Pennsylvania, Rick Carrick, a 69-year-old retiree, was walking his dog Elvis outside the Lackwanna county courthouse in downtown Scranton as he processed the election results on Wednesday. He said he was ready to move out of the country.“I just told my daughter, I said guarantee first thing he does when he’s sworn in is he gives everybody from January 6 a full pardon,” said Carrick.Lackawanna county, home to Scranton, was one of several key areas in Pennsylvania where Donald Trump improved his performance compared with 2020. Joe Biden carried the county by eight points in 2020, Kamala Harris carried it by about three points this year. The county was once a Democratic stronghold – Barack Obama won it by nearly 28 points in 2012.Carrick said he had no idea why Trump had been able to do so well in the county.“I’m just looking at the big picture. OK, maybe Trump is better on the economy, and to be honest with you, the first time he ran I liked a lot of his ideas, like we can’t be the bank for the entire world,” he said. “But then other things that he does, it’s like he wants to be king.”Debbie Patel, a retired attorney and progressive activist from the Milwaukee area, said she sees a “dark road ahead” – “for Americans generally”.“The first targets will be the ones he’s been vocal about, and then, because he lacks the capacity to empathize with others. it’s anybody’s guess who he will go after next.”Still, Patel is hopeful about the possibility of establishing common ground among “all people”. She cited efforts by groups like Braver Angels, a nonprofit that seeks to depolarize US politics through facilitated conversations between Democratic and Republican Party voters, as exemplary models for seeking common ground.Ali Asfari, 33, lives in Dearborn, Michigan, which has a large Arab American population. The Biden-Harris administration’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza influenced his decision to vote for Trump, but that wasn’t the only issue.“When he [Trump] was in office there were no wars, and inflation nowadays is bad because of the Joe Biden administration. But hopefully now, with the promises that Donald Trump has given us, it’s going to be better,” Asfari said.“We’re going to have a better economy. We’re going to have better family values, in schools, especially. And we’re going to make this country great again. We’re going to have the entire planet to respect this country again as usual. Because with the Biden administration, nobody had respect for us.”Asfari , who voted for Biden in 2020, added:“She did a terrible job, her and Joe. Look at the wars around the world. Look at the economy over here, with inflation. You know, we middle classes, we go for groceries, everything is double the price. The jobs, we barely find jobs, they’re barely hiring and everything is expensive. Family values went down, down, down, especially in schools. You know, they want to join the boys and girls in one bathroom. They’re doing terrible stuff. So that’s why we have to end all this kind of things and go back to Republicans.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Donald Trump poised to win election after string of crucial swing state wins

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      After notching a string of wins in crucial swing states, Donald Trump was poised to return to the White House after a momentous presidential election in which democracy itself had been at stake and which is likely to take the United States into uncharted political waters.The Republican nominee took North Carolina surprisingly early, the first battleground state to be called, and later he took Georgia and then Pennsylvania. He was strongly positioned in Arizona and Nevada, other key contests.The race between Trump, a former president, and the current Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris, had been a frenetic contest and it finally approached its conclusion amid scenes of celebration in the Trump camp.At 1.20am, at Trump’s election watch party in Palm Beach, Florida, a prolonged, almighty roar went up as Fox News had called Pennsylvania for Trump. “It’s over!” screamed one man, amid the noise, at what felt like the point of no return. A young man in a black Trump hat shouted: “Fuck Joe Biden! Fuck her!”The euphoric crowd chanted: “USA! USA!” They gathered near the stage, waiting for Trump to speak.At 1.47am, Fox named Trump president-elect, though the Associated Press – which the Guardian follows – has not yet put Trump over the finish line.The man who incited the deadly attack at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, earning (and surviving) a second impeachment; the man who was this year convicted on 34 criminal charges; the man who faces multiple other criminal counts and who has been ordered to pay millions in multiple civil lawsuits, including one over a rape claim a judge deemed “substantially true”. The man at the centre of all of that whom senior military aides called a fascist and a danger to the republic was preparing to head for the White House again.Eventually, past 2am, Trump emerged to speak, to the strains of God Bless the USA, the Lee Greenwood country anthem plastered on Bibles that Trump hawks for sale. Trump was surrounded by his family, by close aides, and by JD Vance, the hard-right Ohio senator he made his vice-presidential pick.“This is a movement like nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said. “This is I believe the greatest political movement of all time. There’s never been anything like this in this country and now it’s going to reach a new level of importance, because we’re going to help our country heal.View image in fullscreen“We’re going to fix our borders. We’re going to fix everything about our country … I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve, this will truly be the golden age of America.”Trump reveled in battleground state victories and said he would win them all. He claimed to have won the popular vote, which had not yet been decided. He described “a great feeling of love” and claimed “an unprecedented and powerful mandate”, celebrating Republicans retaking the Senate. He said it looked like Republicans would keep control of the House of Representatives – again, undecided at that point.Trump saluted his wife, Melania, his family, and Vance, who he invited to the podium to speak. Vance buttered up the boss, promising “the greatest economic comeback in American history under Donald Trump’s leadership”.Trump referred to the assassination attempts against him. “God spared me for a reason,” he said.At Harris’s watch party, at Howard University in Washington, the mood became somber, as hopes Harris could become the first president from a Historically Black College and University began to flicker and dim. Around 1am, Cedric Richmond, a former congressman and Harris campaign co-chair, told supporters they would not hear from Harris.“Thank you for believing in the promise of America,” Richmond said. “We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.”Attendees rushed out, the mood swinging to despair. Eight years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in a similar fashion, few attendees seemed surprised or shocked. Many declined to comment. “What more is there to say,” one woman shrugged as she shuffled out.Strewn water bottles and other litter were all that was left after the crowd was gone.Before 1am, the Republicans had retaken the Senate. A West Virginia seat went red as expected but the die was cast when Sherrod Brown, a long-serving progressive Democrat, was beaten in Ohio by Bernie Moreno, a car salesperson backed by Trump. Democrats had held the chamber 51-49. Other key races went right. In Maryland, Angela Alsobrooks provided a point of light for Democrats, joining Lisa Blunt Rochester, of Delaware, as the third and fourth Black women ever elected to the Senate.The House remained contested, Democrats seeking to retake the chamber, to erect a bastion against a Republican White House and Senate. The House can hold a president to account but the Senate controls federal judicial appointments. Further rightwing consolidation of control of the supreme court, to which Trump appointed three hardliners between 2017 and 2021, looms large.In June 2022, that Trump court removed the federal right to abortion. Campaigns for reproductive rights fueled Democratic electoral successes after that but on Tuesday such issues seemed to fall short of fueling the wave of support from suburban, Republican-leaning women Democrats had hoped for and pundits predicted.A measure to enshrine abortion rights in the Florida constitution, which Democrats hoped would help boost turnout, fell short of the 60% needed for approval. Nebraska, won by Trump, voted to uphold its abortion ban, which outlaws the procedure after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion-related measures did pass in New York, Maryland, Colorado, Missouri, Nevada and Arizona.A huge gender gap opened. A CNN exit poll showed Harris up by 11 points among female voters, Trump up 10 among male voters. Other polls showed dominant concerns over the economy and democracy. According to the AP Votecast survey, four in 10 voters named the economy and jobs as the most important problem facing the country, a hopeful sign for Trump. Roughly half of voters cited the fate of democracy, a focal point of Harris’s campaign.Wednesday will bring jitters in foreign capitals. Victory for Trump’s “America first” ethos can be expected to boost rightwing populists in Europe and elsewhere – and to place support for Ukraine in jeopardy as it fights Russian invaders.At home, America lies divided. Harris centered her campaign on Trump’s autocratic threat while he ran a campaign fuelled by grievance, both personal and the perception of an ailing America, baselessly painting Biden and Harris as far-left figures wrecking the economy with inflation and identity politics. Though he was the subject of two assassination attempts, in Pennsylvania and Florida, he stoked huge divisions and widespread fears of violence.Trump told supporters “I am your retribution” and threatened to prosecute political foes, journalists and others. He suggested turning the US military against “the enemy from within”. He put immigration and border security at the heart of his pitch, painting a picture of the US overrun by illegal immigration, with language that veered into outright racism and fearmongering. He referred to undocumented people as “animals” with “bad genes … poisoning the blood of our country”.He vowed to stage the biggest deportation in US history, to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists, to impose sweeping tariffs on allies and foes alike.On election night, he said he would govern “by a simple motto: Promises made. Promises kept. We’re going to keep our promises. Nothing will stop me.”Additional reporting by Sam Levine in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Hugo Lowell in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Asia Alexander in Washington DCRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      A polarized America goes to the polls: ‘I’m in a house divided’

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      America had previously always been “somebody else’s country,” said Christopher La Rose, a health researcher, as he waited just before 7am in Pine Lake, a village that’s too small for postal delivery just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.But that changed recently for La Rose, who is of Guyanese descent, when he became an American citizen. He had the jitters on Monday night, before using his first-ever vote in a US election to back Kamala Harris.View image in fullscreen“I am sincerely concerned about the way that the country could devolve if the other chap got into office,” La Rose said. “I’m concerned about the political party that has coalesced around him, and how they have, in my mind, lost their way, and I’m voting to protect my kids.”Georgia is one of the seven swing states where election results are close enough to fight over and voters in all of those states say they definitely feel fought over.At a busy polling place in Scottsdale, Arizona, the conservative youth organization Turning Point brought out a bright pink party bus adorned with “Trump train” signs, which they will use to take voters to other Scottsdale polling places if the lines become too long. The group also put up signs imploring voters to stay put: “stay in line, don’t leave your country behind,” one sign said.View image in fullscreenA man was also gathering signatures for America Pac, Elon Musk’s group that is paying circulators to sign up other people who could win a $1m prize. “Elon Musk needs our help,” the man told one voter.Musk’s controversial effort to drive turnout is late to the race. In many swing states, most people who are going to vote have already done so. More than 80 million people cast ballots before election day across the country, with 4 million in Georgia alone – 80% of Georgia’s 2020 vote total.Georgia’s in-person votes will be counted and announced about an hour after polls close at 7pmlocal time, elections officials said last week. Georgia officials have meticulously tried to avoid giving election integrity denialists something to wrap a grievance around this year. The election interference attempts of 2020 still resonate.View image in fullscreenGabriel Sterling, election operations chief for Georgia’s secretary of state, at midday on Tuesday that all polling locations were working smoothly, with an average wait – if there is a wait – of two minutes and an average check-in time of 49 seconds.Cyndi Keen, a lifelong Republican, voted a straight Republican ticket on Tuesday. “When it comes down to looking at having a better life for my children, for my grandkids and for myself, I like the Republican policies better,” she said. She thought the results will be close – and her household had voted for different candidates. “I’m in a house divided, my sweetie went the other way. He’s straight Republican but he voted for Harris.”View image in fullscreenCathy Garcia, an activist with the Working Families party from Santa Fe, New Mexico, flew to Atlanta this week. Tuesday morning with eight hours to go, she was beating on doors in Atlanta’s south-eastern suburbs, looking to put the last voter in line. She was accompanied by a far-flung team visiting from safe Democratic states – Massachusetts, California, New York – putting in work where it might count the most.They wrestled with the cellphone app showing them where to find clusters of registered voters who had not yet voted. The apartment complex in south DeKalb county gave them some density to work with, but low-income people tend to be more transient … and less likely to be at home in the middle of the day.Their effort demonstrates the effort the campaigns are making to get every last voter they can to a poll.Kamala Harris was spending the day on Tuesday at the Naval Observatory, the vice-president’s residence in Washington. The public is not expected to see the Democratic nominee until Tuesday night, where she is poised to deliver remarks at Howard University, her alma mater, in Washington DC. But she has been blitzing radio stations with calls across the country in a last-effort push for votes.Trump has ratcheted up outrage in the waning days of the election, wrapping himself and Republican voters in the politics of extreme grievance over descriptions of himself and his supporters as “garbage”, Nazis and fascists. And yet, his comments at rallies have included increasingly strident attacks on undocumented people, who he has called “animals” and “monsters”, and personal attacks on Harris.Trump partisans have cheered him on and adopted his tone.“He’s a big daddy. He’ll smack you if you’re an asshole,” said Joanne Kelchner, 77, a retiree from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who voted for Trump had harsh words for Harris. “Why is she not proud of her Brahmin heritage?” Kelchner asked. “I mean the elite class of India and pretending that she’s not Black, whatever … God bless us all.”View image in fullscreenBut partisan rancor abounds.“Donald Trump is crazy. I mean, he’s a lunatic and the people I think that vote for him are lunatics because he is crazy,” said Jeannie Strickland, a retiree from Georgia. “He’s trying to get people revved up to fight for him. I think if they put his butt in jail, like they should have done at least two years ago, it might calm him down a little bit, but they don’t do anything to him. I’m scared he’s going to win, and I might have to find an island somewhere and go live somewhere else, because he likes Hitler, and he liked the things Hitler did.”View image in fullscreenBoth sides have armies of lawyers in anticipation of legal challenges on and after election day. And law enforcement agencies nationwide are on high alert for potential violence.Tensions briefly flared outside a polling site in a library in downtown Phoenix, where a group of men decked out in American flag T-shirts had gathered to wave “Union Yes for Harris Walz” signs. As another man in a truck drove past, he hollered at the men: “Fuck you!”Angel Torres Pina, a 21-year-old who serves in the military and who voted for the first time on Tuesday, wanted politics to become less divisive and fear-based. He was somewhat nervous about voting at the library at all. “Am I making the right decisions? Am I making the wrong decisions? Are people gonna bad-talk about me because I voted for what I believe in?” said Torres Pina, an independent who voted for Harris. “I keep seeing on the news about these riots, these protests, these chaos, and it makes me a bit scared for if I’m voting right or wrong.”While many Americans have described how stressful this election is, Dawn Alter, a 50-year-old sales representative from New Berlin, Wisconsin, was in good spirits on Tuesday morning. Alter was supporting Harris, and thought the vice-president stood a chance in Wisconsin – a key swing state.Alter believes Trump has shed support here since 2020, and viewed herself as evidence: she abandoned Trump after supporting the former president in 2020, saying she was tired of the division and “negativity” he has sowed.“It’s a lot of discord, there’s too much misinformation,” said Alter. “There needs to be change and unity – I think those are the two biggest things for me.”In 2016, Wisconsin voters elected Donald Trump by less than a percentage point, and in 2020, the state flipped for Joe Biden by a similarly narrow margin. Polling suggests the presidential race in Wisconsin is essentially a toss-up, and voters were acutely aware of the uncertainty they face.View image in fullscreenMatt Steigerwald, a college lecturer from Wisconsin, said he was “cautiously optimistic”, adding: “Wisconsin is probably going to be pretty tight.” Steigerwald, who joked that he was a “bleeding-heart liberal”, said that even as a left-of-center voter, he found Trump “especially abhorrent”.“I just don’t know how you can support somebody who’s said and done so many awful things, who treats women so poorly, who treats people of different races so poorly – he’s just an awful human being from my perspective,” said Steigerwald. Additional reporting by Carter Sherman, Alice Herman, Sam Levine and Rachael LeingangRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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