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      The great danger is that this time, Trumpism starts making sense | Randeep Ramesh

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      Donald Trump’s unpredictable style and electoral success reflect a turbulent era when neither progressives nor authoritarians have secured control. Far from signalling an autocratic takeover, his rise shows a political landscape in flux. The 2008 crash and its uneven recovery marked the decline of the old economic order. But in 2016, the rise of Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left highlighted a real shift, as neoliberalism’s grip loosened, making space for once marginalised ideas.Since then, two US presidencies have acknowledged the need to rebuild an economy that supports blue-collar workers affected by free trade, immigration and globalisation. While neither administration succeeded – and paid for it at the ballot box – the result has been a growing constituency on both sides of the American political divide that takes seriously, albeit often rhetorically, economic injustice. But for any political movement to become dominant, it has to shape the core ideas that matter to everyone, not just its diehard supporters.A subtle shift is taking place: once-taboo “protectionism” is now a bipartisan issue, with Joe Biden upholding Trump’s tariffs on China. The two presidents have encouraged US companies to reshore manufacturing. Industrial policy, missing since the 1990s, and antitrust actions now find advocates on both sides of the aisle. Both Trump and Harris gauged voters’ indifference to near-trillion-dollar deficits, promising on the campaign trail to protect social security and Medicare.While the methods are shared, the goals diverge. The US became the world’s top oil and gas producer in the last decade. Biden sought to cultivate a green economy, while Trump promoted fossil fuels so aggressively that it bordered on self-parody.Biden fell short of delivering the transformation he had promised. He set out to tackle inequality, improve public services and address the climate crisis with a $4tn plan funded by taxing the wealthy – a mission to unite social liberalism with economic fairness. But his ambitious plans were shrunk by lobbying by corporate interests and resistance from centrist Democrats.After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden shifted away from economic radicalism. When inflation surged, instead of controlling prices, he allowed the cost of essentials to soar, causing the steepest food-price hike since the 1970s. In 2022, the poorest 20% of Americans spent nearly a third of their income on food, while the wealthiest fifth spent just 8%. Biden avoided emergency price controls, unlike Richard Nixon who implemented them in 1971 – and won a landslide reelection the following year.Biden learned the lesson too late, promising to tackle “greedflation” as part of his reelection campaign. Once he dropped out, Harris said she would enact the “first ever federal ban” on food-price gouging. That was slamming the stable door shut long after the horse had bolted. However, in a sign that price controls were becoming mainstream in national politics, Trump promised to cap credit card interest rates.Trump’s populist rhetoric resonated with disillusioned voters, yet his first term’s policies had often mirrored the establishment he criticised, blending and betraying the US’s pro-market ideals. As the historian Gary Gerstle writes in his book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: “If [the administration’s] deregulation, judicial appointments, and tax cuts pointed toward the maintenance of a neoliberal order … Trump’s assault on free trade and immigration aimed at its destruction.” Trump presents free trade and open borders as threats to US prosperity, advocating for strict controls that admit only goods and people aligned with American interests.The president-elect has abandoned the neoliberal tradition of keeping markets shielded from direct political influence, openly using his power to favour allies and enrich elites. While centrist Democrats support corporate interests by blocking progressive reforms, Trump aligns directly with billionaires, promoting a culture where justice serves the wealthy, prejudice is trivialised and power diminishes equality. This trickle-down bigotry will ultimately create a system where servility to power and social division become normalised, eroding fairness for everyone.Whether Trump can mobilise popular discontent over social and economic inequalities without alienating the oligarchs who support him remains an open question. In the months ahead, a struggle will unfold among factions within Trump’s circle. Economic populists such as the Republican senator Josh Hawley and the vice-president-elect, JD Vance, will differ from libertarians such as Vivek Ramaswamy and the self-interested deregulatory agenda of Elon Musk. Trump’s aim isn’t to lift all boats, but rather to lift enough to convince voters to tolerate the corruption, consumer scams and environmental degradation that enrich a plutocratic class. This strategy, boosted by a pliant mediasphere, enables him to present a party of private power as the voice of the ordinary voter.American political life often oscillates between “normal” and “revolutionary” phases – periods of stability interspersed with upheaval, where ideological shifts reshape public policy. After the crash but before Trump, the Tea Party was a rightwing populist movement frustrated by globalisation yet anti-worker in orientation. Revolutionary moments – such as the rise of nativist populism or democratic progressivism – trigger profound ideological shifts that reshape public values and policy. Trump’s victory was historic, but it is not yet ideologically cohesive or triumphant.If that changes, it could permanently shift certain constituencies. In 1948, Democratic support for civil rights led African Americans to abandon their traditional allegiance to the Republicans. They left the party of emancipation for the party of Jim Crow. Betting that working-class voters have nowhere else to go is a gamble centrist politicians will profoundly regret.For Democrats, the traditional strategy of pairing social liberalism with modest economic reform no longer connects with today’s voters. While social equality is a moral imperative, it requires bold, egalitarian economic policies to truly resonate. Until such policies take shape, political dysfunction and public frustration will persist. The pressing question now, for the US and beyond, is what vision and leadership will meet these urgent demands. More

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      Trump reportedly picks China critic Mike Waltz as national security adviser – as it happened

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      The Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, that Trump has chosen Florida congressman Mike Waltz as his national security adviser.The post does not require Senate confirmation and is highly influential.Here are the key recent developments:

      Democratic Representative Mark Takano won reelection to a US House seat representing California on Monday. Takano defeated Republican David Serpa, the Associated Press reports. The congressman is a longtime incumbent, the ranking member on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and also sits on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Takano was previously a classroom teacher and a community college trustee.

      The Wall Street Journal and CNN reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, that Trump has chosen Florida congressman Mike Waltz as his national security adviser. The post does not require Senate confirmation and is highly influential. Waltz is also on the Republican’s China taskforce and has argued the US military is not as prepared as it needs to be if there is conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.

      Trump is reportedly expected to name Marco Rubio as secretary of state. The New York Times reports that Trump is expected to name Florida senator Marco Rubio his secretary of state. The paper cites three unnamed sources “familiar with [Trump’s] thinking”.

      Donald Trump has announced that he will nominate Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, saying the former New York congressman and gubernatorial candidate will focus on cutting regulations.

      Stephen Miller, an architect of the hardline immigration policies Donald Trump enacted during his first term, appears to be heading back to the White House.

      The president-elect has also appointed Tom Homan, who was one of the main officials behind Trump’s family separation policy, as his “border czar”.

      Kamala Harris made her first public appearance since her concession speech at a Veterans Day ceremony. The vice-president did not speak at the event, and has since ended her public itinerary for the day after returning to Washington DC.

      Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin is reportedly being considered for a position to lead the Department of Interior or Veterans Affairs under Donald Trump’s administration.

      Trump’s new “border czar” Tom Homan made clear in an interview he is prepared to pursue hardline immigration policies. He told Fox News: “If sanctuary cities don’t want to help us, then get the hell out of the way, because we’re coming.”

      Democrat Cleo Fields has won Louisiana’s congressional race in a recently redrawn second majority-Black district. That flips a once reliably Republican seat blue, according to the Associated Press.

      Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Trump’s business fraud trial in New York that saw him convicted of 34 felonies earlier this year, will decide on Tuesday whether to overturn the verdict, Reuters reports. The case is the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to reach a verdict, and Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on 26 November – though now that he is headed back to the White House, it is unclear if that will happen.
      This live coverage is ending soon, thanks for following along.Democratic Representative Mark Takano won reelection to a US House seat representing California on Monday. Takano defeated Republican David Serpa, the Associated Press reports.The congressman is a longtime incumbent, the ranking member on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and also sits on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Takano was previously a classroom teacher and a community college trustee.The 39th congressional District covers communities in Riverside County southeast of Los Angeles. The Associated Press declared Takano the winner at 9.08pm EST.Vietnam’s Communist Party head To Lam congratulated Donald Trump in a phone call on Monday and the two discussed ways their countries could boost economic ties, the country’s communist party said.The US is Vietnam’s largest export market, and in September last year the two countries upgraded their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership, the highest level in Vietnam’s ranking.“Vietnam is ready to promote stable and long-term development of bilateral relations for the benefit of the people of the two countries,” Lam said during the call, according to a statement posted on the communist party’s website.The statement said Trump expressed his respect for the relationship with Vietnam and Vietnam-US economic cooperation, and wanted to further promote it.While the New York Times has reported that Donald Trump has picked Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state, the report also says “Mr. Trump could still change his mind at the last minute.”Rubio is arguably the most hawkish option on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of state, Reuters reports, and he has in years past advocated for a muscular foreign policy with respect to America’s geopolitical foes, including China, Iran and Cuba.Over recent years he has softened some of his stances to align more closely with Trump’s views. The president-elect accuses past US presidents of leading America into costly and futile wars and has pushed for a more restrained foreign policy.Rubio has said in recent interviews that Ukraine needs to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia rather than focus on regaining all territory that Russia has taken in the last decade. He was also one of 15 Republican senators to vote against a $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, passed in April.Rubio is also a top China hawk in the Senate. Most notably, he called on the Treasury Department in 2019 to launch a national security review of popular Chinese social media app TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly, prompting an investigation and troubled divestment order.As shell-shocked Democrats try to understand why working-class Americans – once the cornerstone of their political base – chose a billionaire over them, progressives argue the path forward is to champion “popular and populist” economic policies.Democratic recriminations have intensified in the nearly seven days since their devastating electoral losses, which may yet deliver a new era of unified Republican governance in Washington, after Donald Trump stormed to a second term while his party easily flipped the Senate and is on the verge of winning a majority in the House. Divisions have deepened, with progressives blaming the party’s embrace of corporate America and swing-state Democrats accusing the left of tarnishing its appeal with ex-urban and rural voters.“Clearly not enough voters knew what Democrats were going to do to make their lives better, particularly poor and working-class Americans across this country,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday:The New York Times reports that Trump is expected to name Florida senator Marco Rubio his secretary of state. The paper cites three unnamed sources “familiar with [Trump’s] thinking”.Axios reports that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cenvoy, Ron Dermer, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, and that Dermer also met with Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner.Axios cites to unnamed two Israeli officials and two US officials with knowledge of the meeting, reporting:
      An Israeli official said the meeting was aimed at passing messages from Netanyahu to Trump and briefing the president-elect on Israel’s plans in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran for the next two months before Trump takes office.
      “One of the things the Israelis wanted to sort out with Trump is what are the issues he prefers to see solved before 20 January and what are the issues he prefers the Israelis to wait for him,” a US official said.
      The US officials mentioned the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire efforts, the plan for Gaza after the war ends and Israeli-Saudi normalization efforts as issues the Israelis want to take Trump’s pulse on.
      Dermer also met with Jared Kushner, a source with knowledge of the meeting said.
      On Ukraine, Waltz has said his views have evolved, Reuters reports. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he called for the Biden administration to provide more weapons to Kyiv to help them push back Russian forces.But during an event last month, Waltz said there had to be a reassessment of the United States’ aims in Ukraine.“Is it in America’s interest, are we going to put in the time, the treasure, the resources that we need in the Pacific right now badly?” Waltz asked.Waltz has praised Trump for pushing Nato allies to spend more on defense, but unlike the president-elect has not suggested the United States pull out of the alliance.“Look we can be allies and friends and have tough conversations,” Waltz said last monthReuters has more information about Mike Waltz, who is reportedly Trump’s pick for national security adviser.If selected, Waltz will be responsible for briefing Trump on key national security issues and coordinating with different agencies.While slamming the Biden administration for a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Waltz has publicly praised Trump’s foreign policy views.“Disruptors are often not nice … frankly our national security establishment and certainly a lot of people that are dug into bad old habits in the Pentagon need that disruption,” Waltz said during an event earlier this year.“Donald Trump is that disruptor,” he said.Waltz was a defense policy director for defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates and was elected to Congress in 2018. He is the chair of the House Armed Services subcommittee overseeing military logistics and also on the select committee on intelligence.Waltz is also on the Republican’s China taskforce and has argued the US military is not as prepared as it needs to be if there is conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.In a book published earlier this year titled “Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret,” Waltz laid out a five part strategy to preventing war with China, including arming Taiwan faster, re-assuring allies in the Pacific, and modernizing planes and ships.Decision Desk HQ, an organisation that uses models to project how the vote count will unfold, is predicting that the Republicans will win a majority in the House.With a Republican Senate majority already won, this would mean Trump controls both houses of Congress when he takes office in January, making it significantly easier to pass legislation.The Associated Press, which the Guardian relies on to call races, has not yet confirmed that the Republicans have won the four seats needed for a House majority.There is more information now about California Governor Gavin Newsom’s plans to meet with the Biden administration this week to discuss zero-emission vehicles and disaster relief. The Democratic governor is leaving for Washington on Monday and will return home Wednesday, his office said. Newsom will also meet with California’s congressional delegation, the Associated Press reports. He is seeking federal approval for state climate rules, a $5.2bn reimbursement for emergency funding during the Covid-19 pandemic and updates to the state’s Medicaid program, along with other priorities.The trip comes days after Newsom called for state lawmakers to convene a special session in December to protect California’s liberal policies ahead of Trump’s return to office in January.Trump then criticized the governor on social media, calling out the high cost of living in California and the state’s homelessness crisis. He said Newsom was “stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again.’”California won against most of the Trump administration’s legal challenges over the state’s environmental and other progressive policies during the Republican’s first term, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California San Diego.“The question is: Has Donald Trump changed the legal playing field so much through the court appointments of his first term that he’ll be able to win on policies in his second term?” he said.As president, Trump appointed more than 230 federal judges, including three justices to the US Supreme Court. More

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      Black women on what Harris’s loss says about the US: ‘Voters failed to show up for her’

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      In the hours after Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid and endorse Kamala Harris as the democratic nominee for president, 40,000 Black women – leaders in politics, business and entertainment – met on a Zoom call to rally around the vice-president.“We went from that call to organizing our house, our block, our church, our sorority, and our unions,” said Glynda C Carr, president and co-founder of Higher Heights, an organization that works to help Black women get elected to political office. “That is what we did for the 107 days that she ran for office. Black women used our organizing power around a woman that we knew was qualified, that had a lived experience.”View image in fullscreenFor many, Harris seemed to be the one woman to break the glass ceiling of reaching the highest office in the US. Harris, a graduate of Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington DC and a member of the country’s oldest Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc (AKA), who had become the first Black female vice-president after spending a career as a prosecutor, California’s attorney general and senator, had reached a point where voters would welcome a woman – many deemed to be beyond qualified – versus Donald Trump, an embattled former president then awaiting sentencing on more than three dozen felony convictions.“Here is a woman that has had access to be able to build upon legacies and blueprints,” Carr said. Harris’s candidacy was so exciting because “she literally embodies Black excellence for Black women.”Harris’s 107-day campaign to become president began in a year of recognizing the anniversaries of pivotal advancements for Black people during the Jim Crow era and Civil Rights movement – 70 years after Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and the NAACP dismantle school segregation; 60 years after Fannie Lou Hamer spoke at the 1964 Democratic national convention; and 52 years since Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and first Black to run for president.“It gave so much hope,” said Christian F Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women and part of generation X, who never thought she’d see a Black president – let alone a Black woman president. “It was like the opportunity and manifestation of our ancestors’ wildest dreams. That’s what I thought to myself like, if she is elected, this is what our ancestors have dreamt about, and women, and Black women have dreamt about our entire lives.”It was that hope that fueled a wide-range of support from Democratic leadership, including former president Jimmy Carter who cast his ballot for Harris weeks after turning 100. Republicans such as former congresswoman Liz Cheney and her father, Dick Cheney, who served as vice-president in the George W Bush administration. Bipartisan support, an aggressive and energized campaign with a huge funding arm from several groups supporting Harris wasn’t enough to overcome the second election of Trump, who saw growth in his voting base among Black and Latino voters. Trump garnered more than 75m votes as of Sunday evening, and won the popular vote for the first since he began his ascension to the White House.“Harris’s candidacy was working for unity and democracy and protecting freedom,” Nunes, 46, said. “Then we had another candidate who basically ran on a campaign to take away freedoms. I felt that this loss was not a reflection of her ability to lead. I felt like it was a reflection of voters who said that they would show up for her, but failed to show up for her. And also, people’s inability to trust women and stand up for women – particularly, especially a Black woman. And I feel like this continuously resonates and shows up in so many spaces and I think that’s the part that was hurtful.”View image in fullscreenTrump’s victory came from voters who were so put off by the US’s trajectory that they welcomed his brash and disruptive approach. About three in 10 voters said they wanted total upheaval in how the country is run, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. Even if they weren’t looking for something that dramatic, more than half of voters overall said they wanted to see substantial change.Both nationwide and in key battleground states, Trump won over voters who were alarmed about the economy and prioritized more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws. Those issues largely overshadowed many voters’ focus on the future of democracy and abortion protections – key priorities for Harris’s voters, but not enough to turn the election in her favor.Rarely has ethnicity, race or gender been mentioned in many after-election interviews, as reasons for not supporting Harris’s bid for president or why they preferred Trump, but some Harris supporters believe they were an underlying reason many will not admit to.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShavon Arline-Bradley, president and CEO of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) said Harris’s campaign of inclusion and strong support from the Democrats’ most loyal voting block – Black women – could not withstand “the wall of white nationalism and racism and classism and sexism and misogyny”.“It could not withstand the wall of an electorate that used class, race and gender to block the opportunity for an all-inclusive society that our country is so-called built on,” she said. “This idea of womanhood in leadership still becomes unfathomable for many.”New Orleans resident Laureé Akinola-Massaquoi is the mother of a two -year-old daughter, and said that Harris being the Democratic nominee for president, meant a more equal, progressive future for all of America, not just for Black people, but for everybody.But when Akinola-Massaquoi, 36, woke up on 6 November and saw that Trump had won the election, she was “disgusted, disappointed, just annoyed, really annoyed”.“Nowhere else can other people do the things he does or say the things he does, or have the record he has and become president of the United States. I just don’t even know how he even got this far,” she said. More

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      Sweep of swing states rubs salt in Democrats’ wounds as Trump prepares to meet Biden

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      Donald Trump was declared the winner in Arizona early on Sunday, completing the Republicans’ clean sweep of the so-called swing states and rubbing salt in Democrats’ wounds as it was announced that the president-elect is scheduled to meet with Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the presidential handover.In a national campaign that was projected as being extremely close but he ended up winning handily, the result in Arizona gives Trump 312 electoral college votes, compared with Kamala Harris’s 226. The state joins the other Sun belt swing states – Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina – and the three Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in voting Republican. All were expected to be extremely competitive but all went for Trump, though by fairly close margins.Republicans also regained control of the Senate – they hold 53 seats to the Democrats’ 46 – and look likely to keep control of the House of Representatives, where 21 races remain uncalled but Republicans currently have a 212-202 advantage, giving them a “trifecta” – both houses of Congress as well as the presidency – that will allow them to govern largely unfettered for at least the next two years.The political realignment comes after a bruising election that has set the stage for the Democratic party to re-evaluate a platform that appeared to have been rejected by a majority of US voters. Trump also won the popular vote, the first time a Republican has done so since George W Bush in 2004 following the 9/11 attacks a few years before.At Biden’s request, Trump will visit the Oval Office on Wednesday, a formality that Trump himself did not honor in 2020 when he lost the presidency to Biden but refused to accept the results.In a speech last week, Biden said he would “direct my entire administration to work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition”.But as president-elect, Trump has reportedly yet to submit a series of transition agreements with the Biden administration, including ethics pledges to avoid conflicts of interest. The agreements are required in order to unlock briefings from the outgoing administration before the handover of power in 72 days’ time.The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Biden will brief Trump on foreign policy on Wednesday, telling CBS Face the Nation: “The president will have the chance to explain to President Trump how he sees things.”Asked if Biden will ask legislators to pass additional aid for Ukraine before he leaves office, Sullivan said the president “will make the case that we do need ongoing resources for Ukraine beyond the end of his term”. Trump allies have said the incoming administration’s focus would be on peace not territory.View image in fullscreenSullivan also said that the international community needs “to increase pressure on Hamas to come to the table to do a deal in Gaza, because the Israeli government said it’s prepared to take a temporary step in that direction” because the group had told mediators, he said, it “will not do a cease-fire and hostage deal at this time”.The political fallout from Trump’s win continues to reverberate, not least in the Democratic camp. The Harris-Walz campaign is estimated to have spent $1bn in three months but is now reportedly $20m in debt.The Republican pollster Frank Luntz told ABC News’s This Week that whoever “told” Harris to focus on Trump during her presidential campaign had “committed political malpractice”.“We all know what Trump is,” Luntz said. “We experienced him for four years.”Progressive senator Bernie Sanders, who votes with Democrats, defended Harris’s campaign and refused to be drawn into further analysis on whether Biden should have stepped away from his re-election bid sooner.“I don’t want to get involved,” he told CNN. “We got to look forward and not in the back. Kamala did her very best. She came in, she won the debate with Trump. She worked as hard as she possibly could.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreen“Here is the reality: the working class of this country is angry, and they have reason to be angry,” he added. “We are living in an economy today where people on top are doing phenomenally well while 60% of our people are living paycheck-to-paycheck.”Republicans, meanwhile, have not explained why Trump and many in the party argue last week’s election was free and fair but maintain the 2020 one was somehow rigged, despite every single lawsuit alleging fraud being rejected.Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the the house judiciary committee, called Trump’s victory last week the “greatest political comeback”.On Friday, Jordan and fellow Republican representative Barry Loudermilk sent a letter to special counsel Jack Smith to demand that his office preserve records of the justice department’s prosecutions of Trump.Asked by CNN whether Trump would go after his political opponents, Jordan said: “He didn’t do it in his first term. The Democrats went after him and everyone understands what they did.”“I don’t think any of that will happen,” Jordan reiterated. “We are the party who is against political prosecution. We’re the party who is against going after your opponents using lawfare.”Byron Donalds, a Republican congressman from Florida, told Fox News that claims of a list were “lies from the Democratic left”.“I will tell you, this is not something that Donald Trump has ever spoken to, or he’s committed to, whatsoever. There’s no enemies list,” Donalds said. Trump has regularly referred to his political opponents as “the enemy within”. More

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      Bernie Sanders says he opposes urging Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down

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      Bernie Sanders said he opposes any move to force Sonia Sotomayor, the senior liberal justice on the US supreme court, to step down so that Joe Biden could nominate a younger liberal replacement before he finishes his term as president.Sotomayor, 70, is known to suffer from health issues, and some Democrats fear a repeat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died during Donald Trump’s first term – giving him a third opportunity to nominate a new justice and further shore up the top court’s conservative bent.In his first term, Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia, Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Anthony Kennedy, and Amy Coney Barrett to take the place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died less than two months before the 2020 election – leaving six largely conservative judges to just three liberals.Trump’s first-term appointees to the court were critical to overturning abortion rights and a series of other rulings that delighted conservative activists.In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sanders, a progressive senator who identifies as an independent but usually votes with Democrats, said it would not be “sensible” to ask Sotomayor to step down while Biden is still in office.He added he’d heard “a little bit” of talk from Democratic senators about asking Sotomayor, who is serving a lifetime appointment to the supreme court, to step aside.“I don’t think it’s sensible,” Sanders said, without elaborating further.No elected Democrat has so far publicly called on the justice to resign, but the idea comes amid a feverish effort by Democrats to “Trump-proof” their agenda before the Republican takes office in January.Supreme court justices are nominated by the sitting president but face an often grueling confirmation process in the Senate. With Democrats soon to lose control of the body, the opportunity for Biden to appoint – and for Democratic senators to confirm – a successor to Sotomayor is fast slipping away.Biden appointed Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson to the supreme court. She was confirmed in 2022. However, with just two months left in office, it is unlikely that Biden and a Democrat-controlled Senate would be able to nominate and confirm a new justice to the court in time.Democrats have previous floated the possibility of increasing the number of justices to counter the court’s political make-up. In July, Biden proposed term limits and a code of ethics for court justices, after a series of scandals relating to the conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito called into question their impartiality.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden said the court had “gutted civil rights protections, taken away a woman’s right to choose, and now granted Presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office”.In a second term, meanwhile, Trump could have the opportunity to further deepen the court’s conservative leaning, as Thomas and Alito are both in their mid-70s.Just as Democrats are considering whether Sotomayor should step down to install a replacement liberal justice, Republicans could do the same after they take power in January. “Alito is gleefully packing up his chambers,” Mike Davis, a conservative legal operative, predicted on social media this week.Although a Republican majority in the Senate refused to take up confirmation hearings in 2016 when Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia, protesting that to do so in an election year would be unfair, they had no such problems when Trump nominated Barrett to replace Ginsburg in 2020, also an election year. More

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      ‘No time to pull punches’: is a civil war on the horizon for the Democratic party?

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      Joe Biden stood before the American people, millions of whom were still reeling from the news of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential race, and reassured them: “We’re going to be OK.”In his first remarks since his vice-president and chosen successor, Kamala Harris, lost the presidential election, Biden delivered a pep talk from the White House Rose Garden on a sunny Thursday that clashed with Democrats’ black mood in the wake of their devastating electoral losses. Biden pledged a smooth transfer of power to Trump and expressed faith in the endurance of the American experiment.“Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable,” Biden said. “A defeat does not mean we are defeated. We lost this battle. The America of your dreams is calling for you to get back up. That’s the story of America for over 240 years and counting.”The message severely clashed with the dire warnings that many Democrats, including Biden, have issued about the dangers of a second Trump term. They have predicted that Trump’s return to power would jeopardize the very foundation of American democracy. They assured voters that Trump would make good on his promise to deport millions of undocumented people. And they raised serious doubts about Trump’s pledge to veto a nationwide abortion ban.Now as they stare down four more years of Trump’s presidency, Democrats must reckon with the reality that those warnings were for naught. Not only did Trump win the White House, but he is on track to win the popular vote, making him the first Republican to do so since 2004. Senate Republicans have regained their majority, and they appear confident in their chances of holding the House of Representatives, with several key races still too close to call on Friday morning.The bleak outcome has left Democrats bereft, unmoored and furious when they previously thought this week would be the cause of joy and celebration. They are now heading into a brutal political wilderness with its current leaders tarnished by advanced age and a catastrophic defeat and a younger generation that is yet to fully emerge.The party also faces a likely brutal civil war between its leftists and centrists over the best way forward – one that will be fought over the levers of power in the party at every level from the grassroots of all 50 US states to the crowded corridors of Congress in Washington.The stark reality has left Democrats asking themselves the same question over and over again: how did we get here?The hypotheses and accusations rose from whispers to shouts starting on Wednesday. Although a handful of Democrats suggested Harris should have done more to distance herself from Biden, few party members appeared to blame the nominee, who was credited with running the best possible campaign given her roughly 100-day window to close a considerable gap with Trump.Some Democrats blamed Biden, who withdrew from the presidential race in July only after mounting pressure from his party after a disastrous debate performance against Trump. Jim Manley, who served as a senior adviser to the former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, said that Biden never should have run for re-election.“This is no time to pull punches or be concerned about anyone’s feelings,” Manley told Politico. “He and his staff have done an enormous amount of damage to this country.”In an even more damning indictment, Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who was applauded for her role in pressuring Biden to step aside, suggested the party should have held an open primary.“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi told the New York Times on Thursday. “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.”View image in fullscreenA number of other senior Democratic aides complained to reporters – on background, without their names attached to the quotes – that Biden had put the party in a terrible position by not reckoning earlier with the widespread concerns over his age and unpopularity. (Biden would have been 86 at the end of his second term, while Trump will be 82 at the end of his.)The White House pushed back against those gripes, framing Democrats’ losses in a much more global context. Incumbents have lost ground around the world in the past year, a trend that experts largely blame on the anger and disillusionment spurred by the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing high inflation it caused.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, cited this explanation during her press briefing on Thursday, while noting that Biden still believes he “made the right decision” in stepping aside.“Despite all of the accomplishments that we were able to get done, there were global headwinds because of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Jean-Pierre said. “And it had a political toll on many incumbents, if you look at what happened in 2024 globally.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite those headwinds, Democrats wonder if their communication strategy could have prevented Republicans’ triumph. Leaders of the party are now debating the role of new media and how dominant rightwing influencers, particularly in the so-called “manosphere”, helped propel Trump to victory.Left-leaning Van Jones posited that Democrats had focused too much on traditional media at the expense of cultivating a leftwing media ecosystem, saying in a Substack Live chat: “We built the wrong machine.”Or perhaps Democrats’ failure to connect with the concerns of working-class voters cost them the White House, as progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders argued.“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders said in his post-election statement. “In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions.”But who will lead those discussions? Biden will be 82 when he leaves the White House in January. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader who has now been demoted to minority leader, is 73. Pelosi is 84. Sanders, who won re-election on Tuesday, will be 89 by the time his new term ends.The party must now look to a new generation of leaders, a pivot that many argue should have come earlier. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader who still holds out a distant hope of becoming speaker in January if his party can win a majority, might lead the way. Progressive Democrats will probably be looking to popular lawmakers like congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to shape the party’s future. Other rank-and-file members have pointed to Gavin Newsom, the California governor who is already trying to “Trump-proof” his state, as an example for resisting the new administration.They will have a foundation to work from, party leaders assert. Although Trump’s victory was devastating to them, Democrats protected at least three and possibly five competitive Senate seats while mitigating Republican gains in the House. Even if House Republicans maintain control of the chamber, they will be forced to govern with a narrow majority that proved disastrous during the last session and could pave the wave for significant Democratic gains in 2026.For now, though, the Democrats who poured their hearts and souls into electing Harris as the first woman, first Black woman and first Asian American woman to serve as president seem exhausted. They have spent most of the past decade warning the country about the dangers of Trump and his political philosophy only for a majority of American voters to send him back to the White House.While Trump’s first electoral victory sparked a wave of outrage and protests among Democrats, his second win seemed met with a mournful sigh from many of his critics. Right now, Democrats are taking the time to grieve. And then, eventually, they will start to pick up the pieces of their party.Lauren Gambino contributed reportingRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      The Observer view on US election: lessons for the left in wake of damning defeat

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      Donald Trump’s unexpectedly clearcut victory in last week’s US presidential election is a wake-up call for the progressive left in America and Britain. The hard-right Republican nominee made gains in almost all voter groups, including in swing state cities, middle-class suburbs, working-class manufacturing centres and rural and farming communities. Black, Latino, Native American and younger voters, on whose support his Democratic rival, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, had pinned her hopes, also went for Trump in larger than anticipated numbers. Polling suggesting a dead heat was wrong. Trump scored an undeniable nationwide triumph, winning both the electoral college and the popular vote.The Democratic party’s inquest into what went wrong must honestly confront some uncomfortable truths. One concerns identity. It’s plain, on this showing at least, that membership of racial and ethnic minorities can no longer be blithely assumed to translate into support for a progressive left agenda. Another concerns priorities. Top-down policy agendas pursued by entitled and privileged social “elites” can alienate ordinary voters from all backgrounds. They simply cannot or will not relate to them.Likewise, Harris’s belief that support for abortion rights, while laudable, could be used as a decisive wedge issue to attract female voters was confounded by the 45% of women who backed Trump. For them, bread-and-butter issues mattered more. A CNN exit poll also found Trump’s support among college-educated and first-time voters, who usually favour the Democrats, rose, too. Unsurprisingly, most white men went with the white guy. Again, worries about prices, the economy, jobs and security might have determined their vote. But, sadly, many might have rejected the idea of a woman of colour as president.This was a comprehensive defeat, not only for Harris but for her boss, President Joe Biden, and for the Democratic party, which also lost control of the Senate and has probably failed once again to take the House of Representatives. It’s true that Harris had little more than three months to make her case. It’s possible that had the unpopular president stepped down earlier, as the former speaker Nancy Pelosi suggests, Harris or another candidate might have done better. It’s certain that, as usual, the economy was the top issue, and that most voters blame the Biden-Harris administration for doing a poor job. But if the significance of this debacle is to be fully understood, it is necessary to look beyond such conventional explanations.The heart of the problem is that Democrats have lost touch – and no longer seem to understand where at least half of all Americans are coming from. Harris’s brave show of positivity and her stress on inclusiveness, unity and joy jarred badly with the joyless, negative everyday experience of conflicted and divided voters. They complained that high inflation is ruining living standards, food is unaffordable, secure, well-paid jobs are a rarity amid influxes of cheap migrant labour – and that their current leaders disrespect and ignore them, and simply do not care about them. If this sounds familiar, it’s because similar grievances are fuelling the advance of Reform UK and European rightwing populist parties, which welcomed Trump’s victory.This fundamental disconnect is evident in other areas. One recent poll found that 45% of Americans say democracy does not do a good job protecting ordinary people. Trust in institutions, such as the justice system and the media, is eroding. Long gone are the days when three national TV networks and a clutch of self-important newspapers dictated the news agenda. Trump understood this. He took his campaign to popular podcasters and talk radio. He mostly avoided big set-piece interviews and risky prime-time debates. And, despite attempts on his life, he hosted raucous open-air rallies, defiantly offensive to the end.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLaced with ever-increasing vulgarity, his speeches offered a deliberately gloomy, dark and angry contrast to Harris’s upbeat vision. He was, Trump said, “mad as hell”. He was going to get even. He would take down the elites. And he would make America great again. This furious narrative of victimhood, unfairness and retribution reflected the nation’s sour mood. Trump said he would fight for them – and enough of them believed him. Most thought the country was heading in the wrong direction anyway. They wanted a change. So, having fired him in 2020, they hired him for a second time – even though, according to the CNN poll, 54% view him unfavourably.“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump claimed – and this prospect is truly daunting. His mandate to “save the country” includes mass migrant deportations, unfunded tax cuts, sweeping import tariffs, expanded oil and gas drilling, abandoning the green agenda, repudiation of Nato, a free hand for Israel, betrayal of Ukraine to Russia, and promised Stalinist purges of political opponents, journalists and anybody else he dislikes. Britain, estranged from the EU, now faces a potential collapse of its US “special relationship” despite Keir Starmer’s awkward schmoozing of the president-elect. What a mess!Right now, Trump is in the pink. He has won a famous victory. But let’s not forget for a moment that he remains a fundamental danger to America and the world. At some point, Britain and the other western democracies may have to draw a line, even do the unthinkable and break with the US. As we have said before, Trump is unfit to hold the office to which he has just been re-elected. Proof of that contention will not be long in coming. More

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      Joe Biden to welcome Donald Trump to the White House on Wednesday

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump will meet on Wednesday in the Oval Office, the White House announced on Saturday.Trump will take office on 20 January to become the 47th president of the United States, winning the position back for the Republicans after soundly defeating his Democratic rival and the current US vice-president, Kamala Harris, in the 5 November election.“At President Biden’s invitation, President Biden and President-elect Trump will meet in the Oval Office on Wednesday,” the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement.Such a post-election meeting is traditional between the outgoing and the incoming presidents. It is scheduled for 11am.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      But after Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020 and then refused to concede to Biden and accept the result, wrongly claiming he had won but had been defrauded out of his victory, he did not host Biden at the White House during the transition in administrations.Then, on inauguration day, 20 January 2021, Trump also broke with tradition by again not receiving Biden, the 46th president – and his wife, incoming first lady Jill Biden – at the White House for the handover and accompanying them to the swearing-in ceremony outside the US Capitol.The Trumps left the White House that morning and flew to Florida.It was only two weeks after thousands of extremist supporters of Trump had broken into the Capitol to try in vain to stop the certification of Biden’s triumph, which led to Trump’s second impeachment, when he was accused of inciting an insurrection.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPreviously, the Obamas followed tradition in 2017 by welcoming Donald and Melania Trump at the White House before accompanying them to Trump’s inauguration, and Barack Obama hosted Trump, the then incoming 45th president, to the Oval Office in late 2016 after he’d defeated Hillary Clinton.This year, Biden had initially sought re-election but dropped out of the race in July after a disastrous debate against Trump, giving his anointed Democratic successor, Harris, a very short campaign for the presidency.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More