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      The Democrats lost because they ran a weak and out-of-touch campaign | Bhaskar Sunkara

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      I turned on MSNBC after the election results came in and this, verbatim, was the commentary I heard: “This really was a historic, flawlessly run campaign. She had Queen Latifah [who] never endorses anyone! She had every prominent celebrity voice, she had the Taylor Swifties, she had the Beyhive. You could not run a better campaign in that short period of time.” Democrats, it seems, are already blaming their defeat this week on a host of contingent factors and not on their own shortcomings.It’s, of course, true that inflation has hurt incumbents across the world. But that doesn’t mean that there was nothing that Joe Biden could have done to address the problem. He could have rolled out anti-price-gouging measures early, pushed taxes on corporate super profits and more. Through well-designed legislation and the right messaging, inflation could have been both mitigated and explained. That’s what president Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered his supporters in Mexico and his governing coalition enjoyed commanding support.However, more than policy, Americans craved a villain. An incompetent communicator in old age, Biden couldn’t provide one. He couldn’t grandstand about hauling profiteers in front of Congress or taking on billionaires. He couldn’t use his bully pulpit effectively to tout his successes creating good manufacturing jobs or put America’s inflation (and GDP growth) in global context. He couldn’t do much of anything.As a result, 45% of voters, the highest number in decades, said they were financially worse off than they were four years ago. These people weren’t misled by the media, they were lamenting what’s obvious to everyone who lives in the United States: the soaring costs of groceries, housing, childcare and healthcare are both distributional and supply problems that the government has not tackled with urgency.Donald Trump, for his part, ran a less than impressive campaign. He wasn’t as coherent as he was in 2016 when he more frequently spoke to the economic grievances and personal experiences of ordinary workers. In a less populist mood, Trump felt comfortable enough to openly pander to unpopular billionaires like Elon Musk.As for Kamala Harris, her problem began all the way in 2020 when she was selected on identitarian grounds as a vice-presidential candidate despite performing terribly in the Democratic primaries. At a debate in March 2020, Biden pledged he would nominate a woman as vice-president. A host of influential NGOs then urged him to pick a Black woman. From the beginning, Harris was a choice driven more by optics than merits.Harris had an uphill battle from the start. She was forced to govern alongside an increasingly senile president and given poison-pill assignments like a role as “border czar”. Biden’s belated departure from a race he couldn’t win meant Harris didn’t have the legitimacy afforded by an open primary, a primary that if conducted early enough might have yielded a stronger candidate like the Georgia senator Raphael Warnock.Once given the reins of the party, the vice-president ran a campaign that was in both style and substance – like today’s Democratic party as a whole – driven by the professional class. Weakly populist ads targeted to swing states sat uneasily with attempts to make the race about abortion rights or Trump’s contempt for democracy. There was no unifying economic message that blamed elites for the country’s problems and laid out a credible vision of change. People knew that Harris was not Trump, but they didn’t know what she was going to do to solve their problems. She had the burden of incumbency without its benefits.Harris was smart enough to not overemphasize her own personal story and how historic her victory would have been. But the Democrats as a whole were still associated with the identitarian rhetoric and an emphasis on anti-discrimination over class-based redistribution that drove Harris’s selection as vice-president to begin with. Many of us sounded the alarm early about the prominence of efforts like White Women: Answer the Call and Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders for Kamala that focused on mobilization through skin color and gender instead of shared class interest. But a party increasingly divorced from workers ran with the activist base that it had rather than the voting base it needed to have.The result was a staggering shift in working-class support across demographics. Exit polls suggest that Harris lost 16 points with “voters of color” with no degree compared with Biden, with particularly sharp losses among Latinos. The abortion emphasis didn’t pan out either – Biden led among those who believed that abortion should be “legal in most cases” by 38 points. Harris appears to have tied Trump with those voters.In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Senator Chuck Schumer infamously argued: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” Without a New Deal–sized economic vision with a unified working class at the center, the Democrats have seen that calculation fail for the second time in eight years.

      Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, founding editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities More

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      US election briefing: Democrats pick through defeat with blame falling on Biden and economy

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      The Democratic party has begun to pick through Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump in the presidential election, with the post-pandemic headwinds, a failure to distance herself from Joe Biden and overestimating abortion access instead of the economy as an election winner, all reported by congressional Democrats as reasons for the decisive loss.Biden struck an optimistic tone in an address to the nation, praising Harris for an “inspiring” campaign. Comments from the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, claiming Democrats had “abandoned working-class people”, earned a rebuke from the Democratic party chair, Jaime Harrison.Biden’s decision to pursue re-election and then his late withdrawal drew criticism from numerous former top Democrat advisers and politicians, including Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and presidential candidate, who said “it probably wasn’t great to cover up President Joe Biden’s infirmities until they became undeniable on live TV”.Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, pushed back on the accusation that it was arrogant for the 81-year-old president to run for a second term: “This is the president who has been the only person [who] has been able to beat Donald Trump.”Here’s what else happened on Thursday:US presidential election news and updates

      Trump has named Susie Wiles, the manager of his victorious campaign, as his White House chief of staff, making her the first woman to hold the influential role. She was seen as the leading contender for the job but has avoided the spotlight, even refusing Trump’s invitation to take the microphone during his victory speech on Wednesday. Learn more about Wiles here.

      Vladimir Putin has congratulated Trump on his victory and expressed admiration for Trump’s response to an assassination attempt. Putin said he was ready for dialogue with Trump, which will cause disquiet in Kyiv and other European capitals. Hours beforehand, Russia had carried out a massive drone attack on Kyiv, and killed four people in a strike on a hospital in Zaporizhzhia.

      Republicans have expanded their control of the US Senate, after Dave McCormick defeated the Democratic incumbent in Pennsylvania. Control of the House remained unclear on Thursday, with Republicans closing in on the 218 seats required for a majority.

      Healthcare providers have reported unprecedented surges in demand for reproductive and gender-affirming medications in the wake of Trump’s victory, even greater than the day after Roe v Wadefell.

      California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, announced a special session of the state’s legislature to ensure the attorney general’s office and other state agencies have the funding they need. California has been setting up guardrails to protect its residents’ rights under an adversarial federal government.

      Trump as president may give Israel a “blank cheque” for all-out war against Iran, a former CIA director and US defence secretary has predicted. Palestinians in Ramallah argue things cannot get any worse for them than it has been under Biden.

      Elon Musk has said Trump’s podcast appearances made “a big difference” in the election, as the manosphere and so-called “heterodoxy” celebrate the result. Meanwhile, searches for the 4B movement have spiked on Google and TikTok as women discuss cutting off heterosexual dating with men.

      A Texas judge has ruled against Biden’s programme offering a path to citizenship for certain immigrant spouses of US citizens, a blow that could keep the scheme blocked through the president’s final months in office. Fear has risen in undocumented communities and families face being torn apart at the prospect of Trump’s promised mass deportation programme.

      Americans see immigration as the most pressing issue for Trump to address, and a large majority believe he will order mass deportations of people living in the US illegally, a Reuters/Ipsos poll has found.

      The US Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point. Its chair, Jerome Powell, said the election result would have no “near-term” impact on rates and insisted he would not resign if Trump asked him to leave early, adding that firing a Fed governor was “not permitted under the law”.

      The British government will ask its ambassador to Washington, Dame Karen Pierce, to stay in post as Trump takes power, ahead of a complex shuffle of UK security and diplomatic jobs in the new year.

      Sales have surged for dystopian books, with The Handmaid’s Tale jumping more than 400 places on bestseller charts since Wednesday and On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder enjoying a similar rush.
      Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

      Harris urges supporters to ‘never give up’ – read the full speech

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      Where do the Democrats go from here? – podcast

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      “This was a pretty sweeping victory for Trump,” Lauren Gambino, political correspondent for Guardian US, tells Michael Safi. “It was decisive, and he may very well end up with full control of Congress, which would really help him implement some of these pretty dramatic proposals he’s laid out throughout the campaign.”Speaking to Democrats processing the result, Gambino says there is a sense of devastation.“Some of them are calling for a full overhaul of their brand. Bernie Sanders has said they’re no longer the party of the working class.”Safi also reports from Kamala Harris’s concession speech at Howard University, Washington DC. He speaks to Harris supporters reflecting on what went wrong, and asking: what next?Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod More

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      Musk says Trump’s podcast appearances made ‘big difference’ in election

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      Donald Trump’s stunning election triumph was won partly thanks to his willingness to undergo freewheeling interviews with popular podcasters like Joe Rogan, the US president-elect’s most influential backer, Elon Musk, has claimed.Speaking to Tucker Carlson, Musk said Trump’s three-hour conversational encounter last month with Rogan – America’s most-listened-to podcaster – and other podcast appearances allowed listeners to decide whether he was a “good person” and was a major point of distinction from Kamala Harris.“I think it made a big difference that President Trump and soon to be vice-president Vance went on lengthy podcasts,” Musk told Carlson, who expressed agreement.“I think this really makes a difference because people like Joe Rogan’s podcast, which is great, and Lex Fridman’s and the All-In podcast. To a reasonable-minded, smart person who’s not like hardcore one way or the other, they just listen to someone talk for a few hours, and that’s how they decide whether you’re a good person, whether they like you.”Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, each underwent several podcast interviews during the campaign, including on Call Her Daddy, in which the US vice-president talked about abortion.But she did not appear on The Joe Rogan Experience. The podcaster later said he declined her campaign’s insistence that it should last for just one hour, rather than three, and that Rogan travel to meet her, instead of his preference that it take place in his studio in Austin, Texas.Musk, who has frequently belittled Harris, claimed she had refused a three-hour sit-down because it would have exposed her supposed inability to talk in a relaxed and spontaneous manner.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

      Harris urges supporters to ‘never give up’

      With Trump re-elected, this is what’s at stake

      Abortion ballot measure results by state
      “I actually posted on X [that] nothing would do more damage to Kamala’s campaign than going on Joe Rogan, because she’d run out of non sequiturs after about 45 minutes,” he said. “Hour two and three would be a complete melted puddle of nonsense. So, it would just be absolute game over. That’s why she didn’t go on.“But, on the other hand, Trump, he’s there, there’s no talking points. He’s just being a normal person, having a conversation and doing three hours of Rogan, no problem.”Rogan’s interview with Trump, conducted at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort, was noted for its friendly exchanges and words of praise from the podcaster, which included him lauding the then candidate’s speaking style and “comedic instincts”.“You said a lot of wild shit and then CNN, in all their brilliance by highlighting your wild shit, made you much more popular,” Rogan told Trump, explaining his ability to get more publicity than other politicians.“It’s funny. It’s stand-up. It’s funny stuff. You have, like, comedic instincts. Like when you said to Hillary: ‘You’d be in jail.’ Like, that’s great timing. But it’s like that kind of stuff was unheard of as a politician. Like, no one had done that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe podcast host compared Trump’s behavior to the more “rehearsed” speech of other politicians – possibly implying Harris.“When you see certain people talk, certain people in the public eye, you don’t know who they are. You have no idea who they are. It’s very difficult to know,” Rogan said. “You see them in conversations. They have these pre-planned answers, they say everything. It’s very rehearsed. You never get to the meat of it.”Rogan ultimately endorsed Trump on the eve of the election after hosting another interview with Musk, who told him that X – the social media platform that the Space X and Tesla entrepreneur owns – would not be allowed to exist if Harris won the election.After being criticised early in her candidacy for avoiding challenging interviews, Harris sat for several television interrogations, including with CBS’s 60 Minutes and Bret Baier on Fox News, a pro-Trump network where she was subjected to multiple interruptions and hostile questions on rightwing talking points.Trump held more interviews but generally chose friendly settings, including Fox and Newsmax, where his views went largely unchallenged. He pulled out of an interview with 60 Minutes, which has been interviewing presidential candidates for more than half a century, after objecting to the programme’s plans to factcheck him.Shannon C McGregor, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, told the Hill that podcast appearances gave voters a better insight into the candidates as people than regular television interviews.“It gives listeners a better sense of what the candidates are like than the CNN interview with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, especially for people who aren’t super interested in politics,” she said. 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

      Harris urges supporters to ‘never give up’

      With Trump re-elected, this is what’s at stake

      Abortion ballot measure results by state More

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      Stephen Colbert on Trump’s win: ‘The deep shock and sense of loss is enormous’

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      Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, sending him back to the White House.Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert didn’t mince words on the results of the 2024 election: “Well, fuck. It happened, again,” he said. “After a bizarre and vicious campaign fueled by a desperate need not to go to jail, Donald Trump has won the 2024 election.“The deep shock and sense of loss is enormous,” he continued. “But let’s look at the bright side. This way at least there’ll be a peaceful transfer of power. Mike Pence, olly olly oxen free. All day yesterday, I was walking around proudly wearing my ‘I Voted’ sticker. Today I wore my, ‘I am questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of humanity’ sticker.“Now as a late-night host, people often say to me, ‘Come on, part of you has gotta want Trump to win because he gives you so much material to work with,’” he added. “No. No one tells the guy who cleans the bathroom, ‘Wow, you must love it when someone has explosive diarrhea, there’s so much material for you to work with!’“I wish, you wish, so many of us wish this hadn’t happened,” he continued, “but that is not for any of us to decide. This is a democracy. That’s Democracy with a capital ‘duh’. And in this democracy, the majority has spoken, and they said they don’t actually care that much about democracy.”The Late Show host congratulated Harris and Tim Walz on running an “extraordinary” 107-day campaign, and looked to the bleak future. “The first time Donald Trump was elected, he started as a joke and ended as a tragedy. This time he starts as a tragedy. Who knows what he’ll end as – a limerick?“Who knows what the next four years are going to be like,” he added. “What we do know is that we are going to be governed by a monstrous child surrounded by cowards and grifters, and my brain keeps pumping out an unlimited supply of ramifications. It’s really hard to see a bright side here.”But “we can take comfort in knowing that we’ve been here before. We know what’s coming,” he concluded. And there would be jokes, “because that’s what we do. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. No one gets into this business because everything in their life worked out great, so were built for rough roads. You guys ready?”Jimmy Kimmel“Let me tell you, that was the worst Taco Tuesday of my whole life,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday evening. “We had the choice between a prosecutor and a criminal and we chose the criminal to be president of the United States. More than half of this country voted for the criminal who’s planning to pardon himself for his crimes. I guess this election wasn’t rigged.”Fighting back tears, Kimmel listed everyone that Trump’s election will hurt: “It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go, for healthcare, for our climate, for scientists, for journalists, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on social security, for our allies in Ukraine, for Nato and democracy and decency. It was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him and guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him, too. You just don’t realize it yet.”It was a good night, however, for Putin, polio and “lovable billionaires like Elon Musk and the bros up in Silicon Valley and all the wriggling brain worms who sold what was left of their souls to bow down to Donald Trump”.“But I’m gonna say something that Trump would never say unless it favored him,” he added. “The people voted and this is the choice we made. In January, Donald Trump becomes president and that’s that, he won. It doesn’t mean we give up, but it also doesn’t mean we storm the Capitol because we don’t like the result.”Despite a lot of people not wanting to hear any silver lining, Kimmel endeavored to end on a positive note. “The best I can come up with is, we’ve been through this once before and yes, this time it is probably going to be worse, maybe a lot worse, but I also think that maybe we will look back and realize that in the long run, this is what we needed to wake us up,” he concluded. “Maybe the people who care so much about him need to find out how little he cares about them.”Seth MeyersAnd on Late Night, Seth Meyers also mourned Trump’s victory, noting that he will be the oldest person to ever take office and the first convicted felon. “When I was in grade school, they always told us anyone could grow up to be president, but they didn’t say ‘literally fucking anyone’,” he joked.“I wish I had some trenchant words of wisdom to impart,” he later added. “I’m sad to say I don’t. We’re about to step over the precipice into truly uncharted territory. You need only look back to Trump’s first term to get a sense of how dangerous his second term will be. And no one can say they didn’t know what they were getting, because Trump made it crystal clear. All I know is that the fight for justice doesn’t end with one election.“In times like this, when everything feels overwhelming and impossible, like all hope is lost, we have no choice but to look back on the broad scope of history,” he continued. “Justice is not automatic, comeuppance is not guaranteed, politics unfortunately is not a Marvel movie, even though Joe Biden does look eerily like old Captain America. That doesn’t mean a struggle toward a more just and compassionate world is futile, it just means it’s hard, and heartbreaking and soul-crushing and agonizing. And it never ends. Democracy does not happen only on election day.”Meyers ended with an exhortation to his viewers to keep fighting back: “If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who said no to Trump’s dark, dangerous vision for America last night, now is the time to stand in solidarity with our friends, with our neighbors, with the vulnerable communities, and begin the hard work of making real the world we want to live in. That’s what we will be doing on day one.” More

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      US election live: Trump prepares to choose top team as Harris tells supporters ‘do not despair’

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      After Donald Trump’s US election victory, here’s what will happen next:

      US president, Joe Biden, spoke to Trump on Wednesday and invited him to the White House. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said Trump “looks forward to the meeting, which will take place shortly, and very much appreciated the call”. It would be the first time they had met since Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump in June that forced him out of the race.

      Biden will make an address to the nation on Thursday, vowing a peaceful transfer of power to Trump after his crushing election win over Kamala Harris. In what promises to be an agonising moment for Biden, he will speak in the Rose Garden of the White House at 11am (4pm GMT) to “discuss the election results and the transition” to Trump’s second term.

      Despite Trump’s election success being apparent pretty early on election night, the full US election results are still not in. Out of 51 states (including DC), results for 49 have been called so far. Donald Trump currently has 295 electoral votes and Harris has 226. For context, Joe Biden was declared the winner offcially four days after the election in 2020.

      Harris will preside over a joint session of Congress in January to certify the results of the election. Harris delivered a speech conceding defeat in the presidential election to Trump on Wednesday afternoon.

      Trump will be sworn in as the 47th US president on 20 January 2025.
      Robert F Kennedy Jr, who previously said that Donald Trump had promised him control over a broad range of public health agencies if he returned to the White House, said on Wednesday that there are “entire departments” within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that “have to go”, reports The Hill.The website, citing an MSNBC interview, reports that Kennedy said:
      In some categories … there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA … that have to go, that are not doing their job, they’re not protecting our kids.”
      When asked if he would eliminate any health agencies, Kennedy told MSNBC, “to eliminate the agencies, as long as it requires congressional approval, I wouldn’t be doing that.”“I can get the corruption out of the agencies,” he added.Trump on Sunday told NBC that Kennedy, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and former independent candidate who dropped out and endorsed Trump, would have a “big role in the administration” if he won Tuesday’s presidential election.After Donald Trump’s US election victory, here’s what will happen next:

      US president, Joe Biden, spoke to Trump on Wednesday and invited him to the White House. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said Trump “looks forward to the meeting, which will take place shortly, and very much appreciated the call”. It would be the first time they had met since Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump in June that forced him out of the race.

      Biden will make an address to the nation on Thursday, vowing a peaceful transfer of power to Trump after his crushing election win over Kamala Harris. In what promises to be an agonising moment for Biden, he will speak in the Rose Garden of the White House at 11am (4pm GMT) to “discuss the election results and the transition” to Trump’s second term.

      Despite Trump’s election success being apparent pretty early on election night, the full US election results are still not in. Out of 51 states (including DC), results for 49 have been called so far. Donald Trump currently has 295 electoral votes and Harris has 226. For context, Joe Biden was declared the winner offcially four days after the election in 2020.

      Harris will preside over a joint session of Congress in January to certify the results of the election. Harris delivered a speech conceding defeat in the presidential election to Trump on Wednesday afternoon.

      Trump will be sworn in as the 47th US president on 20 January 2025.
      The Philippines expects US policy in the Indo-Pacific and support for its treaty ally amid South China Sea tensions to remain steady under Donald Trump, driven by bipartisan resolve in Washington, its ambassador to the US said on Thursday, reports Reuters.Both Democrats and Republicans prioritise countering China’s influence, including in the South China Sea, Jose Manuel Romualdez said, suggesting that military cooperation, economic ties and security commitments with the Philippines will continue.“It is in their interest that the Indo-Pacific region remains free, peaceful and stable, especially given the economic part of it, with trillions of dollars passing through the South China Sea,” Romualdez told Reuters in an interview.US-Philippine security engagements have deepened under president Joe Biden and Philippine counterpart Ferdinand Marcos Jr, with both leaders keen to counter what they see as China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea and near Taiwan.Marcos said in a congratulatory message after Trump’s victory:
      I am hopeful that this unshakeable alliance, tested in war and peace, will be a force of good that will blaze a path of prosperity and amity, in the region, and in both sides of the Pacific.”
      Under Marcos, the Philippines has increased the number of its bases accessible to US forces to nine from five, some facing the South China Sea, where China has built artificial islands equipped with runways and missile systems. The US has proposed $128m for infrastructure improvements at those bases, in addition to a $500m pledge for the Philippine military and coastguard.According to Reuters, Romualdez expressed confidence that these commitments, including joint US-Philippine maritime exercises that began last year, would continue under Trump.“We have very strong bipartisan support in the US Congress where the money comes from. Every single one of our friends in the Republican side has signified their concern and strong support for whatever we’re doing right now in relation to the challenges we face with China today,” Romualdez told Reuters. He suggested potential changes under Trump would be “minimal” and could even be favourable.Analysts say it is hard to separate the president-elect’s bluster from his actual plans but it’s clear his priority is to bin many of Joe Biden’s policies, writes Andrew Roth in this analysis piece:The US foreign policy establishment is set for one of the biggest shake-ups in years as Donald Trump has vowed to both revamp US policy abroad and to root out the so-called “deep state” by firing thousands of government workers – including those among the ranks of America’s diplomatic corps.Trump’s electoral victory is also likely to push the Biden administration to speed up efforts to support Ukraine before Trump can cut off military aid, hamper the already-modest efforts to restrain Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza and Lebanon and lead to a fresh effort to slash and burn through major parts of US bureaucracy including the state department.Trump backers have said he will be more organised during his second term, often dubbed “Trump 2.0”, and on the day after election day US media reported that Trump had already chosen Brian Hook, a hawkish state department official during the first Trump administration, to lead the transition for America’s diplomats.And yet analysts, serving and former US diplomats and foreign officials said that it remained difficult to separate Trump’s bluster from his actual plans when he takes power in January. What is clear is that his priority is to bin many of the policies put in place by his predecessor.“I’m skeptical that the transition process will be super-impactful since the natural instinct of the new team will be to toss all of Biden’s foreign policy in the dumpster,” one former senior diplomat said.“If you go back to 2016, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall. And, you know, it doesn’t look like there was a secret plan to defeat Isis,” said Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security thinktank. “Some of these things didn’t turn out the way that they were talked about on that campaign trail and we go into this without really knowing what the president’s proposal will be for all of this – and what he will do.”South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, spoke with Donald Trump on Thursday and congratulated him on winning the US presidency on the “Make America Great Again” slogan as officials in Seoul worked to prepare for “significant” economic changes, reports Reuters.Yoon and Trump held a 12-minute phone call and discussed the close security and economic ties of their two countries across all areas, a senior South Korean official said on Thursday.South Korea’s ambassador to the US also visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to meet with members of the president-elect’s camp, the foreign ministry said.Trump’s election has renewed attention in South Korea on his “America First” foreign policy plans and how his unpredictable style will play out in his second term, reports Reuters.Officials worked past midnight on Wednesday to prepare for changes expected from US policies, with the Bank of Korea and thinktanks seeing a potential hit to exports if the US raises tariffs.Meetings at the trade ministry that began in the hours after Trump’s victory led to back-to-back discussions early on Thursday as South Korea’s economic leaders weighed the impact on exports of potential tariffs.“Should policy stance that has been stressed by president-elect Trump become realised, the impact on our economy is expected to be significant,” finance minister Choi Sang-mok said at a 7.30am (10.30pm GMT on Wednesday) meeting with trade and foreign ministers.South Korea would probably suffer less than China, Mexico and the EU, but Asia’s fourth-largest economy could be forced into another renegotiation of its bilateral free trade agreement with Washington, according to Kim Young-gui, an economist at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP).Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday that Poland would work on strenghtening its relations with the US after Donald Trump won the presidential election.Yesterday, Tusk joined other European leaders in congratulating Trump.The Australian prime minister who vowed before the last election to herald a “kinder, gentler parliament” has now hailed Australia’s rowdy, robust and combative style of political debate as proof of a functioning democracy, warning “only dictatorships pretend to be perfect”.In remarks to a global democracy conference in Sydney a day after the United States returned Donald Trump to the presidency eschewing warnings about his autocratic style, Anthony Albanese suggested the adversarial tendencies of the Westminster political system were “a virtue, not a flaw”.“A fierce contest can be a good thing, as long as it’s a contest about substance, about things that matter to people and issues that affect the country,” Albanese told the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, in a speech distributed in advance.For today’s First Edition newsletter, my colleague Nimo Omer spoke with Guardian US live news editor Chris Michael about what a Donald Trump presidency might look like. Here’s a snippet:“Autocrats are rejoicing,” Chris says about Trump’s victory. “That probably tells you all you need to know”. Trump has on many occasions praised Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. His admiration for other strongman leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, China’s Xi Jinping and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is well documented and long held.Trump has said that he would end Russia’s war in Ukraine “in one day”, though he has not provided specific details on how. Expectations are that Ukraine will see a significant reduction in military aid from the US – the Trump team have made clear they have no intention of indefinitely maintaining commitment to Kyiv as the war continues to drag on.Over on the Guardian’s business live blog, my colleague Graeme Wearden writes that the a looming new trade war triggered by Donald Trump could push the eurozone economy from sluggish growth into “a full-blown recession”.That’s according to the investment bank ING, who fear the recession could begin even before Trump – who has said he wants to impose a 10% tariff on all non-US goods – is sworn in next January.China warned on Thursday there would be “no winners in a trade war” after the re-election in the US of former president Donald Trump, who has pledged huge new tariffs on Chinese imports.“As a matter of principle, I would like to reiterate that there will be no winners in a trade war, which is also not conducive to the world,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). 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      Thursday briefing: What lies ahead for the US in a second Trump administration

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      Good morning.Kamala Harris conceded the US election to Donald Trump overnight. In a speech at Howard University, the vice-president urged supporters not to lose hope, saying “this is a time to organise, to mobilise and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together”. Harris, hoarse from the frenzied campaign that began a little over 100 days ago, contrasted sharply with Trump following his defeat in the 2020 election, which he never formally conceded.Harris’s speech capped a turbulent election, marked by Trump’s dramatic political comeback. He won decisively, carrying both the electoral college and the popular vote. The Republican party also flipped control of the Senate and while the House of Representatives has not yet been called, the Republicans remain confident. With control over all three branches of government, Republicans could have a much smoother path for passing legislation.As Democrats begin soul-searching (and the inevitable blame game), Trump’s new GOP prepares to take power. For today’s newsletter, I spoke with Guardian US live news editor Chris Michael about what a Trump presidency might look like. But first, the headlines.Five big stories

      Environment | It is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record, the European Union’s space programme has found. The prognosis comes the week before diplomats meet at the Cop29 climate summit and a day after a majority of voters in the US, the biggest historical emitter of planet-heating gas, chose to make Donald Trump president.

      Middle East | Many Israelis were reeling after Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to dismiss his popular defence minister, Yoav Gallant, in the midst of a multifront war. The prime minister said he had fired Gallant over what he described a “crisis of trust”. Gallant, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and a senior general, has been replaced by the foreign minister, Israel Katz, a Likud lawmaker and loyalist who has little military background.

      Politics | The Reform UK MP Lee Anderson has apologised after parliament’s watchdog on bullying and harassment told him to do so for telling a security guard who asked for his ID to “fuck off, everyone opens the door to me”.

      Economy | Rachel Reeves has committed not to increase taxes at Labour’s next budget and said the government would need to “live within the means” of her spending plans if public services came under mounting pressure.

      Health | Doing just five extra minutes of exercise a day could help lower blood pressure, a study suggests. High blood pressure affects 1.28 billion adults worldwide and is one of the biggest causes of premature death. It can lead to strokes, heart attacks, heart failure, kidney damage and many other health problems, and is often described as a silent killer due to its lack of symptoms.
      In depth: ‘All bets are off’View image in fullscreenReproductive rightsThroughout his campaign Trump “flip-flopped” on the issue of abortion, Chris Michael says. Sometimes he would brag about the singular role he played in overturning Roe v Wade; other times he publicly created distance from multiple anti-abortion positions and insisted that it was an issue for individual states to decide.In Tuesday’s elections, seven states passed measures that enshrine abortion rights in their constitutions – but this will not be the end of the story. Anti-abortion activists will likely challenge the reversal of bans in court, and will fight even harder to push legislation through before more bans are repealed.Crucially, if Trump returns to the White House with Republican control of the Senate and House of Representatives, it could have significant implications for abortion access. “Trump has said he would veto a national abortion ban if one reached his desk, but who knows —he could change his mind,” Chris points out. As his tone suggests, few have been reassured by Trump’s promise not to sign a federal ban. This scepticism stems not only from Trump’s history of lying but also from accusations that his camp is playing a verbal sleight of hand, replacing the term “national ban” with phrases like “national minimum standard”, which would essentially achieve the same goal.“But even if he doesn’t do that, the GOP could theoretically use this obscure piece of law called the Comstock Act,” Chris adds. This 150-year-old anti-obscenity law bans mailing abortion-related material and was outlined in Project 2025, an extreme 922-page policy document published by a rightwing thinktank as a way to bypass congress altogether and use the legislation to ban the mailing of abortion pills – in effect a national ban.Since Roe v Wade established a constitutional right to abortion, the Comstock Act could not be enforced. However, after Roe was overturned in 2022, anti-abortion groups have pushed the idea that the Comstock Act is valid once more.ImmigrationBorder control has always been the key Trump issue. Who can forget “Build the wall” and images of children in cages under the child separation policy. This time around, his crackdown on immigration is set to be even more controversial – and wide-ranging.As ever, much vitriol has been aimed at undocumented immigrants. But the president-elect has expanded his ire to potentially include those who legally live in the US. Trump has outlined a mass deportation plan that could target up to 20 million people. According to estimates, there are 11 million undocumented immigrants. There is little detail on how such an unprecedented policy would be put into practice, but as Trump appoints officials in the coming months, they will have a much easier time pushing through these changes regardless of the indirect consequences and larger fallout.Trump’s rhetoric has also become more violent, racist and xenophobic than ever. He has warned that mass deportations will “be a bloody story” and claimed immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country”. Such language echoes the rhetoric of fascists like Mussolini and Hitler, whom Trump reportedly praised while in office, even lamenting that he didn’t have commanders as loyal to him as Hitler did. Trump’s words carry deeply troubling implications for immigrants who are fearful of reprisals from his second administration.The international stageView image in fullscreen“Autocrats are rejoicing,” Chris says about Trump’s victory. “That probably tells you all you need to know”. Trump has on many occasions praised Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. His admiration for other strongman leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, China’s Xi Jinping and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is well documented and long held.Trump has said that he would end Russia’s war in Ukraine “in one day”, though he has not provided specific details on how. Expectations are that Ukraine will see a significant reduction in military aid from the US – the Trump team have made clear they have no intention of indefinitely maintaining commitment to Kyiv as the war continues to drag on. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, congratulated Trump on his “impressive” election victory on Wednesday. “I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs.”Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was among the first leaders to congratulate Trump on his victory. A Trump win is great news for Netanyahu, as Julian Borger writes in this analysis. His return to the White House “removes a substantial barrier to Israel’s full control and potential annexation of at least part of Gaza and the West Bank”.The US is an anchor for many international organisations and treaties: Nato, the Paris climate accord (again) and other institutions could face upheaval due to Trump’s isolationist worldview. Trump has dismissed the climate crisis as “a big hoax” and has pledged to cut funding for Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which he derided as the “green new scam”. Instead, Trump plans to pivot heavily toward resource extraction, prioritising oil and gas drilling – including on public lands and in national parks. In July, he emphasised this shift, vowing to “drill, baby, drill”. Analysts warn that a Trump presidency could add billions of tonnes of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, which would have devastating global consequences.With the Cop29 climate conference beginning next week, the pressure is even higher for decisive action.Democratic normsIn recent months, Trump was labelled a fascist by Kamala Harris and his longest serving former chief of staff, retired general John Kelly.“In a weird way, the one thing that isn’t an issue, for now, is the ‘stop the steal’ movement,” Chris says. “Trump was preparing to contest the results of the election and to undermine democracy itself in order to stay in power but because he’s legitimately won, he doesn’t have to do that. So the whole machinery that was built up around this grievance has potentially had the wind taken out of its sails.”Trump, a man famous for never letting go of grudges, will probably continue with his mission to undermine and hollow out democratic norms and institutions. Trump has said in many interviews and rallies that he would mobilise the federal government against his personal political enemies and the army against citizens that he called “the enemy within”. A second Trump administration likely poses a severe threat to independence of the justice department and other institutions like the FBI and the CIA.Trump has also pledged to dismantle what he calls the “deep state” – in other words the federal bureaucracy – by firing thousands of non-political civil servants and replacing them with loyalists. This purge “poses a threat to the checks and balances system” that stood in the way of his most destructive instincts in his first term, says Chris.Freedom of the press, a cornerstone for any functioning democracy, will also likely be in jeopardy. Trump has threatened to jail reporters who do not give up sources and strip broadcasting licences from news outlets as punishment for coverage that he did not agree with. A CNN review of the president-elect’s interviews and speeches over the past two years found that he has called for every major American TV news network to be punished.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNow the fevered campaigning is over, the real work begins. Trump will be appointing his top team in the coming weeks, which could even include anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr and Elon Musk. For now “all bets are off”, Chris says.For more details on the consequences of a second Trump presidency, read our Guardian series The StakesWhat else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      In the second edition of our Black diaspora newsletter, The Long Wave, Nesrine Malik reflects on Kemi Badenoch’s ascension to leader of the Conservatives, and asks if it really is a win for Nigerians. Charlie Lindlar, acting deputy editor, newsletters

      The story of the GP Thomas Kwan, sentenced to 31 years in jail yesterday for trying to poison his mother’s partner while disguised as a nurse, is truly bizarre, as Mark Brown describes it: “An Agatha Christie-inspired Columbo episode with a splash of Breaking Bad.” Toby Moses, head of newsletters

      “I’m just running free as a bird to give everyone a giggle” – Simon Hattenstone looks back at the rich history of streaking, meeting those who got their kit off for a cause … or because they just felt like it. Charlie

      As anyone who has seen the viral clips of Maggie Smith in the Nothing Like A Dame doc knows, she was a character – her friend Fiona Golfar confirms it in this lovingly told recollection. Toby

      “Horrible direction, an appalling script, dreadful performances: it really does have it all” – Catherine Bray is unfestive and unsparing in her review of the so-bad-it’s-still-bad Christmas film Holiday Twist. Charlie
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Hakan Calhanoglu scored a first-half penalty to give Inter a 1-0 Champions League win over Arsenal, the Gunners’ first European defeat of the season. Aston Villa also lost 1-0, to Belgian side Club Brugge, after Tyrone Mings gave away a bizarre second-half penalty.Boxing | Imane Khelif, who won Olympic gold in women’s boxing amid a gender eligibility row, is taking legal action over media reports allegedly detailing her leaked medical records. Reports published in France this week claimed the 25-year-old has XY (male) chromosomes.Golf | Rory McIlroy has suggested Donald Trump’s return to the White House could accelerate peace talks between traditional golf tours and the Saudi Arabia-backed Liv Golf. McIlroy even floated the idea of Elon Musk becoming involved in golf’s elongated merger plans.The front pagesView image in fullscreen“American dread” says the Guardian while the Mirror asks “What have they done … again?”. The Express goes full Maga: “He’s been shot, convicted of a crime and branded a fascist … but he’s still the people’s choice”. The Times has “Trump promises golden age after sweeping Harris aside”. “Landslide” – that’s the i while the Daily Mail is a bit obvious: “A comeback to Trump all comebacks!”. The Telegraph calls it “Trump’s clean sweep”. “Trump is back” reports the Financial Times, while in the Metro it’s “America’s golden Age”. And finally, the Sun goes with “You’re rehired”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenWhat will Trump do in power?The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, explains how Donald Trump won a second term and what he intends to do with it.Cartoon of the day | Ella BaronView image in fullscreenThe UpsideView image in fullscreenWhen Abi Wilkinson moved to the US after her partner got a new job, she assumed she could continue her work as a freelance journalist stateside. But when visa issues initially prevented her from continuing in her career, she gained a new perspective. She writes for A moment that changed me: “I don’t think I had fully understood how much my self‑esteem was tied to my work and how preoccupied I was with how I was perceived by strangers.”When her work permit did come through, Wilkinson “decided to prioritise mental wellbeing over status, ambition or self-aggrandising notions about significance. I found a job as a nanny. I was happier than I had been in years.”Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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