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      Trump expected to appoint China critics Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz

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      President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly decided to appoint the prominent China hawks Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz as his respective secretary of state and national security adviser.Rubio was arguably the most hawkish option on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of state, and he has in past years advocated for a muscular foreign policy with respect to America’s geopolitical foes, including China, Iran and Cuba.Over the past several years the Florida senator 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.A failed challenger to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Rubio had been rumored to be one of the leading contenders for Trump’s vice-presidential pick before JD Vance was announced.Since his failed run for president, Rubio has served as an informal foreign policy adviser and helped Trump prepare for his first debate against Biden in 2020.Trump has not confirmed the planned appointment, which was first reported by the New York Times. If confirmed, Rubio would be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat once the Republican president-elect takes office in January.While the famously mercurial Trump could always change his mind at the last minute, he appeared to have settled on his pick as of Monday, sources told Reuters.While Rubio was far from the most isolationist option, his likely selection nonetheless underlines a broad shift in Republican foreign policy views under Trump.Once the party of hawks who advocated military intervention and a muscular foreign policy, most of Trump’s allies now preach restraint, particularly in Europe, where many Republicans complain US allies are not paying their fair share on defense.“I’m not on Russia’s side – but unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement,” Rubio told NBC in September.Waltz, a Republican congressman and Trump loyalist who served in the national guard as a colonel, has criticized Chinese activity in the Asia-Pacific and voiced the need for the US to be ready for a potential conflict in the region.Last week, Waltz won re-election to the US House seat representing east-central Florida, which includes Daytona Beach. He defeated the Democrat James Stockton, a pastor and former president of a local NAACP branch.Waltz is a combat-decorated Green Beret and a former White House and Pentagon policy adviser. He was first elected in 2018, replacing the Republican Ron DeSantis, who ran for governor, in Florida’s sixth congressional district.Waltz served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, and he was awarded four Bronze Stars. He was one of the lawmakers appointed in July to serve on a bipartisan congressional taskforce to investigate the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.After Waltz left the US army, he worked in the Pentagon in the George W Bush administration as policy director for former defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.Under the former vice-president Dick Cheney, Waltz served as a counter-terrorism adviser.In 2021, after Joe Biden ordered a chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, Waltz asked Biden to reverse course and relaunch military operations in the region. The war in Afghanistan began under Bush after the 11 September 2001 attacks.The Intercept reported that before his run for Congress in 2018 Waltz managed a lucrative defense contracting firm with offices in Afghanistan.Waltz has consistently expressed the need for protecting the Afghan people, saying that US “soldiers will have to go back”. Government reports have stated that US nation-building efforts resulted in the deaths of more than 48,000 civilians and 66,000 Afghan police and military, and widespread torture.In other developments on Trump’s appointments, the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, has been picked to become the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing two sources.Earlier this year, Noem was widely seen as a potential presidential running mate for Trump. She lost out after recycling a two-decade-old story designed to illustrate decisive leadership that involved her shooting dead a puppy that did not hunt and had bitten members of her family.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Democrat Ruben Gallego beats far-right Republican Kari Lake to win Arizona senate seat

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      Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego has won the race for US Senate in Arizona, becoming the first Latino to represent the state in the Senate, beating out the far-right firebrand Kari Lake.Gallego will replace the Democrat turned independent senator Kyrsten Sinema, who ran for office as a centrist and charted a way for Democrats to win statewide elections in the right-leaning state, but then consistently stood in the way of her party’s priorities in the Senate. She did not seek re-election.While the presidential race polled neck and neck throughout the election, Gallego polled ahead of Lake by several points the entire campaign, an unlikely position for a progressive congressman trying to win a battleground state. Gallego also outperformed Lake in fundraising, giving him more local airtime and mailbox presence.In the end, he edged out Lake with 50% of the vote to her 48%, while Trump easily beat Harris in the state.“Gracias, Arizona!” Gallego wrote on the social platform X. He planned to speak to his supporters during a news conference Monday night.After Gallego’s win, Democrats will have 47 seats in the 100-member Senate, versus the Republicans 52, erasing Democrats’ previous majority in the chamber.Republicans flipped Democratic-controlled Senate seats in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Montana. In the latter three cases, defeated senators Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey and Jon Tester all polled ahead of Harris but couldn’t overcome their states’ shifts toward the Republicans.Lake ran into trouble winning over moderate Republicans and independent voters, both needed to deliver a victory. Attacks she had made against the late US senator John McCain reverberated, and the so-called McCain Republicans split on supporting her.Lake ran for governor in 2022, losing to the Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake has yet to accept the results of that election.Republican efforts focused more on Trump’s bid to swing the state back red after he lost there in the narrowest victory nationwide in 2020. Billboards financed by the Arizona Republican party that boasted of “team unity” did not include Lake. Instead, Trump was pictured alongside out-of-staters like JD Vance, Elon Musk, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard.Arizona has had six senators in just over a decade, creating an endless stream of high-priced elections for these coveted seats. Republicans there have run to the right of the electorate, creating an opening for Democrats to make a case to new residents and suburbanites who are shifting to the left.Gallego was able to tell his personal story frequently in his campaign. He is the son of Mexican and Colombian immigrants, who was raised by his mother and worked odd jobs at meat-packing plants and pizza shops to earn extra money for his family. He then graduated from Harvard and joined the Marine Corps, deploying to Iraq as part of a unit that saw some of the heaviest casualties of the war.Lake delivered the news as an anchor on the local Fox affiliate in Phoenix for decades, putting her in Arizonans’ homes daily. Raised in Iowa, she has talked about being the youngest of nine children and called herself a “mama bear”. She has embraced Trump and the Maga movement, happily saying “you can call me Trump in a dress any day.”Lauren Gambino contributed reporting 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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      Wisconsin supreme court seems hostile to 1849 abortion ban in oral arguments

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      During heated oral arguments on Monday morning, the Wisconsin supreme court appeared poised to find an 1849 law banning most abortions cannot be enforced.The legal status of abortion in Wisconsin has been contested since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and ended the right to abortion nationwide, triggering bans across the country – including in Wisconsin, where a 175-year-old ban immediately went into effect.Democrats in Wisconsin have seized on abortion as a campaign issue, with Justice Janet Protasiewicz expressing her support for abortion rights and winning a seat on the court in spring 2023. Protasiewicz’s election to the court helped flip the ideological balance on the bench, which is now controlled by a narrow liberal majority.It is highly unlikely the liberal-controlled court will uphold the ban.The 1849 statute, which was nullified by Roe v Wade and then reanimated when the landmark decision was overturned, declares that ending “the life of an unborn child” is a felony, except when required to save the life of the mother. In July 2023, a Dane county judge ruled that the 1849 ban applies only to feticide and not “consensual” abortion, citing a previous ruling that interpreted the statute as an anti-feticide law, and in September, providers including Planned Parenthood resumed offering abortion care.The Sheboygan county district attorney Joel Urmanski appealed the ruling, which is now before the Wisconsin supreme court.“The position of the circuit court below … is ultimately indefensible,” said Matthew Thome, an attorney representing Urmanski, during his opening argument. Thome argued that the 1849 law should be interpreted to “prohibit consensual abortions from conception until birth, subject to an exception when it is necessary to save the life of the mother”.Justice Jill Karofsky interrogated Urmanski’s interpretation of the law, asking if it would provide exceptions for rape, incest, the health of the mother, or fetal abnormalities.“Just to be clear, a 12-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by her father and as a result, became pregnant, under your interpretation … she would be forced to carry her pregnancy to term?” asked Karofsky. She noted that the “penalty for aborting after a sexual assault would be more severe than the penalty for the sexual assault”.In response to a question about the medical consequences of a ban, Thome responded that he was unsure, given that he is “not a doctor”.“I fear that what you are asking this court to do is to sign the death warrants of women and children and pregnant people in this state, because under your interpretation, they could all be denied life saving medical care, while the medical professionals who are charged with taking care of them are forced to sit idly by,” said Karofsky.The court weighed the question of whether laws that were passed regulating abortion while Roe was in effect “impliedly repealed” the 1849 ban and rendered it unenforceable.“All of those statues” passed after 1973 and before it was overturned, “just go to the dust pile?” asked Karofsky.Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative-leaning judge, argued, of the 1849 ban, that “the law is still there”, adding that “the judiciary doesn’t get to edit laws, the judiciary doesn’t get to rewrite them, we didn’t delete it, we prevented its enforcement”.The assistant attorney general Hannah Jurss disagreed, arguing that “there is nothing in the text of these statutes that says in the event that Roe is overturned we somehow go back to the old law and throw out all of the new ones,” drawing a distinction between Wisconsin’s more than a century old law and “trigger” laws passed in certain states that were specifically designed to go into effect after Roe v Wade was overturned.A separate case, which the Wisconsin supreme court has also agreed to hear, would decide whether the right to abortion is protected under the state’s constitution – possibly opening the door to challenge other laws regulating abortion in the state. More

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      Trump to name immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy

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      Donald Trump is expected to announce that he will appoint immigration hardliner and close adviser, Stephen Miller, as his White House deputy chief of staff for policy.Miller worked in the White House during the president-elect’s first administration, serving as a senior adviser to Trump and as director of speechwriting. He played a key role in developing several of Trump’s immigration policies, including the Muslim travel ban and the family separation policy.Although Trump has not officially announced the appointment yet, CNN reported the news earlier on Monday, citing two sources familiar with the matter, and later on Monday, JD Vance appeared to confirm the report in a post on X, where he congratulated Miller.“This is another fantastic pick by the president. Congrats @StephenM!” the vice-president-elect said.It had been expected that Miller would take on an expanded role in Trump’s second term if the former president won the 2024 election, and assist him in carrying out his mass deportation plan for millions of undocumented migrants in the US.Miller has been a frequent presence during Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to the Associated Press, often traveling with him and speaking ahead of Trump at his rallies.Miller is also known for his extremist rhetoric. He spoke at Trump’s infamous Madison Square Garden rally, where he told the crowd that “America is for Americans and Americans only” and promised to “restore America to the true Americans”.In an interview with the New York Times last year, Miller also outlined plans in the event that Trump was re-elected, to restrict legal and illegal immigration. The plans included rounding up undocumented immigrants in the US and detaining them in camps while they await expulsion.Over the years, reports have alleged that during Trump’s administration, Miller had advocated for blowing up migrants with drones – which he has denied – and that he suggested sending 250,000 US troops to the southern border.In 2019, after the US raid killed the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it was alleged by Mark Esper, the former defense secretary, that Miller had proposed beheading al-Baghdadi, dipping the head in pig’s blood and parading it around “to warn other terrorists”. Miller also denied this, and called Esper a “moron”.That same year, Miller was found to have promoted white nationalist views in emails sent to rightwing journalists. This led a number of Democrats to call on him to resign and more 50 civil rights groups penned a letter to Trump, urging him to fire Miller.“Stephen Miller has stoked bigotry, hate and division with his extreme political rhetoric and policies throughout his career,” the letter stated. “The recent exposure of his deep-seated racism provides further proof that he is unfit to serve and should immediately leave his post.”After the Trump presidency ended, Miller founded the non-profit America First Legal Foundation, which he described as the right’s “long-awaited answer” to the American Civil Liberties Union.Over the years, the group has launched more than 100 legal actions against Democratic policies and what it sees as “woke corporations” such as Disney, Nike and more, according to the New York Times.It was also reported last year that Miller’s legal group also had a board seat with Project 2025, the controversial policy effort led by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups, to roadmap rightwing policy plans for a second Trump term.Project 2025, a document which consists of more than 900 pages, outlines plans and strategies on how Trump and his allies could dismantle the US government. The plans include shrinking environmental protections, the replacement of civil servants with Trump loyalists, the elimination of the the education department, the reduction of LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights and more.In 2022, Miller reportedly testified to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection on the US Capitol, where he was asked about whether Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol that day.Miller reportedly defended Trump, stating that his use of the word “we” in his remarks outside the Capitol that day was not an effort to incite the crowd to storm the Capitol, but rather a rhetorical device used in political speeches for decades.In April this year, Axios reported that Miller was helping to drive a plan to tackle supposed “anti-white racism” if Trump was re-elected.The Axios report stated that if Trump returned to the White House, Miller and other aides planned to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of civil rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of colour”.Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told Axios: “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to [Joe] Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated.”The news about the expected appointment of Miller on Monday follows Trump’s announcement that former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tom Homan would be appointed “border czar”.Miller will also work alongside Susie Wiles, whom Trump last week named as his chief of staff. More

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      Trump didn’t just win. He expanded his voter base | John Zogby

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      Donald Trump defied the polls and pundits and received both a majority of the popular vote and of the electoral college. His margin of 3.4 percentage points (thus far) was well beyond anything that anyone projected and it is the first time a Republican candidate for president received a majority of popular votes since 2004. It is probably safe to say that even his own pollsters did not see this tornado coming, otherwise the president-elect’s team would not have issued statements earlier in the day attacking voting irregularities and election tampering. Certainly not if you are expecting to win.Published polls and the television network-sponsored exit polls both revealed some new truths that help explain what really happened and must be studied by winners and losers, academics and both political strategists and junkies.For starters, Trump has built on his coalition of angry and disaffected voters. The Maga movement (“Make America great again”) was once the exclusive club of angry white voters, conservatives who wanted to win, people filled with status anxiety – the fear of losing their middle-class status – and folks deeply concerned about the loss of traditional values like hard work, the nuclear family, frequent church attendance, marriage of only men and women, and heterosexuality. They also feared that the day had arrived when America lost its standing in the world. To be sure, the doors to this movement were not-so-subtly opened to white nationalists and supremacists. Their standard bearer was seen only as an aberration, and protest against Hillary Clinton, who represented government paternalism and patronage and a candidate not to be trusted.But 2024 exit polling has clearly shown that Maga has expanded beyond its original base. Trump outperformed his previous runs by substantial numbers among men and women, particularly young men; Black people, Latinos, Asian/Pacific Islanders; and suburban voters. He grew his support among voters in every state.There are lessons to be learned here. Democrats have targeted demographic groups by using one-dimensional definitions and messages. This view suggests that Black people are mainly concerned about civil rights. Latinos are obsessed about immigration and women are defined by second-class status and reproductive rights. Following the successful playbook of Barack Obama in 2008, Democrats bought into the idea of a coalition of young voters, particularly young women, along with people of color and suburbanites that would only produce a winning formula for the ages. Two authors, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira even wrote the manual for the party The Emerging Democratic Majority, in which they argue that these groups were growing in numbers and thus constituted the future. Both authors have since repudiated their own argument because, while it worked for Obama again in 2012, it failed miserably in most off-year elections and fell short in the 2016 Trump/Clinton election when key elements of the coalition chose to not vote.The election of 2024 put the final nail in the coffin of that theory. While there was a 21-point gender gap with men overwhelmingly choosing Trump and women supporting Kamala Harris, Trump won a majority of men and women in the suburbs. He received 50% of the vote among those earning less than $100,000 last year, compared with 46% voting Harris. He also won 21% of Black men and 55% of Latino men and 66% of voters with less than a college degree. Even though the president-elect has made several controversial statements about combat veterans, he won the vote of veterans by 26 points (65% for him, 34% for Harris).The vice-president managed to win only 17% of those who identify as born-again/evangelical Christians, even though every Democratic candidate since Barack Obama had won at least 30% of this group.Pre-election polls showed the race too close to call. Our John Zogby Strategies poll showed a 3.7 -point margin for Harris as of Sunday with minor candidates in the mix. Our simple head-to-head brought Harris’s “lead” down to 2.4 points. We all caught the anxiety over the economy, the threat to American democracy, the loss of reproductive rights, immigration and the security of the southern border, and crime. We also showed a majority with a negative view of Trump.But he still won – and convincingly. At a moment when the sitting president has a 40% approval rating and about seven in 10 voters feel that things in the US are headed in the wrong direction, voters wanted change. Now Trump will have to steer the ship of state during turbulent times. He will have to govern. That is the hard part.

      John Zogby is senior partner at the polling firm of John Zogby Strategies and is author of Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read the Polls and Why We Should (Rowman & Littlefield) More

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      What is voter certification – the process that Trump targeted in 2020?

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      With voting completed in the US presidential election, election officials across the country will now turn to certifying the results before the electoral college meets in December and Congress certifies the vote in January.Until the 2020 election, few paid attention to certification, which was seen as a bureaucratic way of officializing the results of the election. But after 2020, Donald Trump and allies, who questioned the election results, targeted the certification process as a way of causing confusion. In advance of the presidential election, there were deep concerns that the former president and allies would try and block certification of the election results, starting at the local level.Trump’s victory in the election means that there likely won’t be an effort to block certification of the presidential results. But there still are some close US Senate and House races that could prompt battles over certification. Experts say it is clear that certification is not discretionary and those who refuse to certify could face criminal penalties.What is certification?Certification refers generally to the process of making the election results official. The process works differently in each state. Election results are unofficial until they are certified.It takes place after a canvass, the process that takes place after every election to aggregate all of the ballot totals, resolving outstanding disputes over challenged or provisional ballots and reconciling any discrepancies or inconsistencies. Officials investigate any discrepancies, if they exist, in vote totals. The process varies by jurisdiction, but there is usually a board of people which then votes to certify the election. Various state laws make it clear that this is a ministerial responsibility and that officials cannot refuse to do so.For a statewide election, results are certified at both the local and state level.Is certification when disputes over election results are resolved?No. The canvass and certification process is aimed at reconciling vote totals and getting an official count. The process may identify abnormalities that could become the basis for an election contest or challenge later. State laws allow for separate legal processes outside of the certification process to challenge election results. These typically take place in the courts.What happens if an official or a board refuses to certify?Most boards certify the vote on a majority vote, so a single member refusing to certify wouldn’t block certification.But if a majority of the board refuses to certify, a secretary of state or election watchdog group would likely sue them to get a court to force them to certify. Watchdog groups have already warned that those who refuse to certify will face criminal charges.Could an effort to block certification actually work?No. If there were substantial irregularities in an election that could affect the outcome, it would be resolved in court. Experts are confident that the winners of elections will be the ones seated.Despite that confidence, there’s still concern that refusals to certify will allow people to continue to question the election results and seed further doubt about the election.What happens after certification?In a presidential election, there are additional steps after states certify the vote.In nearly every state, the winner of the statewide vote gets all of the state’s electors to the electoral college. A new law, the Electoral Count Reform Act, requires the governor of each state to certify the list of their state’s electors no later than six days before the electoral college meets. This year, that means the electors will be finalized by 11 December and the electors will meet in state capitols across the country on 17 December.Once the electors meet and cast their votes, they transmit them to the National Archives in Washington. Congress will oversee the counting of the vote on 6 January 2025 to make the results official. The constitution says that the president of the Senate – the vice-president – will oversee counting of the votes. That means that Kamala Harris will oversee the counting of the vote this year. Harris, who conceded the election to Trump on Wednesday, said in her concession speech that she “will engage in a peaceful transfer of power”. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump speaks with Putin and advises him not to escalate Ukraine war – report

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      Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin on Thursday and discussed the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.The US president-elect advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe”, the Post reported.It added that Trump expressed interest in follow-up conversations on “the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon”.During the election campaign, Trump said he would find a solution to end the war “within a day”, but did not explain how he would do so.According to one former US official who was familiar with the call and spoke to the Washington Post, Trump likely does not want to begin his second presidential term with an escalation in the Ukraine war, “giving him incentive to want to keep the war from worsening”.In a statement to the outlet, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “President Trump won a historic election decisively and leaders from around the world know America will return to prominence on the world stage. That is why leaders have begun the process of developing stronger relationships with the 45th and 47th president because he represents global peace and stability.”Trump had also spoken to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, according to media reports.Biden has invited Trump to come to the Oval Office on Wednesday, and on Sunday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that Biden’s top message will be his commitment to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. He will also talk to Trump about what’s happening in Europe, in Asia and the Middle East.“President Biden will have the opportunity over the next 70 days to make the case to the Congress and to the incoming administration that the United States should not walk away from Ukraine, that walking away from Ukraine means more instability in Europe,” Sullivan told CBS.Washington has provided tens of billions of dollars worth of US military and economic aid to Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022, funding that Trump has repeatedly criticised and rallied against with other Republican lawmakers.Ukraine’s foreign ministry disputed a claim in the Washington Post article that Kyiv was informed of the call and did not object to the conversation taking place. “Reports that the Ukrainian side was informed in advance of the alleged call are false. Subsequently, Ukraine could not have endorsed or opposed the call,” foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi told Reuters.On Friday, the Kremlin said Putin was ready to discuss Ukraine with Trump but that it did not mean that he was willing to alter Moscow’s demands.On 14 June, Putin set out his terms for an end to the war: Ukraine would have to drop its Nato ambitions and withdraw all its troops from all the territory of four regions claimed by Russia.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUkraine rejected that, saying it would be tantamount to capitulation, and that Zelenskyy has put forward a “victory plan” that includes requests for additional military support from the west.Also on Sunday, Trump spoke to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “The chancellor emphasised the German government’s willingness to continue the decades of successful cooperation between the two countries’ governments. They also agreed to work together towards a return to peace in Europe,” a German government spokesperson said.In a call last week with South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, Trump said the US was interested in working with Seoul in the shipbuilding industry, particularly in naval shipbuilding, as well as “promoting genuine peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region,”, the South Korean leader said.Trump’s call with Putin comes just a day after Bryan Lanza, a senior political adviser to Trump, told the BBC that Ukraine should focus on achieving peace instead of “a vision for winning”.“When Zelenskyy says we will only stop this fighting, there will only be peace, once Crimea is returned, we’ve got news for President Zelenskyy: Crimea is gone,” Lanza told the BBC.After his comments, a Trump spokesperson said Lanza “was a contractor for the campaign” and that he “does not work for President Trump and does not speak for him”. More