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      Biden promises smooth transfer of power to Trump in White House address

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      Joe Biden promised a smooth transfer of power to Donald Trump in an address to the nation on Thursday, as he implored Americans to “bring down the temperature” of partisan divisions and keep their faith in democratic systems following Kamala Harris’s loss in the presidential race.“For over 200 years, America has carried on the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world,” Biden said in the White House Rose Garden on a sunny morning, the weather ill-fitted to the mood among Democrats. “The will of the people always prevails.”Biden noted he spoke with Trump on Wednesday to congratulate the president-elect on his victory and promise his administration’s full cooperation to “ensure a peaceful and orderly transition”.“That’s what the American people deserve,” Biden added.Biden delivered his remarks to a crowd of senior administration officials and family members, including his granddaughter Finn, who all greeted him with an extended round of applause as he approached his podium. In a speech that combined reflectiveness with surprising optimism, Biden suggested the end of one of the most bitter presidential contests in US history should serve as an opportunity for building unity among the American people.“Campaigns are contests of competing visions. The country chooses one or the other, and we accept the choice the country made,” Biden said. “Something to hope we can do, no matter who you voted for, is see each other not as adversaries but as fellow Americans – bring down the temperature.”After Harris’s devastating defeat that left many of her supporters distressed over the trajectory of the nation, Biden took a moment to commend his vice-president on an exemplary campaign. Harris had roughly 100 days to win the White House, after Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July. Although she fell short, Harris offered an important example of true public service, Biden said.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      “She ran an inspiring campaign, and everyone got to see something that I learned early on to respect so much: her character,” Biden said. “She gave her wholeheart[ed] effort, and she and her entire team should be proud of the campaign they ran.”The president similarly applauded the thousands of poll workers who ensured a safe and smooth election day, pointing to their work as an example of the country’s “honest”, “fair” and “transparent” election system. Trump and his allies have repeatedly raised baseless doubts about the integrity of the US election system, although they were notably quiet on that subject after Republicans’ strong performance on Tuesday.Biden did not shy away from addressing Democrats’ disappointment and sorrow over the election results, which gave Republicans control of the White House and the Senate. The House of Representatives remained too close to call on Thursday afternoon, but Republicans expressed confidence that they would maintain their narrow majority in the lower chamber.Biden commended his administration on a “historic presidency” that included the passage of several landmark bills addressing infrastructure, the climate crisis and healthcare. Those laws would continue to reap benefits for the American people for years and even decades into the future, Biden said on Thursday.“I know it’s a difficult time. You’re hurting. I hear you and I see you,” Biden told his colleagues. “But don’t forget. Don’t forget all that we accomplished.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTurning his attention to the final weeks of his presidency, Biden pledged to continue doing the work of the American people over the next 74 days.“Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable,” Biden said. “We all get knocked down, but the measure of our character, as my dad would say, is how quickly we get back up.”Biden, who has repeatedly asserted that America’s best days are still ahead, leaned on his trademark optimism to offer a pep talk to the nation. History is long, Biden reminded his country, and Trump’s victory serves as only one chapter in a much more expansive story.“A defeat does not mean we are defeated. We lost this battle. The America of your dreams is calling for you to get back up. That’s the story of America for over 240 years and counting,” Biden said.“The American experiment endures. We’re going to be OK, but we need to stay engaged. We need to keep going. And above all: we need to keep the faith.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Here’s how the American press can survive four years of Trump | Margaret Sullivan

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      Everything we know about the next US president suggests that the press in America will be under siege in the next four years as never before.After all, Donald Trump has portrayed the media as the “enemy of the people”, has suggested that he wouldn’t mind seeing journalists get shot, and, in recent months, has sued CBS News and the Pulitzer prize organization.Now, with what he considers a mandate, he’ll want to push harder.“He’ll use every tool that he has, and there are many available to him,” predicted Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Post and the author of Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post, published last year.Baron told me on Wednesday that the president-elect had long been on a mission to undermine the mainstream media, and that he would be more empowered in a second term.Every would-be autocrat sees to it, after all, that an independent press doesn’t get in his way. Often, it’s one of the first democratic guardrails to be kicked down as a nation moves in an authoritarian direction.“Trump is salivating at the chance to sue a journalist for a leak of a classified document,” Baron said, perhaps using the century-old Espionage Act to exact a harsh punishment, even a prison term.With an aggressive attorney general – more combative than Jeff Sessions, whom Trump criticized for not being tough enough – that may be doable.And if even more source material is deemed classified, almost any story based on a leak can be depicted as a threat to national security.Another tactic: Trump’s allies will bankroll legal actions against the press, as the tech investor Peter Thiel did in a lawsuit against Gawker in 2016, forcing the media company into bankruptcy while portraying himself as a champion of quality journalism.Baron also sees Trump and friends threatening advertisers whose revenue keeps media companies in business – “and they will run for cover”.Then, if media outlets become sufficiently weakened, his allies may buy them and turn them into propaganda arms.Another likely move is to stonewall the press, making the job of informing the public much harder.Trump’s true believers, installed throughout the government, from the intelligence agencies to the IRS to the defense department, will anticipate what Trump wants and be hostile to reporters, Baron predicted. “Journalists will hit roadblocks constantly.”Toward the same end, legislation that weakens the Freedom of Information Act – which allows the press and the public the right to see much of what their government is doing – would be easy enough to enact with a Trump-friendly Congress.How to defend against all this?Baron hopes that media lawyers are already working on contingency plans to combat these moves, and that the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press will have the resources it needs to help as challenges arise. The non-profit provides pro bono legal representation to news organizations, reporters, documentary film-makers and others; and often contributes court documents to support journalists’ fights to protect their newsgathering.On Wednesday, the Reporters Committee sent out a fundraising email with a dire message beginning: “We won’t mince words – the next Trump administration poses a serious threat to press freedom.”I spoke on Thursday with Bruce Brown, the non-profit’s longtime executive director, who told me it will be important “to separate the daily indignations from the true legal threats” that are likely on their way. But, he said: “We have to prepare and be clear-eyed and get ready to act.”The organization is ready, though, with 20 lawyers on staff, many who worked on these issues during the first Trump administration. “In 2016, we were a third the size we are now, and we have lawyers with vastly more experience.”Major media organizations, he said, “need to stick together and not let him peel them off one by one”.More broadly, Marty Baron believes that the mainstream press needs to work on its trust problem.It needs to improve how it presents itself to the public, given that so many people are willing to believe that today’s journalism is part of the problem rather than a pillar of democracy.Bezos’s decision to quash a Post endorsement of Kamala Harris certainly didn’t help with enhancing trust, though the owner claimed he was motivated by wanting his paper to appear non-partisan; about 250,000 subscribers disagreed, cancelling in anger or disgust.Baron (who was critical of the decision to yank the editorial) urges the press to be “radically transparent” with the public.For example, journalists should provide access to full versions of the audio and video that their stories are based on, and should allow people to examine original documents or data sets.“The message,” he said, “should be ‘check my work’.”Baron also believes “the press has a lot to learn about what people’s genuine concerns are,” and should try harder to reach audiences of all political stripes.Trump’s messages about immigration, he believes, have found such fertile ground partly because of people’s worries, whether evidence-based or not, about jobs and salaries.Rebuilding trust is a long-term project. But the Trump-induced challenges are immediate.To survive them, the press needs to get ready now.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Rogan, Musk and an emboldened manosphere salute Trump’s win: ‘Let that sink in’

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      Late on Tuesday night, when it became clear that Donald Trump would be re-elected as president of the United States, the so-called “heterodoxy” was elated.For years, these male podcasters, influencers and public figures had marketed themselves as free-thinking pundits who evaded the bounds of political classification. “Their political views could once have been described as libertarian,” Anna Merlan wrote for the Guardian in August; the word used to describe them pointed to the same, derived from the Greek heteros, meaning other, and doxa, meaning opinion.However, in 2024, the heterodoxy universally endorsed, supported and celebrated the hyper-masculine promise of Trump. This has created a moment in which the vast majority of online voices who appeal to young men are explicitly pro-Trump. In the wake of his win, those who at least feigned political ambivalence now feel no need to moderate themselves.Joe Rogan reacted to Trump’s win on Tuesday night by yelling a reverential “holy shit” in a video he posted to X that showed him watching Trump’s election party on Fox News. Rogan, whose chart-topping podcast has an estimated 81% male audience, considers himself more of a conversationalist than a pundit but nevertheless endorsed Trump hours before the election, after hosting Trump and JD Vance on The Joe Rogan Experience. (He invited Kamala Harris, but they could not agree on interview terms.)Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary and then voted libertarian, and initially liked Robert F Kennedy Jr in 2024. He has supported left-leaning policies like drug and marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage and abortion rights, though he vehemently opposes gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Ultimately, he attributed his pivot to Trump to Elon Musk, the last guest to appear on his podcast before the election.“If it wasn’t for him we’d be fucked,” Rogan posted, referring to Musk. “He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.”Musk, who is generally well-liked among heterodox figures and their supporters, was gleeful as it became clear that Trump had won. He posted a picture to X showing him holding a sink in the Oval Office – a reference to his 2022 takeover of Twitter HQ – captioned “let that sink in”, seemingly relishing the business success and policy influence he anticipates having under a second Trump administration, which he helped secure.Musk’s shift to the far right – after voting for Obama and opposing Trump in 2016 – became noticeable during the pandemic, when he became frustrated that lockdown requirements were slowing production at SpaceX and Tesla. Since taking over Twitter, now X, he has re-platformed Trump and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones as well as racist and sexist provocateurs like the white nationalist Nick Fuentes. “Your body, my choice. Forever,” Fuentes posted on Tuesday night; the phrase has been making rounds on social media since. Musk personally shares an increasingly large volume of far-right content on his own page – especially transphobic content, seemingly in response to his estranged daughter coming out as transgender.While final election data has yet to be released, initial exit polling indicates that men, and particularly young men aged 18-29, were a crucial pillar of support for Trump. Now more than ever, young men are at odds with more liberal young women, supporting Trump over Harris 56% to 42%, while young women preferred Harris 58% to 40%, according to exit polls. These young men, especially those without a college degree, have expressed feeling unfulfilled, dissatisfied with their jobs and lives, and desirous of a society and home life with traditional gender roles. For years, media outlets have documented how more and more young men have been radicalized after consuming content from right-leaning entertainers and commentators, especially on platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Now, as more of those men have reached voting age, this phenomenon appears to be benefiting Trump and the far right.One 2021 study found that a leading predictor of support for Trump – over party affiliation, gender, race and education level – was belief in “hegemonic masculinity”, defined as believing that men should be in positions of power, be “mentally, physically, and emotionally tough”, and reject anything considered feminine or gay. Some heterodox influencers gained a following by embodying or promoting precisely this brand of masculinity, and giving their followers a script for blaming dissatisfaction on women.Jordan Peterson, who has built a career as a pop pseudo-psychologist promoting patriarchy and the revival of the “masculine spirit”, considers himself to be “devoid of ideology”, but has aligned himself with rightwing figures like Tucker Carlson, Andy Ngo and Matt Walsh and frequently decried the media’s coverage of Trump, calling it biased. He was quick to celebrate Trump’s victory – albeit in a backhanded way. “Thank Heaven for working class slobs,” he posted to X at 1.40am.Nico Kenn De Balinthazy, better known by his YouTube moniker Sneako, took to the streets of New York on Tuesday night in a Make America Great Again hat and an American flag draped around his shoulders. Sneako, who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 before switching his allegiance to Trump, could be seen trying to provoke the people around him, gloating as the results came in. He loudly laughed at one woman who was crying. The day before the election, he had posted on X: “Kamala Harris is proof that women shouldn’t vote.”Not every heterodox figure has been explicitly pro-Trump this year. Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, which is overwhelmingly geared toward men (particularly college-age men), was also quick to react to the election results. In a video posted to his Instagram, Portnoy – who has been accused of consistently misogynistic behavior both at and outside work – didn’t celebrate Trump, who he has never endorsed, but he expressed indignation at liberal voters.“People like myself, independents, moderates – the Democrats gave us no choice,” Portnoy said, at times slurring his words. “That was the worst campaign. And their pure arrogance and their moral superiority have driven people away. If you say you’re voting for Trump, suddenly you’re a Nazi, you’re Hitler, you’re garbage. Enough. Enough.”Lex Fridman never endorsed Trump either. The science and politics podcast host is less brash than the bulk of the heterodoxy, but is still popular among young men and still friendly to rightwing figures like Carlson and the former Trump adviser Stephen Miller when they stop by for interviews. On election night, he replied to Musk’s enthusiasm for Trump with a rocket emoji and “LFG!”He also was sure to acknowledge a perceived win for himself as he celebrated Trump’s. “PS: Long-form podcasts FTW,” he posted. “I hope to see politicians from both sides doing 2-3+ hour genuine, human conversations moving forward.”During this election cycle, Trump’s embrace of the bro-centric podcast scene came as he sidelined (and in some cases, fumbled) traditional campaign tactics like door-knocking and canvassing. This choice appears to have had no negative effect on his election bid. In fact, it may have even helped him. Trump’s victory could very well be an emboldening choice among heterodoxy figures, who now see the possible fruits of openly embracing the right. They certainly aren’t going away. 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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      It’s OK to feel despair at Trump’s victory. The important thing is not to give up | Polly Toynbee

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      With wailing woe in the small hours, many of you shared that wrenching despair when the US election result extinguished hope. Beyond reason, beyond reckoning, a nation that was once the beacon of the democratic world has knowingly elected a dangerous, racist demagogue, a “pussy-grabbing” criminal who tried to overthrow the government, a wild conspiracy spreader, a squalid, reckless beast of fathomless vanity and corruption. Caligula, Commodus, Nero, Domitian … This is the way a civilisation dies: by suicide not murder.Donald Trump could now command both houses of Congress and the supreme court, with no steadying countervailing instinct for national self-preservation. “America first” means no allies, no “special relationships”, tariffs for all. Encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want”, Nato be damned. He will send in the military to force mass deportations of millions of migrants. He threatens the justice system with revenge, with protesters and opponents branded “the enemy within”. This democratically elected self-described “dictator” can do whatever he wants. And the tides will carry this poison across the Atlantic, invigorating Europe’s hard right from Nigel Farage to Viktor Orbán, Geert Wilders to Marine Le Pen, the Alternative für Deutschland to the Sweden Democrats.On the morning of the result I was speaking to US students visiting the UK from Pennsylvania, Virginia and New Jersey. One had her head bowed, sighing. Another told me she had wept. They were mainly liberals, the sort who might choose a semester in Europe, and were distressed at how many fellow students had not voted. “My Republican uncle lives up the road, but we don’t speak, not since he had Obama toilet paper when we visited at Thanksgiving. He genuinely believes Kamala is a street walker.” They talk of abortion rights and deep dark misogyny: “American men will not vote for a woman,” one said, and others agreed. Trump voters live across a divide for ever unbridgeable to them. How can this be happening, they want to know. How can civilisation be so fragile?But enough of this, before I rant myself to lunacy, fearing a dark future for children and grandchildren. Is it wise or useful to feel a political event as such a visceral, gut-punching personal calamity? Pollsters remind us that most normal people most of the time think little about politics. Asked “How often, if at all, do you discuss government and politics with others”, 30% say never, 19% a few times a month, 19% less often, leaving 32% at a few times a week and 10% nearly every day. Political obsessives (you and me, Guardian readers) are odd. If you live and breathe it, if you see the world and everything that happens through a political and sociological lens, you are unusual. Many others can travel through life thinking only of family, work and friends without much curiosity about who is governing, how and why, beyond perhaps a distant dislike.Out canvassing you find plenty who say they don’t care about “politics”, as if it were a hobby for a few and not a citizen’s duty nor a question of self-interest. I resist the instinct to shake some sense into them. I do say that “politics” is everything: the ambulance or police car that does or doesn’t arrive, the quality of your air and water, safety of your food or medicines, tax you pay, pensions you draw, the streets and parks, the arts, sports stadiums – and the fairness of how we live. I usually expect a laconic shrug.Is that a better way to be for your own sanity? Life on the left is a long and often unhappy journey through dashed hopes and deep disappointments, elections lost and lost again. The people will insist on making the wrong choices at the ballot box – perverse, nonsensical and against their own interests. Once in a while all that losing gets punctuated by a burst of radiant sunlight when the left occasionally wins – in Britain in my lifetime in 1964, 1974, 1997 and this good year. But when they do succeed, watch how many on the left prefer to get their disillusion in early when their government fails to fix everything all at once, veers off course or compromises with the voters.The Brexit referendum result felt like a shutter falling across the country, dividing us as never before, while casting us adrift from the mainland of our home continent. I found it hard enough then to inhabit the mind of Brexit voters who had done this to us, but to think yourself into the impenetrable Trump-voting psyche is 100 times harder. No, this is not just “metropolitan elite” obtuseness: the other side is equally uncomprehending.Not long before he died, I had a long conversation with the economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who said research shows that those on the left are much less happy than those on the right: US Republicans have always outscored Democrats on the happiness scale. I can see why seething outrage at social injustice and indignation at reactionary governments that defend the interests of the rich against the chances of children is not a pathway to contentment. In comparison, look at the easeful life of complacent conservatism, perched like a Cheshire cat beaming down from the high branches of power.Would it be better to give up all this angst and agonising and arguing? Let things be? Do the gardening, try gourmet cooking, re-read classics of yesteryear, forget whatever public realm lies beyond the immediate horizon of your own small sphere. No, of course not. There is no escaping the danger of Trumpism, only escapism. The unexamined life is not worth living, said Socrates, and that applies equally to the unexamined society in which we live. And when you do examine it, action is required. Each time, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again confronting the forces of conservatism. The more vicious they become now, the greater the duty to resist. “Never give up,” said the vanquished and exhausted Kamala Harris.

      Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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      How California has been ‘Trump-proofing’ itself against federal reprisal

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      California prided itself on its resistance to Donald Trump during his first term as president and will hardly have to scramble to assume the same role a second time around.Indeed, as a bastion of Democratic party strength in a country moving sharply to the right, it has been preparing for this moment for a long time.“California will continue to be at the forefront of progress, the fulcrum of democracy, the champion of innovation, and the protector of our rights and freedoms,” Adam Schiff, the state’s newly elected senator and a frequent target of Trump’s wrath, promised supporters on election night.On Thursday, Gavin Newsom announced a special session of the California legislature to ensure the attorney general’s office and other state agencies have the funding they need. “We won’t sit idle,” the governor said. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond.”Even with Trump out of power since 2021, California has been setting up guardrails to protect its resident’s rights under an adversarial federal government. The state has enshrined abortion rights in its constitution, passed a ballot initiative explicitly defending the right of same-sex couples to marry and pushed for tougher gun laws that still adhere to the supreme court’s narrow interpretation of the right to bear arms.It has even considered establishing state funding to meet the cost of wildfires, earthquakes and other natural disasters in case the Trump administration decides to withhold emergency funds from states it deems to be politically hostile, as it sometimes did during its 2017-21 term.View image in fullscreen“We’ve been Trump-proofing the place,” said Elizabeth Ashford, a political consultant who has worked for governors on both sides of the aisle and was Kamala Harris’s chief of staff when she was California’s attorney general. “The work … has been to put measures in place that can withstand shifts in Washington and on the supreme court. These projects have been going on for years.”Asked how ready she thought California was for the new administration, Ashford said: “On a scale from one to 100, we’re starting at about 90.”California is both the most populous US state and its most powerful economy, making it an unusual counterweight to the power of the federal government. It has, for example, negotiated directly with car manufacturers over tailpipe emission standards, thus circumventing the avowed desire of Trump’s allies to end a long-established rule that allows the state to set its own standards.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Where it cannot work around the federal government, it can seek to challenge any hint of government overreach in the courts, as it did more than 130 times during the first Trump administration. Rob Bonta, the state attorney general, told the policy news outlet CalMatters last week that his team had prepared briefs and tested arguments on a range of issues – everything from limits on abortion medication to gun laws and upholding the civil rights of transgender young people.“The best way to protect California, its values, the rights of our people, is to be prepared,” Bonta told CalMatters. “Unfortunately, it’s a long list.”In a statement on Wednesday, Bonta said California will “continue to move forward driven by our values and the ongoing pursuit of progress”. He added: “I’ll use the full force of the law and the full authority of my office to ensure it.”It is unlikely to take long for California and the new administration to butt heads. Newsom has a long record as a Trump antagonist and spent much of the election campaign traveling the country to promote Democratic candidates – all of which makes him a likely lightning rod for Trump’s ire.View image in fullscreenTrump has called Newsom “one of the worst governors in the country” and nicknamed him “New-scum”. Their rivalry is also personal, since Newsom’s ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, is engaged to Donald Trump Jr.Trump’s former staffers have made little secret of their wish to disrupt the Democratic party’s stranglehold over California politics and have spelled out their intentions in documents like the Project 2025 blueprint that became a lightning rod during the election campaign. Despite Trump’s attempts to distance himself from it, California officials have studied Project 2025 carefully and are assuming it will form the policy backbone of the new administration. One California congressman, Jared Huffman, has described it as a “dystopian nightmare”.There are several ways in which the state can try to disrupt that nightmare. During Trump’s first presidency, for example, state agencies including the California highway patrol refused to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency tasked with aggressive round-ups of immigrants without papers. Police in so-called “sanctuary cities” were similarly protective of their immigrant populations.For all the preparation, though, state officials fear that the new Trump administration will be more organized and more radical than the old one, and that it will have more of a political mandate since a groundswell of California voters – many more than in 2020 or in 2016 – have indicated they are sympathetic to parts of the Trump agenda.Newsom said last week he was particularly concerned about the prospect of widespread raids on immigrants, which could prove devastating to the immigrant-dependent California economy including the vast agricultural concerns based largely in the inland Central valley.There may be other parts of the Trump agenda which, if enacted, could prove difficult to reverse – a national abortion ban passed by Congress, say, or a repeal of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. And that has many advocacy groups deeply worried about the vulnerable populations they serve.“Our community is feeling very anxious and uncertain,” said Terra Russell-Slavin, a lawyer with the Los Angeles LGBT Center, “particularly given the number of attacks that Trump has explosively targeted toward the LGBTQ community and specifically the trans community”.In response, Russell-Slavin said her organization was working with state and local governments to find alternative funding streams should the federal government cut back on gender-affirming healthcare or homelessness services or senior services. “We’re very fortunate that our lawmakers are overwhelmingly supportive,” she said. “We are very confident they will fight for protections for us.”Will that be enough? For now, California officials are showing their teeth and vowing to fight. But Newsom, for one, is under no illusions about how much is at stake. “No state,” he said last week, “has more to lose or more to gain in this election.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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