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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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      US presidential election updates: Trump demands Senate streamline his cabinet picks as recruitment begins

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      President-elect Donald Trump has demanded the incoming Republican leader in the Senate streamline the temporary approval of his cabinet appointees, as his team begins assembling the incoming White House team.Three Republicans are vying to replace incumbent majority leader Mitch McConnell ahead of a party vote on Wednesday. Senator Rick Scott of Florida has earned endorsements from Trump’s Maga camp, including from Robert F Kennedy Jr, Elon Musk and Marco Rubio – each of whom has been speculated to be among Trump’s top team.“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments,” Trump posted on social media, referring to a controversial measure that would put his cabinet picks in office while temporarily sidestepping a lengthy Senate confirmation process.

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      The president-elect also announced he was bringing back hardline immigration official Tom Homan to oversee the country’s borders and deportation efforts in the incoming administration, labelling Homan “the border czar”. Trump is meeting with potential candidates to serve in his administration and has charged his longtime friend Howard Lutnick with recruiting officials who will deliver, rather than dilute, his agenda.Here’s what else happened on Sunday:US presidential election news and updates

      Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin on Thursday and advised him not to escalate the war in Ukraine, reminding him of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe”, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. The US president-elect expressed interest in follow-up conversations on “the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon”, the Post reported. Trump also spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday evening, agreeing to work together towards peace in Europe.

      Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he has had “good and very important conversations” with Trump, speaking three times since Tuesday’s election, according to Reuters. “We see eye to eye on the Iranian threat in all its components, and the danger posed by it,” Netanyahu said. In the US, the anti-war Uncommitted movement plans to continue its activism and has blamed Trump’s win on Democrats’ handling of conflict in the Middle East.

      Trump was declared the winner in Arizona, completing the Republicans’ clean sweep of the so-called swing states and rubbing salt in Democrats’ wounds as it was announced that the president-elect is scheduled to meet with Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the presidential handover.

      Republicans on Sunday appeared close to clinching control of the US House of Representatives, after Republican Eli Crane won reelection to a US House seat representing Arizona’s second congressional district late on Saturday.

      Bitcoin soared to a new record high, passing $80,000 for the first time in its history shortly after 7pm ET, according to Agence France-Presse. The cryptocurrency has kept climbing since Trump’s victory.

      Trump’s talk of revoking broadcast licenses and jailing journalists could undermine press freedom, advocates have warned. The president-elect’s campaign was marked by hostile rhetoric towards journalists and calls for punishing television networks and prosecuting journalists and their sources.

      Some companies have been moving factories from China to Southeast Asia, anticipating Trump could slap high tariffs on Beijing when he returns to the White House, industrial park developers in the region say.

      Bernie Sanders said he opposes any move to urge the senior liberal justice on the US supreme court to step down for a younger liberal replacement before Biden’s term ends. Sonia Sotomayor, 70, is known to suffer from health issues, and some Democrats fear Trump could have the opportunity to nominate a new justice and further shore up the top court’s conservative bent.

      Sanders also defended his comments that Democrats abandoned working-class voters, after Nancy Pelosi slammed Sanders for his statement, telling the New York Times, “I don’t respect him [for] saying that that”. The party is grappling with the implications of its electoral defeat and faces a likely brutal civil war over the best way forward.
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      Sweep of swing states rubs salt in Democrats’ wounds as Trump prepares to meet Biden

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

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

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

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      ‘I hate lying to her’: US couples on voting against their partners’ candidates

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      In the 2024 election, women turned out for Kamala Harris, while men were instrumental in securing Donald Trump’s win, according to early polling information. In some cases, those women and men were married to each other or otherwise romantically involved. In other relationships, it was the men who voted for Harris, while their female partners voted for Trump.Here, Americans who voted differently from their partners shared with the Guardian how such partisan views have affected their relationship, what it was like to “cancel out” a loved one’s vote, and why some kept their votes secret. Some requested to keep their identities anonymous to discuss personal matters.‘The only thing keeping me in this marriage is my teenagers’I’m voting for Harris, and I fight about it often with my husband. I’m disgusted with him for how he has changed from the man I married to supporting a candidate who is anti-everything in our personal lives. We have a trans child, a female child, a disabled child, mixed-race grandchildren, all of whom are hated by the Maga party. I’ve always been an independent feminist who bases beliefs on logic, facts and empathy. Living with a person who can’t admit to being wrong when facts are presented and no longer supports independent women is its own sort of hell. The only thing keeping me in this marriage is my teenagers. Thankfully, they’re juniors in high school, so I only have one and a half years to be stuck in it. Anonymous, caretaker, indie author and editor, 47, IllinoisView image in fullscreen‘I hate lying to her, but it’s for the best’I’ve been dating my girlfriend for 10 months. We met through a mutual friend at her church, and got along instantly. I love her to death. We celebrated Halloween and dressed up as ghosts.I secretly voted for Kamala Harris. I told my girlfriend that I wasn’t voting, and she doesn’t doubt it. She once said that Trump is America’s last hope, and that he is God’s chosen candidate. It was horrifying. I was internally screaming “WTF”. She has also said that the allegations against him are all lies; part of a “secret plot” to destroy him. But I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I feel dishonest. I hate lying, but it’s for the best. I’d hate to see her go insane over my vote, but I know she would. Not only that, but her father would disapprove of our relationship if he knew. He would disapprove of her just for dating me. I can’t risk that, ever. Anonymous, computer science student, 22, Joplin, MO‘He calls me stupid’It has been hell since the moment Trump announced his candidacy. Hubby, who voted for Clinton and Obama (he says he now regrets doing that), is brainwashed Maga to the core and watches Fox incessantly. It was affecting my physical and emotional health. He uses abusive language, calls me stupid when I explain my main concerns are education, health, climate change, moral standards and so on. He is an old man who has felt disenfranchised and diminished by social change.I met him in a club on a girls’ night, and we’ve been married for 37 years. No children, but he has a daughter and two granddaughters from a previous marriage who I have a great relationship with. And we have a cat! The evil spewed by Trump has made our life bizarre. But at this point, I’m in it for the long haul. Anonymous, retired educator and scientist , Florida‘We will still have sex tonight’It is election night as I write this. I’m sitting in the nursery holding our five-month old baby while he naps. My conservative husband is downstairs with our six-year old, probably listening to live election coverage that leans far right in perspective. He asked me how I was feeling today and I said fine. I know when I’m on my deathbed, I will not be thinking about Donald Trump, I’ll be thinking of my family. I’ll be thinking of my husband who yes, voted for Trump not once but three times but is also smart (yes, very smart), and my favorite person in the world. Now that the poll results are pouring in, I feel upset that my husband can support a misogynistic, racist and manipulative candidate. I also heard my husband’s concerns about another four years of a liberal leadership, and he is not wrong. He is just less right. And we will still have sex tonight. Susie, 39, from Colorado‘My wife expects Trump to stop funding mass slaughter’I voted for Jill Stein. Almost every Democrat we met voted for Jill Stein because she opposes what is happening in the Ukraine and Gaza (and the West Bank), especially Gaza. My wife voted for Donald Trump because she doesn’t believe a word he actually says and she expects him to stop funding mass slaughter. We think similarly about politics, but my wife doesn’t want the Democrats in power because they are warmongers, whereas I will not vote for anyone who endorses a genocide or an unjust war. Voting differently hasn’t affected our relationship in the least. Anonymous, artist, 69, Tucson, ArizonaView image in fullscreen‘I wrote in Jesus Christ, my husband voted Trump’I couldn’t vote for Harris because she is pro-abortion, and strong on that. Although I am strongly pro-life, I do think laws need to be refined to protect women who are miscarrying and to protect the life of the mother. I could not vote for Trump because he is mentally ill and unstable. I think he has turned the immigration issue into racism. My biggest issues are to protect and support Israel, to find a humane way to screen immigrants and help true asylum seekers, while protecting our country from real criminals, not illegals. So I wrote in Jesus Christ. My husband voted Trump. We can agree to disagree. We both have freedom to vote our conscience. Anonymous, retired RN and homeschool teacher, 58, Kingston, Tennessee‘Our love is more important than our disagreements’My wife and I have been together since 2019, married in 2022. I voted for Harris, she didn’t. It’s been a strain on our relationship and we have developed policies – such as when it gets too heated, either of us can say “peace out” – and we are working on listening thoroughly to each other. The election won’t affect our relationship. We’ve agreed on that! Our love is more important than our disagreements. Ross R Mason, 62, vice-president at EarthX Media Inc, Dallas, Texasskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion‘I don’t feel like my best self when I have to defend my values to my spouse’I really don’t understand how my husband can like Trump. We used to make fun of him when he was on The Apprentice. He is a smart man, and he believes these buffoons. I voted for Harris. I support women’s reproductive rights, and that was one of the most important issues for me. I also feel that she is sane and not divisive. My husband and I agreed when Harris got on the ticket that we would not discuss politics. If we do, it sours our relationship. It has worked for the most part. I don’t feel like my best self when I have to defend my values to my spouse. Anonymous, librarian, 47, from Oregon‘I love his determination to do his best’About 27 years ago, I met my husband on a blind date. Two years later, we married. He voted for Trump, I voted for Harris. It’s not a secret; my husband knows what’s important to me. I’m extremely aggravated by his preference for Fox News, which I see as a successful propaganda machine. However, while I don’t care for his political perspectives and practices, I love his intellectual capacity, his sense of humor and his determination to do his best. Anonymous, retired educator, 78, from Tucson, ArizonaView image in fullscreen‘He chose a misogynistic racist over me’We’ve been married 40 too many years and basically canceled each other’s votes. I’ve been involved in politics since my 20s and consider myself as a liberal. There have been many arguments since my husband started to espouse Trump gaslighting. I hate the fact that he would choose a misogynistic racist over me, a woman. Abortion and immigration issues mattered to me this election. Most of our relatives came to the US as illegals and now this immigration rhetoric comes up? We both agreed not to discuss politics, though. We’ll keep on keeping on. Rebeca Guevara, 76, retired nurse from Laredo, Texas‘This makes me question the relationship’My partner knows who I voted for, but we just don’t talk about politics. I’d love to be able to have a discussion with him about the issues, but he usually changes the subject. While I consider myself a moderate (I’d vote for someone like Mitt Romney if he was the Republican candidate), he gets most of his political insights from Fox News. He sees Trump as strong and believes that he’d be worse off financially if Harris had won (he and I are both in a good position financially, but we’re not nearly rich enough to be better off under Trump).We met online almost two years ago and are in a committed relationship, but we both have kids from previous marriages and are not planning to live together anytime soon. The fact we can’t even have a discussion about the election makes me question the relationship. Anonymous, 51, Columbus, Ohio, with a management position in engineeringResponses have been edited for clarity. Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Trump’s wild threats put press freedom in the crosshairs in second term

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      Donald Trump could have an easier time limiting press freedom in his second term in the White House after a campaign marked by virulent rhetoric towards journalists and calls for punishing television networks and prosecuting journalists and their sources, legal scholars and journalism advocacy groups warn.Aside from worries about Trump’s demonization of the press inciting violence against journalists, free press advocates appear to be most alarmed by Trump’s call for the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revoke TV networks’ broadcast licenses and talk of jailing journalists who refuse to reveal anonymous sources.Still, despite a conservative majority on the supreme court and likely Republican control of the House and Senate, those same people also say that America’s robust first amendment protections and a legislative proposal and technology to protect sources mean that a diminished press under Trump is not a certainty.“My big-picture concern is that Trump is going to do exactly what he has been telling us that he wants to do, which is that he is going to punish his critics,” said Heidi Kitrosser, a Northwestern University law professor.Kitrosser added: “He is going to punish people who dissent from his approach to things, people who criticize him and also, perhaps more importantly, investigative journalists and their sources who are not offering opinions but are exposing facts that he finds embarrassing or inconvenient.”Trump has long said journalists deliver “fake news” and are the “enemy of the people”, but since leaving office in 2021 he has used more violent language. At a 2022 rally in Texas, Trump suggested that the threat of rape in prison could compel a journalist to reveal their sources.“When this person realizes that he is going to be the bride of another prisoner shortly, he will say, ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that was,’” Trump said.At a recent campaign rally, Trump also said that given where the press was located at the event, if someone were to try to assassinate him, the person “would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much”.Kash Patel, who could be appointed as acting attorney general or head of the CIA, frequently talks of the “deep state” and told the far-right Trump ally Steve Bannon in a podcast interview: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media … We’re going to come after you.”Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said it was “entirely possible that [Trump] is just bloviating”.In his earlier campaigns and first term in office, Trump “was on the campaign trail calling them names and riling up crowds, but he was not actively saying, ‘I want to throw them in jail,’” Timm said.Trump also posted on Twitter during his first term about revoking broadcasters’ licenses when they put out “fake news”.After the tweets, Ajit Pai, then the FCC chair appointed by Trump, said: “I believe in the first amendment.”View image in fullscreen“Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on a particular newscast,” Pai explained.But Trump and his supporters talked more about revoking the licenses during his second run for the White House. CNN reported in October that Trump had over the last two years said at least 15 times that the government should take such actions.After a 60 Minutes interview in October that contained an answer from Kamala Harris about the war in Gaza that differed from her response in a trailer for the interview, Trump called CBS a “threat to democracy” and said its license should be revoked.An FCC commissioner appointed by Trump recently also said that NBC could lose its license for having Harris appear on Saturday Night Live before the election and not giving equal time to Trump.Another Trump-appointed FCC commissioner said it “would not be inappropriate for the commission” to investigate the complaint about the 60 Minutes interview.“That is even more disturbing, because it means that it’s not just Trump wildly spewing off the cuff. It means that two of the five current FCC chairs might be amenable to this argument,” Timm said.Still, it is unlikely that the FCC would be able to revoke a broadcaster’s license before the end of Trump’s term, according to Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior counselor for the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe commission only revokes a license when a broadcaster goes off the air, Schwartzman said. The government agency could then take back the spectrum licensed to the station in case someone else would like to use it.The commission could deny a license renewal, but none are up for renewal until June 2028, and the commission would not be able to even decide to hold a hearing on a renewal before the end of Trump’s second term in office, Schwartzman said.As to cracking down on whistleblowers and journalists, Trump could use the Espionage Act, which allows the government to pursue people who share information with journalists related to national security, Kitrosser said.Barack Obama was also aggressive in his use of the law to prosecute whistleblowers during his presidency.Kitrosser said she was “very, very disturbed” by Obama’s crackdown on media sources.But the difference between the Obama administration’s effort and Trump’s call for prosecuting journalists and sources who leak information is that Trump has repeatedly said: “He does not think that criticism of him, criticism of judges that he appoints, criticism of his policies … should be protected,” Kitrosser said. “Not to protect national security, but to protect himself, and I think that is really the fundamental difference between Obama and Trump.”The Trump administration will probably have an easier time pursuing sources than journalists.“I think courts will be more receptive to the argument that the first amendment bars media prosecutions of journalists under the Espionage Act than they have been receptive to those claims by media sources,” Kitrosser said.To protect sources, journalists could also start to rely more on encryption communication tools like Signal in a second Trump term. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has urged journalists to start using such technology.The organization is also lobbying for the passage of the Press Act, which would prohibit the federal government from compelling journalists to disclose certain protected information, except in limited circumstances such as to prevent terrorism or imminent violence, and from spying on journalists through their technology providers.The House passed the bill unanimously. Three Republican senators have also sponsored the legislation, but it has stalled in committee because of a small group of Republicans, including Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who argued the bill would “open a floodgate of leaks damaging to law enforcement and our nation’s security”.“Too many journalists are little more than leftwing activists who are, at best, ambivalent about America and who are cavalier about our security and the truth,” Cotton wrote in a statement explaining his opposition.Timm, of the Press Foundation, said he was unsure whether the Senate would pass the legislation before Joe Biden leaves office.“The Democrats in the lame duck session are really going to have to prioritize it because when the Senate changes hands and the White House changes hands, there is probably little to no chance that this bill would pass,” Timm said. “It’s now or never for protecting journalists’ rights.” More

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      A new era dawns. America’s tech bros now strut their stuff in the corridors of power | Carole Cadwalladr

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      In hindsight, 2016 was the beginning of the beginning. And 2024 is the end of that beginning and the start of something much, much worse.It began as a tear in the information space, a dawning realisation that the world as we knew it – stable, fixed by facts, balustraded by evidence – was now a rip in the fabric of reality. And the turbulence that Trump is about to unleash – alongside pain and cruelty and hardship – is possible because that’s where we already live: in information chaos.It’s exactly eight years since we realised there were invisible undercurrents flowing beneath the surface of our world. Or perhaps I should talk for myself here. It was when I realised. A week before the 2016 US presidential election, I spotted a weird constellation of events and googled “tech disruption” + “democracy”, found not a single hit and pitched a piece to my editor.It was published on 6 November 2016. In it, I quoted the “technology mudslide hypothesis” a concept invented by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, who coined the term “disruption” – a process endlessly fetishised in tech circles, in which a scrappy upstart such as Microsoft could overthrow a colossus like IBM.Whoever wins, I wrote, this election represented “the Great Disruption. With Trump the Great Disruptor.” And, for good measure, I chucked in some questions: “Will democracy survive? Will Nato? Is a free and fair election possible in a post-truth world?”View image in fullscreenThat article was the beginning of my own Alice in Wonderland tumble down the rabbit hole. and I reread it with the sinking knowledge that this next presidential term may yet provide those answers. If it seems like I’m crowing, I wish. This isn’t a valedictory “I told you so”: it’s an eight-year anniversary reminder for us to wake up. And a serving of notice: the first stage of this process is now complete. And we have to understand what that means.We’ve spent those eight years learning a new lexicon: “misinformation”, “disinformation”, “microtargeting”. We’ve learned about information warfare. As journalists, we, like FBI investigators, used evidence to show how social media was a vulnerable “threat surface” that bad actors such as Cambridge Analytica and the Kremlin could exploit. PhDs have been written on the weaponisation of social media. But none of this helps us now.There’s already a judiciary subcommittee on the “weaponisation of the federal government” in Congress to investigate the “censorship industrial complex” – the idea that big tech is “censoring” Republican voices. For the past 18 months, it’s been subpoena-ing academics. Last week, Elon Musk tweeted that the next stage would be “prosecutions”. A friend of mine, an Ivy League professor on the list, texts to say the day will shortly come “where I will have to decide whether to stay or go”.View image in fullscreenTrump’s list of enemies is not theoretical. It already exists. My friend is on it. In 2022, Trump announced a “day one” executive order instructing “the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new online censorship regime … and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified”. And my friends in other countries know exactly where this leads.View image in fullscreenAnother message arrives from Maria Ressa, the Nobel prize-winning Filipino journalist. In the Philippines, the government is modelled on the US one and she writes about what happened when President Duterte controlled all three branches of it. “It took six months after he took office for our institutions to crumble.” And then she was arrested.What we did during the first wave of disruption, 2016-24, won’t work now. Can you “weaponise” social media when social media is the weapon? Remember the philosopher Marshall McLuhan – “the medium is the message”? Well the medium now is Musk. The world’s richest man bought a global communication platform and is now the shadow head of state of what was the world’s greatest superpower. That’s the message. Have you got it yet?Does the technology mudslide hypothesis now make sense? Of how a small innovation can eventually disrupt a legacy brand? That brand is truth. It’s evidence. It’s journalism. It’s science. It’s the Enlightenment. A niche concept you’ll find behind a paywall at the New York Times.You have a subscription? Enjoy your clean, hygienic, fact-checked news. Then come with me into the information sewers, where we will wade through the shit everyone else consumes. Trump is cholera. His hate, his lies – it’s an infection that’s in the drinking water now. Our information system is London’s stinking streets before the Victorian miracle of sanitation. We fixed that through engineering. But we haven’t fixed this. We had eight years to hold Silicon Valley to account. And we failed. Utterly.Because this, now, isn’t politics in any sense we understand it. The young men who came out for Trump were voting for protein powder and deadlifting as much as they were for a 78-year-old convicted felon. They were voting for bitcoin and weighted squats. For YouTube shorts and Twitch streams. For podcast bros and crypto bros and tech bros and the bro of bros: Elon Musk.Social media is mainstream media now. It’s where the majority of the world gets its news. Though who even cares about news? It’s where the world gets its memes and jokes and consumes its endlessly mutating trends. Forget “internet culture”. The internet is culture. And this is where this election was fought and won … long before a single person cast a ballot.Steve Bannon was right. Politics is downstream from culture. Chris Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, quoted his old boss to me in my first phone call with him. Elections are downstream from white men talking on platforms that white men built, juiced by invisible algorithms our broligarch overlords control. This is culture now.The Observer’s reporting on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica belongs to the old world order. An order that ended on 6 November 2024. That was the first wave of algorithmic disruption which gave us Brexit and Trump’s first term, when our rule-based norms creaked but still applied.View image in fullscreenThe challenge now is to understand that this world has gone. Mark Zuckerberg has ditched his suit, grown out his Caesar haircut and bought a rapper-style gold chain. He’s said one of his biggest regrets is apologising too much. Because he – like others in Silicon Valley – has read the runes. PayPal’s co-founder Peter Thiel, creeping around in the shadows, ensured his man, JD Vance, got on the presidential ticket. Musk wagered a Silicon Valley-style bet by going all in on Trump. Jeff Bezos, late to the party, jumped on the bandwagon with just days to go, ensuringhis Washington Post didn’t endorse any candidate.These bros know. They don’t fear journalists any more. Journalists will now learn to fear them. Because this is oligarchy now. This is the fusion of state and commercial power in a ruling elite. It’s not a coincidence that Musk spouts the Kremlin’s talking points and chats to Putin on the phone. The chaos of Russia in the 90s is the template; billions will be made, people will die, crimes will be committed.Our challenge is to realise that the first cycle of disruption is complete. We’re through the looking glass. We’re all wading through the information sewers. Trump is a bacillus but the problem is the pipes. We can and must fix this.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk More

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      in US Politics

      From Trump’s victory, a simple, inescapable message: many people despise the left | John Harris

      by

      There is no need to pick only a few of the many explanations of Donald Trump’s political comeback. Most of the endless reasons we have heard over the past five days ring true: inflation, incumbency, a flimsy Democratic campaign, white Americans’ seemingly eternal issues with race, and what one New York Times essayist recently called “a regressive idea of masculinity in which power over women is a birthright”. But there is another story that has so far been rather more overlooked, to do with how politics now works, and who voters think of when they enter the polling booth.Its most vivid element is about the left, and one inescapable fact: that a lot of people simply do not like us. In the UK, that is part of the reason why Brexit happened, why Nigel Farage is back, and why our new Labour government feels so flimsy and fragile. In the US, it goes some way to explaining why more than 75 million voters just rejected the supposedly progressive option, and chose a convicted criminal and unabashed insurrectionist to oversee their lives.The latter story goes beyond Kamala Harris and her failed pitch for power. When established parties on the progressive and conservative wings of politics go into an election, in the minds of many people, they represent a much larger set of forces, whether their candidates like it or not. After all, what people understand as the left and right operate far beyond the institutions of the state: political battles are fought in the media, on the street, in workplaces, campuses, and more. This has always been the case, but as social media turn the noise such activity makes into a deafening din, seeing most big parties and candidates as the tips of much larger icebergs becomes inevitable.Trump leads the movement that was responsible for the January 6 insurrection, has made less-than-subtle noises about his affinity with the far right, and makes absolutely no bones about any of it. For the Democrats, the lines that connect a centrist figure such as Harris to the wider US left tend to look much fuzzier, but that does not make millions of people’s perceptions of them any less real. Around the world, in fact, the left looks to many voters like a coherent bloc that goes from people who lie in the road and shut down universities to would-be presidents and prime ministers – the only difference between them, as some see it, is that radical activists are honest about their ideas, whereas the people who stand for office try to cover them up.What the US election result shows is that, when told to make a choice, millions of people will draw on those ideas, and ally themselves with the other political side. Many of them, of course, have arrived at that conclusion thanks to outright bigotry. But given the remarkable spread of votes for Trump – into Latino and black parts of the electorate, and states considered loyal Democratic heartlands, from California to New Jersey – that hardly explains the entirety of his win. What it highlights is something that many American, British and European people have known for the past 15 years, at least: that the left is now alienating huge chunks of its old base of support.That story has deep roots, partly bound up with the decline of political loyalties based around class: compared with 2008, 2024’s Democratic coalition was skewed towards the higher end of the income range, whereas Trump’s tilted in the other direction. The same kind of fracturing now seems to be affecting many ethnically based political loyalties: as Trump well knows, there are now large numbers of voters from minorities – and immigrant backgrounds – who largely accept rightwing ideas about immigration. That is partly because modern economies create such a desperate competition for rewards.But there seems to be more to it than that: polling shows the suggestion that “government should increase border security and enforcement” is supported by higher percentages of black and Hispanic voters than among white progressives – but the same applies to “most people can make it if they work hard” and “America is the greatest country in the world”. Growing chunks of the electorate, in other words, are not who the left think they are.Meanwhile, the widening political gap based around people’s education levels – voters without college degrees supported Trump by a 14-point margin, while Harris had a 13-point advantage among college-educated people – creates yet more problems. Some of them are to do with “wokeness” and its drawbacks. Because the cutting edge of left politics is often associated with institutions of higher education, ideas that are meant to be about inclusivity can easily turn into the opposite. The result is an agenda often expressed with a judgmental arrogance, and based around behavioural codes – to do with microaggressions, or the correct use of pronouns – that are very hard for people outside highly educated circles to navigate.At the same time, our online discourse hardens good intentions into an all-or-nothing style of activism that will not tolerate nuance or compromise. A message about the left then travels from one part of society to another: there is a transmission belt between clarion calls that do the rounds on college campuses, the Democratic mainstream, and unsettled voters in, say, suburban and rural Pennsylvania. And the right can therefore make hay, as evidenced by a Trump ad that was crass and cruel, but grimly effective: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”In its own ugly way, that line highlights what might have been Trump and his supporters’ strongest asset: the idea that, because they are so distant and privileged, modern progressives would rather ignore questions about everyday economics. Nearly 40% of all Americans say they have skipped meals in order to meet their housing payments, and more than 70% admit to living with economic anxiety. A second Trump term, of course, is hardly going to make that any better: the point is that he was able to successfully pretend that it would.That then opened the way for something even more jaw-dropping: Trump’s sudden claim to be a great unifier, something implicitly contrasted with progressives’ habit of separating people into demographic islands. It takes an almost evil level of chutzpah to flip from his hate and nastiness to a new message of love for most Americans, but consider what he saidabout his coalition of voters: “They came from all quarters: union, non-union, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American, Muslim American. We had everybody. And it was beautiful.” That is the increasingly familiar sound of populist tanks being parked on the left’s lawn.None of this is meant to imply that most progressive causes are mistaken, or to make any argument for leaning into Trumpism. What the state of politics across the west highlights is more about tone, strategy, empathy, and how to take people with you while trying to change society – as well as the platforms that poison democratic debate, and the harm they do to progressive politics. The next time you see someone on the left combusting with self-righteous fury on the hellscape now known as X, it’s worth remembering that its current owner is Elon Musk, who may be about to assist Trump in massively cutting US public spending, while cackling at the weakness of the president’s enemies, and their habit of walking into glaring traps.

      John Harris is a Guardian columnist More