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      Nancy Pelosi blames Joe Biden for election defeat as Democrats turn on each other – US politics live

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      Joe Biden’s slowness in exiting the 2024 presidential election cost the Democrats dearly, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said, days after Kamala Harris was beaten by Donald Trump.“We live with what happened,” Pelosi said.Pelosi was speaking to The Interview, a New York Times podcast, in a conversation the newspaper said would be published Saturday in full.“Had the president gotten out sooner,” Pelosi remarked, “there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.“And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”As Democrats engaged in bitter blame games over Harris’s defeat and a second presidency for Trump, who senior Democrats from Harris down freely called a “fascist”, Pelosi’s words landed like an explosive shell.The Times said Pelosi “went to great lengths to defend the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments, most of which took place during his first two years, when she was the House speaker”.Pelosi reportedly played a key role in persuading Biden to stand aside. But she has not sought to soothe his feelings. In August, she told the New Yorker she had “never been that impressed with his political operation”.Russia’s foreign ministry sees no grounds for talking about resuming dialogue on strategic stability and arms control with the US at the moment, Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing Russia’s deputy foreign minister.Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow and Washington “are exchanging signals on Ukraine” through closed channels at the military and political levels, according to Interfax. He also said that Russia was ready to listen to US president-elect, Donald Trump’s proposals on resolving the crisis in Ukraine, adding that there could be no simple solution.“We are extremely thorough, responsible and attentive to any ideas that are proposed by countries in this area,” Interfax quoted Ryabkov as saying.According to Reuters, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Thursday congratulated Trump on winning the US election, praised him for showing courage when a gunman tried to assassinate him in July, and said Moscow was ready for dialogue with Trump. He said comments that Trump had made about trying to end the war were worthy of attention.Trump told NBC he had not talked to Putin since his election victory but “I think we’ll speak”.Ryabkov said the threat of severing diplomatic relations with the US remained if Russia’s frozen assets were seized or Washington escalated tensions over Ukraine.Ryabkov also commented on Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine, saying it would make it possible “to turn to the nuclear option” if there was an acute crisis in relations with the west and the situation in Ukraine, Interfax reported.The US justice department is bringing criminal charges over an Iranian plot to kill the president-elect, Donald Trump, that was thwarted by the FBI, the government said.The federal government has unsealed criminal charges in what the justice department said was a murder-for-hire plan to take out Trump before this week’s presidential election, which he won decisively over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan alleges that an unnamed official in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards instructed a contact this past September to put together a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump.Investigators learned of the plot while interviewing Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national identified by officials as an Iranian government asset who was deported from the US after being imprisoned on robbery charges.He told investigators that a Revolutionary Guard contact in Iran instructed him in September to devise a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately assassinate Trump, according to the criminal complaint.Two other men who the authorities say were recruited to participate in other assassinations, including a prominent Iranian American journalist, were also arrested on Friday. Shakeri remains in Iran.“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said in a statement on Friday.Ed Davey has urged Keir Starmer to “Trump-proof” the UK by urgently seeking closer European cooperation over military aid for Ukraine and economic ties, after the US president-elect’s threats about security and trade wars.The Liberal Democrat leader, whose party is the third biggest in the House of Commons, argued that while the UK government should seek to work with a Donald Trump administration, it should also be as prepared as possible if he were to abandon Ukraine or impose sweeping tariffs.“Yes, we can work with him,” Davey said. “Of course we should, and it may well be that we can, but it would be irresponsible not to take the measures in a diplomatic way, defensive way, that would make our national security and our economy Trump-proof.“I think millions of people in the UK and elsewhere are just really worried and quite scared. And they’re particularly scared about what it’s going to mean for our security and our economy.”Trump’s election should be “a wake-up call for the government on Ukraine”, said Davey, who was spending part of Friday at a charity in Surrey that provides aid packages for Ukrainian families.He said Starmer should push for an immediate European conference on how the continent could fill the gap in defence assistance if, as Trump and his team have hinted, he pulls US support, or tries to force Ukraine into accepting an end to the conflict that would greatly strengthen Russia.“We can’t simply abandon Ukraine to Putin just because Trump’s in power,” Davey said. “We’ve been playing a critical role, and I think we could play an even more critical role by working with European friends, bringing together European countries so we can increase the aid to Ukraine, and pay for that by seizing Russian assets properly. We’ve been pushing for that for some time.“Now is the absolute the moment to do it so Europe can fill the gap. But we have got to do it quickly.”Bomb threats were made against several Maryland boards of elections and election offices in at least two California counties on Friday, state authorities said, adding that everyone was safe and law enforcement officials were investigating.According to Reuters, election officials were counting mail-in ballots when the threats came in Maryland. State administrator of elections, Jared DeMarinis, said the threats led to the evacuation of some buildings. He called the threats “cowardly,” adding that local officials will resume counting on Saturday.“Safety is a top concern – but we WILL resume canvassing (counting) tomorrow. Cowardly threats whether from abroad or not shall not deter us,” DeMarinis said on social media platform X.“The Baltimore County Police Department is aware and currently investigating the bomb threat received via email by the Baltimore County Board of Elections Office,” police posted on X, later adding that a probe determined that threat to be unfounded.Reuters reports that in California’s Orange County, the registrar of voters received a bomb threat at an office in Santa Ana after which the office building was evacuated and bomb detection dogs were used to conduct a search. No explosives were located, officials said, adding normal operations will resume on Saturday.The registrar of voters in California’s Riverside County said its central counting building was also evacuated due to a threat and a bomb squad found no explosives.The offices of California governor, Gavin Newsom, and Maryland governor, Wes Moore, said they were monitoring the situation and working with local officials.The FBI said that hoax bomb threats, many of which appeared to originate from Russian email domains, were directed on Tuesday at polling locations in five battleground states – Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – as voting was under way. Russia denies interfering in US elections.Millions of Americans are at risk of losing health coverage in 2025 under Donald Trump’s forthcoming administration.More than 20 million Americans rely on the individual private health insurance market for healthcare, private insurance which is subsidized by the federal government.These subsidies, programs that help lower the cost of health insurance premiums, increased the amount of assistance available to people who want to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare as a signature piece of legislation during Barack Obama’s administration.This specific subsidy program resulted from the Biden administration’s 2021 American Rescue Plan and is set to expire at the end of 2025.“The consequences of more people going uninsured are really significant, not just at an individual level with more medical debt and less healthy outcomes, but also has ripple effects for providers,” Sabrina Corlette, a research professor and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, said.“Premiums go up for the people who do have health insurance; for the people without health insurance, it’s financially devastating. The result is medical debt, garnished wages and liens on people’s homes because they can’t pay off their bills,” she said.Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, expressed hopes during a phone call with US president-elect, Donald Trump, that he would keep his “promises to work towards ending wars” in the Middle East, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).In the phone call, the Iraqi premier pointed to Trump’s “campaign statements and promises to work towards ending wars in the region”, a statement from Sudani’s office said late on Friday. “The two sides agreed to coordinate efforts in achieving this goal,” it added.About 2,500 US troops are deployed in Iraq as part of a US-led coalition that was formed to help battle the Islamic State group. Bases hosting the US troops have been the target of dozens of rocket and drone attacks launched by Iran-backed groups in Iraq, which have also claimed attacks against Israel.Baghdad has for years called on Washington to provide a clear timeline for the withdrawal of their remaining coalition troops.The US and Iraq announced in late September that the international coalition would end its decade-long military mission in federal Iraq within a year, and by September 2026 in the autonomous Kurdistan region. But the joint statement and US officials did not say whether any US troops would remain in Iraq.Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, according to a report from CNN. They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.On the campaign trail, Trump has mulled sending the military after his political enemies, and also to turn back migrants at the southern border.US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes. There are also fears he could gut the civil service in the Pentagon, and replace fired staff with employees selected for their loyalty to him.Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”. While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.A spokesperson for the president-elect told CNN that his “campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages”. It is not yet clear who is behind the messages, nor is there a comprehensive list of the people to whom the messages were sent, but social media posts indicate that the messages are widespread.Black people in states including Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, the DC area and elsewhere reported receiving the messages. The messages were sent to Black adults and students, including to high schoolers in Massachusetts and New York, and students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), such as Alabama State University and other schools, including ones across Ohio, Clemson University, the University of Alabama and Missouri State. At least six middle school students in Pennsylvania received the messages, according to the AP.Authorities including the FBI and attorneys general are investigating the messages.Joe Biden’s slowness in exiting the 2024 presidential election cost the Democrats dearly, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said, days after Kamala Harris was beaten by Donald Trump.“We live with what happened,” Pelosi said.Pelosi was speaking to The Interview, a New York Times podcast, in a conversation the newspaper said would be published Saturday in full.“Had the president gotten out sooner,” Pelosi remarked, “there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.“And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”As Democrats engaged in bitter blame games over Harris’s defeat and a second presidency for Trump, who senior Democrats from Harris down freely called a “fascist”, Pelosi’s words landed like an explosive shell.The Times said Pelosi “went to great lengths to defend the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments, most of which took place during his first two years, when she was the House speaker”.Pelosi reportedly played a key role in persuading Biden to stand aside. But she has not sought to soothe his feelings. In August, she told the New Yorker she had “never been that impressed with his political operation”.Hello and welcome back to our rolling coverage of US politics and the fallout from the presidential election.Our top story this morning is that Nancy Pelosi has blamed Joe Biden for the Democrats’ defeat.The former House speaker said the president’s slowness in dropping out of the race left the party without enough time to hold an open primary.More on that shortly. First, though, here is a round up of the latest news:

      The justice department has brought charges against a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards paramilitary group for plotting to assassinate Donald Trump prior to Tuesday’s presidential election, the Associated Press reports. On the campaign trail in the lead-up to his election win, Trump survived two assassination attempts, but authorities do not believe either were linked to Iran, a longtime foe of the United States.

      Donald Trump’s incoming presidency is set to threaten millions of Americans’ healthcare plans. More than 20 million Americans rely on the individual private health insurance market for healthcare, private insurance which is subsidized by the federal government.

      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former independent presidential candidate turned Trump surrogate, is reviewing candidate resumes for the top jobs at the US government’s health agencies in Donald Trump’s new administration, a former Kennedy aide and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

      A Chinese national who had been recently released from a mental hospital was ordered to be held on trespassing charges on Friday after police say he tried to enter president-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the Associated Press reports. That entrance was in violation of a court order that he stay away from Mar-a-Lago after previous attempts.

      Democratic US Representative Andrea Salinas has won reelection in Oregon’s 6th congressional District, beating Republican Mike Erickson to earn a second term in Congress after outraising him by millions of dollars. Oregon’s newest congressional district was seen as leaning more toward Democrats, according to the Cook Political Report. That gave a slight advantage to the freshman Democratic incumbent, who also defeated Erickson in the 2022 election.

      Women have won 60 seats in the New Mexico Legislature to secure the largest female legislative majority in US history, stirring expressions of vindication and joy among candidates.

      A federal judge on Friday overturned Illinois’ ban on semiautomatic weapons, leaning on recent US supreme court rulings that strictly interpret the second amendment right to keep and bear firearms. Judge Stephen P McGlynn issued the lengthy finding in a decree that he said applied universally, not just to the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit challenging the ban.

      Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”. While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.

      Donald Trump, during a call with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, handed the phone to Elon Musk, the New York Times reported, confirming an earlier Axios story. It is not clear what the three men discussed or whether they touched on any change in US policy toward Ukraine in the wake of Trump’s election victory, the Times said.

      The Biden administration has decided to allow US defense contractors to work in Ukraine to maintain and repair Pentagon-provided weaponry, Reuters is reporting, citing US officials. The contractors would be small in number and located far from the frontlines and will not be engaged in combat, an official told the news agency.

      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case has granted a request from the special counsel’s office to pause proceedings in his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election. Jack Smith asked judge Tanya Chutkan to pause the case against the president-elect to “assess the unprecedented circumstances” in which the office finds itself. More

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      US election briefing: military officials reportedly discuss how to handle illegal orders from Trump

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      Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, according to a report from CNN. They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.On the campaign trail, Trump has mulled sending the military after his political enemies, and also to turn back migrants at the southern border. US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes. There are also fears he could gut the civil service in the Pentagon, and replace fired staff with employees selected for their loyalty to him.Meanwhile two states – the swing states of Nevada and Arizona – have yet to be called for either Harris or Trump. Should the Republicans win the electoral college votes from both states, it would mean they had a clean sweep of all seven swing states in the election. Republicans have a majority in the Senate, are ahead in the popular vote, and are ahead, though have not yet achieved a majority, in Congress, where they are six seats shy of a majority that would offer Trump even more power to enact key policies.Here’s what else happened on Friday:

      The justice department has brought charges against a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards paramilitary group for plotting to assassinate Donald Trump prior to Tuesday’s presidential election, the Associated Press reports. On the campaign trail in the lead-up to his election win, Trump survived two assassination attempts, but authorities do not believe either were linked to Iran, a longtime foe of the United States.

      Nancy Pelosi said she believed Joe Biden waited too long to exit the race, and erred in immediately endorsing Kamala Harris. In an interview with the New York Times, Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker who played a major role in pressuring Biden not to seek re-election, said: “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race.”

      Donald Trump’s incoming presidency is set to threaten millions of Americans’ healthcare plans. More than 20 million Americans rely on the individual private health insurance market for healthcare, private insurance which is subsidized by the federal government.

      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former independent presidential candidate turned Trump surrogate, is reviewing candidate resumes for the top jobs at the US government’s health agencies in Donald Trump’s new administration, a former Kennedy aide and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

      A Chinese national who had been recently released from a mental hospital was ordered to be held on trespassing charges on Friday after police say he tried to enter president-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the Associated Press reports. That entrance was in violation of a court order that he stay away from Mar-a-Lago after previous attempts.

      Democratic US Representative Andrea Salinas has won reelection in Oregon’s 6th congressional District, beating Republican Mike Erickson to earn a second term in Congress after outraising him by millions of dollars. Oregon’s newest congressional district was seen as leaning more toward Democrats, according to the Cook Political Report. That gave a slight advantage to the freshman Democratic incumbent, who also defeated Erickson in the 2022 election.

      Women have won 60 seats in the New Mexico Legislature to secure the largest female legislative majority in US history, stirring expressions of vindication and joy among candidates.

      A federal judge on Friday overturned Illinois’ ban on semiautomatic weapons, leaning on recent US supreme court rulings that strictly interpret the second amendment right to keep and bear firearms. Judge Stephen P McGlynn issued the lengthy finding in a decree that he said applied universally, not just to the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit challenging the ban.

      Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”. While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.

      Donald Trump, during a call with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, handed the phone to Elon Musk, the New York Times reported, confirming an earlier Axios story. It is not clear what the three men discussed or whether they touched on any change in US policy toward Ukraine in the wake of Trump’s election victory, the Times said.

      The Biden administration has decided to allow US defense contractors to work in Ukraine to maintain and repair Pentagon-provided weaponry, Reuters is reporting, citing US officials. The contractors would be small in number and located far from the frontlines and will not be engaged in combat, an official told the news agency.

      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case has granted a request from the special counsel’s office to pause proceedings in his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election. Jack Smith asked judge Tanya Chutkan to pause the case against the president-elect to “assess the unprecedented circumstances” in which the office finds itself. More

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      Military officials reportedly discuss how to handle illegal orders from Trump – live

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      Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, CNN reports.They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.On the campaign trail, Trump has mulled sending the military after his political enemies, and also to turn back migrants at the southern border. US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes. There are also fears he could gut the civil service in the Pentagon, and replace fired staff with employees selected for their loyalty to him.Here’s more, from CNN:
      Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment.
      Officials are now gaming out various scenarios as they prepare for an overhaul of the Pentagon.
      “We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said.
      Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.
      “Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”
      Martin Pengelly reports for the Guardian on Nancy Pelosi’s comments that Joe Biden’s delay in withdrawing from the race blew Democrats’ chances of winning: Joe Biden’s slowness in exiting the 2024 presidential election cost the Democrats dearly, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said, days after Kamala Harris was beaten by Donald Trump.“We live with what happened,” Pelosi said.Pelosi was speaking to the Interview, a New York Times podcast, in a conversation the newspaper said would be published Saturday in full.“Had the president gotten out sooner,” Pelosi remarked, “there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.For the full story, click here:Here’s a look at where things stand:

      Speaking to the New York Times, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker who played a major role in the pressuring Joe Biden not to seek re-election, said she believed the president waited too long to exit the race, and erred in immediately endorsing Kamala Harris. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said.

      Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, CNN reports. They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.

      Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”. While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.

      Donald Trump, during a call with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, handed the phone to Elon Musk, the New York Times is also reporting, confirming an earlier Axios story. It is not clear what the three men discussed or whether they touched on any change in US policy toward Ukraine in the wake of Trump’s election victory, the Times said.

      The Biden administration has decided to allow US defense contractors to work in Ukraine to maintain and repair Pentagon-provided weaponry, Reuters is reporting, citing US officials. The contractors would be small in number and located far from the frontlines and will not be engaged in combat, an official told the news agency.

      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case has granted a request from the special counsel’s office to pause proceedings in his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election. As we reported earlier, Jack Smith asked judge Tanya Chutkan to pause the case against the president-elect to “assess the unprecedented circumstances” in which the office finds itself.
      Donald Trump yesterday announced that his campaign co-chair Susie Wiles will be his chief of staff in the White House.He’s expected to announce more appointments to prominent administration positions soon. The Guardian’s Lorenzo Tondo took a look at who might be in the running:Officials at the Pentagon are having informal discussions about what to do if Donald Trump were to give an illegal order, such as deploying the military domestically, CNN reports.They are also preparing for the possibility that he may change rules to be able to fire scores of career civil servants.On the campaign trail, Trump has mulled sending the military after his political enemies, and also to turn back migrants at the southern border. US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes. There are also fears he could gut the civil service in the Pentagon, and replace fired staff with employees selected for their loyalty to him.Here’s more, from CNN:
      Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment.
      Officials are now gaming out various scenarios as they prepare for an overhaul of the Pentagon.
      “We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said.
      Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.
      “Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”
      Nancy Pelosi also said she disagreed with Bernie Sanders, the progressive independent senator who said Democrats had “abandoned working-class people” after Kamala Harris’s election loss.“Bernie Sanders has not won,” Pelosi said in her interview with the New York Times.“With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic party has abandoned the working-class families.”The former speaker instead blamed cultural issues for Harris’s loss to Donald Trump. “Guns, God and gays – that’s the way they say it,” Pelosi told the Times.“Guns, that’s an issue; gays, that’s an issue, and now they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities; and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose.”Speaking to the New York Times, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker who played a major role in the pressuring Joe Biden not to seek re-election, said she believed the president waited too long to exit the race, and erred in immediately endorsing Kamala Harris.“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said. Shortly after announcing in July that he would end his bid for a second term, Biden endorsed Harris, setting the stage for her to become the Democratic nominee. Harris went on to lose the presidential election to Donald Trump on Tuesday, and in the interview conducted two days later, Pelosi said Democrats would have benefited from a primary to choose their candidate.“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said.“And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”Donald Trump has attacked California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who yesterday called the state legislature into a special session to enact laws intended to counter the Republican president-elect’s agenda.“Governor Gavin Newscum is trying to KILL our Nation’s beautiful California. For the first time ever, more people are leaving than are coming in. He is using the term ‘Trump-Proof’ as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again,’ but I just overwhelmingly won the Election,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.He also restated his support for voting laws that could make it more difficult to cast ballots: “Also, as an ‘AGENT’ for the United States of America on Voting & Elections, I will be DEMANDING THAT VOTER I.D., AND PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP, ARE A NECESSARY PART AND COMPONENT OF THE VOTING PROCESS!”Donald Trump’s transition team could announce additional White House positions as early as today, CNN is reporting.As we reported earlier, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is not expected to return to a new Trump administration but could advise on Middle East policy.The Financial Times is reporting that the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, is being tapped to be Trump’s new “energy tsar”.Burgum is Trump’s preferred candidate for the role, the paper writes, adding that former energy secretary Dan Brouillette is also a contender.Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”.While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name.Black people in states including Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, the DC area and elsewhere reported receiving the messages.The messages were sent to Black adults and students, including to high schoolers in Massachusetts and New York, and students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), such as Alabama State University and other schools, including ones across Ohio, Clemson University, the University of Alabama and Missouri State.At least six middle school students in Pennsylvania received the messages, according to the AP.Authorities including the FBI and attorneys general are investigating the messages.Jim Banks, the Republican Indiana senator-elect, said he hopes that every undocumented immigrant who came to the US illegally under the Biden administration will be deported once Donald Trump is in office.“It’s my hope that we deport every single one of them that we can, and it starts with deporting violent criminals who are in the United States who came here illegally who have committed violent crimes,” Banks told CNN on Friday.“I think once you do that, President Trump is committed to making that his first and top priority when it comes to mass deportation.”Asked how those plans would be carried out, Banks said he didn’t think it would be “that complicated”.He said the American people had given Trump and the Republicans “a mandate to do everything that we can.”“The goal should be to deport every illegal in this country that we can find,” he added. More

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      Think you know how bad Trump unleashed will be? Look at the evidence: it will be even worse | Jonathan Freedland

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      Are you ready for Trump unbound? You may have thought the former and future president was already pretty unrestrained, not least because Donald Trump has never shown anything but brazen disrespect for boundaries or limits of any kind. And you would be right. But, as an earlier entertainer turned president – and Trump combines the two roles – liked to say: You ain’t seen nothing yet.That’s because the 47th president will enter the Oval Office free of almost all constraints. He will be able to do all that he promised and all that he threatened, with almost nothing and no one to stand in his way.To understand why, it pays to start with the nature of the win he secured on Tuesday. He did not eke out a narrow victory on points, as he did when he squeaked through the electoral college in 2016. This was a knockout that has Trump on course to bag every one of the battleground states and to be the winner of the popular vote, the first Republican to pull off that feat in 20 years. All of which enables him to claim what he lacked in 2016: an emphatic mandate.But even that is to understate the transformational nature of this election. Trump won big and everywhere: gaining ground in 48 of the 50 states, in counties rural, urban and suburban, across almost every demographic, including those groups such as Hispanic voters, who were once reliably Democratic. “The 2024 election marks the biggest shift to the right in our country since Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980,” according to Doug Sosnik, a former political adviser in Bill Clinton’s White House.What drove that red wave was the same anti-incumbency mood that has toppled governments all over the democratic world, including in Britain. And it is not too hard to explain. Americans are still feeling the hangover of the inflation shock that followed the Covid pandemic. Any conversation with a Trump voter, and I had many this week, would rapidly turn to high petrol prices and unsustainable grocery bills.In that climate, the impulse is to kick out the party in charge. This week, that basic urge proved stronger than any misgivings about Trump. Throw in fear of migrants and the accusation that Democrats are the party of the liberal coastal elites, in thrall to the progressive fringes and out of touch with ordinary people – both sentiments expertly inflamed by Trump – and you have the ingredients for a crushing defeat.The result is that Trump will have control not only of the White House, but also the Senate and most likely the House as well. Admittedly, Republicans had majorities on Capitol Hill when Trump took office eight years ago too, but here’s the difference. Back then, there were at least a few moderate, Trump-sceptic Republicans in Congress ready to defy the president. Not now. Trump’s hold on what has become the Maga party is total. There are next to no John McCains to give Trump the thumbs-down this time, certainly not enough to cause him trouble. What he wants, he’ll get.Which means he can nominate whoever he likes to all the key posts, knowing his yes-men in the Senate will give him the confirming nod. Last time, he felt pressure to appoint responsible adults to his cabinet or to head federal agencies, officials who then went on to dilute or even thwart his wilder schemes. This time he can surround himself with true believers, including the apostles of the notorious Project 2025 plan that Trump disavowed during the campaign but which he is now free to implement – thereby ensuring a full-spectrum takeover by Maga loyalists of the machinery of the US government.It’s no good looking to the supreme court to act as a restraining hand. Thanks to Trump, that bench now has a six-to-three rightwing majority, and it has already issued the blank cheque he craved. In a July ruling, the court granted the president sweeping immunity for his official acts. The threat of legal jeopardy that once hovered over Trump will melt away. To his delight, the multiple criminal cases against him are set to be suspended, on the principle that a sitting president cannot be indicted.What, then, will be left to hold Trump in check? It won’t be fear of losing the next election: he’s constitutionally barred from running again (though you wouldn’t bet against him testing that limit too). The conventional media will do their best, but if the Trump era has shown us anything, it’s that the information ecosystem of the US is changed utterly. Fifty years ago, if three broadcast networks and a couple of east coast newspapers declared the president a crook, that president was finished, as Richard Nixon learned to his cost. Now, the mainstream press can reveal the most damning evidence about Trump and it goes nowhere. His supporters either never hear those revelations – because they get their news from Trump-friendly TV and social media channels – or, if they do, they flatly dismiss them as lies. We truly live in the age of “alternative facts”, and that gives Trump enormous freedom. He could do heinous things in office, or simply fail as president, and tens of millions of Americans would never know about it.The prospect of Trump unchecked is not merely an offence to abstract notions of democracy. It poses multiple dangers, all of them clear and present. To take just one, there is nothing to stop the old-new president making good on his promise to put the anti-vax fanatic and conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge of public health. If that happens, there are already warnings that polio or measles could return to afflict America’s children.Or consider the climate. In Salem, Virginia, last weekend, I heard Trump hail the glories of “liquid gold”, meaning oil, leading the crowd in a chant of “Drill, baby, drill”. He promised to extract oil from the last pristine wilderness in North America, Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge. Joe Biden had moved to preserve it; Trump will send in the rigs. That will accelerate yet further the climate breakdown, a crisis that was unmistakable that day in Salem, where the temperature reached a weird 26C in November.Trump is now free to abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s wolves, free to make Nato a dead letter – which it will be the day Trump is sworn in on 20 January. We know that Trump has contempt for Nato’s core principle of mutual defence. Without that, the alliance falls apart. Yet there is no one to stop him.Ultimately that task will fall to the Democrats. Except they will soon wield no formal power in Washington. I asked one seasoned hand what practical tools the party had to restrain or even scrutinise Trump, given that they will soon lose their current ability to launch congressional investigations and convene official hearings. The answer: “They can hold press conferences.”For now, Democrats are turned inward, engaged in a round of recriminations as competing factions blame each other for Tuesday’s disaster. That process is inevitable, but the longer it goes on the more it helps Trump, by removing one more check on the power he will soon wield.We know how Trump wants to rule because he has said so, telling a Fox News interviewer he would be a dictator “on day one”. We know which leaders he admires because of the way he gushes over Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. The assumption had always been that these fantasies of his would remain just that, because of the institutional checks and balances that fetter an American president. But when Trump renews his oath on 20 January, those restraints will look either badly frayed or entirely absent. He will be Trump unbound, free to do his worst.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      It is galling to see Starmer ingratiate himself with Trump – but it would be horribly negligent if he didn’t | Gaby Hinsliff

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      Dawn had barely broken, and nor had Kamala Harris publicly conceded, when Keir Starmer tweeted his congratulations to the not-quite-officially President-elect Donald Trump.Britain would, he said, stand “shoulder to shoulder” with its old ally, as it always does. Though he got the early opportunity he wanted to congratulate the new president-elect even more fulsomely down the phone, those words will have been gut-wrenching for many people. How can it be business as usual, with a president whose own former chief of staff said he met the definition of a fascist? What on earth makes Starmer think he can influence Trump for the better, the usual rationale for engaging with unsavoury leaders, where Trump’s own advisers repeatedly failed? The only people he ever really heeded, the British-born former White House adviser Fiona Hill once told one of Theresa May’s aides, were the now late Queen and the pope.Starmer’s obvious answer, of course, is that it would be an act of breathtaking negligence not to even bother trying; that he can’t be squeamish when there are workers afraid of losing their jobs in a trade war, Ukrainians dying under Russian bombardment, and future generations who would pay a terrible price for the US reneging on its climate commitments. The less obvious one, however, is that if he cannot get Trump’s ear then Trump will get his hot takes on the British national interest elsewhere. Starmer may have got that phone call, but it was Nigel Farage who spent election night at the Trump victory party in Mar-a-Lago.Though this isn’t the result a Labour government wanted, it’s the one it has war-gamed hardest. The charm offensive began months before Starmer and Trump’s relatively cordial dinner in September, with the foreign secretary, David Lammy, making surprisingly deep inroads in Republican circles for a man who once called Trump a woman-hating, neo-Nazi sociopath. But as Lammy’s allies point out, JD Vance once called Trump an idiot who might be the US’s Hitler, which didn’t stop Trump picking Vance as a running mate. The president-elect is both intensely transactional – if anything, he may see British desperation to make up lost ground with him as useful – and wildly unpredictable, a combination offering both opportunity and threat.The lesson Downing Street takes from studying Trump is essentially the one many Republican voters do: that he says a lot of wild stuff but doesn’t always mean it, and if he does he often unexpectedly changes his mind. Already there are hints he might give Ukraine more time to win its war, if only because he hates being associated with losing, while senior Republicans are signalling that “friendly” nations could escape his threatened trade tariffs – a crude signal that there will be rewards for compliance.But there will surely also be a price: Starmer could easily find himself pushed to pick a side in trade negotiations between the US and Brussels, just as he is trying to mend fences with Europe. What if a British government that has staked everything on economic growth finds its business interests pulling one way, and its shared interest in the defence of Europe against Russian aggression pulling the other? At the very least, those budget forecasts – and the money set aside for extra defence spending – may well soon need revisiting.In her memoirs, Theresa May describes the acute anxiety of standing beside then president Trump at a press conference where he was supposed to send a critical signal to Russia by stressing his commitment to Nato, not knowing whether he’d actually say it until he opened his mouth. But at least she could plan for that scenario in advance: harder to deal with was Trump’s tendency to blindside Britain with things nobody saw coming. For her, that meant Trump pulling troops out of Iraq and Syria without warning or concern for British forces fighting alongside them, lobbying her to bring Farage into cabinet, and casually retweeting incendiary social media posts by the British far right. This time, he won’t just be surfing X when he’s bored but actively integrating its owner, Elon Musk – who is already regularly kicking lumps out of Starmer, most recently over cutting inheritance tax relief for farmers – into his administration.The Southport riots, during which Musk tweeted that “civil war is inevitable” and promoted conspiracy theories about white protesters being more harshly treated than ethnic minority ones, convinced many Labour MPs that hate and disinformation online must be tackled. But how brave are ministers prepared to be if that means a direct hit on someone in Trump’s inner circle?Labour MPs in seats where Reform came second in July are, meanwhile, now visibly rattled, and newly fearful of handing Farage further sticks to beat them with. Though Starmer learned his own lesson about the salience of immigration or the risks of alienating white working-class voters way back in 2019, Harris’s defeat is only likely to underline that message for him.There’s no denying that for progressives, the world now looks lonelier than it did; that the choice the US has made will have consequences smaller countries can only do so much to contain. But that doesn’t mean Britain can afford to sit the coming battles out, assuming someone else will do the dirty work. Starmer’s job now is to pull whatever levers he can reach, in alliance with whoever he can persuade to join him; ours, meanwhile, is never to give up hope.

      Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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