World
Election 2024 live updates: Trump prepares for transition back to the White House
President-elect Donald Trump has begun preparing for the Oval Office by naming Susie Wiles as his new White House chief of staff.
Wiles spearheaded his successful 2024 campaign and is the first of many appointees who will help to push his agenda, which includes the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, more trade tariffs and extended tax cuts.
The Republican meanwhile looks to be on course to win Nevada as he nears the completion of an astonishing clean sweep of the swing states, with only Arizona still to declare.
Trump shared several late-night election victory posts on Truth Social on Thursday – his first since his return to power was confirmed early on Wednesday morning.
The wave of posts included an Electoral College map, newspaper front pages recounting his triumph over Democrat Kamala Harris and a photo of a MAGA cap-clad Trump with the caption: “Get ready for the Golden Age.”
On Thursday, President Joe Biden addressed the nation from the White House Rose Garden and assured Americans there would be a “peaceful and orderly transition” from his administration to Trump’s. He also praised Harris’s “heart and effort” on the campaign trail.
Ann Selzer explains why her very wrong Iowa poll may have helped Trump
The pundit’s much-watched Iowa poll, which showed Kamala Harris heading into Election Day with a surprise three-point lead, was one of numerous 2024 election forecasts that ultimately failed to predict the result.
In a post-mortem on Thursday, Selzer explained how she’s thinking through the discrepancy between what actually happened and what was forecast in the Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey of voting intentions in the Hawkeye State.
Josh Marcus has the story.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 14:40
The Handmaid’s Tale soars 400 places to third on bestseller charts after Trump win
Margaret Atwood’s novel from 1985, recently filmed as a prestige TV series with Elisabeth Moss, presents a near-future dystopian society in which women are reared for the sole purpose of bearing children.
Sales of the book are now reportedly spiking in response to Trump’s election, as copies of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four were said to have done in reaction to his first term.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 14:20
Oddsmakers call JD Vance and Gavin Newsom the 2028 frontrunners
The bookmakers are already looking ahead to the next presidential election and see Trump’s running mate as his natural heir on the Republican ticket.
Perhaps less obviously, the consensus suggests that California Governor Gavin Newsom will be the man to mount the fightback next time around.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 14:00
Watch: CBS anchor chokes up discussing how he will explain Trump’s victory to his children
CBS anchor chokes up discussing how he will explain Trump’s victory to his children
CBS News anchor choked up when asked how he will explain Donald Trump’s election victory to his children. John Dickerson was visibly emotional as he reacted to the president-elect’s historic victory when he appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Thursday (7 November). Colbert asked: “How would you explain that to a 14-year-old today? How would you explain this election?” “I’ll try not to think about my boys because,” Dickerson said before choking up. After a brief pause, he regained his composure to explain his concerns.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 13:40
Vladimir Putin congratulates ‘brave man’ Trump on his election victory
The Russian president has congratulated Donald Trump on his election victory, praising his “brave” response to the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 but admitting that even he has “no idea” what a second term will look like given Trump’s impulsive nature.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 13:20
Joe Rogan calls on Trump ‘to unite everybody’ as president
The podcaster who interviewed both Trump and JD Vance but not Kamala Harris (her campaign was in talks with him but the two sides failed to agree a time) has already been credited by the likes of Elon Musk and Dana White with helping the Republican to victory with his last-minute endorsement.
He has since urged the president-elect against attacking his enemies, commenting on his popular show: “He’s got to unite people. He’s got to not attack the left, not attack everybody, let them all talk their s***, but unite.
“Now it’s time to unite everybody.”
Here’s Josh Marcus on the Democratic hunt for its own influencer kingmaker.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 13:00
Ted Cruz’s daughter grimaces and says ‘don’t clap’ for Trump win
Here’s a nice little moment you might have missed amid this week’s seismic events: Caroline Cruz, 16, showing up her dad at his victory party after he saw off a challenge to his Senate seat from Democrat Colin Allred.
James Liddell has the story.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 12:40
Mass racist text messages sent to Black people across America spark investigations
A deluge of racist text messages invoking slavery raised alarm across the US this week after they were sent to Black men, women and students, including middle schoolers, prompting inquiries by the FBI and other agencies.
The messages, sent anonymously, were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
They generally used a similar tone but varied in wording.
Some instructed the recipient to show up at an address at a particular time “with your belongings,” while others didn’t include a location.
Some of them mentioned the incoming presidential administration.
It isn’t yet clear who is behind the messages and there was no comprehensive list of where they were sent but high school and college students were among the recipients.
The FBI said it was in touch with the Justice Department on the messages and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating the texts “alongside federal and state law enforcement”.
The Ohio Attorney General’s office also said it was looking into the matter.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 12:20
David Axelrod blames Democrats for becoming ‘smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party’
The former senior adviser to Barack Obama has criticized the Democratic Party for snobbery and for disillusionment among working-class voters following its US election rout.
In an excoriating takedown of his own party, David Axelrod highlighted the Democrat failure to reach blue collar voters and large parts of the electorate who hadn’t gone to college.
In an interview with CNN on Thursday night, Axelrod said the Democrats had become an increasingly “smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party”, suggesting that they failed to appeal to people from lower-class and non-college educated backgrounds.
“The only group that Democrats gained within the election on Tuesday was White college graduates, and among working-class voters, there was a significant decline,” he added.
Madeline Sherratt reports.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 12:00
Pentagon braces for ‘major upheaval’ under new Trump administration
The Washington Post reports this morning that the Pentagon is braced for “major upheaval” once the 47 president takes office “amid fears that the once and future commander-in-chief will follow through on vows to deploy the military domestically against American citizens, demand fealty from key leaders and attempt to remake the nonpartisan institution into one explicitly loyal to him”.
Trump repeatedly threatened on the campaign trail to use the US Armed Forces against “the enemy within”, dismiss any general involved in the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and reverse “woke” decisions like the renaming of military bases associated with Confederate generals.
Professor Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tells The Post: “The greatest danger the military faces is a rapid erosion of its professionalism, which would undermine its status and respect from the American people.
“Mr Trump does not have a real understanding of civil-military relations, or the importance of a nonpartisan, nonpolitical military.”
Here’s more from Rhian Lubin.
Joe Sommerlad8 November 2024 11:40