Jeremy T. Ringfield's Blog, page 303

Warriors coach Steve Kerr gives his take on Trump’s election win

Steve Kerr, a frequent critic of Donald Trump, accepted the former president’s re-election in a media session Wednesday ahead of the Warriors’ game against the Celtics in Boston.

“Well, I believe in democracy and the American people have spoken and voted for Trump,” Kerr said. “I want him to do well the next four years. I want our country to do well.”

Kerr, who endorsed Kamala Harris for president at the Democratic National Convention this summer, then shifted into a sarcastic tone, mocking Trump’s unwillingness to accept his loss in the 2020 election, which led to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol.

“Thankfully, this time everything was clean,” he joked. “It’s great that every election has been really valid except for the last one four years ago.”

Two days ago, Kerr warned against Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theories.

The 59-year-old coach helped lead the U.S. to Olympic gold this summer in Paris in his first cycle as the head coach of Team USA. He hinted at issues that some analysts have identified as reasons voters may not have been energized to support Harris, the vice president: U.S. support of Israel’s military and economic inflation.

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“It’s a complex world. We’ve got a lot of interesting stuff between wars abroad and the global economy that has shifted everything in terms of what it means for our citizens and their day-to-day lives,” Kerr said. “I’m well aware that I live in a bubble and I’m one of the luckiest people on Earth. So what I want is what’s best for us and I hope Trump can deliver that.”

Finally, he was asked about his message to the team in terms of resetting themselves on basketball.

“Let’s make America great again and beat the Celtics,” Kerr said.

Control of the US House hangs in the balance with enormous implications for Trump’s agenda

By LISA MASCARO and MARY CLARE JALONICK

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House majority hung in the balance Wednesday, teetering between Republican control that would usher in a new era of unified GOP governance in Washington or a flip to Democrats as a last line of resistance to a Trump second-term White House agenda.

A few individual seats, or even a single one, will determine the outcome. Final tallies will take a while, likely pushing the decision into next week — or beyond.

After Republicans swept into the majority in the U.S. Senate by picking up seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana, House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted his chamber would fall in line next.

“Republicans are poised to have unified government in the White House, Senate and House,” Johnson said Wednesday.

President-elect Donald Trump, who won the Electoral College and the popular vote against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, has consolidated growing power around his MAGA movement, backing newcomers to Washington and setting the stage for his own return to the White House.

Johnson said Republicans in Congress are preparing an “ambitious” 100-day agenda with Trump, who he has said is “thinking big” about his legacy.

Tax cuts, securing the southern border and taking a ”blowtorch” to federal regulations are at the top of the agenda if the GOP sweeps the White House and Congress. Trump himself has promised mass deportations and retribution against his perceived enemies. And Republicans want to push federal agencies out of Washington and to restaff the government workforce with the help of outside think tanks, Johnson has said, to bring the federal government “to heel.”

But Johnson, after just a year on the job, has had difficulty governing the House, and the new Congress would be no different. Hard-liners led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Matt Gaetz and others have often confronted and upended their own GOP leadership in what has been one of the most chaotic sessions in modern times.

If Johnson’s slim four-seat majority were to shrink any further, governing could come to a standstill.

Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the House “remains very much in play.”

With Democrats having defeated two House Republicans in Jeffries’ home state of New York, he said the path to the majority now runs through pickup opportunities in Arizona, Oregon, Iowa and California that are still too early to call.

“We must count every vote,” Jeffries said.

The House contests remained a tit-for-tat fight to the finish, with no dominant pathway to the majority for either party. Rarely, if ever have the two chambers of Congress flipped in opposite directions.

Each side is gaining and losing a few seats, including through the redistricting process, which is the routine redrawing of House seat boundary lines. The process reset seats in North Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama.

Much of the outcome hinges on the West, particularly in California, where a handful of House seats are being fiercely contested, and mail-in ballots arriving a week after the election will still be counted. Hard-fought races around the “blue dot” in Omaha, Nebraska and in far-flung Alaska are among those being watched.

Trump, speaking early Wednesday at his election night party in Florida, said the results delivered an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” for Republicans.

He called the Senate rout “incredible,” and he praised Johnson, saying he’s “doing a terrific job.”

From the U.S. Capitol, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, privately a harsh Trump critic, called it a “hell of a good day.”

Senate Republicans marched across the map alongside Trump, flipping the three Democratic-held seats and holding their own against Democratic challengers who failed to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas and Sen. Rick Scott in Florida.

In West Virginia, Jim Justice, the state’s wealthy governor, flipped the seat held by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin. Republicans toppled Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio with GOP luxury car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur Bernie Moreno. And Republican Tim Sheehy defeated Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in Montana.

Democrats avoided a total wipeout by salvaging seats in the “blue wall” states. Rep. Elissa Slotkin won an open Senate seat in Michigan, and Sen. Tammy Baldwin was reelected in Wisconsin. Pennsylvania’s race between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick was still undecided.

In other developments, Democrats made history by sending two Black women, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, to the Senate. Just thee Black women, including Harris, have served in the Senate, but never two at the same time.

All told, Senate Republicans have the potential to achieve their most robust majority in years — a testament to McConnell, who made a career charting a path to power, this time aligned with Trump whom he has privately called “despicable” in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

During a news conference Wednesday, McConnell declined to answer questions about his past stark criticism of Trump and said he viewed the election results as a referendum on the Biden administration.

He told reporters at the Capitol that a Senate under Republican control would “control the guardrails” and prevent changes in Senate rules that would end the filibuster.

“People were just not happy with this administration and the Democratic nominee was a part of it,” McConnell said.

What’s still unclear is who will lead the new Republican Senate, as McConnell prepares to step down from the post.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican, and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who previously held that post, are the front-runners to replace McConnell in a secret-ballot election scheduled for when senators arrive in Washington next week.

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves, Kevin Freking and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

FACT FOCUS: A multimillion vote gap between 2020 and 2024 fuels false election narratives

BY MELISSA GOLDIN

Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States, social media users began pushing two conflicting narratives to suggest election fraud, one that revived false claims by Trump that the 2020 vote was stolen from him and the other questioning how Vice President Kamala Harris could have received so many fewer votes in 2024 than President Joe Biden in 2020.

Both narratives hinge on a supposed 20 million vote gap between Harris and Biden.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: President Joe Biden won approximately 20 million more votes in the 2020 election than Vice President Kamala Harris earned in the 2024 race, proving either that Trump has cheated his way to a second term or that there was widespread fraud four years ago.

THE FACTS: The claims are unfounded. Votes from Tuesday’s presidential election are still being counted, so any comparison with previous races would not be accurate. In addition, election officials and agencies monitoring the vote have reported no significant issues with Tuesday’s election. Claims of widespread fraud in 2020 have been debunked countless times.

“As we have said repeatedly, our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free, and fair elections for the American people,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said in a statement. “This is what we saw yesterday in the peaceful and secure exercise of democracy. Importantly, we have no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.”

Multiple Pennsylvania officials, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, said that they had not seen any signs of cheating and called the election secure after Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday that there was “a lot of talking about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia.”

And yet, posts circulated online claiming otherwise, receiving hundreds of thousands of likes and shares.

“20 MILLION VOTES WERENT COUNTED,” reads one X post. “I KNEW IT TRUMP CHEATED.”

Another X post, which shared a bar graph of presidential election results from 2012-2024, states: “If these nunbers are accurate, this is indicative of a stolen 2020 election. 20 million votes just disappeared. In other words there were potentially 20 million fraudulent votes last cycle. That’s an insane number.” The Democratic candidates in 2012 and 2016 both won nearly 66 million votes, a bit less than Harris’ current count.

Harris had won about 67 million votes as of Wednesday afternoon, compared to the approximately 81 million Biden garnered in 2020 — a difference of about 14 million. But that gap is decreasing as the vote count continues. No state has counted 100% of its ballots yet.

Trump is so far lagging behind his 2020 total by approximately 2 million votes, but this gap is also decreasing as more votes are counted.

Despite persistent claims that Trump won the 2020 election, including from Trump himself, there is no evidence that this is true.

Biden won the Electoral College with 306 votes to Trump’s 232, and the popular vote by more than 7 million ballots. Many battleground states conducted recounts or thorough reviews of their results, all of which confirmed Biden’s victory. An exhaustive Associated Press investigation in 2021 found fewer than 475 instances of confirmed voter fraud across six battleground states — nowhere near the magnitude required to sway the outcome of the presidential election.

Trump was repeatedly advised by members of his own administration that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. Numerous legal challenges alleging voter fraud pursued by the Trump campaign and its backers were heard and roundly rejected by dozens of courts at the state and federal level, including by judges whom Trump appointed.

The allegations now spreading about fraud in the 2024 race echo many baseless claims that emerged four years ago.

Vice President Kamala Harris called Trump on Wednesday afternoon to concede the race and congratulate him.

“We must respect the results of this election,” she said in her concession speech.

Brandin Podziemski ruled out of anticipated Warriors-Celtics matchup

BOSTON — Brandin Podziemski’s status on the official injury report Wednesday morning was “available.” In the afternoon, he got downgraded to questionable with an illness. Then before Wednesday night’s game between the Warriors and Celtics in the TD Garden, the Warriors ruled the guard out.

Podziemski left Monday’s game in Washington D.C. with an illness. He said he felt dizzy and lightheaded, which began at the start of the game and persisted on-and-off until the end of the game, but didn’t get an official diagnosis. He subbed himself out one minute into the third quarter when his symptoms were too much to play through and didn’t return.

“He’s still sick,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said pregame. “That impacts the game significantly for us. So we’ve got to figure out how to we’re going to kind of piece together the lineup behind Steph.”

Podziemski, 21, is averaging 9.3 points, 5.3 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game. He ranks third in the NBA in plus-minus, a metric that shows how impactful he is when he’s on the court.

“He’s still feeling the effects,” Kerr said. “Whatever it is. Whether it’s a viral thing, who knows? He’s not feeling well, and we’re holding him out. He’s dying to play, and we’re holding him up.”

De’Anthony Melton (back) is also out for the Warriors. He’s set to get re-evaluated on Thursday after participating in 3-on-3 at the end of morning shootaround Wednesday. Podziemski likewise participated in shootaround.

On the other side, Jaylen Brown (hip) has been ruled out for Boston as well as Kristaps Porzingis, who is sidelined indefinitely.

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Steph Curry, who played on a 24-minute restriction in his first game back from an ankle sprain that knocked him out for three contests, is once again active. Kerr said he’s not necessarily on a minutes restriction against Boston, but they’re not going to push it after he missed a week and is still ramping up in-game endurance.

Notable

— Kerr said he didn’t need to address the team after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, a result that he and many within the team are unsatisfied with. He joked that he told the team in their morning meeting, “Let’s make America great again and beat the Celtics.”

“I believe in democracy,” Kerr said, in seriousness. “The American people have spoken and voted for Trump. I want him to do well the next four years. I want our country to do well. I believe in the will of the people, and I’ll do everything I can to support my country and our government. And I want nothing for the best for us.”

— The Celtics enter Wednesday night with a 121.8 offensive rating that leads the NBA. Last year, they set the NBA record in the metric, which measures scoring efficiency. They’re taking more than 50 3-pointers per game and often deploy a five-out style with lineups in which every player is capable of shooting from distance.

— Kerr is expected to face the biggest round of boos in his career as Celtics fans remain upset that he didn’t play Jayson Tatum minutes to their liking during Team USA’s run to gold.

Kerr said he doesn’t regret the way he handled the staff, and that he can’t control the narrative his coaching decisions created.

“I don’t think anybody actually cared enough about me to boo me,” Kerr said when asked what the loudest he’s been boo’d was. “We’ll see how it goes tonight. I’m sure, also, a lot of Celtics fans are going to cheer me for being part of Team USA, bringing a gold medal for our country. I’m a patriotic American, I love my country. Three Celtics who were on my team won a world championship and two months later won a gold medal. Pretty incredible stuff. People can write about whatever they want to write about.”

Trump receives congratulations and an invitation to the White House as Biden nudges on transition

By Zeke Miller, Will Weissert and Jill Colvin, Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump spent his first day as president-elect receiving congratulatory phone calls from his defeated opponent, world leaders and President Joe Biden as he began the process of turning his election victory into a government.

Trump was keeping a low profile, staying out of the public eye after addressing supporters in Florida during the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Vice President Kamala Harris called Trump to concede the race and to congratulate him, while Biden invited the man he ousted from the White House four years ago to an Oval Office meeting to prepare to return the keys. Biden’s chief of of staff later Wednesday nudged the Trump team to sign the required federal agreements necessary to begin an orderly presidential transition, a White House official said.

A source with knowledge of the Trump campaign said transition talks to take over power on Jan. 20, 2025, had not begun in earnest. Instead, the president-elect was busy taking calls from leaders, domestic and international, donors and key supporters. Transition discussions are expected to ramp up later in the week, as attention turns to naming an inaugural committee and a formal transition team.

Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients reached out to Trump transition co-chairs Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon to reiterate the important role the agreements with the White House and the General Services Administration play in beginning a presidential transition. The White House official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive transition planning.

The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potential Trump administration national security appointees, which could limit the number of his staff who could work on sensitive information by Inauguration Day. It also means they can’t yet access federal facilities, documents and personnel to prepare for taking office.

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The agreements are required by the Presidential Transition Act, and require the president-elect’s team to agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations. Congress, in the act, set a deadline of Sept. 1 for the GSA agreement and Oct. 1 for the White House agreement, in an effort to ensure that incoming administrations are prepared to govern when they enter office on Jan. 20.

The White House announced that Biden had spoken to the president-elect and expressed his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition, while emphasizing the importance of working to bring the country together.

Biden also called Harris to salute her for her campaign. And Trump and Harris spoke on a call where the president-elect “acknowledged Vice President Harris on her strength, professionalism, and tenacity throughout the campaign, and both leaders agreed on the importance of unifying the country,” according to Trump spokesman Steven Cheung.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s office said he called Trump and the pair had a “warm and cordial” conversation while also also discussing the ”Iranian threat.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had an “excellent call” with Trump, who has threatened to cut off the steady flow of U.S. aid and arms to his nation in its fight against Russia’s nearly three-year-old invasion. “I praised his family and team for their great work,” Zelenskyy said. “We agreed to maintain close dialogue and advance our cooperation. Strong and unwavering U.S. leadership is vital for the world and for a just peace.”

French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Trump, too, as did Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who spoke to the president-elect to express “the kingdom’s aspiration to strengthen the historical and strategic relations between the two countries, wishing the friendly American people progress and prosperity under his excellency’s leadership,” according to a statement from Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry.

Trump made his first foreign trip as president during his first term to Saudi Arabia. He stood by the kingdom then, even as ties became strained over the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives in Istanbul.

The president-elect has since vowed to bring peace to the Middle East at a time when Israel is at war with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon and has recently traded fire with Iran. Trump, who was a staunch supporter of Israel during his previous term, has not said how he’d accomplish that.

Meanwhile, U.S. markets, banks and bitcoin all stormed higher Wednesday, as did Tesla, owned by outspoken Trump supporter Elon Musk, as investors looked favorably on a smooth election and Trump returning to the White House.

Trump got more potential good news with word that special counsel Jack Smith is evaluating how to wind down the two federal cases against the president-elect before he takes office in light of longstanding Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted, according to a person familiar with Smith’s plans who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.

Smith charged Trump last year with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The latter case had already been dismissed. But Trump’s election victory means that the Justice Department believes he can no longer face prosecution in accordance with decades-old department legal opinions meant to shield presidents from criminal charges while in office.

Miller and Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Tom Beamont and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.

Trump has vowed to shake some of democracy’s pillars

By Calvin Woodward, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — American presidential elections are a moment when the nation holds up a mirror to look at itself. They are a reflection of values and dreams, of grievances and scores to be settled.

The results say much about a country’s character, future and core beliefs. On Tuesday, America looked into that mirror and more voters saw former president Donald Trump, delivering him a far-reaching victory in the most contested states.

He won for many reasons. One of them was that a formidable number of Americans, from different angles, said the state of democracy was a prime concern.

The candidate they chose had campaigned through a lens of darkness, calling the country “garbage” and his opponent “stupid,” a “communist” and “the b-word.”

Bikers show their support for President-elect Donald Trump while riding on I-84, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, near Lords Valley, Pa. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The mirror reflected not only a restive nation’s discontent but childless cat ladies, false stories of pets devoured by Haitian immigrant neighbors, a sustained emphasis on calling things “weird,” and a sudden bout of Democratic “joy” now crushed. The campaign will be remembered both for profound developments, like the two assassination attempts on Trump, and his curious chatter about golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.

Even as Trump prevailed, most voters said they were very or somewhat concerned that electing Trump would bring the U.S. closer to being an authoritarian country, where a single leader has unchecked power, according to the AP VoteCast survey. Still, 1 in 10 of those voters backed him anyway. Nearly 4 in 10 Trump voters said they wanted complete upheaval in how the country is run.

In Trump’s telling, the economy was in shambles, even when almost every measure said otherwise, and the border was an open sore leeching murderous migrants, when the actual number of crossings had dropped precipitously. All this came wrapped in his signature language of catastrophism.

His win, only the second time in U.S. history that a candidate won the presidency in non-consecutive terms, demonstrated Trump’s keen ear for what stirs emotions, especially the sense of millions of voters of being left out — whether because someone else cheated or got special treatment or otherwise fell to the ravages of the enemy within.

That’s whom Americans decisively chose.

The centuries-old democracy delivered power to the presidential candidate who gave voters fair warning he might take core elements of that democracy apart.

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After already having tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power when he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mused that he would be justified if he decided to pursue “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

This, in contrast to the oath of office he took, and will again, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” as best he can.

One rough and decidedly imperfect measure of whether Trump might mean what he says is how many times he says it. His direct threat to try to end or suspend the Constitution was largely a one-off.

But the 2024 campaign was thick with his vows, rally after rally, interview after interview, that if realized would upend democracy’s basic practices, protections and institutions as Americans have known them.

And now, he says after his win, “I will govern by a simple motto: promises made, promises kept.”

Through the campaign, to lusty cheers, Trump promised to use presidential power over the justice system to go after his personal political adversaries. He then raised the stakes further by threatening to enlist military force against such domestic foes — “the enemy from within.”

Doing so would shatter any semblance of Justice Department independence and turn soldiers against citizens in ways not seen in modern times.

He’s promised to track down and deport immigrants in massive numbers, raising the prospect of using military or military-style assets for that as well.

Spurred by his fury and denialism over his 2020 defeat, Trump’s supporters in some state governments have already engineered changes in how votes are cast, counted and affirmed, an effort centered on the false notion that the last election was rigged against him.

On Tuesday, Trump won an election in the time of a Democratic administration. The effort to revise election procedures will now be fought out by states in his time.

Yet another pillar of the system is also in his sights — the non-political civil service and its political masters, whom Trump together calls the deep state.

He means the generals who didn’t always heed him last time, but this time shall.

He means the Justice Department people who refused to indulge his desperate effort to cook up votes he didn’t get in 2020. He means the bureaucrats who dragged their heels on parts of his first-term agenda and whom Trump now wants purged.

Trump wants to make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as being outside civil service protections. That could weaken the government’s power to enforce statutes and rules by draining parts of the workforce and permit his administration to staff offices with more malleable employees than last time.

But if some or all of these tenets of modern democracy are to fall, it will be through the most democratic of means. Voters chose him — and by extension, this — not Democrat Kamala Harris, the vice president.

And by early measures, it was a clean election, just like 2020.

Eric Dezenhall is a scandal-management expert who has followed Trump’s business and political career and correctly predicted his wins in 2016 and now. He also foresaw that the criminal cases against Trump would help, not hurt, him.

Sussing out what Trump truly intends to do and what might be bluster is not always easy, he said. “There are certain things that he says because they cross his brain at a certain moment,” Dezenhall said. “I don’t put stock in that. I put stock in themes, and there is a theme of vengeance.”

So it remains to be seen whether America will get two special days Trump has promised.

Upon taking office again, he said, he’ll be a “dictator,” but only for a day. And he’s promised to let police stage “one really violent day” to crack down on crime with impunity, a remark his campaign said he didn’t really mean, just as his people said he wasn’t serious about subverting the U.S. Constitution.

The voters also gave Trump’s Republicans clear control of the Senate, and therefore majority say in whether to confirm the loyalists Trump will nominate for top jobs in government. Trump controls his party in ways he didn’t in his first term, when major figures in his administration repeatedly frustrated his most outlier ambitions.

“The fact that a once proud people chose, twice, to demean itself with a leader like Donald Trump will be one of history’s great cautionary tales,” said Cal Jillson, a constitutional and presidential scholar at Southern Methodist University whose new book, “Race, Ethnicity, and American Decline,” anticipated some of the existential issues of the election.

“Donald Trump’s actions will be as divisive, ill-considered, and mean-spirited in his second term as in his first,” he said. “He will undercut Ukraine, NATO, and the U.N. abroad and the rule of law, individual rights, and our senses of national cohesion and purpose at home.”

From the political left, any threats to democracy were not on the mind of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont when he offered a blistering critique of the Democratic campaign.

“It should come as no surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” he said in a statement. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of Americans are experiencing?”

He concluded: “Probably not.”

For his part, Trump says he is intent on restoring democracy, not tearing it down.

There was nothing democratic, he and his allies assert, in seeing military leaders defy the elected commander in chief, whether the issue was troop deployments or his wish for a splashy military parade. Or in seeing Democratic presidents establish immigration policy and vast student loan relief though executive action, bypassing Congress.

But that case is built from the ground up on the lie of a stolen 2020 election, his machinations to stall the certification of that vote and his mob’s bloody attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He comes to office intending to pardon some of the people convicted for that riot and perhaps clear himself of criminal cases against him.

Guardrails remain. One is the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority loosened the leash on presidential behavior in its ruling expanding their immunity from prosecution. The court has not been fully tested on how far it will go to accommodate Trump’s actions and agenda. And which party will control the House is not yet known.

The Republican’s victory came from a public so put off by America’s trajectory that it welcomed his brash and disruptive approach.

Among voters under 30, just under half went for Trump, an improvement from his 2020 performance, according to the AP VoteCast survey of more than 120,000 voters. About three-quarters of young voters said the country was headed in the wrong direction, and roughly one-third said they wanted total upheaval in how the country is run.

By Trump’s words, at least, that’s what they’ll get.

AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this report.

Democrats enter a Trump presidency without a plan or a clear leader

By Steve Peoples, Joey Cappelletti and Chris Megerian, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats spent billions of dollars warning American voters that Donald Trump posed an imminent threat to democracy, that his economic policies would benefit only his wealthy friends, that he was literally a fascist.

In the end, voters didn’t care — or if they did, it didn’t matter.

And now, after Kamala Harris’ decisive loss, Democrats enter a second Trump presidency with no clear leader, no clear plan and no agreement on what caused them to be so wrong about the 2024 election.

“I think there needs to be a cleaning of the house, there needs to be a new generation of leaders that emerge,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., among the few Democrats with presidential ambitions to address the party’s future on Wednesday. “There needs to be new thinking, new ideas and a new direction. And, you know, the establishment produced a disaster.”

Supporters arrive before Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a concession speech Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, on the campus of Howard University in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

With votes still being counted, Trump was on track to become the first Republican in two decades to win the popular vote, although the scope of his Electoral College victory was likely to fall short of President Barack Obama’s 2008 performance in which he won 365 electoral votes.

Trump picked up a small but significant share of younger voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, many of whom were feeling down about the economy, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. The Republican president-elect also made progress among voters without a college degree.

Most of the elected Democrats who are most often mentioned as 2028 presidential prospects — including the governors of California, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania — declined to weigh in when asked. Others canceled scheduled interviews.

The few progressives willing to speak publicly offered different explanations. Relatively few were blaming President Joe Biden for backtracking on his promise not to run for reelection, which blocked the party from picking a replacement in a traditional primary.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent and former Democratic primary candidate, had warned Harris before Election Day that she was focusing too much on flipping Republican votes and not enough on pocketbook issues. He issued a statement excoriating party leadership.

FILE — Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., talks to the media as he walks to the House chamber before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” he said. “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

Others weren’t so eager to make wholesale changes.

“Our challenge is not to overreact to this election,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who easily won reelection Tuesday night. “We had a candidate with a relatively low profile — no one knew much about Kamala Harris … who took on one of the best-known people in the history of mankind.”

Just eight years ago, Democrats were stunned by Trump’s shocking victory over Hillary Clinton. But at that time, many were united in blaming the loss on dysfunction within the Democratic National Committee. Others blamed Russian influence efforts supporting Trump or FBI Director James Comey’s statement excoriating Clinton’s handling of classified information in her emails while serving as secretary of state.

There are no excuses this time. The results show Democrats’ current problems extend well beyond its political machinery.

Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a concession speech for the 2024 presidential election on the campus of Howard University in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Operatives from the party’s progressive wing condemned Harris’ campaign for investing too much time and resources on winning moderate Republicans at the expense of the party’s working-class base, including union workers drawn to Trump’s promises to impose tariffs on friends and foes alike and threats to American businesses thinking of moving jobs offshore.

Warnings about Trump’s threat to U.S. democracy were important, they said, but the issue was not top of mind for most voters.

“In the coming months, our party will be doing a lot of introspection, lots of thinking,” said Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar, whose district contains much of Detroit. “Democrats focused on Trump’s character. His legal problems, being a felon. But for the large part, the people who are economically suffering, who feel that they are worse off economically, did not pay much attention to his character.

Others were less diplomatic.

Alexandra Rojas, executive director of the far-left Justice Democrats, said that the party’s leadership must “take responsibility for how a second Donald Trump presidency became possible again under their watch.”

“The Democratic Party is rapidly losing its legitimacy amongst the everyday people and marginalized communities continuously used as stepping stones to win elections,” Rojas charged, even as she acknowledged “there are no easy answers for where we as a country and movement go from here.”

Indeed, the data suggests that Democrats have serious work to do.

Biden drew about even with Trump among voters without a college degree four years ago, earning 47% of their vote compared to Trump’s 51%. But voters without a college degree inched toward Trump in 2024, giving him a clear advantage with 55% of their vote. Fewer — 43% — backed Harris.

President Joe Biden walks from Marine One as he arrives on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

The modest movement of those without a college degree was pronounced among younger voters, with Trump earning 52% now compared with 44% four years ago, and among nonwhite voters, 32% vs. 25%.

Overall, about half of voters under age 30 supported Harris. That’s compared to the roughly 6 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020. At the same time, Black and Latino voters appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than they were to back Biden four years ago, VoteCast found.

Jef Pollock, a veteran Democratic pollster, said the Harris campaign “was dealt a bad hand given the international rebuke of incumbent parties all over the world as voter frustrations over the economy have boiled over.”

“But Democrats have to look internally and ask ourselves what can we do to rebuild our relationship with rural, working class, and Latino voters as well as young men,” Pollock said. “Clearly they believe we are not addressing their every day needs.”

For now, it’s unclear if the party will go through any kind of formal self-examination process to determine exactly what went wrong.

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After the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee famously commission an internal “growth and opportunity” report to chart a path forward. But even then, the GOP found electoral success only after Trump ignored the report’s recommendations to strengthen the party’s infrastructure and adopt a more welcoming and inclusive message.

After the 2016 election, Democrats also made changes to their party infrastructure and fundraising after a period of introspection as well.

Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, who led Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, is worried that Democrats won’t do the introspection necessary after this devastating loss.

“A healthy party is challenging itself to do that kind of an autopsy and hear what we did wrong,” he said. “I don’t even know that there is going to be that kind of a process.”

Sanders himself was more blunt in his statement.

“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” he said. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”

Cappelletti reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers Dan Merica, Farnoush Amiri and Stephen Groves in Washington contributed.

Trump isn’t first to be second: Grover Cleveland set precedent of non-consecutive presidential terms

By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — On the list of U.S. presidents, several have been tapped by voters to serve for more than one term, with Donald Trump joining the group as the 45th president and now the 47th, too. But only one other American president did it the way Trump will — with a gap of four years between terms.

That was Grover Cleveland, who served as the 22nd president after the 1884 election, and as the 24th president after the campaign of 1892.

Former President Donald Trump returns to the White House after clinching victory Wednesday morning. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Cleveland was governor of New York when he was tapped as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 1884. He was “viewed as the epitome of responsibility and stability,” said Daniel Klinghard, professor of political science at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

A narrow victory in the popular vote gave him enough votes in the Electoral College to be named president. Four years later, even though he once again had a slight lead in the popular vote, he lost the Electoral College count to Republican Benjamin Harrison.

Cleveland remained well-thought of by the public, though. He won both the popular and Electoral vote in 1892.

During his first term, among the issues he took on: pushing for a reduction of tariffs that had been put in place during the Civil War. He advocated strongly for it, linking that position to the Democratic Party and getting public support, Klinghard said.

“That model of a president being a vocal, clear spokesperson for a policy that animated the party” was emulated by future presidents like Woodrow Wilson, he said. And it helped keep Cleveland in the public eye during the years following his first term.

“This is a point at which the modern notion of the of the national party really came together. Cleveland had a group of skilled political operatives, very wealthy folks, who saw themselves benefiting from free trade,” Klinghard said. “And they spent a lot of time sort of keeping Cleveland’s name in front of the electorate, sort of very much as Trump’s allies have done, sort of dismissing anybody else as a challenge — as a rival.”

Why AP called Wisconsin and the White House for Donald Trump

By ROBERT YOON, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press declared that Republican Donald Trump won Wisconsin — and with it, a return to the White House — once it determined that remaining uncounted votes mostly from the greater Milwaukee area would not be enough to allow Vice President Kamala Harris to overtake Trump.

With nearly all of the vote counted early Wednesday, the AP declared Trump the winner of Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes at 5:34 a.m. ET, enough to push the former president past the 270-vote threshold needed to retake the presidency.

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Winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania had been the vice president’s most straightforward path to victory, but the AP had already declared Trump the winner in Pennsylvania at 2:24 a.m. ET. The winner of Michigan remained undetermined at the time Wisconsin was called.

In the hours leading up to the AP’s race call in Wisconsin, a sizable amount of uncounted ballots remained in Milwaukee and Racine counties, among others. In order to win, Harris would have needed to win the vast majority of these uncounted ballots. That was still possible, considering that Milwaukee County is one of the state’s most reliable Democratic strongholds. As for Racine, although the county generally favors Repbulicans, it historically has reported votes near the end of its count that heavily favored Democrats.

Subsequent vote updates from Racine did heavily favor Harris — but not by enough to allow her to push past Trump, even when factoring in additional uncounted Milwaukee County votes that would have benefited the vice president.

The AP only declares a winner once it can determine that a trailing candidate can’t close the gap and overtake the vote leader.

Here’s a look at how the AP called this race:

CANDIDATES:

Harris (D) vs. Trump (R) vs. Randall Terry (Constitution) vs. Chase Oliver (Libertarian) vs. Jill Stein (Green) vs. Claudia De la Cruz (Party for Socialism and Liberation) vs. Cornel West (Justice for All) vs. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (We the People).

POLL CLOSING TIME:

9 p.m. ET

ABOUT THE RACE:

Wisconsin was one of the three Midwestern “blue wall” states that supported Trump in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020 and remained a competitive presidential battleground in 2024. Both Trump and Harris and their running mates made frequent stops in Wisconsin, including several in the populous Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay areas. The margin of victory in past presidential contests was less than a percentage point in the 2020, 2016, 2004 and 2000.

In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton lost statewide despite winning Milwaukee County with 66% of the vote, Dane County, the home of Madison, with 71% and LaCrosse with 52%. Four years later, Joe Biden improved upon Clinton’s performances in the three counties by between 3 and 5 percentage points, helping him eke out a narrow statewide victory. Trump carried Brown County, the home of Green Bay, in 2016 and 2020 with about 52% of the vote, and Biden outperformed Clinton’s showing there by about 4 percentage points.

For Republican candidates, winning the conservative “WOW” counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington in suburban Milwaukee can help offset heavy Democratic support in Milwaukee and Dane counties.

WHY AP CALLED THE RACE:

In addition to Racine, Trump was also comfortably ahead in the other southeastern counties that form the state’s most solid Republican stronghold. This region includes the so-called “WOW” counties but does not include Milwaukee County itself. Trump also had a large lead in northeastern Wisconsin, including in Brown County, home to Green Bay. He also established decisive leads in the Republican-voting counties surrounding Brown.

Harris was trailing Biden’s 2020 performance across the board in every geographic region. She was also trailing Biden across the state’s political spectrum, from areas that voted the most heavily for Trump in 2020 to those that voted most heavily for Biden.

Learn more about how and why the AP declares winners in U.S. elections at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Horoscopes Nov. 6, 2024: Emma Stone, think outside the box and apply discipline

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY: Emma Stone, 36; Ethan Hawke, 54; Maria Shriver, 69; Sally Field, 78.

Happy Birthday: Dig deep, and you’ll discover all you need to know to further your ambitions. Stop agonizing over things you cannot change and shift gears to enforce a positive attitude structured toward gaining access to a lifestyle that offers less stress and a better chance of finding the happiness you deserve. Think outside the box and apply discipline and physical attributes to turn your pursuits into something tangible. Live life your way. Your numbers are 5, 12, 20, 27, 32, 38, 44.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Take advantage of any opportunity to explore new places, go on an adventure or reconnect with someone from your past who enjoys the same things as you. A deliberate move will face opposition, but with ingenuity and energy, you will overcome any obstacle you encounter. 2 stars

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Embrace change, and doors will open. An opportunity to adopt a healthier lifestyle or choose home improvements that add to your convenience is apparent. Participate in an event or join a group that embraces your desired values, skills or pastimes. 5 stars

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Fact-check; if you believe everything you hear, disappointment will prevail when the truth unfolds. Change only what’s feasible and don’t count on old quotes being honored. Get up to speed, find out where you stand and negotiate a deal you can handle financially. 3 stars

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Spice up your life and take on something that excites you or encourages you to use your skills differently. Let your intuition lead the way when dealing with personal and professional connections. Don’t expect everyone to be honest. Trust your instincts, and you’ll know when to make a move. 3 stars

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Ramp up your energy levels; make the changes that satisfy your soul and put a smile on your face. Taking care of business will encourage you to take advantage of an opportunity to socialize, network or expand your circle of friends, interests and pastimes. Romance is favored. 3 stars

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Get out and see what’s happening in your neighborhood, but avoid getting trapped by someone pushing their agenda or trying to separate you from your cash. Sign up for a seminar or class that will encourage you to make a lifestyle change that enriches your life. 5 stars

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Keep your thoughts to yourself and your emotions invisible. Size up situations carefully and determine what others want before you make promises. Explore what interests you. Start a conversation with someone who can broaden your scope about something you want to pursue. Self-improvement and personal growth are favored. 2 stars

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Reach out to those sharing your goals or offering incentives to help you further your agenda. Staying active will help you avoid negative interactions with someone looking for a fight. A change at home that makes your life and achieving your goals easier will pay off. Expand your mind. 4 stars

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Review investments, medical concerns or contracts. The extra time spent will reveal information that can spare you from making an untimely mistake. Trust your instincts over what others try to lead you to believe. Think fast and stay ahead of anyone who challenges you. 3 stars

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Look at situations from different perspectives and consider the most cost-effective way to manage your response. Demonstrating your reliability will lead to an unexpected opportunity involving financial gain. A change will boost your morale and confidence, giving you the charisma to outshine anyone who challenges you. 3 stars

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Clear up unfinished business. The less you must deal with, the easier it will be for you to recognize and take advantage of an opportunity. Ask questions and demonstrate what you can contribute. Define your objective, and an offer will be made to meet your needs. 3 stars

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Listen, keep your thoughts to yourself and only reveal what you will do and what you expect in return. If something sounds too good to be true, take a pass and stick to what’s realistic and within your budget and capabilities. Don’t let love lead you astray. Avoid excess. 4 stars

Birthday Baby: You are imaginative, ambitious and hardworking. You are social and dynamic.

1 star: Avoid conflicts; work behind the scenes. 2 stars: You can accomplish, but don’t rely on others. 3 stars: Focus and you’ll reach your goals. 4 stars: Aim high; start new projects. 5 stars: Nothing can stop you; go for gold.

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