November 8, 2024 - US election news

President Joe Biden and Rep. Nancy Pelosi walk after disembarking Marine One in San Francisco on February 21.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested in an interview Friday that President Joe Biden’s late departure from the presidential race could have hampered Democrats’ ability to beat Donald Trump.

“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said during an interview with a New York Times podcast.

Pelosi and Biden have been on the outs since she helped orchestrate his removal from the top of the Democratic ticket in July.

While she has claimed she didn’t actively encourage fellow Democrats to encourage his decision to step aside, she nonetheless made clear her view that his was not a winning candidacy.

Yet her comments in the interview are her most explicit to date questioning Biden’s decision to not withdraw sooner.

She said once he was out, she had expected a more competitive Democratic primary that may have sharpened the eventual nominee.

Instead, Biden immediately endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and the party coalesced around her, forestalling any competition from fellow Democrats.

She pointed specifically to Biden’s decision to endorse Harris within hours of stepping aside as a reason a primary was prevented.

“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,” she said.

Three Republican senators with a history as backbench rabble-rousers are poised for the first time in their careers to chair major committees when the new Senate convenes in January.

And Sen. Chuck Grassley, a 91-year-old non-lawyer, will helm the influential Senate Judiciary Committee again.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a conservative who has promoted conspiracies, is also expected to take on the well-funded Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that is part of Paul’s committee. That panel has traditionally tackled major bipartisan projects from sex trafficking on Backpage.com to the epidemic of sexual assault in the Coast Guard.

The musical chairs of the committee shakeups are all part of the transition as GOP regains control of the Senate after four years in the minority and Republican senators scramble to assume coveted spots atop the committees.

Cruz, Lee and Paul have often railed against their leaders — and committee chairs — over government funding, deficit spending and other hot-button issues. Now, while still vocal on those topics, they will be in their third terms and are more seasoned. They’ll have significant influence to impact policy making, nominations and usher through pet projects after years of amassing seniority.

Pentagon officials are holding informal discussions about how the Department of Defense would respond if President-elect Donald Trump issues orders to deploy active-duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of apolitical staffers, defense officials told 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 get ready for an overhaul of the Pentagon.

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?”

It’s unclear at this point who Trump will choose to lead the Pentagon, though officials believe Trump and his team will try to avoid the kind of “hostile” relationship he had with the military during his last administration, said a former defense official who served under Trump.

Read what possible Trump orders are being discussed by Pentagon officials.

The winners of several elections up and down the ballot will be making history this year, CNN projects.

With CNN projecting a Donald Trump win for president, his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, is poised to be sworn in as the first millennial vice president.

Both parties are also poised to welcome a diverse group of newly elected lawmakers in Congress and in state executive offices.

See a list of the history-makers here.

American voters have spoken, and they decided to rehire Donald Trump as president of the United States.

But he won’t take office until January 20, 2025, and there are multiple things that will happen between now and then. Throughout November, December and January, there will be a transition between the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden and the incoming Trump administration. The transition has been complicated by Trump blowing through multiple deadlines in that process, which is laid out in law.

Read more about the timeline here.

Rep. Katie Porter speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2022.

California Democratic Rep. Katie Porter said Tuesday’s election results are a “wake-up call” for the party to refocus its messaging to voters.

She told CNN on Friday that “everyone in Congress, regardless of their party” needs to “connect directly with the biggest challenges families are having,” including the cost of housing and childcare. Overall, there needs to be “a strong economic message,” she said.

She said she feels “very good” that Democrats could be that party. Vice President Kamala Harris tried to speak to these issues as the presidential candidate, she said, but that message didn’t get through to voters because it was such “an abbreviated campaign” and because of “the chaos Donald Trump created.”

Porter decided not to run for reelection in her Southern California swing district, opting for a Senate bid instead, which she lost. The race in her 47th District is now tight and could flip for Republicans as votes are still being tallied.

House Republicans currently have 212 seats and Democrats have 202. Either party needs 218 seats to win the majority. Republicans flipped control of the Senate, winning at least 52 seats so far.

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is working quickly to fill critical White House positions, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN, noting that additional positions could be announced as early as today.

Trump announced on Thursday that his campaign co-manager, Susie Wiles, will be named his White House chief of staff. Wiles is expected to help build out the White House team alongside the President-elect and his transition co-chairs.

In light of Donald Trump’s reelection, migrant support groups have started preparations for the president-elect’s promise of mass deportations.

Immigration attorney Camille Mackler says she, along with over 80 legal service providers throughout New York State, stand ready to defend the rights of immigrants who previously have not been considered a priority for removal by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Mackler also said the incoming Trump administration may put renewed pressure on immigration judges to adjudicate cases at a faster rate, at a time when finding legal representation for defendants is a major challenge due to attorney shortages.

Some houses of worship in New York City are also preparing to provide sanctuary to some immigrants.

The Interfaith Center of New York has helped orchestrate the humanitarian response to an ongoing migrant crisis in the city, which has included using churches, synagogues, and mosques to provide temporary shelter for asylum-seekers. “That’s the network that will be mobilized when it comes to fighting any sort of more extreme measures such as deportation,” said Rev. Chloe Breyer, director of the non-profit.

Some background: Donald Trump’s allies and some in the private sector have been quietly preparing to detain and deport migrants residing in the US on a large scale, according to four sources familiar with the discussions.

Early discussions among Trump’s team have focused on removing undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, a source familiar with the team’s preliminary plans told CNN this week. A key issue under consideration is how, when and if to deport immigrants who were brought to the US as children, commonly known as Dreamers.

Indiana Republican Senator-elect Jim Banks speaks at the RNC in Milwaukee on July 16.

Indiana GOP Sen.-elect Jim Banks said he hopes every undocumented immigrant who came into the US illegally under President Joe Biden’s administration will be deported once President-elect Donald Trump is back 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. And I think once you do that, President Trump is committed to making that his first and top priority when it comes to mass deportation,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash on Friday.

Banks maintained he doesn’t think it will be “that complicated,” saying local law enforcement is prepared and increasing penalties on businesses will lead to undocumented immigrants returning to their home countries “on their own.”

For context: Refugees, asylum-seekers and their immediate families contributed an estimated net $37.5 billion to the federal government between 2005 and 2019, according to a report released earlier this year by the Department of Health and Human Services. However, they cost state and local governments an estimated net of $21.4 billion, the report said. Immigrants have also been playing a crucial role in easing labor shortages.

And deportations are costly. If 1 million undocumented immigrants are deported per year, it could cost over $960 billion spanning more than a decade, according to the American Immigration Council. Additionally, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement workforce would need to dramatically increase in size, which would require Congress to authorize billions of dollars in additional spending.

Trump said Thursday when it comes to mass deportations, “there is no price tag.”

CNN’s Catherine E. Shoichet contributed reporting to this post.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference in San Francisco on October 06, 2022.

In a fiery post on Truth Social, President-elect Donald Trump took aim at California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s leadership, arguing the governor’s promised resistance to policies on Trump’s agenda would prevent the state from reaching its full potential.

The president-elect said Newsom is “trying to KILL our Nation’s beautiful California,” and went on to criticize the state’s handling of homelessness, high cost of living, and what he called “out of control” grocery prices, positioning these issues as evidence of a government failing its citizens.

This comes after the Democratic governor on Thursday called for lawmakers to convene a special session later this year to safeguard the state’s progressive policies on climate change, reproductive rights and immigration ahead of another Trump presidency.

Other blue state leaders have also begun to position themselves to resist the incoming administration, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vowing Wednesday not to “accept an agenda from Washington that strips away the rights that New Yorkers have long enjoyed,” and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker vowing Thursday: “You come for my people, you come through me.”

Former President Donald Trump, holds a campaign rally at First Horizon Coliseum on November 2, 2024 in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The Justice Department on Friday announced federal charges in a thwarted Iranian plot to kill Donald Trump before the presidential election.

According to court documents, Iranian officials asked Farhad Shakeri, 51, in September to focus on surveilling and ultimately assassinating Trump. Shakeri is still at large in Iran, the Justice Department said.

This is a newly disclosed plot and marks yet another alleged attempt on Trump’s life by the Iranian regime.

Prosecutors allege Shakeri – who participated in recorded conversations with law enforcement – was originally tasked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to carrying out other assassinations against US and Israeli citizens inside the US. But IRGC officials told Shakeri on October 7 to focus only on Trump, court documents say, and that he had seven days to formulate an assassination plan.

The two other individuals charged, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt, were arrested in New York and are accused of helping the Iranian government surveil a separate US citizen of Iranian origin. They made their initial appearance in court yesterday, the Justice Department said, and are being detained pending trial.

In statements, both Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray denounced the continued threats from the Iranian government against individuals in the United States.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Garland said.

More context: The US government has repeatedly raised concerns that Iran may try to retaliate for a 2020 US drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a top general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) by trying to kill Trump or his former advisers.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that all three men were specifically charged in the plot against Donald Trump.

House Republicans are officially putting special counsel Jack Smith on notice, now that President-elect Donald Trump is heading back to the White House and Republicans have a chance of keeping their majority in the House.

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who is leading the investigation into former January 6 committee, sent a letter to Smith telling him to preserve his records and comply with their previous requests.

Context: Trump has said multiple times he plans to fire Smith and end the federal cases against him for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and mishandling classified documents.

As of Wednesday, Smith is in active talks with Justice Department leadership about how to end the federal cases against Trump, a DOJ official familiar with the discussions told CNN.

President-elect Donald Trump and special counsel Jack Smith.

Special counsel Jack Smith has asked federal Judge Tanya Chutkan to wipe away all deadlines that are upcoming in Donald Trump’s January 6 criminal case, so his office can assess how to move forward as Trump returns to the presidency.

This is the first step where Smith is publicly indicating he preparing to wind down the case against Trump.

CNN has reported that the special counsel has already been in active talks with Justice Department senior officials about how to handle the case.

The government will file a status report or update the court by December 2, they added.

Read more on what happens to Trump’s criminal and civil cases here.

This post has been updated with more reporting.

People in at least 20 different states have received racist text messages with references to “slave catchers” and “picking cotton,” according to a CNN tally, in the wake of the presidential election.

Attorneys general for several states have condemned the messages and are encouraging residents who received them to file complaints with their offices. The “texts appear to be targeting Black and Brown individuals, including students,” New York’s attorney general said.

It was not immediately clear who sent the messages, and there is no complete list of whom they were delivered to. At least some appear to have been sent through TextNow in what the company “believe(s) … is a widespread, coordinated attack,” it told CNN on Friday.

“As soon as we became aware, our Trust & Safety team acted quickly, rapidly disabling the related accounts in less than an hour,” said the company, whose service lets people sign up anonymously using an email address and send texts that appear to come from a randomly generated phone number.

Donald Trump’s presidential “campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages,” its spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Talaya Jones, a New Jersey resident who received a text around 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday, told CNN her reaction was “shock, anger and sadness all in one.”

Jones said it felt “strategically planned.”

“For the people that voted that way that they voted, one thing to recognize — this the person you voted for, these are the type of people that back him, and it’s insane because at the end of the day, we’re all humans,” she said.

Read more about the racist texts.

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‘Go to the plantation’: Black Americans react after being targeted in anonymous messages

01:52 - Source: CNN

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday said he wasn’t going to sell shares of his social media platform Truth Social, calling the platform an “an important part of our historic win.”

More background: Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group, Trump’s social media company, initially skyrocketed in value after CNN and other media outlets projected Trump won Tuesday’s presidential election.

Trump Media’s stock, which trades under the ticker symbol “DJT,” spiked 35% at the opening bell, translating to an astounding market value of about $9 billion.

Trump is the dominant shareholder in the conservative social media company, which has scant revenue and is losing money.

The president-elect’s 114.75 million shares were briefly worth about $5.3 billion based on those early gains, up from $3.9 billion when trading ended on Election Day. Of course, those are only paper gains and in practice it would be difficult for Trump to sell much of those shares without tanking the price.

Read more on Truth Social here.

CNN’s Matt Egan contributed reporting to this post.

Senior officials of the Kamala Harris campaign held a staff call Thursday evening on the heels of the vice president’s loss to Donald Trump and made one request of their colleagues: Please don’t criticize the campaign to members of the press.

That plea, described to CNN by a source on the call, came as Democrats have begun what is expected to be a long process of soul-searching to figure out why Trump had such a decisive victory against Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Senior officials speaking on Thursday’s call included campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks.

They made clear to their downtrodden colleagues — it doesn’t help anyone to air dirty laundry with the press.

Senior officials also sought to be reassuring, promising that they will all do their best to help colleagues find jobs, the source said. Harris campaign leadership also acknowledged that Harris’ defeat had been wide sweeping — they had taken significant hits with almost every demographic group except college-educated people in the suburbs.

Pennsylvania Senate candidate Republican David McCormick takes part in a debate at the WPVI-TV studio in October in Philadelphia.

The Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s Senate seat has sued Philadelphia election officials over the process of counting provisional ballots in his race, where the GOP candidate, David McCormick, currently has a narrow lead over Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.

McCormick is seeking a court order that would allow him to challenge large groups of ballots at a time, based on those ballots sharing the same alleged deficiencies, rather than file individual challenges to each of the provisional ballots he thinks should be disqualified. He also wants to have a representative present while the ballots are adjudicated.

McCormick wants additional ballots set aside over a dispute about whether people whose mail ballots are rejected for technical defects should be allowed to cast provisional ballots.

McCormick currently leads Casey by roughly 34,000 votes. It’s not clear how many provisional votes are left to count statewide, but his lawsuit estimates that 15,000-20,000 provisional ballots will be adjudicated in Philadelphia in the coming days.

CNN has not projected a winner in the race.

Robert O'Brien speaks during the the 2023 Concordia Annual Summit at Sheraton New York on September 19, 2023 in New York City.

Robert O’Brien, Donald Trump’s national security adviser during his first term, met with Taiwan’s representative to the US Alexander Yui and Republican former Rep. Chris Stewart for lunch in Salt Lake City on Thursday, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The meeting came as diplomats across Washington are feverishly seeking meetings with former Trump administration officials as they share messages to be passed on from their country’s leaders, look for tips on how to get close to Trump, and seek out a better understanding of what Trump’s policies might look like.

Why this matters: Taiwan is particularly concerned about the policies Trump might pursue in office given the former president’s comments on the campaign trail saying that the self-governed island should pay the US more for defense support. Trump also said that Taiwan had taken semiconductor business away from the US and cited plans to put tariffs on chips from Taiwan in a second term.

In recent months, Republicans have told Taiwan officials to tone down their consistently vocal support for Ukraine and the US backing for Ukraine, noting that if Trump were to come back into the White House they would be better off pursuing further support from the US and shoring up a relationship with Trump, than being viewed as rhetorical defenders of Ukraine.

O’Brien declined to comment on the lunch.

With Trump promising to bring an end to the Ukraine War and the conflicts in the Middle East he could use his second term to really pivot US foreign policy focus to the Asia-Pacific and to US-China competition, explained people close to him.

What Trump’s Taiwan policy shapes up to look like remains unclear, but communications between people Taiwan and people close to Trump is a space to watch as that policy begins to take shape.

Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle said on Friday that Democrats can still exercise their power in the House if they end up in the minority.

He continued, “And I think that will still be the case whether it’s the debt ceiling, which will be back in front of us in just two months, whether it’s the budget, whether it’s the must-pass annual defense bill. There are ways in which, in the minority, Democrats can exercise our power to make sure that we are able to impact the agenda.”

While Republicans have clinched the White House and flipped the Senate, unified control for the GOP remains a question as votes in House races continue to be counted. There are 23 House races that have not yet been projected.

People hold signs during a news conference by Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, Monday, May 20, 2024, in Las Vegas.

Despite a strong showing of support for abortion rights on Election Day, the abortion access landscape in the United States won’t change immediately. And under President Donald Trump’s second term, it will remain heavily fragmented — and vulnerable to future restriction.

Voters in seven states – Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York – passed pro-abortion ballot initiatives at the polls this week. About a fifth of abortions in the US – an average of about 19,000 each month – occur in those states, according to data from the Society of Family Planning.

In most of those states – Colorado, Maryland, Montana, Nevada and New York – abortion is already legal, and the ballot measures maintain access by enshrining the right to abortion in the state’s constitution.

In only two states did voters approve measures to expand abortion access: in Arizona, where there is currently a 15-week gestational limit, and in Missouri where abortion is currently banned. The measures in both states allow for the right to an abortion to be enshrined in the state constitutions up to fetal viability, which doctors say is around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Still, what these new pathways will mean in terms of practical change for women seeking an abortion remains to be seen.

Policy change takes time: However, “adding constitutional protection does not automatically repeal bans or restrictions; litigation is often necessary to overturn pre-existing state laws,” according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization focused on sexual and reproductive health that supports abortion rights.

On Wednesday, Planned Parenthood’s two providers in Missouri filed a suit to restore abortion access in the state. Still, it will take time to ramp up resources to support broader access, experts say.

Broad restrictions remain: Even if the ballot measures in Arizona and Missouri improve access in those states, about 40% of women of reproductive age – more than 26 million women ages 15 to 44 – will still be living in states with abortion bans or restrictions.

Read the full story here.

Sen. John Cornyn speaks to the press in the US Capitol in February.

Moving to bolster his bid to become the next Republican leader, Sen. John Cornyn announced Friday he had raised nearly $33 million in this cycle to support his party’s successful effort to win back majority control in the chamber.

About half of that, $16 million, went to the National Republican Senatorial Commitee, the election arm for the Senate Republicans that provides funding and other resources to incumbents and GOP nominees running for the Senate.

That haul increases the amount the Texan has raised since arriving in the Senate in 2002 to nearly $415 million. That included during his two terms as chair of the NRSC.

Cornyn is running against Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. Rick Scott of Florida to replace Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who has held that top post for 18 years.

A week ago, sources with Thune said he had raised $31 million for the cycle with a smaller amount, $4 million, going directly to the NRSC.

Harris supporters become emotional as Vice President Kamala Harris concedes the election at Howard University in Washington, DC, on November 6.

America did not elect Kamala Harris as its first female president this week, but Janet Edwards was grateful she got to witness a fellow Black woman run for the highest office in the land in her lifetime.

She didn’t want to let Harris’ loss on November 5 take away from the joy of the 107 days before it.

Tuesday’s election has left Democrats reeling, but Harris’ loss comes with an added layer of disappointment for some women, particularly the women of color who backed her overwhelmingly. For the second time in eight years, the highest, hardest glass ceiling survived millions of tiny cracks, once again testing the optimism of those who hope to see the first female president elected.

Supporters of Hillary Clinton react to early polls results on election night in 2016.

Even as other countries – including Italy, North Macedonia and, most recently, Mexico – have in recent years joined the ranks of countries that have elected the first women to their highest political offices, American voters have picked Donald Trump twice over the two women who have come closest to the White House in US history.

Women have been running for president for more than 150 years, starting with Victoria Woodhull’s 1872 bid as a candidate of the Equal Rights Party. The late Rep. Shirley Chisholm, a former New York congresswoman, became the first Black woman to seek the office in 1972. Her slogan: “Unbought and Unbossed.” Harris’ previous presidential campaign paid homage to the typography of the Chisholm run.

Read more about the impact of Harris’ loss on the effort to break the highest glass ceiling in US politics.

U.S. Senator Mike Lee speaks on government funding during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on March 6.

President-elect Donald Trump could be in a position to select the government’s top ethics czar when he assumes office in January – after a key ally in the Senate blocked President Joe Biden’s pick to head the Office of Government Ethics.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah in September objected to the speedy Senate confirmation of David Huitema to the post – a little more than a year after he was first nominated by Biden. In a Senate speech, Lee said the confirmation vote should be delayed until after the presidential election, citing what he called the “political weaponization of the US government against Donald Trump by the Biden-Harris administration.”

Huitema has served as an ethics official with the State Department.

Lee’s office did not respond to a CNN inquiry Thursday about the nomination.

Independent watchdog groups outside the government say the agency, known as OGE, needs a permanent director to help oversee the onslaught of ethics reviews that are part of the transition to a new administration.

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the liberal-leaning group Public Citizen, called the unfilled post “incredibly concerning.”

“We certainly think that ethics should not be a partisan game and holding over the placement of a new OGE director for a new administration to choose their new ethics point is exactly that,” Gilbert said.

Read more on the government’s top ethics czar here.

While Republicans have clinched the White House and flipped the Senate, unified control for the GOP remains a question as votes in House races continue to be counted.

There are 23 House races that have not yet been projected.

Republicans are six seats away from holding on to the majority, while Democrats are 18 seats away from taking the chamber.

Republicans will win the US Senate majority, a victory for the party that has been locked out of the majority in the chamber since 2021. With several races still to be declared, Republicans will have at least 52 seats in the chamber.

The race has not been called in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

An aerial view shows the south side of the city of Douglas next to the double wall on the US-Mexico next to the Mexican city of Agua Prieta, on October 15.

Authorities in Arizona border towns have a new immigration mandate, and are gearing up to enforce it — but also warn they need more funding for what has traditionally been a federal responsibility.

CNN has projected Proposition 314 will pass with 63% approval as of Thursday. The proposition allows local and state law enforcement in Arizona to arrest migrants and criminalize unauthorized crossings anywhere but an official port of entry. In short, it makes violations of immigration law a state crime — rather than only a federal offense.

It also increases the punishment for selling fentanyl that results in the death of a person.

Emmanuel Botello, a San Luis police lieutenant, told CNN affiliate KTVK/KPHO enforcing the mandate will require more federal funding.

Some context: The measure adds another dimension to the long-running debate over border security in a state that shares a 370-mile border with Mexico.

Proponents say the measure would curb illegal immigration and cut down on crime perpetrated by migrants, stepping in where the federal government has failed. Meanwhile, critics argue that the it would result in racial profiling and unlawful policing, be costly for the state and strain law enforcement resources.

The proposal is similar to Texas’ controversial immigration law known as SB 4, which has been blocked from going into effect as a legal challenge plays out in court.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to go after much of the media in his second term, threatening to jail journalists, revoke broadcast licenses and target outlets with a flurry of lawsuits. It’s a playbook he’s threatened to use before.

During his first term in the White House, Trump regularly tangled with journalists, assailed the press as the “enemy of the people,” and banned reporters from official briefings. In recent months on the campaign trail, Trump employed dark and violent rhetoric to attack the media — telling a crowd this week that he wouldn’t mind if journalists got shot — and sparking fears he will attempt to weaponize the government against the free press.

Experts on authoritarian leadership in Europe say that in a second term, enabled by more loyalists and fewer guardrails around him, Trump could do extensive damage to press freedom in the United States. A look at some countries in Europe, where Democracy is “backsliding” portends how it can happen.

Sharon Moshavi, president of the International Center for Journalists, said that in countries that have experienced a dismantling of the free press, “It’s not one thing — it’s not ‘we’re going to jail journalists.’”

Governments around the world controlled by authoritarians and strongmen, including Russia, Hungary, India, and until recently, Poland, have moved to muzzle the free press and crush dissent, she said. Trump has praised the leaders of many of these nations, especially Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts. It’s attacks from multiple angles,” she said.

Read more on experts’ warning here.

A red shift across the country has propelled Donald Trump back into the White House. He won or is leading in all seven battleground states, and he turned Democrats’ “blue wall” in the industrial Northeast and Midwest red again.

Capitalizing on frustration at the cost of living and anxiety about the direction of the country, as well as making inroads with traditionally Democratic voting groups, he can claim new support across the country.

Areas with notable shifts:

Trump’s third run for the White House is likely to deliver his first victory in the popular vote, a feat he achieved by gaining support across the country, including in the Northeast.

While he was nowhere near winning his home state of New York, he saw improved margins in much of the state, and especially on Long Island. He also saw unexpected gains in blue states like Virginia and New Jersey. He saw particularly large swings in border counties in Texas and southern Florida.

Click through CNN’s interactive map of the red shift.

President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Florida, on November 6.

In the days leading up to the US election, pollsters had the race deadlocked. The vote was essentially a coin flip.

But over on the betting platform Polymarket, the odds were much more solidly in former President Donald Trump’s favor. On Monday, Trump led Vice President Kamala Harris 58% to 42% — a lead that, by Wednesday morning, proved to be a much more accurate reflection of reality.

For free market purists, the success of betting sites like Polymarket, Kalshi and PredictIt isn’t surprising at all. The basic theory behind prediction markets is that a lot of people with money on the line can better predict an outcome than any one expert. Even if those people are not well informed, collective wisdom emerges from everyone’s aversion to losing money.

But just like polls, prediction markets are far from perfect.

There have been some high-profile misses, so the Nate Silvers and Ann Selzers of the world probably won’t be out of a job anytime soon.

Read the full analysis.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins shares her reporting on what’s going on inside Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump supporters jockeying for a job in the president-elect’s White House.

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What Kaitlan Collins is hearing from inside Mar-a-Lago about the fight for jobs in Trump’s White House

02:30 - Source: CNN

Federal investigators are running down email addresses from Russian internet domains that were used to make a slew of non-credible bomb threats across swing states on Election Day.

Though the presidential election is over, US intelligence and law enforcement agencies are still grappling with and analyzing a deluge of disinformation and online threats aimed at sowing discord among voters.

In the days before, on and after Election Day, for example, officials at the FBI and other agencies spent hours tracking videos and other social media posts, including ones they said were made by Russian operatives, people briefed on the matter said. It was the most active and aggressive the US government has been in combatting foreign influence in the age of social media, the sources said.

It is not yet clear who sent the bomb threats or from where. A Russian email address can be used outside of Russia, and the bomb threats are entirely separate activity from the social media disinformation. But the spate of emails caused temporary evacuations at some polling centers and injected tension in the final hours of voting to an already-chaotic threat environment.

The unprecedentedly high tempo of the investigations is a response to an election during which fake content was easier than ever to make and quicker to spread online, and right- and left-wing partisans were quick to amplify the content to claim voter fraud or suppression.

Read the full story.

Presidential historian Allan Lichtman tells CNN why his prediction that Vice President Kamala Harris would defeat President-elect Donald Trump in the race for the White House was incorrect.

Lichtman had correctly predicted 9 out of the 10 elections prior to 2024.

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See the moment Lichtman realized his election prediction was wrong

03:42 - Source: CNN

The Supreme Court on July 30

The roiling debate over the strength of democratic restraints to keep Donald Trump in check when he returns to the White House in January has put a renewed focus on a divisive Supreme Court ruling that some fear could enable his worst impulses.

Trump’s sweeping election victory has relit fears on the left of an empowered president pushing the boundaries of his authority — only now with a precedent in hand that grants far-reaching immunity from criminal prosecution.

Taken together, the political and legal alignment will usher Trump into a second term with unprecedented power.

“For 250 years, the possibility of criminal prosecution operated as a guard rail on the conduct of our presidents,” said Neil Eggleston, a veteran attorney who served as White House counsel in the Obama administration. “That guard rail is now gone, and I see few if any others that will constrain President Trump.”

Some context: In a highly anticipated ruling that came over the objection of the three-justice liberal wing, the Supreme Court held that Trump enjoyed “absolute” immunity from prosecution for actions taken within his core constitutional powers and a more limited immunity for other official actions.

Based on their statements at oral argument, it was clear that several conservative justices saw the ruling not as a gift to Trump but rather as a way to head off spiraling and potentially politically motivated prosecutions.

And while the decision may accomplish that — complicating any effort to prosecute Biden once he leaves office, for instance — it is also widely viewed as removing a check on a president who chafed at the concept of boundaries.

Read the full story.

President-elect Donald Trump points to the crowd at his election watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida, on November 6.

President-elect Donald Trump has won the battleground state of Nevada, CNN projects, bringing his electoral vote count to 301 as his team begins preparing for the transfer of power ahead of the inauguration next January. CNN has yet to project a win in Arizona.

Here’s what to know:

The U.S. Capitol building November 6, the President-elect Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are laying the groundwork to push through an ambitious agenda with President-elect Donald Trump if they have total control of Washington next January — a rare GOP trifecta that party leaders believe is now within reach.

And this time they’ll be prepared to use it.

Their goal is to get to work quickly drafting big pieces of the Trump administration’s agenda, starting with a major economic package centered on taxes, energy policy, border security and deregulation, according to two people familiar with discussions.

GOP leaders have been dreaming of another major tax package, as many tax provisions are set to expire at the end of 2025.

Also on the table: potentially rolling back parts of President Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping economic and climate bill that Democrats passed when they had unified government earlier in Biden’s term, one source familiar with the discussions told CNN.

Republicans also see an opening for other big-ticket items like the House GOP’s hardline immigration proposals that have been stalled since passing their chamber last year as Senate Democrats and the Biden White House had strongly opposed that plan.

Remember: With Republicans winning control of the Senate, delivering on Trump’s agenda will come down to whether the GOP retains a majority in the House. CNN has not yet made a projection in the battle for control of the House. But key pickups in Pennsylvania and Michigan have party leaders hopeful that a full sweep is in sight and senior Republicans feel confident they will hold onto their slim majority.

Even with unified GOP control, there would be challenges ahead for Republicans. One issue is the political math: House Republicans believe if they do hold onto the majority, it won’t be by much. Mike Johnson — who would be expected to keep his position as speaker — would only have a few votes to spare. And their current, narrow majority, has been plagued by divisions and roadblocks.

Read more about the Republican agenda.

CNN’s Danya Gainor contributed to this report.

With the Republican Party now entirely his, its anti-Trump figures banished for good, Donald Trump will enter the Oval Office with both the experience of having done the job before and a wealth of resentments over how he believes the system failed him.

“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump told supporters. He summed up his approach to a second term as such: “I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept.”

Here’s how things could look different in a second Trump presidency:

Read more about how a second Trump term will be different.

Special counsel Jack Smith and President-elect Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is in an extraordinarily unique position: He has been reelected to the White House as a convicted felon who is awaiting sentencing in his hush money case in New York and still working to stave off prosecution in other state and federal cases.

Trump has said multiple times he plans to fire special counsel Jack Smith and end the federal cases against him for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and mishandling classified documents.

As of Wednesday, Smith is in active talks with Justice Department leadership about how to end the federal cases against Trump, a DOJ official familiar with the discussions told CNN.

Later this month, a judge in New York is set to sentence Trump after holding off on handing down the punishment ahead of Election Day to avoid any appearance of affecting the outcome of the presidential race. Whether that sentencing happens at all remains an open question.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Read the full rundown of what to expect.

Trump brings Susie Wiles to the podium at an election night watch party Wednesday, November 6, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

President-elect Donald Trump announced his campaign manager Susie Wiles will serve as his White House chief of staff when he assumes office. She will be the first woman to hold the role.

Vice President-elect JD Vance said it was “great news” that Wiles has been selected for the role, writing on X that she will be a “huge asset” in the White House.

A source told CNN that Wiles had expressed certain conditions to Trump before she accepted the role of chief of staff — the top item being more control over who can reach the president in the Oval Office.

Some context: During Trump’s first term, his chiefs of staff struggled to prevent a roving cast of informal advisers, family members, friends and others from getting inside the White House to meet with him. Trump is often influenced on an issue by whomever he speaks to last, a fact that is well known within his circle and one that made life difficult for his top aides.

What to know about Wiles: The daughter of the late NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall and a seasoned political operative from Florida, Wiles is one of the longest-serving advisers in Trump’s orbit. After helping him win Florida in 2020, she served as his de facto chief of staff during his post-presidency and then led his campaign for the entirety of the race — a rare feat in Trump world. Wiles was widely credited for running what was seen as Trump’s most sophisticated and disciplined campaign, which included keeping many of the fringe voices in his orbit at bay.

Trump credited Wiles during his victory speech, though she declined to address the crowd. Her willingness to stay in the background has endeared her to Trump and to his allies, several of whom have already endorsed her publicly for the job.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to completely remake the US government and wield new power as president. The ambitious promises, if enacted, would transform society.

Some of his most-repeated promises on the campaign trail include:

Now Americans will find out what was hyperbole and what was real — what is achievable and what he will be able to push through by himself, with help from Congress and without interference by the courts.

His pledge to end Russia’s war on Ukraine “in 24 hours,” for example, seems overwrought, to say the least.

His pledge for a mass deportation effort, on the other hand, is very serious. It seems to be backed up by some clear planning but there’s a lack of public details. Expect Trump to come into office with a series of executive orders already written to reinstate border policies unwound by the Biden administration.

Read the full analysis of Trump’s master plan.