Nancy Pelosi blames Joe Biden for election defeat as Democrats turn on each other – US politics live | US elections 2024

Key events

At 2.25am, Donald Trump gazed out at his jubilant supporters wearing “Make America Great Again” hats. He was surrounded by his wife, Melania, and his children, the Stars and Stripes and giant banners that proclaimed: “Dream big again” and “Trump will fix it!”

“We’re going to help our country heal,” Trump vowed. “We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders, we’re going to fix everything about our country and we’ve made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that.”

Having risen from the political dead, the president-elect was already looking ahead to what he called the “golden age of America” – a country that had just shifted sharply to the right. And at its core was the promise of Trump unleashed: a radical expansion of presidential power.

The 45th and 47th commander-in-chief will face fewer limits on his ambition when he is sworn in again in January. He returns as the head of a Republican party remade in his image over the past decade and as the architect of a right-leaning judiciary that helped eliminate his legal perils. Second time around, he has allies across Washington ready to enforce his will.

Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and former Republican congressional aide, said:

What we’re going to have is an imperial presidency. This is going to be probably the most powerful presidency in terms of centralising power and wielding power that we’ve had probably since FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was president from 1933 until his death in 1945).”

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Judge cancels court deadlines in Trump‘s 2020 election case after his presidential win

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case canceled any remaining court deadlines on Friday while prosecutors assess the “the appropriate course going forward” in light of the Republican’s presidential victory, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Special counsel Jack 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. But Smith’s team has been evaluating how to wind down the two federal cases before the president-elect takes office because of longstanding Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted, a person familiar with the matter told the AP.

Trump’s victory over vice-president Kamala Harris means that the Justice Department believes he can no longer face prosecution in accordance with department legal opinions meant to shield presidents from criminal charges while in office.

Trump has criticized both cases as politically motivated, and has said he would fire Smith “within two seconds” of taking office.

The AP reports that in a court filing on Friday in the 2020 election case, Smith’s team asked to cancel any upcoming court deadlines, saying it needs “time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”

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Anti-abortion advocates press Trump for more restrictions as abortion pill sales spike

Anti-abortion advocates say there is still work to be done to further restrict access to abortion when Republican Donald Trump returns to the White House next year, reports Associated Press (AP).

They point to the federal guidance that the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden released around emergency abortions, requiring that hospitals provide them for women whose health or life is at risk, and its easing of prescribing restrictions for abortion pills that have allowed women to order the medication online with the click of a button.

“Now the work begins to dismantle the pro-abortion policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” the Susan B Anthony List, the powerful anti-abortion lobby, said in a statement on Wednesday. The group added: “President Trump’s first-term pro-life accomplishments are the baseline for his second term.”

The group declined to release details about what, specifically, they will seek to undo, reports the AP. But abortion rights advocates are bracing for further abortion restrictions once Trump takes office. And some women are, too, with online abortion pill orders spiking in the days after election day.

Trump has said abortion is an issue for the states, not the federal government. Yet, during the campaign, he pointedly noted that he appointed justices to the supreme court who were in the majority when striking down the national right to abortion. There are also things his administration can do, from picking judges to issuing regulations, to further an anti-abortion agenda.

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In the first Trump term Richard Moore, then the political director of the UK Foreign Office and now the head of MI6, admitted half of Britain’s diplomats woke up each morning dreading what they might read on the president’s Twitter feed.

The sheer unpredictability of Trump’s caprice, and his faith in his quixotic charisma, made it hard for diplomats to operate. It would often taken feverish consultations with Trump’s senior aides, including some in the Pentagon, before a plan – such as a premature withdrawal of 2,500 US troops from Afghanistan – could be finessed.

Now, for all the pro-forma congratulations, that sense of foreboding is back. Although only 4% of the American electorate said foreign policy was the most important issue to them in the election, for those watching from abroad it was the all-consuming preoccupation.

That is hardly surprising, as Trump represents an injection of highly combustible material into an already explosive world. Two wars are raging, one now including North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia, and the other still capable of pitting Iran against Israel. And a third with China is looming. In the eyes of Republican foreign policy thinkers, that is at least two wars too many.

Yet, extraordinarily, Trump’s campaign left few clues as to how he would conduct foreign policy. Often the proposals he referenced were mere headlines – such as ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours; outlandish, such as deporting 10 million migrants; or contradictory, concerning committing to Nato and suggesting Russia does whatever it wants to European freeloaders.

Apart from that, there is a broad intent to make tariffs as much as sanctions the central part of the US foreign policy armoury.

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Donald is not the only Trump back in the picture after his election win.

On Tuesday night, members of the former and future president’s family posed with him at his Florida estate in celebration of his re-election. “Dad, we are so proud of you,” wrote Tiffany, Trump’s younger daughter, posting the photo on X. It was also shared by his 17-year-old granddaughter, Kai, captioned: “The whole squad.”

Notably absent was the former first lady, Melania. However, the happy family shot did include Elon Musk – not a blood relative but surely now loved by the president-elect like a son – who was holding X-AE-AXii, the most absurdly named of his own 12 children.

Given the prominent roles, official and unofficial, held by Trump’s children and their spouses in his first administration, it is a safe bet that family members will be front and centre in his second. Here is a reminder of the characters likely to feature in the Trump dynasty, season two:

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Updated at 05.58 EST

Jacky Rosen, a former Las Vegas-area synagogue president and computer programmer, ran ads touting herself as an independent who doesn’t listen to “party leaders”, reports the AP.

Sam Brown had Donald Trump’s support in the Republican primary and won easily, but he was significantly outspent during the campaign, leaving Rosen to dominate the airwaves for months.

Analysts note that Nevada has a history of backing no-nonsense senators who deliver funding from Washington.

According to the AP, Rosen also spotlighted her work on expanding broadband internet access and helping to connect Las Vegas with Southern California via light rail. And she hammered Brown for his opposition to abortion rights, saying he would support a national abortion ban despite Brown’s statements that he respects Nevada voters’ choice decades ago to legalize abortions.

A ballot measure this year that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution passed. Voters must again approve it in 2026 in order to amend the constitution.

The Senate contest drew relatively little national interest for most of the campaign, a striking contrast with the presidential race as both Trump and vice-president, Kamala Harris, targeted the state and its six electoral votes. Conservative money flowed in during the final days as the GOP posted a strong showing in early period, but Brown was unable to fully fight back.

Brown previously made an unsuccessful bid in 2022 for the Republican nomination to face Cortez Masto.

All four of Nevada’s US House incumbents – three Democrats and one Republican – also won reelection this year.

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Democratic US senator Jacky Rosen reelected in Nevada, securing battleground seat

Nevada Democratic senator Jacky Rosen has won reelection, beating Republican Sam Brown in a tight but unusually quiet race for the battleground state, reports the Associated Press (AP).

According to the AP, the first-term senator had campaigned on abortion rights and positioned herself as a nonideological politician, a formula that also worked for the state’s senior senator, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, in her own reelection bid two years ago.

“Thank you, Nevada! I’m honored and grateful to continue serving as your United States senator,” Rosen said Friday on the social platform X.

Brown, a retired army captain who moved to Nevada from Texas in 2018 and has never held elected office, unsuccessfully tried to ride president-elect Donald Trump’s strong showing in the working-class state. Trump won Nevada on Friday.

The Associated Press left phone and emailed messages seeking comment on Friday from Brown’s campaign. Just before Rosen won, Brown said on X that it was unacceptable that votes were still being counted in Nevada days after the election.

“We deserve to know election results within hours, not a week later,” he said.

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The former US president Donald Trump, due to return to the White House in January, has not yet engaged in formal discussions regarding his new cabinet. Nevertheless, amid his plane journeys, television appearances and rallies, speculation and rumours have swirled around several figures who could find roles in his administration.

My colleagues have taken a look at those who have been and could be offered roles in the cabinet and wider administration when Trump takes office, in this explainer piece:

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Russia’s foreign ministry sees no grounds for talking about resuming dialogue on strategic stability and arms control with the US at the moment, Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing Russia’s deputy foreign minister.

Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow and Washington “are exchanging signals on Ukraine” through closed channels at the military and political levels, according to Interfax. He also said that Russia was ready to listen to US president-elect, Donald Trump’s proposals on resolving the crisis in Ukraine, adding that there could be no simple solution.

“We are extremely thorough, responsible and attentive to any ideas that are proposed by countries in this area,” Interfax quoted Ryabkov as saying.

According to Reuters, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Thursday congratulated Trump on winning the US election, praised him for showing courage when a gunman tried to assassinate him in July, and said Moscow was ready for dialogue with Trump. He said comments that Trump had made about trying to end the war were worthy of attention.

Trump told NBC he had not talked to Putin since his election victory but “I think we’ll speak”.

Ryabkov said the threat of severing diplomatic relations with the US remained if Russia’s frozen assets were seized or Washington escalated tensions over Ukraine.

Ryabkov also commented on Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine, saying it would make it possible “to turn to the nuclear option” if there was an acute crisis in relations with the west and the situation in Ukraine, Interfax reported.

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The US justice department is bringing criminal charges over an Iranian plot to kill the president-elect, Donald Trump, that was thwarted by the FBI, the government said.

The federal government has unsealed criminal charges in what the justice department said was a murder-for-hire plan to take out Trump before this week’s presidential election, which he won decisively over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.

A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan alleges that an unnamed official in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards instructed a contact this past September to put together a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump.

Investigators learned of the plot while interviewing Farhad Shakeri, an Afghan national identified by officials as an Iranian government asset who was deported from the US after being imprisoned on robbery charges.

He told investigators that a Revolutionary Guard contact in Iran instructed him in September to devise a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately assassinate Trump, according to the criminal complaint.

Two other men who the authorities say were recruited to participate in other assassinations, including a prominent Iranian American journalist, were also arrested on Friday. Shakeri remains in Iran.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said in a statement on Friday.

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Ed Davey has urged Keir Starmer to “Trump-proof” the UK by urgently seeking closer European cooperation over military aid for Ukraine and economic ties, after the US president-elect’s threats about security and trade wars.

The Liberal Democrat leader, whose party is the third biggest in the House of Commons, argued that while the UK government should seek to work with a Donald Trump administration, it should also be as prepared as possible if he were to abandon Ukraine or impose sweeping tariffs.

“Yes, we can work with him,” Davey said. “Of course we should, and it may well be that we can, but it would be irresponsible not to take the measures in a diplomatic way, defensive way, that would make our national security and our economy Trump-proof.

“I think millions of people in the UK and elsewhere are just really worried and quite scared. And they’re particularly scared about what it’s going to mean for our security and our economy.”

Trump’s election should be “a wake-up call for the government on Ukraine”, said Davey, who was spending part of Friday at a charity in Surrey that provides aid packages for Ukrainian families.

He said Starmer should push for an immediate European conference on how the continent could fill the gap in defence assistance if, as Trump and his team have hinted, he pulls US support, or tries to force Ukraine into accepting an end to the conflict that would greatly strengthen Russia.

“We can’t simply abandon Ukraine to Putin just because Trump’s in power,” Davey said. “We’ve been playing a critical role, and I think we could play an even more critical role by working with European friends, bringing together European countries so we can increase the aid to Ukraine, and pay for that by seizing Russian assets properly. We’ve been pushing for that for some time.

“Now is the absolute the moment to do it so Europe can fill the gap. But we have got to do it quickly.”

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Bomb threats were made against several Maryland boards of elections and election offices in at least two California counties on Friday, state authorities said, adding that everyone was safe and law enforcement officials were investigating.

According to Reuters, election officials were counting mail-in ballots when the threats came in Maryland. State administrator of elections, Jared DeMarinis, said the threats led to the evacuation of some buildings. He called the threats “cowardly,” adding that local officials will resume counting on Saturday.

“Safety is a top concern – but we WILL resume canvassing (counting) tomorrow. Cowardly threats whether from abroad or not shall not deter us,” DeMarinis said on social media platform X.

“The Baltimore County Police Department is aware and currently investigating the bomb threat received via email by the Baltimore County Board of Elections Office,” police posted on X, later adding that a probe determined that threat to be unfounded.

Reuters reports that in California’s Orange County, the registrar of voters received a bomb threat at an office in Santa Ana after which the office building was evacuated and bomb detection dogs were used to conduct a search. No explosives were located, officials said, adding normal operations will resume on Saturday.

The registrar of voters in California’s Riverside County said its central counting building was also evacuated due to a threat and a bomb squad found no explosives.

The offices of California governor, Gavin Newsom, and Maryland governor, Wes Moore, said they were monitoring the situation and working with local officials.

The FBI said that hoax bomb threats, many of which appeared to originate from Russian email domains, were directed on Tuesday at polling locations in five battleground states – Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – as voting was under way. Russia denies interfering in US elections.

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Incoming Trump presidency threatens millions of Americans’ healthcare plans

Marina Dunbar

Millions of Americans are at risk of losing health coverage in 2025 under Donald Trump’s forthcoming administration.

More than 20 million Americans rely on the individual private health insurance market for healthcare, private insurance which is subsidized by the federal government.

These subsidies, programs that help lower the cost of health insurance premiums, increased the amount of assistance available to people who want to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare as a signature piece of legislation during Barack Obama’s administration.

This specific subsidy program resulted from the Biden administration’s 2021 American Rescue Plan and is set to expire at the end of 2025.

“The consequences of more people going uninsured are really significant, not just at an individual level with more medical debt and less healthy outcomes, but also has ripple effects for providers,” Sabrina Corlette, a research professor and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, said.

“Premiums go up for the people who do have health insurance; for the people without health insurance, it’s financially devastating. The result is medical debt, garnished wages and liens on people’s homes because they can’t pay off their bills,” she said.

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Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, expressed hopes during a phone call with US president-elect, Donald Trump, that he would keep his “promises to work towards ending wars” in the Middle East, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

In the phone call, the Iraqi premier pointed to Trump’s “campaign statements and promises to work towards ending wars in the region”, a statement from Sudani’s office said late on Friday. “The two sides agreed to coordinate efforts in achieving this goal,” it added.

About 2,500 US troops are deployed in Iraq as part of a US-led coalition that was formed to help battle the Islamic State group. Bases hosting the US troops have been the target of dozens of rocket and drone attacks launched by Iran-backed groups in Iraq, which have also claimed attacks against Israel.

Baghdad has for years called on Washington to provide a clear timeline for the withdrawal of their remaining coalition troops.

The US and Iraq announced in late September that the international coalition would end its decade-long military mission in federal Iraq within a year, and by September 2026 in the autonomous Kurdistan region. But the joint statement and US officials did not say whether any US troops would remain in Iraq.

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

On the campaign trail, Trump has mulled sending the military after his political enemies, and also to turn back migrants at the southern border.

US law generally prohibits active-duty troops from being deployed for law enforcement purposes. There are also fears he could gut the civil service in the Pentagon, and replace fired staff with employees selected for their loyalty to him.

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Black people across US receive racist text messages after Trump’s win

Adria R Walker

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

A spokesperson for the president-elect told CNN that his “campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages”. It is not yet clear who is behind the messages, nor is there a comprehensive list of the people to whom the messages were sent, but social media posts indicate that the messages are widespread.

Black people in states including Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, the DC area and elsewhere reported receiving the messages. The messages were sent to Black adults and students, including to high schoolers in Massachusetts and New York, and students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), such as Alabama State University and other schools, including ones across Ohio, Clemson University, the University of Alabama and Missouri State. At least six middle school students in Pennsylvania received the messages, according to the AP.

Authorities including the FBI and attorneys general are investigating the messages.

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Nancy Pelosi says Biden’s delay in exiting race blew Democrats’ chances

Joe Biden’s slowness in exiting the 2024 presidential election cost the Democrats dearly, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said, days after Kamala Harris was beaten by Donald Trump.

“We live with what happened,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi was speaking to The Interview, a New York Times podcast, in a conversation the newspaper said would be published Saturday in full.

“Had the president gotten out sooner,” Pelosi remarked, “there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.

“And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”

As Democrats engaged in bitter blame games over Harris’s defeat and a second presidency for Trump, who senior Democrats from Harris down freely called a “fascist”, Pelosi’s words landed like an explosive shell.

The Times said Pelosi “went to great lengths to defend the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments, most of which took place during his first two years, when she was the House speaker”.

Pelosi reportedly played a key role in persuading Biden to stand aside. But she has not sought to soothe his feelings. In August, she told the New Yorker she had “never been that impressed with his political operation”.

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Opening summary

Hello and welcome back to our rolling coverage of US politics and the fallout from the presidential election.

Our top story this morning is that Nancy Pelosi has blamed Joe Biden for the Democrats’ defeat.

The former House speaker said the president’s slowness in dropping out of the race left the party without enough time to hold an open primary.

More on that shortly. First, though, here is a round up of the latest news:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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