Takeaways and analysis: Harris gives concession speech, Dems hope for House control

Symone Sanders-Townsend speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

There were a lot of organizers across the country, in places like Florida and Georgia and whatnot, who were telling people to focus on local elections this cycle because in their view, when it came to the presidency, Trump and Harris were much of the same.

But I think one of the things that should come out of this result, as my friend DeRay Mckesson said, is that who the president is does matter. You cannot local election your way to a representative democracy and think you’re going to be OK. 

For the young people out there who are looking at this saying, “Oh my goodness, politics does not work.” Well, the system only works if you work it. We do live in a participatory democracy, which means people must participate. 

Your participation can change things. Sometimes you leave it all in the field and you are not successful — that’s a hard reality. But folks must continue to keep fighting. Make no mistake, it will be rough for a while. It may not look like it will come as swiftly as you want it to, but it will come. But this will be a rough time, and we should be honest about that.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

As Trump’s campaign reiterates its frightening vow to carry out the most massive deportation operation in U.S. history, we ought to discuss how Americans actually feel about the policy and all it might entail. 

Michael Podhorzer’s recent piece for MSNBC makes the case that multiple polls released this year have misrepresented support for mass deportation by failing to clarify what it could mean or how it would look in practice, and he cites data showing Americans’ broad support for allowing immigrants to remain in the country — even if they’re undocumented — once the people polled were informed about these various immigration statuses.

That tracks with a recent poll released by the University of Maryland, showing that voters in swing states favor a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants over mass deportation when the respondents were given a detailed breakdown of what each would mean, including an estimate of how much a mass deportation force could cost.  

Candidates can only give you a rough guide of the voters’ thinking on policy. Ballot measures are a much better indicator. There were a lot on Tuesday’s ballots and here are a few things we learned:

• Voters are still concerned about access to abortion, to a point. Abortion-rights ballot measures passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Montana, Missouri, Nevada and New York. A Florida measure received 57% of the vote, which was not enough to clear a supermajority bar. Voters in South Dakota rejected a measure, and a ban on abortions after the first trimester passed in Nebraska.

• Legalizing marijuana was. Ballot measures failed in North Dakota and South Dakota. A measure in Florida also failed, but it came really close to passing the 60% supermajority threshold.

• They aren’t jazzed about ranked-choice voting. A popular reform among a certain segment of good-government types, ranked-choice voting failed in Nevada and Oregon and looks headed to defeat in Colorado, while a measure to repeal it in Alaska is currently ahead. Similarly, a bid to replace partisan primaries with an open system in Arizona failed and a top-two primary failed in South Dakota. Ranked-choice voting passed in D.C., but supporters are going to have to work harder to make their case.

• Voters really like banning noncitizen voting. Despite already being banned in state and federal elections in all 50 states, measures to restrict voting to only citizens passed in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin.

According to a Washington Post analysis of data from The Associated Press and the University of Florida Election Lab, 2024 turnout levels are expected to be near the record set in 2020. The Post notes that most battleground states are on track to break turnout records and that at least 10 states are expected to surpass highs set in 1980.

Here’s the overall picture: In 2020, 66% of the voting-eligible population voted. As of now, the Post estimates that participation is tracking toward 65% this time around.

There’s a weird belief in Washington that a competitive primary is bad. Reporters describe a candidate coming out of a “bruising primary,” while strategists look for ways to lock up a nomination early.

But this election was another example of why that’s a bad strategy.

Harris, of course, faced literally no primary, as she essentially got the nomination by default after Biden decided not to seek re-election after all.

In a scathing statement today in response to Harris’ loss, Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized the Democratic Party and its leadership, suggesting they are out of step with the electorate.

The independent Vermont senator, who himself cruised to re-election Tuesday night, endorsed Harris when she ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket in July. He urged her campaign to pay more attention to working-class voters than to moderate Republicans, and he hit the campaign trail on Harris’ behalf to win them over.

“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,” Sanders wrote. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

In the waning days of the 2024 presidential election, some Harris supporters longed for former President George W. Bush to endorse her. 

He didn’t, but not because he likes Trump. (Look no further than his unprintable reaction to Trump’s first inauguration.) Instead, like his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and a long string of presidents stretching back to George Washington, he decided to stay retired from politics.

It’s another one of those American norms that Trump has broken: the idea that a president should return to his farm, like the Roman consul Cincinnatus. (Or in Bush’s case, his oil paintings.)

To be fair, Grover Cleveland also left the White House after a defeat, then returned for a second nonconsecutive term, and Teddy Roosevelt tried to do the same running as a Bull Moose.

But by and large, former presidents have been content to leave it all behind, maybe write a memoir or do some charitable work, sit on some corporate boards and leave the governing to someone else, especially after losing.

It’s too soon to tell if this idea becomes a trend, but you can see examples at a smaller level such as Kari Lake, who ran for governor in 2022, lost, and then ran for Senate this year.

Symone Sanders-Townsend speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

The presidential election of 1968 was the same election where Richard Nixon won and Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the House of Representatives. Many things can happen in one election.

Trump is going to be the 47th president of the United States, but Democrats also scored some wins last night. Shomari Figures is now a congressman-elect in an Alabama seat that was created out of a gerrymandering lawsuit that went all the way up to the Supreme Court. That’s a seat Democrats didn’t have before. Now they do. 

Then you have the flip with Rep. Brandon Williams’ seat. He’s a Republican incumbent from New York’s 22nd Congressional District. Now a Democrat will represent that seat. Notably, Williams is who House Speaker Mike Johnson stood alongside as he promised to get rid of the CHIPS Act, which is bringing a lot of jobs to New York state. So it appears that didn’t bode well for him. 

Some of the Democrats I’ve talked to are still optimistic. They believe there’s still an opportunity where there will be a narrow Democratic majority in the House. Many of the races we’re holding out for are in places like Arizona and California. It’s clear we’re going to be waiting a while for results, folks.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

During her speech, Harris briefly gave a shoutout to Howard University when talking about the importance of service. Historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, ought to be in focus over the next four years: Many of them are underfunded by the states in which they reside and are seemingly ripe for Trump’s manipulation.

On the campaign trail, Trump portrayed his first term as a savior to these schools, frequently overstating his administration’s support while ignoring the cuts he proposed. And as I wrote earlier this year, Trump talked about investigating the heads of HBCUs if he found out they didn’t support his campaign.

Claire McCaskill speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

I’m so proud of Harris. I don’t think people realize how hard it is to get to where she was, a woman getting elected district attorney — it’s not easy, guys.

People don’t trust women to be in charge of making decisions about life and death and being, frankly, a supervisor in some ways over police. After that, she fought through the primary in California politics to become attorney general. I mean, this is really hard stuff.

And then for her to be selected as vice president after, what I think she would tell you, was a very disappointing presidential race where she kind of lost her footing and was listening too much to consultants and not exuding who she was, was extraordinary.

Then to be vice president and step into the most difficult situation in the world, where she had to be completely loyal to Biden and respectful of the fact that he had chosen her to replace him on the ticket while maneuvering a campaign — that’s such political skill.

It is just inspiring. People don’t understand what she had to do to get to this moment, and so I’m just very proud of her.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

When Harris launched her run for president in July, “joy” was the operating sentiment behind it. It was reflected in the surge of optimism among Democrats and the record-breaking fundraising numbers, as well as at Democratic National Convention, where delegates were buoyed by a sense of jubilance.

Now, after a decisive red wave on Tuesday, the reality of a second Trump administration is sinking in for Democrats. Yet Harris’ tone today was in stark contrast to the dark mood among her supporters, urging them not to despair or give up.

“Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win,” she said to cheers. 

“The outcome of this election was not what we wanted,” she added. “Not what we fought for. Not what we voted for. But hear me when I say: The light of America’s promise will always burn bright.”

Unlike Trump’s rambling victory speech, Harris’ concession was a model of classic rhetoric, praising the volunteers and campaign staff, talking about her pride in the campaign they ran, calling for unity in the wake of the election. She even mentioned that she had called Trump to concede.

But the speech then broke from the usual pattern with a long interlude that was very clearly a harsh criticism of Trump, cloaked in generic platitudes about democracy. It began when she noted that she would work with the Trump campaign on the transition and a “peaceful transfer of power.”

“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” she said, in a passage that was clearly about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “That principle as much as any other distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny, and anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it.”

She then went on to indirectly criticize Trump’s view of the presidency, saying: “At the same time, in our nation we owe loyalty not to a president or a party but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our god.”

You can find similar rhetoric in old concession speeches, but the context of these remarks makes them dramatically different.

Kamala Harris has won Maine’s presidential contest, securing the state’s three electoral votes, NBC News projects.

See the latest results here.

Harris, speaking before a cheering crowd at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, told her supporters that she would keep fighting despite ceding the election to Trump: 

We’re still waiting on a few states to finalize their tallies, but we know what the next steps are now that voting is done and Harris has conceded. The concession triggered the start of the official presidential transition period that the Trump campaign will (at least theoretically) be coordinating with the Biden administration and General Services Administration.

In the meantime, the states will be certifying the election results up the chain to the executive, who signs off on a “certificate of ascertainment” by Dec. 11. That has to happen before the Electoral College’s electors are due to convene on Dec. 17 in the various states to cast their votes for Trump. And then Congress will meet on Jan. 6 to tally the electoral votes and certify Trump as the winner ahead of him being sworn in on Jan. 20.

Democrat Elissa Slotkin has won the U.S. Senate race in Michigan, NBC News projects.

See the latest results here.

It’s not often that a state race for superintendent for public instruction makes national news. But Michele Morrow was not a normal candidate.

The Republican, a former homeschool teacher who has never worked as a licensed educator, was perhaps most notable for attending a Jan. 6 rally near the Capitol, spreading QAnon conspiracy theories, and posting that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Dr. Anthony Fauci, among others, should be publicly executed. (She claimed those were jokes.)

Obama himself seemed to have taken it personally, campaigning against her while in North Carolina to stump for Harris, as this excellent overview from The 19th shows.

President Joe Biden has spoken with Trump on the phone and invited him to meet “in the near future,” the White House said. The president, whose eleventh-hour exit from the race is under heightened scrutiny in the wake of Harris’ loss, will address the nation on the election results tomorrow. Biden also had a call with Harris, per the White House.

Modern presidential campaigns tend to win with a message of optimism. Or at least an assurance to voters that the candidate will work to make things better. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was uniquely successful for one steeped — quite frankly — in misery. 

Despite a record-breaking economy and the historically low rate of illegal border crossings (something MAGA world tends to care about), Trump routinely painted a sordid picture of the United States. And he and his surrogates were clear in suggesting things were likely to get worse for many Americans if he was elected.

In October of 2016, a pollster in Wisconsin asked voters about their views on the economy. Among Republicans, 42% said it had gotten worse over the previous year. Five months later, the same pollster asked again. This time, 59% of Republicans said it had gotten better — a shift of 82 percentage points.

Nothing about the economy had changed dramatically. Even if it had, the question was carefully worded to ask about changes in the economy over the previous year, so presumably it wouldn’t have been affected by even short-term gains.

But one thing had changed: Trump had won election and been inaugurated.

Trump didn’t just sweep the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. He also narrowed the gap with Harris in reliably Democratic states like Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California, in most cases making as much as double-digit gains compared to 2020. 

Trump rallied in several blue states near the end of his campaign. Some considered it a risky strategy, but it may have helped him make those in-roads.

Trump will have the power to get rid of half his criminal caseload when he returns to the White House — specifically, the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith for alleged 2020 election subversion and alleged illegal hoarding of classified documents and obstruction. The president-elect pleaded not guilty in all four of his criminal cases, but his guilt won’t likely be adjudicated either way in those two.

NBC News reported earlier today that Justice Department officials “have been evaluating how to wind down the two federal criminal cases” before Trump takes office, “to comply with longstanding department policy that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted.”

A first-term Republican president who didn’t win the popular vote squares off against a Democrat viewed by the party as the best bet to appeal to the middle. But after a particularly nasty race, the Republican wins a second term, even carrying the popular vote, in what is considered at the time a massive realignment.

That describes, more or less, what happened on Tuesday. But it’s also a decent description of the 2004 election between George W. Bush and John Kerry. And while that’s certainly not a happy analogy for Democrats this morning, it may offer some solace as the party plots its next move.

After all, the 2004 election didn’t turn out to be much of a realignment after all, as voters, turned off by the Iraq War and a cratering economy, turned to Barack Obama.

Historical analogies only get you so far, but in this case, they’re a reminder that voters who cast a ballot for the other side aren’t necessarily lost forever, and that even a big loss is sometimes only a temporary setback.

It really is all over now. Harris has conceded to Trump in a phone call, NBC News reports, citing a senior Harris aide.

Harris is still scheduled to deliver a speech at 4 p.m. ET. The aide also said that little time had been spent working on the address prior to last night, in the belief that the race would still be undecided this soon after Election Day.

Democrat Tammy Baldwin wins re-election to the U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, NBC News projects.

See the latest results here.

One of the biggest dramas ahead of Trump’s first inauguration was figuring out who the heck was going to serve in his administration. If you recall, the theory was that in picking people like Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state or having Gen. James Mattis at the Pentagon, there would be so-called “adults in the room” to guide the neophyte president.

That clearly did not go well, even with the weird praise sessions that masqueraded as Cabinet meetings. Trump shuffled through personnel rapidly.

Trump’s pledge to grant clemency to Jan. 6 defendants has already led at least one of those defendants to ask to postpone proceedings:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped his independent presidential bid in expectation of a possible role in a future Trump administration, told MSNBC on Wednesday that “entire departments” at places like the Food and Drug Administration “have to go.” 

Kennedy also suggested he’d advocate for removing fluoride from tap water. It’s unclear what kind of role Kennedy is likely to have in Trump’s pending administration, but he holds outlandish evidence-free beliefs about vaccines and diseases, including the false claim that Covid was a bioweapon that was “deliberately targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

As I wrote last night, one major failing of Harris’ campaign was not doing more to center climate change, which is one of the most  — if not the most — pressing issues right now.

In April, U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said that world leaders have only two years left to change course and dramatically reduce carbon emissions to mitigate a climate catastrophe.

Trump has won Michigan's presidential contest, securing the state's 15 electoral votes, NBC News projects. He was already projected to have won enough Electoral College votes to secure the presidency.

See the latest results here.

With Rep.-elect Sarah McBride’s victory in Delaware, the U.S. is set to have its first-ever openly trans member of Congress. With party control of the House still up in the air, it remains to be seen whether McBride’s gendered honorific in the chamber will be honored by leadership or not.

The GOP won on the backs of $215 million in anti-trans ad spending, and there could be an early fight over how the chamber addresses McBride.

Bellicose and petty, Trump has described the press as his "enemy." He has repeatedly said he wants to change libel laws so that journalists who write unfavorably about him are not protected. And as The Guardian notes, while he may not have been effective in doing so the first time, he now has three Supreme Court appointees on his side. Furthermore, he is emboldened like never before, having been handed a decisive victory. 

Earlier this year, environmental journalist Joseph A. Davis published a piece by the Society of Environmental Journalists, asking: “Will Journalism Be a Crime in a Second Trump Administration?” In it, he wrote: “Environmental journalists are used to worrying about things that are endangered. So we think it’s time to add press freedom and democracy to the endangered list — that’s what’s at stake in the coming presidential election.”

Even conservative political pundit and journalist Ramesh Ponnuru wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post last week, titled “Trump’s Threats to the Press Are Serious and Literal.”

Arizona voters approved a ballot measure to give state and local law enforcement more power to enforce immigration-related laws, NBC News projects.

It makes it a state crime for a migrant to enter from a foreign country outside of a lawful port of entry and for a migrant to refuse to return to their home country if a court requires them to do so.

The measure was voted to be placed on the ballot despite opposition from Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs as well as Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is currently in a tight Senate race against Kari Lake. However, the measure is expected to face legal challenges, similar to one in Texas that was temporarily paused by the court after lawsuits.

Jeff Bezos extended a warm welcome back to Trump this morning:

Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, made news ahead of the election when he quashed the Post’s endorsement of Harris at the last minute. Bezos’ public reasoning for doing so didn’t make sense. What does make sense, however, is that he may view his fawning behavior as a way to help his giant companies preserve contracts with the federal government and protect them from antitrust policy.

Among the more shocking exit poll results in the presidential race is a class realignment from 2020.

This year, Harris carried voters whose total household income is over $100,000 by a 53% to 45% margin. In 2020, Trump carried the same demographic 54% to 42% against Biden.

In contrast, Trump reversed his fortunes amongst those with incomes between $50,000 and $99,999 and those who make less than $50,000, winning both by 2%. Biden carried those demographics by 15% and 10%, respectively, in 2020.

Comparing this polling to the Harris campaign’s messaging on the booming economy and the Trump campaign’s message about inflation tells a story about how the economy has been working for the electorate: Those for whom Biden’s economy is working largely wanted things to stay the course. Everyone else just wanted change.

After delaying her speech last night, Harris is set deliver remarks at 4 p.m. ET at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, D.C.

Her husband, Doug Emhoff, is expected to attend as well.

Over the course of the election, Trump's running mate, JD Vance, went from being seen as a bold choice from a confident campaign to a potential liability for his awkwardness and unpopularity. But as the new vice president-elect, Vance is now the heir apparent to the MAGA movement in a way many of the previous claimants haven’t been.

Vance’s ties to the extremely online far-right gives him access to a corner of the base that Donald Trump Jr. has presided over for years. His blind loyalty to Trump already promises to surpass that of former Vice President Mike Pence. And at just 40 years old, he’s not just the current presumptive frontrunner to be the GOP nominee after Trump leaves office, he’s also who many will turn to if Trump becomes unable to perform his duties as president.

An interesting split on whether America’s best days are in its past or in its future provides some insight into the fundamentals at play in this year’s race. According to NBC News exit poll data, 66% of voters who said America’s best days are behind it voted for Trump, while 60% of those who said America’s best days are ahead voted for Harris.

“Make America Great Again” has been Trump’s core message since he first jumped into presidential politics in 2015. He paints a picture of white picket fences and Americans making and building things again. Despite Biden overseeing one of the best economies in presidential history, voters did not feel positive and acted accordingly.

Alongside the economic picture, Trump appealed to voters’ racial anxieties, inviting particularly white voters to dream of asserting their dominance. And white voters responded.

Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour is among those who are embracing their grief this morning, while calling on people not to descend into despair. “Take your rage … and translate that into being productive in your local communities,” she said via an Instagram reel from Detroit. “This is the moment to triple down.”

In a key state Supreme Court contest, Michigan’s court expanded its Democratic majority from 4-3 to 5-2, NBC News projects.

That makes a split between two state courts on the ballot where partisan control was at stake. In another key race, Ohio Republicans expanded their control over the court from a 4-3 majority to 6-1 after Republicans won all three races, based on NBC News projections.

The fate of the House remains up in the air, but with Trump back in the White House and Republicans in control of the Senate, I’m getting nervous about the Affordable Care Act. Trump tried to repeal and damage the ACA throughout his first time in office, and he revived the idea of repealing it early in his campaign (before falsely claiming that he never had). Even if he doesn’t pursue a full repeal, he can still do a ton of damage. Vance has floated an idea for altering the ACA that would reduce millions of Americans’ access to medical care by allowing insurance companies to discriminate against people based on pre-existing conditions. And according to KFF Health News, the uninsured rate is likely to rise if Trump declines to extend enhanced subsidies for ACA insurance plans. It remains to be seen how much of a priority these things are for Trump, but it’s clear our already inadequate social safety net is vulnerable.

About a year and a half after an unprecedented Montana House vote to censure her, Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr coasted to an easy re-election. She won her district race with 83% of the vote. Zephyr’s legislative colleagues voted to censure her in April 2023 after she spoke out at length about the harms of an anti-trans bill being debated for passage.

Trump just became the first person convicted of felony charges to be elected president and the oldest president-elect ever, at 78 years old. He is also only the second former president to be re-elected to a nonconsecutive term. The last time this happened was with Grover Cleveland, over 130 years ago.

Trump’s being the oldest president-elect to date is of major concern to many who have questioned his mental fitness. “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical,” The New York Times reported last month. Adding, “He expresses fear that North Korea is ‘trying to kill me’ when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.”

Sen. Bob Casey is down but not out. The Democratic senator from Pennsylvania has not conceded his race to Republican Dave McCormick, despite being down by just over 50,000 votes with 96% of precincts counted.

“There are more votes that need to be counted in areas like Philadelphia and it’s important that every legal ballot will be counted,” said Casey spokesperson Maddy McDaniel. “When that happens we are confident the Senator will be re-elected.”

Major indexes soared this morning to record highs when the markets opened. The DOW rose +3.07 percent, the S&P 500 +1.95% and the NASDAQ +1.79%. The last time the DOW rose more than 1,000 points in a single day was in November 2022.

On MSNBC, Andrew Ross Sorkin said the market is thinking, “Personnel is policy, and they’re thinking in terms of both executive orders and the regulatory state.”

Moscow released a cool statement acknowledging Trump’s win, stating that the Kremlin is under “no illusions” about what his win might mean. “The ruling political elite in the United States, regardless of party affiliation, adheres to anti-Russian attitudes and a line to ‘contain Moscow,’” the statement said. While Trump’s softness on Vladimir Putin is often significantly overstated, the Russian president is going to look for diplomatic openings to capitalize on Trump’s disinterest in continuing to fund Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion.

Harris and her fellow Democrats tried to tack to the right on immigration by proposing an overly harsh immigration law and then deriding Republicans throughout the campaign for voting against it. Likewise, Harris frequently touted her endorsement from Republican Liz Cheney, even going so far as to hold a rally together in Ripon, Wisconsin, the symbolic birthplace of the Republican party.

Those gambits were both essentially failures as Harris failed to make gains with Republican or independent voters. In traditionally Republican suburbs like the Milwaukee suburbs, ripe targets for the Harris campaign strategy, Harris trailed Biden’s 2020 margins in Washington and Ozaukee counties.

In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, an area of particular focus for Harris, Trump won by 3 percentage points compared to a Biden +4 margin in 2020.

Decades of GOP gerrymandering, coupled with demographic shifts within the state, have officially made Florida — with its whopping 30 electoral votes — a reliably red state.

“The GOP has won every governor’s race since 1994, and gerrymandered districts have locked in its supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature,” CNN explained. As former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., told NBC News last year, “The state is not a red state … this is a gerrymandered and voter suppressed state.”

Americans can expect the GOP to continue systematically eroding democracy — proposals outlined in Project 2025 among the examples. This effective strategy will have lasting effects on future elections and make it even harder for Democrats to win down the road.

Anti-trans rhetoric was an alarmingly prominent part of Trump’s campaign. Fear-mongering around the issue is highly effective and also wildly out of proportion, given less than 1% of Americans identify as trans. 

“Trump’s campaign and pro-Trump groups spent an estimated $95 million on ads, more than 41 percent of which were anti-trans,” PBS reports. That's right — 41%, an astounding number. And it also leaves many trans people — such as myself — feeling terrified this morning. I am privileged enough to live in a solidly blue state in which laws regarding gender-affirming health care are enshrined, but we also have to contend with the reality that the rules of the game are going to look very different under Trump and his love of fascistic politics, which is, among other things, built around the persecution of minorities. 

Even if I am lucky enough to not be directly impacted in my state by Trump’s vehement anti-trans ideology, his rhetoric and policies will likely preclude my visiting a lot of the rest of the country. In some ways being trans is analogous to how red states have become unsafe for pregnant people.

Harris’ devastating and indisputable defeat will invariably produce some major soul-searching for Democrats à la 2008, when the GOP recalibrated after John McCain’s defeat. But a huge question is: Which direction will the party go? Will they inch farther to the right in order to capture voters who subscribed to the narrative that the Democrats are condescending, elite and out-of-touch? Or will they move further to the left and capture many young people and progressives completely disillusioned by the Democrats’ increasingly centrist and even conservative politics — among them, supporting Israel's brutal war in Gaza and Lebanon?

Protestors in Michigan, for example — a crucial swing state, which has a sizeable Arab American population and is still too close to call — encouraged people to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Many Arab Americans described feeling unable to vote for Harris in Michigan, a state Biden decisively won that state in 2020. 

Trump’s transition operation is now underway, working out of its headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida, under the leadership of co-chairs Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnick.

Lutnick told NBC News that he has called people close to him, like Elon Musk, Ross Perot Jr., Chuck Schwab and Palmer Luckey for advice on people who should be added to Trump’s new administration.

The transition team will have access to the Project 2025 database — the right-wing playbook for a second Trump administration that Trump has tried to distance himself from — has collected applications for over 4,000 positions. The America First Policy Institute, which was chaired by McMahon, has written more than 200 draft executive orders that Trump could sign once he officially takes office, as well as policy white papers that could assist in recommending how to advance Trump’s policy agenda.

Trump won a plurality of votes in Dearborn, Michigan, which houses a large Arab American community. According to a 7 a.m. ET vote drop by Wayne County officials, Trump won 42.5% of the vote compared to 36% for Harris. Green Party candidate Jill Stein took home a sizeable 18% of the vote.

Many people were watching the Dearborn returns closely after the Harris campaign stubbornly refused to budge on Israel's war in Gaza and infamously refused to allow a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Convention. Stein’s hefty vote total likely came from protest votes against Harris.

Trump was congratulated by a wide array of world leaders this morning, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country has relied heavily on U.S. support amid its ongoing war with Russia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Trump on “history’s greatest comeback," saying his win “offers a new beginning for America.” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said he looks forward to working with Trump to “maintain regional peace and stability, and strengthen the strategic partnership between Egypt and the United States.”

Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán, French President Emmanuel Macron, and U.K Prime Minister Keir Starmer all offered their congratulations.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reminded readers today that “Mr. Trump has implied that he would not abide by the NATO article requiring collective defense,” which could encourage Russia to widen its reach past Ukraine.

Al Sharpton speaking moments ago on MSNBC:

The economy — a distorted view of the economy — weighed on a lot of the voters around the country. Let’s remember, Donald Trump is an expert promoter, and he was able to get a lot of myths across the table that really weren’t true. But it was not well-promoted on the other side.

I think that we also have to deal with the issue of race and gender. There was a lot of gender bias in this. There was a lot of race bias in this and I think that we thought a lot of voters were more progressive in those areas than they were. When you have the Dobbs decision and you see this kind of vote anyway with the person who put the three justices on the Supreme Court, you have to ask yourself, “Are we fooling ourselves, saying that Americans are further down the road toward dealing with gender bias and race bias than we thought?” 

I'll say this though: Donald Trump will self-destruct. The problem that I see is not Trump. The problem is that those who can be appealed to in this way and how we've got to bring this country together. There will not be a Jan. 6 from Democrats. We’ll deal with this in a dignified way and try to put the pieces together. We’ve lost a battle, but the war is not over.

Republican Tim Sheehy has won the U.S. Senate race in Montana, NBC News projects, defeating incumbent Democrat Jon Tester.

See the latest results here.

Claire McCaskill peaking moments ago on MSNBC:

I think we have to acknowledge that Donald Trump knows our country better than we do. I think he figured out that anger and, frankly, fear were way more powerful than appealing to people’s better angels. That anger and fear were going to work in this election, whether you’re afraid of immigrants or afraid of people who are trans — he figured that out.

I think we all thought everyone’s better angels would prevail. Turns out, the better angels went on vacation when Donald Trump came down that golden escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 and they haven’t returned. 

By the way, the majority of Americans seem to believe he was persecuted not prosecuted. There’s no question that our grip on, “Hey, we got to make sure those same rules apply to everyone. We got to make sure that the rule of law apply to every American, no matter who you are or how powerful you are.” Turns out, that’s not true for many Americans. 

At this moment, Republicans are still hopeful they could win control of the House in addition to the White House and Senate, as Trump had in 2016.

The House of Representatives is still up for grabs with some key competitive races to look out for this morning. In the Phoenix suburbs, incumbent Republican David Schweikert is in a tight race against Democrat Amish Shah. Also in Arizona, Democrat Kirsten Engel is leading incumbent GOP Juan Ciscomani.

In Pennsylvania, Republican Ryan Mackenzie is in a narrow race against incumbent Democrat Susan Wild — as is incumbent Republican Scott Perry over Democrat Janelle Stelson.

Voters in Missouri have passed Amendment 3, which allows the state to regulate abortion only after fetal viability “except to protect the life or health of the woman,” NBC News projects. 

Missouri became one of the first states to enact a near-total abortion ban after Roe v. Wade was struck down. The passage of Amendment 3 marks the first time that voters in a state have overturned an abortion ban since the end of Roe

Republican Michael Lawler has won re-election to the U.S. House in New York’s 17th congressional district, NBC News projects.

See the latest results here.

Jen Psaki speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

There will be a lot of time spent on how and why he won and what this will mean for the country over the next four years and beyond. But in this moment, it’s also important to remember that our democracy is not built around one person or one job.

I have every confidence that pro-democracy forces in this country will continue to stand up and make their voices heard. That’s what we saw after 2016 as well.  Some will be governors, some will be institutions and organizations standing up for rights and standing up for women’s bodily autonomy, and standing up for our climate. And some will be citizens, many of you sitting at home right now digesting this news right now, some of them will be you.

I wish I had better news for my daughter later this morning. I wish I could have called her and told her that the first woman president had just been elected.  I wish that. I won’t be able to do that.  What I can do, what I can tell my daughter, what I will tell my daughter is that our roles as American citizens have never been more important than they are right now. I can tell her that there are still lots of forces out there, forces for good in this country, and that they are going to be getting to work.

This post has been edited slightly for length and clarity.

You would think that a bigger Trump win would be worse for Harris, but I think it would actually let her off the hook a little.

A narrower win would raise questions about the Harris campaign’s approach to voters angry about the war in the Middle East or her flub on what she would done differently than Biden. That was certainly the case for Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But generally speaking, Harris ran a pretty good campaign, especially considering that it was put together on the fly in just four months. She did well in the debate, raised a ton of money and stayed on topic most of the time.

If Trump wins big, though, it’s a sign that something bigger was going on. Perhaps voters were still just really upset about inflation. Perhaps there’s a bigger audience for Trump’s autocratic promises than believed. Or perhaps there’s a broad voter realignment going on beneath the surface that wasn’t well understood.

We’ll figure that answer out in the days and even years to come.

But if Harris loses big, it’s hard to come up with a counterfactual where she could have run a different campaign — and just as significantly, Trump could have somehow run a worse one — and gotten a different result.