Principals

It’s 6:30 a.m. the morning after Election Day, and Donald Trump is projected the winner of the US presidential race in a sweeping victory. Republicans took back control of the Senate. And control of the House is still uncertain.

1. Trump wins
2. The Senate belongs to Republicans
3. House control up in the air
4. World reacts
5. Obama coalition collapses
6. Fed meets

PDB: Stocks, bitcoin up after Trump declares victory

Harris expected to speak today after election loss … WaPo: Biden retreats from view … Ben Smith: 2024 election will change how American politicians think about race

Trump declared winner

Donald Trump will spend another four years in the White House, after multiple outlets called the US presidential race in his favor after 5 a.m. He declared victory from West Palm Beach Wednesday morning, saying “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” A second Trump presidency will jolt Washington and the world, ushering in new trade fights, an immigration crackdown, and an upending of government regulations and operations. Kamala Harris — who would have been the first female president — ended her night without an address to supporters gathered at her alma mater, Howard University. Focus now turns to the Trump transition and the blame game within the Democratic Party over Harris’ loss. By many measures, the 2024 presidential election was historic — the culmination of a chaotic campaign that witnessed the incumbent Democratic president withdraw from the race less than four months before the election, as well as two attempted assassinations of the Republican nominee. With his victory, Trump completes “an improbable comeback after he previously sought to overturn his prior loss, culminating in a riot at the Capitol, and faced criminal charges,” Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin writes.

Republicans exult in their new Senate majority

Senate Republicans were the first to declare victory on Tuesday night, officially securing their majority around midnight but looking like they’d won it even earlier. That’s thanks to snuffing out all of Democrats’ pick-up opportunities and by winning Ohio. Republican campaign chief Steve Daines aggressively intervened in primaries and worked closely with Donald Trump to get there, and Republicans are giddy about the results. Now, the GOP will have control over the next president’s confirmation powers and the ability to reshape the judiciary. After falling short in 2020 and 2022, it’s a big moment for the party. But for Republicans, the celebration before the next election will be relatively brief: They now have to gear up for a hotly contested leadership election to succeed Mitch McConnell next week.

— Burgess Everett

Democrats’ hopes to retake House stay alive

Control of the US House next year is still unclear, and may stay that way until later in the week, as a number of battleground districts remain too close to call. But Democrats have reason to be optimistic, even as Harris’ White House hopes fade and Republicans eye a total takeover of Washington. In order to make House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaker next year, Democrats will need to make a strong showing in California, where GOP Reps. Michelle Steel and Young Kim are locked in tight races. They picked up at least one Republican seat in New York, where Rep. Brandon Williams lost his race; but Republicans were running strong against Democratic incumbents in Maine and Pennsylvania in the early hours of the morning. And with Trump exceeding his 2020 vote totals, the GOP is also projecting confidence.

— Kadia Goba

Trump victory reverberates globally

World leaders swiftly congratulated Trump after he declared victory in the US presidential contest. That includes leaders of nervous European countries, like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said in a post on X that the US and Germany would continue “to promote prosperity and freedom on both sides of the Atlantic.” French President Emmanuel Macron said he was ready to work together with Trump with “respect and ambition,” while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he appreciated Trump’s “peace through strength” approach to global affairs. A second Trump presidency would mean more unpredictability for US foes and allies alike. “I’ve heard him say hundreds of times: I don’t want them to know what I’m doing, part of my value is the perception by adversaries and allies that I am unpredictable,” a former Trump administration national security official once told me. “He views that as a huge strategic advantage of his persona.” Trump will likely bring back his go-it-alone, “America First” approach to foreign policy, and his promise of sweeping tariffs will spawn new tensions with Europe and China.

— Morgan Chalfant

The election buried Obama’s coalition

Trump’s victory kills off the theory of a new Democratic coalition, Semafor’s David Weigel writes. Democrats were already pointing fingers for a likely loss before any votes were counted. Progressives criticized Harris for campaigning with Liz Cheney, Gaza protesters pushed Harris to break with the Biden administration on Israel (which she never did), and center-left pundits regretted her not putting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on the ticket. They all lost, and so did the theory of a new Democratic coalition that was born with Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, nearly died with Trump’s 2016 upset, and got buried on Tuesday night. So long as Donald Trump is leading the GOP — abandoning its old commitment to entitlement cuts, supporting tariffs and re-negotiated trade deals, saying things that anger the traditional media — Republicans have a broader appeal with non-college educated voters who used to be Democrats.

Fed meeting follows election news

The Federal Reserve begins its two-day meeting Wednesday against the backdrop of the presidential race. The central bank is widely expected to cut interest rates by 25 basis points, representing its second cut this year as inflation cools towards the Fed’s target rate. Fed Chair Jerome Powell — originally a Trump appointee — will participate in his usual news conference tomorrow, during which he’s likely to field questions about Trump. Trump and Harris’ economic plans have been scrutinized for the degree to which they would contribute inflation, with plenty of focus being paid to Trump’s proposal for across-the-board tariffs. Trump has also mused about having greater say over the Fed’s decisions, a signal he is looking to end the central bank’s independence. Powell’s job may also be on the line with Trump in the White House.

Beltway Newsletters

Punchbowl News: A healthy Senate majority will allow Donald Trump “to confirm almost any nominee he wants” — potentially even Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Playbook: Trump improved on his 2020 margins in 92% of the counties where the vote has been mostly counted, with the median county shifting a little under two points in his favor.

WaPo: The Democratic blame game is in full force, with one Kamala Harris aide blaming President Biden for not exiting the race sooner. A House Democrat, meanwhile, said the party “has a major working-class voter issue. It started a decade ago as a working-class white issue. It’s now gotten even worse and spread across racial lines.”

Axios: Trump was aided in his election victory by groups that “soundly rejected” him during his first term, including suburban women, independents, and young people.

White House

• President Biden quietly watched the election results roll in from the White House, surrounded by aides and senior staff. He has no public events scheduled for today.

Congress

• Capitol Police arrested a man trying to enter the US Capitol complex with a torch and flare gun on Election Day.

Outside the Beltway

• Ballot measures to enshrine abortion rights in Florida’s and South Dakota’s constitutions failed, while similar measures were approved in Montana and Arizona.

Economy

• The dollar hit a one-year high and bitcoin hit a record once Donald Trump pulled ahead of Kamala Harris in the presidential race. Meanwhile, Tesla shares surged in early trading given Elon Musk’s relationship with the former president, and shares in Trump’s media company also climbed. US stock futures soared, while China’s markets fell sharply as a second Trump term looms. Iran’s currency also fell to a record low.

On the Trail

• Elon Musk joined Donald Trump for his watch party at Mar-a-Lago.
• Larry Hogan skipped voting for president.

National Security

• Chinese hackers behind a sweeping US telecommunications hack targeted “several dozen select, high-value political and national-security figures.” — WSJ
• Russia-linked bomb threats briefly halted swing state voting in the US, according to officials.

Foreign Policy

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister Yoav Gallant over differences over the handling of the Gaza war. Netanyahu named foreign minister Israel Katz as his replacement.
• Iran played down the importance of the US election after Donald Trump’s victory speech. — Reuters

Technology

• Apple will face the first fine to be imposed under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act over the dominance of the company’s App Store. — Bloomberg

Space

• NASA astronauts voted early from the International Space Station. Space ballots get beamed to Earth through NASA’s constellation of satellites that communicate with antennas on Earth.

Media

• Donald Trump’s campaign barred a Politico reporter from its watch party over a story about the campaign parting ways with a white nationalist. — NY Mag

Blindspot

Stories that are being largely ignored by either left-leaning or right-leaning outlets, curated with help from our partners at Ground News.

What the Left isn’t reading: The FBI arrested two Michigan men for making election-related threats, including one who threatened to kill Donald Trump and conservative Christians if he wins the presidency.

What the Right isn’t reading: Trump told his supporters that his advisers told him not to “hit back” at Michelle Obama after she forcefully criticized him on the campaign trail.

Principals Team

Editors: Benjy Sarlin, Elana Schor, Morgan Chalfant

Reporters: Burgess Everett, Kadia Goba, Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Shelby Talcott, David Weigel

Mike Johnson is the speaker of the US House of Representatives. He represents Louisiana in Congress.

On the most important news day in years, the upper echelons of The New York Times were navigating the impact of an internal contract dispute between one of the paper’s labor unions over issues including in-person work, Semafor’s Max Tani reported.

Hundreds of unionized tech employees announced that they were going on strike over a failure to reach a deal for a new contract.