Live: US Elections 2024

President-elect Donald Trump is considering North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum to be his new “energy tsar”, The Financial Times reported, Reuters reports.

Burgum is Trump’s preferred candidate for the role, the newspaper reported citing people familiar with the discussions, adding that former energy secretary Dan Brouillette is also a contender.

The new energy tsar role and its powers are not yet finalised, the FT reported.

Robert Lighthizer, a firm believer in tariffs, has been asked to return as US Trade Representative in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, The Financial Times reported, citing several people familiar with talks in the transition team, Reuters reports.

Lighthizer was one of the leading figures in Trump’s trade war with China and the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, with Mexico and Canada during Trump’s first term.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen has said she proposed to returning US President Donald Trump that the United States could supply more liquefied natural gas to the bloc to replace Russian energy, AFP reports.

European Commission president von der Leyen said it was “very important” that Brussels engaged with Trump around “common interests”, pointing to her first call with him on Thursday.

“Common interests are, for example — this is one topic that we touched upon, I would not say discuss — it’s the whole topic of LNG,” she told reporters in Budapest where EU leaders were wrapping up two days of discussions.

Europe still received “a lot of LNG via Russia”, von der Leyen said, adding: “Why not replace it by American LNG, which is cheaper for us and brings down our energy prices.”

Read more here.

Mexico will continue its measures to stop migrants from reaching its northern border with the United States, its top diplomat said Friday, days after Donald Trump won the US presidential election vowing a new crackdown on illegal immigration, Reuters reports.

Foreign Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente stressed that Mexico’s model is working and will stay in place, pointing to data that shows the number of migrants caught by US authorities at the border had fallen 76 per cent since last December.

“It’s working well and we’re going to continue on this path,” he said, speaking at a regular government press conference.

Read more here.

Donald Trump’s Republicans held on to a narrow edge as election officials tallied the final votes that will determine control of the US House of Representatives, though Democrats succeeded in flipping a pair of New York state seats.

Republicans have secured at least 211 seats, seven short of the majority in the 435-member chamber, with 24 races left to be called, according to projections by Edison Research. Republicans are set to hold a majority of least 53 seats in the Senate.

Full congressional control by Republicans would give Trump great leeway to pursue policies including sweeping tax cuts, energy deregulation and border security controls.

Should Democrats succeed in capturing a majority, which would require them to win 18 of the 24 as-yet uncalled seats, it would give them a bulwark to push back against him.

Read the full Reuters story here.

Global efforts to fight climate change stumbled but survived the last time Donald Trump was elected president and withdrew the United States from an international climate agreement.

Other countries, states, cities and businesses picked up some of the slack.

But numerous experts worry that a second Trump term will be more damaging, with the US withdrawing even further from climate efforts in a way that could cripple future presidents’ efforts, AP reports.

“There’s no hope of reaching a safe climate without substantive action from the United States, from China, from Europe,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson.

Read more here.

Reforming Europe’s economy is all the more urgent following Donald Trump’s US election win, warned the author of a blockbuster report, Mario Draghi, ahead of talks with EU leaders in Budapest on tackling the challenge, AFP reports.

Ex-European Central Bank head Draghi was tasked with preparing the economic report that EU chief Ursula von der Leyen will use to steer her next five years in office.

Published in September, the sweeping document raised the alarm over Europe’s failure to keep up with the United States, pointing to the EU’s low productivity and economic slowdown.

“The recommendations in this report are already urgent, given the economic situation we are in today. They have become even more urgent after the US elections,” Draghi said.

“There is no doubt that the Trump presidency will make a big difference in the relations between the United States and Europe. Not necessarily all in a negative sense, but certainly we must take note,” Draghi said.

Read more here.

The outcome of US elections is positive for energy prices to remain reasonable and affordable, Reuters quotes India’s Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran as saying.

That was an important factor for India and several developing economies, he added.

Indonesia has prepared scenarios to anticipate the impact of potential policies from US President-elect Donald Trump, Reuters quotes a finance ministry official as saying.

The head of the ministry’s fiscal policy agency, Febrio Kacaribu, said the scenarios were designed not only to mitigate negative impacts, but also to find opportunities under a Trump administration.

He did not provide further details.

Indonesia’s finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said in the same press conference that the government would closely monitor the risk of trade wars as countries likely react by imposing higher import tariffs of their own.

Trump has proposed a 10 per cent tariff on all US imports and 60pc on Chinese-made products, which if enacted would affect the whole economy by pushing consumer prices higher.

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 US Supreme Court ruling that some fear could enable his worst impulses, CNN observes.

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, CNN says.

“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 guardrail is now gone, and I see few if any others that will constrain President Trump,” CNN quoted her as saying.

Read more here.

A federal judge has struck down a policy aimed at helping undocumented spouses of US citizens obtain legal status, dealing a blow to outgoing President Joe Biden and an estimated half a million people eligible under the programme.

According to AFP, the ruling comes just days after Donald Trump swept to victory in the presidential election on promises of cracking down on illegal immigration and launching a massive deportation effort.

The “Keeping Families Together” policy, which had been previously suspended amid a court challenge, allowed certain undocumented immigrants married to US nationals to apply for permanent residency without leaving the country, as was previously required.

Judge J. Campbell Barker, of the Eastern District of Texas, who was nominated by Trump during his first White House term, ruled that federal agencies “lack statutory authority” for the programme.

Turkiye’s President Tayyip Erdogan has said that he hoped US President-elect Donald Trump will tell Israel to “stop” the attacks and halting arms support to Israel could be a good start, Reuters reports citing broadcaster NTV.

Trump’s presidency will seriously affect political and military balances in the Middle East region, Erdogan was quoted as telling reporters on his flight back to Turkiye from Budapest, where he attended a European Political Community summit.

President-elect Donald Trump has signalled his intent to ditch the outgoing administration’s policies by talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin, AFP reports.

Putin had hailed Trump as “courageous” for the way he handled himself following an assassination attempt at a rally in July, and said he was “ready” to hold discussions with him.

Trump later told NBC News that he had not talked to Putin, the authoritarian leader whom he has repeatedly praised over the years, since his victory but “I think we’ll speak”.

The president-elect has previously said he would push through a peace deal in that conflict — but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who spoke to Trump earlier this week, said calls for a ceasefire were “dangerous”.

The United Nations has been planning for the possible return of Donald Trump and the cuts to US funding and engagement with world body that are likely to come with his second term as president, Reuters reports.

There was a sense of “dj vu and some trepidation” at the 193-member world body, said one senior Asian diplomat, as Republican Trump won Tuesday’s US election over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

“There is also some hope that a transactional administration will engage the UN on some areas even if it were to defund some dossiers. After all, what bigger and better global stage is there than the United Nations?” said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Trump has offered few specifics about foreign policy in his second term but supporters say the force of his personality and his “peace through strength” approach will help bend foreign leaders to his will. He has vowed to solve the war in Ukraine and is expected to give strong support to Israel in its conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

Read more here.

Several people, including children and college students, have reported receiving racist text messages from unrecognised phone numbers in recent days, CNN says.

The texts have been reported in states including Maryland, New Jersey, Alabama, Michigan and South Carolina.

“The FBI is aware of the offensive and racist text messages sent to individuals around the country and is in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter,” CNN quoted an FBI statement as saying.

Talaya Jones, a Black woman who lives in Piscataway, New Jersey, said she was “shocked” to receive a text on Wednesday informing her that she had been “selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation”, she told CNN.

CNN also shared a screenshot of the purported text message received by Jones, part of which read: “Our executive slave catchers pick you up in a brown van, be prepared to be searched once you’ve entered the plantation.”

Read more here.

Outgoing US President Joe Biden has said that Americans deserve a “peaceful and orderly transition” of power as he prepares to hand over the seat to President-elect Donald Trump.

“Yesterday, I spoke with President-elect Trump to congratulate him on his victory,” Biden said in a post on X.

“And I assured him that I would direct my entire Administration to work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition.

“That’s what the American people deserve,” the Democrat added.

Tesla boss Elon Musk has shared a colour-coded map of the United States, purportedly showing the results of the 2024 US presidential race.

“They say red light helps you sleep better,” he captioned the map posted on X, which showed most of the country coloured red to indicate the districts won by the Republicans.

San Francisco’s first Black female mayor, London Breed, has conceded the race for mayor to Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie, pledging a smooth transition, the Associated Press reports.

The AP has not yet declared a winner because tens of thousands of ballots have “not yet been counted and added to the ranked choice voting calculations”.

Breed could not overcome deep voter discontent and was trailing Lurie, a philanthropist and anti-poverty nonprofit founder. She faced four big-name challengers, including two San Francisco supervisors and a former interim mayor.

“At the end of the day, this job is bigger than any one person and what matters is that we keep moving this City forward,” AP quoted Breed as saying. She added that she had called Lurie to congratulate him.

According to AP, Breed’s fellow Democratic challengers on the campaign trail repeatedly hammered her administration for doing too little, too late as homeless tent encampments, open-air drug use and brazen retail theft proliferated during her six years in office.

Democrat Josh Riley will unseat Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro in New York’s 19th Congressional District, CNN projects, securing a critical swing seat for Democrats as they try to win a House majority.

The rematch between Molinaro and Riley looked like one of the closest contests in the country heading into Election Day, with Democrats in particular viewing the district as a must-win, CNN notes.

Riley, a former counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hammered Molinaro throughout the campaign over his votes against codifying Roe v. Wade.