US election live: Republicans edge closer to House majority as speculation grows over Trump cabinet

Welcome and opening summary …

President-elect Donald Trump has named Susie Wiles, the manager of his victorious election campaign, as his White House chief of staff, the first woman to hold the influential role.

Wiles is widely credited within and outside Trump’s inner circle for running what was, by far, his most disciplined and well-executed campaign, and was seen as the leading contender for the position. She largely avoided the spotlight, even refusing to take the mic to speak as Trump celebrated his victory early on Wednesday morning.

Wiles’s hire is Trump’s first major decision as president-elect and one that could be a defining test of his incoming administration, as he must quickly build the team that will help run the federal government.

Meanwhile the Republicans are edging closer to a House majority, after picking up two more hard-fought seats in Pennsylvania.

Democrats won another seat in New York, defeating a third Republican incumbent in that state, and three US House seats in Nevada will remain under Democratic control after a sweeping win Thursday for the incumbents, but Republicans need just seven more seats to reach a majority of 218.

Here are the other key recent developments:

Speaking to NBC News, Donald Trump made clear that the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants that he campaigned on will be a top priority of his administration. “We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful and, and we have to – at the same time, we want people to come into our country,” Trump said, adding that, “I’m not somebody that says, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in”
The former CIA director and US defense secretary Leon Panetta predicted Trump will give Benjamin Netanyahu a “blank check” in the Middle East, possibly opening the way for all-out war between Israel and Iran
Joe Biden, in a speech from the White House, said he will “ensure a peaceful and orderly transition” to Donald Trump, while calling on the country to “bring down the temperature”
Biden is to focus on government funding and hurricane relief in his final weeks as president. With the clock ticking toward the end of his presidency, Joe Biden will focus on keeping the government funded and open, pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), rush assistance to communities battered by hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as confirm judicial nominees
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, congratulated Donald Trump on winning the US presidential election, and said he was willing to talk to him. “I would like to congratulate him on his election as president,” Putin said in Sochi, a resort on the Black Sea
Several key races remain to be called, including the presidential outcomes in swing states Arizona and Nevada (where Trump is tipped to win), Senate races in those two states plus Pennsylvania and, perhaps most importantly, control of the House
Based on analyses of election results so far, it appears that Trump won by driving out the Republican base and making gains among certain groups that typically back Democrats. But split-ticket voters stepped up for Democratic senators and a governor in swing states, reducing their losses in what was otherwise a rough election
The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates further, saying progress has been made against the wave of inflation that struck the United States during Joe Biden’s presidency, which was likely a major factor in voters choosing Donald Trump as the next president
Trump’s sentencing in his business fraud trial scheduled for later this month? Probably not happening, Politico reports
Gavin Newsom, the California governor and potential presidential candidate some day, called the legislature into a special session to prepare to fight Trump
Democrats aired grievances over Harris’s election loss, with many pointing the finger at Biden and his aborted attempt at a second term
Americans are stockpiling abortion pills as Trump’s victory seems set to put foes of the procedure into positions of power
Harris was unable to settle on an effective message against Trump, and was hobbled from the start by Biden’s low approval ratings, a New York Times postmortem of her campaign finds

Key events

A federal judge has struck down a Biden administration policy that aimed to ease a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who are married to US citizens.

The program, lauded as one of the biggest presidential actions to help immigrant families in years, allowed undocumented spouses and stepchildren of US citizens to apply for a green card without first having to leave the country.

The temporary relief from deportation brought a brief sense of security to some 500,000 immigrants estimated to benefit from the program before Texas-based U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker put it on hold in August, days after applicants filed their paperwork.

Barker ruled yesterday that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority by implementing the program and had stretched the legal interpretation of relevant immigration law “past its breaking point.”

The short-lived Biden administration initiative known as “Keeping Families Together” would have been unlikely to remain in place after Donald Trump took office in January. But its early termination creates greater uncertainty for immigrant families as many are bracing for Trump’s return to the White House.

CNN’s latest projection of the crucial races to gain control of the House has Republicans ahead in ten of the contests, with, according to their projections, only six victories needed to tip them over the magic 218 for control.

AP has called 410 of the 435 races, with the Republicans seven away from control of the House.

Reuters reports that speaking in Budapest, German chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose own government is in crisis, has said “We will continue to work well with the future American president” when asked about the election of Donald Trump.

Scholz added “the question of how this can be achieved has been the subject of our discussion,” referring to a meeting of senior European leaders held yesterday in Hungary.

Writing for MSNBC, political columnist Zeeshan Aleem has pinpointed what he says is the one sentence that shows how defeated Kamala Harris misread the election.

He described her telling Sunny Hostin on ABC’s The View that she wouldn’t have changed anything about the Biden administration’s policies as “an act of political malpractice.”

He writes:

Harris was in a tricky position during the campaign — she was running simultaneously as incumbent and newcomer, and it’s difficult to create distance from an administration whose accomplishments one wants credit for.

But it was far from an inescapable predicament: Competent politicians often get away with talking out of both sides of their mouth.

Harris could’ve said that she took pride in working with Biden in shepherding the US out of the Covid crisis, but that she could hear the American people say that they were still hurting, and that she stood for a sharply new perspective on the economy that was laser-focused on bringing down costs.

Her limited discussion of inflation lacked a clear story or theory of society. Who was to blame for why everything became so expensive? She left hammering corporate greed on the table, and her initial broadsides against big business ebbed as she sought out the input and support of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and even chose billionaires as surrogates.

The Republicans are just a handful of calls away from gaining control of the House, but House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said he can still see a path to victory for the Democratic party.

In an interview overnight, quoted by the Hill website, Jeffries said:

We still have a clear pathway to taking back the majority. Of course that runs through Arizona and Oregon and five races that are flip opportunities in California that are too close to call and too early to call.

You can find the latest results for the US Senate, House and governor elections here …

The election of Donald Trump has far-reaching consequences for US foreign policy, including the Biden administration’s long-standing support for Ukraine. This morning, Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, has said he expects US funding to end.

Reuters quotes Orbán as saying “The Americans will quit this war, first of all they will not encourage the war. Europe cannot finance this war alone.”

In this morning’s First Edition newsletter, my colleagues Archie Bland and our senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison discuss what Trump means for Ukraine …

Our latest episode of Politics Weekly America dropped in the last couple of hours. With Donald Trump president-elect, a 6-3 conservative majority in the US supreme court, and a majority secured in the Senate, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Washington Post reporter Marianna Sotomayor about what happens if Democrats are not victorious in the lower chamber …

You can listen to it here: Can the Democrats salvage the House of Representatives? – podcast

China is bracing itself for four years of volatile relations with its biggest trading partner and geopolitical rival, as the dust settles on the news that Donald Trump will once again be in the White House.

On Thursday China’s president, Xi Jinping, congratulated Trump on his victory and said that the two countries must “get along with each other in the new era”, according to a Chinese government readout.

“A stable, healthy and sustainable China-US relationship is in the common interest of both countries and is in line with the expectations of the international community,” Xi said.

The Guardian’s Amy Hawkins and Helen Davidson report:

Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US president-elect Donald Trump, will not return to the White House, the Financial Times reported on Friday, but Kushner could advise on Middle East policy, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Welcome and opening summary …

President-elect Donald Trump has named Susie Wiles, the manager of his victorious election campaign, as his White House chief of staff, the first woman to hold the influential role.

Meanwhile the Republicans are edging closer to a House majority, after picking up two more hard-fought seats in Pennsylvania.

Here are the other key recent developments:

Speaking to NBC News, Donald Trump made clear that the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants that he campaigned on will be a top priority of his administration. “We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful and, and we have to – at the same time, we want people to come into our country,” Trump said, adding that, “I’m not somebody that says, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in”
The former CIA director and US defense secretary Leon Panetta predicted Trump will give Benjamin Netanyahu a “blank check” in the Middle East, possibly opening the way for all-out war between Israel and Iran
Joe Biden, in a speech from the White House, said he will “ensure a peaceful and orderly transition” to Donald Trump, while calling on the country to “bring down the temperature”
Biden is to focus on government funding and hurricane relief in his final weeks as president. With the clock ticking toward the end of his presidency, Joe Biden will focus on keeping the government funded and open, pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), rush assistance to communities battered by hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as confirm judicial nominees
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, congratulated Donald Trump on winning the US presidential election, and said he was willing to talk to him. “I would like to congratulate him on his election as president,” Putin said in Sochi, a resort on the Black Sea
Several key races remain to be called, including the presidential outcomes in swing states Arizona and Nevada (where Trump is tipped to win), Senate races in those two states plus Pennsylvania and, perhaps most importantly, control of the House
Based on analyses of election results so far, it appears that Trump won by driving out the Republican base and making gains among certain groups that typically back Democrats. But split-ticket voters stepped up for Democratic senators and a governor in swing states, reducing their losses in what was otherwise a rough election
The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates further, saying progress has been made against the wave of inflation that struck the United States during Joe Biden’s presidency, which was likely a major factor in voters choosing Donald Trump as the next president
Trump’s sentencing in his business fraud trial scheduled for later this month? Probably not happening, Politico reports
Gavin Newsom, the California governor and potential presidential candidate some day, called the legislature into a special session to prepare to fight Trump
Democrats aired grievances over Harris’s election loss, with many pointing the finger at Biden and his aborted attempt at a second term
Americans are stockpiling abortion pills as Trump’s victory seems set to put foes of the procedure into positions of power
Harris was unable to settle on an effective message against Trump, and was hobbled from the start by Biden’s low approval ratings, a New York Times postmortem of her campaign finds