Election 2024 live updates: Trump begins transition; three charged in alleged Iranian plot to kill the president-elect

The Russian president has congratulated Donald Trump on his election victory, praising his “brave” response to the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 but admitting that even he has “no idea” what a second term will look like given Trump’s impulsive nature.

Kelly Rissman has more.

The podcaster who interviewed both Trump and JD Vance but not Kamala Harris (her campaign was in talks with him but the two sides failed to agree a time) has already been credited by the likes of Elon Musk and Dana White with helping the Republican to victory with his last-minute endorsement.

He has since urged the president-elect against attacking his enemies, commenting on his popular show: “He’s got to unite people. He’s got to not attack the left, not attack everybody, let them all talk their s***, but unite.

“Now it’s time to unite everybody.”

Here’s Josh Marcus on the Democratic hunt for its own influencer kingmaker.

Here’s a nice little moment you might have missed amid this week’s seismic events: Caroline Cruz, 16, showing up her dad at his victory party after he saw off a challenge to his Senate seat from Democrat Colin Allred.

James Liddell has the story.

A deluge of racist text messages invoking slavery raised alarm across the US this week after they were sent to Black men, women and students, including middle schoolers, prompting inquiries by the FBI and other agencies.

The messages, sent anonymously, were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

They generally used a similar tone but varied in wording.

Some instructed the recipient to show up at an address at a particular time "with your belongings," while others didn’t include a location.

Some of them mentioned the incoming presidential administration.

It isn’t yet clear who is behind the messages and there was no comprehensive list of where they were sent but high school and college students were among the recipients.

The FBI said it was in touch with the Justice Department on the messages and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating the texts “alongside federal and state law enforcement”.

The Ohio Attorney General’s office also said it was looking into the matter.

The former senior adviser to Barack Obama has criticized the Democratic Party for snobbery and for disillusionment among working-class voters following its US election rout.

In an excoriating takedown of his own party, David Axelrod highlighted the Democrat failure to reach blue collar voters and large parts of the electorate who hadn’t gone to college.

In an interview with CNN on Thursday night, Axelrod said the Democrats had become an increasingly “smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party”, suggesting that they failed to appeal to people from lower-class and non-college educated backgrounds.

“The only group that Democrats gained within the election on Tuesday was White college graduates, and among working-class voters, there was a significant decline,” he added.

Madeline Sherratt reports.

The Washington Post reports this morning that the Pentagon is braced for “major upheaval” once the 47 president takes office “amid fears that the once and future commander-in-chief will follow through on vows to deploy the military domestically against American citizens, demand fealty from key leaders and attempt to remake the nonpartisan institution into one explicitly loyal to him”.

Trump repeatedly threatened on the campaign trail to use the US Armed Forces against “the enemy within”, dismiss any general involved in the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and reverse “woke” decisions like the renaming of military bases associated with Confederate generals.

Professor Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tells The Post: “The greatest danger the military faces is a rapid erosion of its professionalism, which would undermine its status and respect from the American people.

“Mr Trump does not have a real understanding of civil-military relations, or the importance of a nonpartisan, nonpolitical military.”

Here’s more from Rhian Lubin.

The president-elect is now projected to have won the western state by NBC News (we’re still waiting on the AP for their confirmation), a victory that would see him pick up a state he lost in both 2020 and 2016.

Trump campaigned often in Las Vegas and appears to have benefited from bolstering his support among Latino men to secure its six Electoral College points and near a clean sweep of the swing states with only Arizona still to report.

The blame game for Kamala Harris’s loss is already in full flow, with top Democratic staffers in Washington DC reportedly placing the blame at President Biden’s door.

Katie Hawkinson has more.

While the Republicans are currently leading the race to control the House by 211 to 199 (with 218 needed for a majority), according to the AP, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries insists his guys can still win and prevent a complete Trumpian takeover of Congress, which would greatly smooth the passage of the new president’s legislative agenda.

“We still have a clear pathway to taking back the majority,” Jeffries told Spectrum 1 News on Thursday.

“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.”

Responding to gains in his native New York, Jeffries said: “Well, certainly the biggest Democratic wins were right here in New York, and I’m so thankful to the coordinated campaign effort that was put together from the very beginning in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections… It was an all hands on deck effort.”

Less than 24 hours after Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States, social media users began pushing two conflicting narratives to suggest election fraud.

One revived false claims by the Republican that the 2020 vote was stolen from him and the other questioned how Vice President Kamala Harris could have received so many fewer votes in 2024 than President Joe Biden in 2020.

Both narratives hinge on a supposed 20 million vote gap between Harris and Biden.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.