Conservative Rick Scott becomes front-runner for Senate leader role; Republicans move closer to US House control – live

Florida senator Rick Scott is picking up momentum from Donald Trump’s circle as a possible front-runner to be the Senate majority leader.

Multiple conservatives, including Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck and Robert Kennedy Jr have endorsed Scott as the next leader.

The majority leader race appears to be down to three Senate Republicans: John Cornyn, a senator from Texas, Senate minority whip John Thune, of South Dakota and Scott.

In a post on X, Carlson described Cornyn as “an angry liberal whose politics are indistinguishable from Liz Cheney’s”. Meanwhile, Kennedy said that without Scott, “the entire Trump reform agenda [is] wobbly”.

Republican senators will vote for their new leader this week. Trump has not weighed in on the race, and some Republicans, including Thune, have asked Trump to stay out of the race. Whoever is chosen to succeed the current majority leader Mitch McConnell, who has been the top Senate Republican since 2015, will have a large sway over how Trump’s agenda can be carried out in Congress.

Senator Bernie Sanders is on the Sunday talk show circuit today defending his statement saying that Democrats have “abandoned working class people” and have instead “defend[ed] the status quo”.

Democrats like Nancy Pelosi slammed Sanders for his statement, telling the New York Times, “I don’t respect him [for] saying that that.”

Talking to CNN’s Dana Bash, Sanders said the working class is angry and they have a reason to be angry. Harris lost supporters to Donald Trump, who “went around providing an explanation” to voters about why they were feeling about the economy, largely placing the blame on undocumented immigrants.

“That is obviously not the reason,” Sanders said. “The reason in my view is we have an unprecedented level of corporate greed today, more income and wealth inequality and people on top want it all.”

“We need an agenda that says to the working class we are going to take on this powerful working class and take on an agenda that works for you,” he said.

Here is a summary of the latest developments so far on today’s US politics blog:

• Donald Trump won the presidential election in Arizona, the Associated Press (AP) declared on Saturday, completing a clean sweep of all seven battleground states and locking in a decisive electoral college victory over the Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris. Trump, who had secured the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House by early Wednesday, now has what is expected to be a final total of 312 votes to Harris’s 226.

• Republican US representative Eli Crane won reelection to a US House seat representing Arizona’s second congressional district. The freshman lawmaker defeated former Navajo Nation president, Jonathan Nez, who was vying to become the state’s first Native American representative. In a statement late on Saturday, Crane commended Nez for entering the race and thanked voters.

• The AP reported that three other US House races in Arizona were too early to call on Saturday, most notably the first and sixth congressional districts.

• Biden and Trump will meet on Wednesday in the Oval Office, the White House announced on Saturday. “At President Biden’s invitation, President Biden and president-elect Trump will meet in the Oval Office on Wednesday,” the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement.

• Republicans on Saturday appeared close to clinching control of the US House of Representatives, a critical element for Trump to advance his agenda when the president-elect returns to the White House in January.

• Trump’s second administration has begun to take shape amid fears over extremist appointments and how far right the US will go while Republicans control the White House and probably both chambers of Congress. The range of names being put forward varies from members of Trump’s inner circle to the world’s richest man, tech mogul Elon Musk.

• Trump said on Saturday that former Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo will not be asked to join his administration. “I will not be inviting former ambassador Nikki Haley, or former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump administration, which is currently in formation,” Trump posted on social media. “I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our country.”

• A New York judge is to decide this week whether Trump’s criminal conviction on charges involving hush money paid to a porn star should be overturned in light of the US supreme court’s July ruling on presidential immunity. Justice Juan Merchan has said he will make his decision by Tuesday. It is the first of two pivotal choices that the judge must make after Trump’s 5 November election victory. Merchan also must decide whether to go ahead with sentencing Trump on 26 November as currently scheduled.

• The Kremlin said on Sunday that it saw “positive signals” from Trump’s position on Ukraine, while warning it was hard to predict how he would behave in office. “The signals are positive. Trump during his election talked about how he perceives everything through deals, that he can make a deal that can lead to peace,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with state media published on Sunday.

• Protests against Trump erupted in the US on Saturday as people on both coasts took to the streets in frustration about his re-election. Thousands of people in major cities including New York City and Seattle demonstrated against the former president and now president-elect amid his threats against reproductive rights and pledges to carry out mass deportations at the start of his upcoming presidency.

• Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday he had spoken with Trump three times in the past few days aimed at tightening the strong alliance between Israel and the US. “These were good and very important conversations,” Netanyahu said in a statement

• Trump’s former Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said he will not seek to join the president-elect’s new administration but is ready to offer advice to his successor, including on how to strengthen sanctions on Iran and Russia and contain the growth of US debt. In an interview, Mnuchin told Reuters it was important for the Treasury to work towards strengthening US trade policy. This includes holding Beijing to its US goods purchase commitments in Trump’s January 2020 Phase One deal to rebalance US-China trade, which he said “they’re not living up to.”

• The president-elect has charged Howard Lutnick, a longtime friend, and one of the few high-profile figures in corporate America to vocally endorse his campaign, with recruiting officials who will deliver, rather than dilute, his agenda. The CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and co-chair of Trump’s transition team, has made no secret of his plan to stack the new White House with loyalists – and keep out anyone who threatens to derail his pledges.

• A senior adviser to Trump said that the incoming US administration’s priority for Ukraine will be achieving peace rather than helping it regain territory captured by Russia in the almost three years of the war. In an interview with the BBC, broadcast on Saturday, Bryan Lanza, who has been a political adviser to Trump since his 2016 presidential campaign, said: “When Zelenskyy says we will only stop this fighting, there will only be peace, once Crimea is returned, we’ve got news for President Zelenskyy: Crimea is gone.”

• The governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, said he thinks Trump may look favourably on the UK choosing to leave the “bureaucratic blob” of the EU. The Democratic politician told the Sky News Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips program that his “gut” suggested Trump could not pursue tariffs “against allies like the UK”.

• Australia’s economy will not be immune from escalating trade tensions, Jim Chalmers has warned, as the Albanese government prepares itself for an incoming Trump administration. In a speech to be delivered on Monday, the treasurer will outline the risks of an “uncertain world characterised by economic vulnerability and volatility” but will say the Australian government is “well-placed and well-prepared”.

• A British minister said on Sunday that the government is unlikely to ask the Reform party leader Nigel Farage to act as an intermediary to deal with Trump. The UK Treasury minister, Darren Jones, said on Sunday that the government would probably reject that offer. Farage had said at the weekend he would be willing to act as an intermediary for the UK government because it is in the national interest. Jones also said that the UK is examining all possible options when it comes Trump’s approach to Ukraine.

• An employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has been fired from her job and is being investigated because she told a disaster relief team she was directing in Florida after Hurricane Milton to avoid homes displaying election campaign signs supporting Trump, conduct that the agency head on Saturday called “reprehensible”.

• Bitcoin soared to a new record high on Sunday, as the cryptocurrency continues to rise after Trump’s presidential election win. The digital currency passed $80,000 for the first time in its history shortly after 12am GMT, according to AFP.

Joan E Greve

Joe Biden stood before the American people, millions of whom were still reeling from the news of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential race, and reassured them: “We’re going to be OK.”

In his first remarks since his vice-president and chosen successor, Kamala Harris, lost the presidential election, Biden delivered a pep talk from the White House Rose Garden on a sunny Thursday that clashed with Democrats’ black mood in the wake of their devastating electoral losses. Biden pledged a smooth transfer of power to Trump and expressed faith in the endurance of the American experiment.

“Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable,” Biden said. “A defeat does not mean we are defeated. We lost this battle. The America of your dreams is calling for you to get back up. That’s the story of America for over 240 years and counting.”

The message severely clashed with the dire warnings that many Democrats, including Biden, have issued about the dangers of a second Trump term. They have predicted that Trump’s return to power would jeopardize the very foundation of American democracy. They assured voters that Trump would make good on his promise to deport millions of undocumented people. And they raised serious doubts about Trump’s pledge to veto a nationwide abortion ban.

Now as they stare down four more years of Trump’s presidency, Democrats must reckon with the reality that those warnings were for naught. Not only did Trump win the White House, but he is on track to win the popular vote, making him the first Republican to do so since 2004. Senate Republicans have regained their majority, and they appear confident in their chances of holding the House of Representatives, with several key races still too close to call on Friday morning.

Donald Trump could have an easier time limiting press freedom in his second term in the White House after a campaign marked by virulent rhetoric towards journalists and calls for punishing television networks and prosecuting journalists and their sources, legal scholars and journalism advocacy groups warn.

Aside from worries about Trump’s demonization of the press inciting violence against journalists, free press advocates appear to be most alarmed by Trump’s call for the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revoke TV networks’ broadcast licenses and talk of jailing journalists who refuse to reveal anonymous sources.

Still, despite a conservative majority on the supreme court and likely Republican control of the House and Senate, those same people also say that America’s robust first amendment protections and a legislative proposal and technology to protect sources mean that a diminished press under Trump is not a certainty.

“My big-picture concern is that Trump is going to do exactly what he has been telling us that he wants to do, which is that he is going to punish his critics,” said Heidi Kitrosser, a Northwestern University law professor.

Kitrosser added:

He is going to punish people who dissent from his approach to things, people who criticize him and also, perhaps more importantly, investigative journalists and their sources who are not offering opinions but are exposing facts that he finds embarrassing or inconvenient.”

Trump has long said journalists deliver “fake news” and are the “enemy of the people”, but since leaving office in 2021 he has used more violent language. At a 2022 rally in Texas, Trump suggested that the threat of rape in prison could compel a journalist to reveal their sources.

Sarah Basford Canales

Australia’s economy will not be immune from escalating trade tensions, Jim Chalmers has warned, as the Albanese government prepares itself for an incoming Donald Trump administration.

In a speech to be delivered on Monday, the treasurer will outline the risks of an “uncertain world characterised by economic vulnerability and volatility” but will say the Australian government is “well-placed and well-prepared”.

There is speculation Trump’s second term in the White House may drive up inflation in the US again if he moves ahead with plans to raise tariffs on imported goods and slash taxes.

“Of course we expect the incoming US administration to bring a different suite of policies. And we are confident in our ability to navigate that change, as partners,” he will say at the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

Modelling undertaken by the Treasury department on different trade and tariff policy scenarios indicated there would be a “small” reduction in Australia’s output and additional price pressures in the short term.

Bitcoin soared to a new record high on Sunday, as the cryptocurrency continues to rise after Donald Trump’s presidential election win.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), The digital currency passed $80,000 for the first time in its history shortly after 12am GMT.

It has been rising since Trump won last Tuesday’s US presidential election over sentiment that he will ease regulations on digital currencies. Bitcoin reached $75,000 on Wednesday, topping its previous all-time peak of $73,797.98 achieved in March, reports AFP.

Trump was seen as the pro-crypto candidate in his battle with the Democratic party’s candidate Kamala Harris.

During his first presidency Trump referred to cryptocurrencies as a scam, but has since radically changed his position, even launching his own platform for the unit.

He has pledged to make the US the “bitcoin and cryptocurrency capital of the world,” and to put tech billionaire and rightwing conspiracy theorist Elon Musk in charge of a wide-ranging audit of governmental waste.

The previous Trump term saw corporate tax cuts that brought more liquidity to markets, encouraging investment into high-growth assets such as cryptocurrency.

According to AFP, in the run-up to the election, Trump apparently became the first former president to use bitcoin in a purchase, as he bought burgers at a New York City restaurant, which hailed it as a “historic transaction”.

From gold-high top sneakers to Women-for-Trump tank tops, iron-on “Fight, Fight, Fight” patches to a poster depicting a 19th-century cowboy outlaw, sales of Trump merchandise at the Trump store in Scranton, Pennsylvania, tripled in sales in the days after the once and future president’s landslide second-term win in the US election last week.

In a hard week for Democrats, the goods flying off the shelves added insult to injury as Scranton has long been intimately linked to Joe Biden, lauded as his home town and symbol of his affinity with America’s working class.

Store manager Thomas Rankin said he never believed polls predicting a tight race. Trump voters, he believed, had simply kept quiet because they didn’t want an argument. “A whole lot of the Democrat party, as soon as they got in the booth, went boom! They could see through the whole Democrat propaganda,” he said.

And then there were the rallies – Rankin, a former deadhead, said he used to go to a lot of concerts – and Trump had held hundreds with his trademark weave of folk tales, policy and political rhetoric.

“People travelled to them like they travelled for the Grateful Dead,” he said, and that’s what I did. He drew people in, just like the Dead. People had fun, but they also had an interest in what he is saying.”

Bitter truths were plentiful in Scranton, last week, as voters in “Scranton Joe” Biden’s home town broadly rejected Democrats’ proposition for a continuation under Kamala Harris.

Lackawanna county, which incorporates Scranton, lies at the top end of the Pennsylvania’s populous Route 222 voter corridor. It was once a Democratic stronghold but last week it swung five points toward Donald Trump compared with 2020.