Donald Trump wins Nevada but Democrats hold on to Senate seat – US election live | US elections 2024

UK prime minister Keir Starmer is being urged to consider an emergency cash injection into defence and to accelerate Britain’s planned review of its military capabilities before Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Senior defence figures are now assessing how Trump’s victory will shape a strategic defence review (SDR) that was already under way in Whitehall, whose findings are due to be reported in the spring. The SDR comes alongside a crucial review of public spending.

However, Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves are already facing calls to think again about the immediate funding allocated to defence, amid concerns that a clear plan for the military’s future may not be in place until next summer.

Starmer’s commitment to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence when economic conditions allow remains unfunded since the budget. Meanwhile, a £17bn shortfall in the budget for new weapons and equipment over the next 10 years has already been identified by the National Audit Office.

Admiral Lord West, a former chief of the naval staff who served as Labour’s security minister under Gordon Brown, told the Observer that Trump’s election created a chance to demonstrate Britain’s willingness to step up on defence, amid the incoming US president’s criticism that European nations have failed to prioritise it.

“I see it as an opportunity,” he said. “It is understandable, given the politics, to do a strategic defence review. But if you’re going to match what’s required for the security of this nation, it will inevitably mean a need for more money. So why don’t we now bite the bullet and go down that road?

“Historically, we’ve done better than most European countries and Trump knows that. We can set an example. We could show we’re going to move straight towards 3% [of GDP spent on defence] because we want to show everyone the way. This would be a big tick in the box, Trump would be on side, and there will be lots of benefits.”

Donald Trump won his sixth battleground state of the 2024 election early on Saturday, beating Kamala Harris in Nevada.

The AP declared Trump the winner after concluding there were not enough uncounted ballots in the state’s strongest Democratic areas to overcome the former president’s 46,000-vote lead over the Democratic nominee.

Trump clinched a second term early on Wednesday when Wisconsin pushed him past the 270 electoral votes needed to win, so Nevada’s six electoral votes only added to the size of his victory.

He now has 301 electoral votes and has won six of the seven battleground states. Only Arizona remains to be called.

The AP only declares a winner once it can determine that a trailing candidate can’t close the gap and overtake the vote leader.

Kamala Harris received at least 22,000 fewer votes than Joe Biden did four years ago in Michigan’s most heavily Arab American and Muslim cities, a Guardian analysis of raw vote data in the critical swing state finds.

The numbers also show Trump made small gains – about 9,000 votes – across those areas, suggesting Harris’s loss there is more attributable to Arab Americans either not voting or casting ballots for third-party candidates.

Support for Democrats also fell in seven precincts around the country with significant Arab American or Muslim populations, according to data compiled by the Arab American Institute. It found a combined drop in the seven precincts, from about 4,900 votes in 2020 to just 3,400 this election.

Another analysis, based on nationwide exit polling by the Council on American Islamic Relations, found 53% of Muslim Americans voted for Jill Stein. The same poll showed 21% of Muslims cast a ballot for Trump and 20.3% for Harris.

The drop in Democratic support in Hamtramck, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights – three Michigan cities with the nation’s largest Arab American and Muslim populations per capita – represent nearly 27% of the 81,000-vote difference between Harris and Donald Trump’s tallies in the state.

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Iran on Saturday urged US president-elect Donald Trump to reconsider the “maximum pressure” policy he pursued against Tehran during his first term, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Trump must show that he is not following the wrong policies of the past,” Iranian vice-president for strategic affairs, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told reporters on Saturday.

Zarif, a veteran diplomat who previously served as Iran’s foreign minister, helped seal the 2015 nuclear accord between Tehran and western powers, including the US. The deal however was torpedoed in 2018 after the US unilaterally withdrew from it under Trump, who later reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

In response, Iran rolled back its obligations under the deal and has since enriched uranium up to 60%, just 30% lower than nuclear-grade. Tehran has repeatedly denied western countries’ accusations that it is seeking to develop a nuclear weapon.

AFP reports that Zarif also said on Saturday that Trump’s political approach towards Iran led to the increase in enrichment levels. “He must have realised that the maximum pressure policy that he initiated caused Iran’s enrichment to reach 60% from 3.5%,” he said. “As a man of calculation, he should do the math and see what the advantages and disadvantages of this policy have been and whether he wants to continue or change this harmful policy,” Zarif added.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, on Thursday said he hoped the president-elect’s return to the White House would allow Washington to “revise the wrong approaches of the past” – however stopping short of mentioning Trump’s name.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he was “not looking to do damage to Iran”. “My terms are very easy. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I’d like them to be a very successful country,” he said after he cast his ballot.

As Donald Trump watched election results roll in from a party at his Mar-a-Lago compound, Elon Musk sat arm’s length away, basking in the impending victory he had helped secure. In less than five months, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO had gone from not endorsing a candidate to becoming a fixture of the president-elect’s inner circle.

“The future is gonna be so 🔥 🇺🇸🇺🇸,” Musk posted to his social media platform, X, just after midnight, along with a photo of himself leaning over to talk with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago dinner.

Musk’s place at the head table was the result of months of political efforts by the world’s richest man, and an injection of at least $130m of his own money. Musk campaigned for Trump both online and offline, funded advertising and get-out-the-vote operations for a campaign at a severe financial disadvantage to its opponent. He even temporarily decamped from his home in Texas to the swing state of Pennsylvania, where he appeared at town hall events and held a $1m daily giveaway for voters.

Musk wasn’t the only billionaire rooting for Trump. But unlike some of his peers, who preferred operating in the shadows, shielded by Super Pacs and meetings behind closed doors, he became Trump’s most visible surrogate. As so often with his endeavors, Musk was all in. And now, gambling on becoming one of Trump’s most vocal and deep-pocketed supporters has won Musk direct influence and access to the nation’s highest office, making him not only the world’s richest man but also one of its most politically powerful.

Musk’s exact role in the coming administration is still unclear. Trump has previously said that the CEO would lead a full audit of the federal government, and make drastic reforms as “secretary of cost-cutting”. Any such position would create immense conflicts of interest, as Musk’s companies hold billions in contracts with the government and are also facing investigations from federal agencies. Under Trump, who has long opposed regulators and ignored ethical conflicts, that may not matter. Musk’s fortune soared by $26bn just two days after the election.

Beyond any potential formal government role, Musk has also ingratiated himself as a close ally of the president-elect – who adopted some of Musk’s policy suggestions during the campaign and praised him as a “super genius” during his victory speech. He reportedly joined Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Wednesday, signaling broad influence.

David Smith

At 2.25am, Donald Trump gazed out at his jubilant supporters wearing “Make America Great Again” hats. He was surrounded by his wife, Melania, and his children, the Stars and Stripes and giant banners that proclaimed: “Dream big again” and “Trump will fix it!”

“We’re going to help our country heal,” Trump vowed. “We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders, we’re going to fix everything about our country and we’ve made history for a reason tonight, and the reason is going to be just that.”

Having risen from the political dead, the president-elect was already looking ahead to what he called the “golden age of America” – a country that had just shifted sharply to the right. And at its core was the promise of Trump unleashed: a radical expansion of presidential power.

The 45th and 47th commander-in-chief will face fewer limits on his ambition when he is sworn in again in January. He returns as the head of a Republican party remade in his image over the past decade and as the architect of a right-leaning judiciary that helped eliminate his legal perils. Second time around, he has allies across Washington ready to enforce his will.

Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and former Republican congressional aide, said:

What we’re going to have is an imperial presidency. This is going to be probably the most powerful presidency in terms of centralising power and wielding power that we’ve had probably since FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was president from 1933 until his death in 1945].”

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case canceled any remaining court deadlines on Friday while prosecutors assess the “the appropriate course going forward” in light of the Republican’s presidential victory, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump last year with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. But Smith’s team has been evaluating how to wind down the two federal cases before the president-elect takes office because of longstanding Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted, a person familiar with the matter told the AP.

Trump’s victory over vice-president Kamala Harris means that the Justice Department believes he can no longer face prosecution in accordance with department legal opinions meant to shield presidents from criminal charges while in office.

Trump has criticized both cases as politically motivated, and has said he would fire Smith “within two seconds” of taking office.

The AP reports that in a court filing on Friday in the 2020 election case, Smith’s team asked to cancel any upcoming court deadlines, saying it needs “time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”

Anti-abortion advocates say there is still work to be done to further restrict access to abortion when Republican Donald Trump returns to the White House next year, reports Associated Press (AP).

They point to the federal guidance that the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden released around emergency abortions, requiring that hospitals provide them for women whose health or life is at risk, and its easing of prescribing restrictions for abortion pills that have allowed women to order the medication online with the click of a button.

“Now the work begins to dismantle the pro-abortion policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” the Susan B Anthony List, the powerful anti-abortion lobby, said in a statement on Wednesday. The group added: “President Trump’s first-term pro-life accomplishments are the baseline for his second term.”

The group declined to release details about what, specifically, they will seek to undo, reports the AP. But abortion rights advocates are bracing for further abortion restrictions once Trump takes office. And some women are, too, with online abortion pill orders spiking in the days after election day.

Trump has said abortion is an issue for the states, not the federal government. Yet, during the campaign, he pointedly noted that he appointed justices to the supreme court who were in the majority when striking down the national right to abortion. There are also things his administration can do, from picking judges to issuing regulations, to further an anti-abortion agenda.

Patrick Wintour

In the first Trump term Richard Moore, then the political director of the UK Foreign Office and now the head of MI6, admitted half of Britain’s diplomats woke up each morning dreading what they might read on the president’s Twitter feed.

The sheer unpredictability of Trump’s caprice, and his faith in his quixotic charisma, made it hard for diplomats to operate. It would often taken feverish consultations with Trump’s senior aides, including some in the Pentagon, before a plan – such as a premature withdrawal of 2,500 US troops from Afghanistan – could be finessed.

Now, for all the pro-forma congratulations, that sense of foreboding is back. Although only 4% of the American electorate said foreign policy was the most important issue to them in the election, for those watching from abroad it was the all-consuming preoccupation.

That is hardly surprising, as Trump represents an injection of highly combustible material into an already explosive world. Two wars are raging, one now including North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia, and the other still capable of pitting Iran against Israel. And a third with China is looming. In the eyes of Republican foreign policy thinkers, that is at least two wars too many.

Yet, extraordinarily, Trump’s campaign left few clues as to how he would conduct foreign policy. Often the proposals he referenced were mere headlines – such as ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours; outlandish, such as deporting 10 million migrants; or contradictory, concerning committing to Nato and suggesting Russia does whatever it wants to European freeloaders.

Apart from that, there is a broad intent to make tariffs as much as sanctions the central part of the US foreign policy armoury.

Esther Addley

Donald is not the only Trump back in the picture after his election win.

On Tuesday night, members of the former and future president’s family posed with him at his Florida estate in celebration of his re-election. “Dad, we are so proud of you,” wrote Tiffany, Trump’s younger daughter, posting the photo on X. It was also shared by his 17-year-old granddaughter, Kai, captioned: “The whole squad.”

Notably absent was the former first lady, Melania. However, the happy family shot did include Elon Musk – not a blood relative but surely now loved by the president-elect like a son – who was holding X-AE-AXii, the most absurdly named of his own 12 children.

Given the prominent roles, official and unofficial, held by Trump’s children and their spouses in his first administration, it is a safe bet that family members will be front and centre in his second. Here is a reminder of the characters likely to feature in the Trump dynasty, season two:

Nevada Democratic senator Jacky Rosen has won reelection, beating Republican Sam Brown in a tight but unusually quiet race for the battleground state, reports the Associated Press (AP).

According to the AP, the first-term senator had campaigned on abortion rights and positioned herself as a nonideological politician, a formula that also worked for the state’s senior senator, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, in her own reelection bid two years ago.

“Thank you, Nevada! I’m honored and grateful to continue serving as your United States senator,” Rosen said Friday on the social platform X.

Brown, a retired army captain who moved to Nevada from Texas in 2018 and has never held elected office, unsuccessfully tried to ride president-elect Donald Trump’s strong showing in the working-class state. Trump won Nevada on Friday.

The Associated Press left phone and emailed messages seeking comment on Friday from Brown’s campaign. Just before Rosen won, Brown said on X that it was unacceptable that votes were still being counted in Nevada days after the election.

“We deserve to know election results within hours, not a week later,” he said.