Red Arrows Across America.
Sturm and drang in Germany.
News Items is “the most valuable newsletter out there.” — Peggy Noonan.
1. Of the counties with nearly complete results, more than 90 percent shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to a Times analysis of election results reported as of early Wednesday. Mr. Trump improved on his 2020 margin in 2,367 counties. His margin decreased in only 240 counties. There were 536 counties where too few votes had been counted to be included in the analysis. Support for Mr. Trump over his three consecutive presidential runs has swayed back and forth, but early results showed that even a number of states where Vice President Kamala Harris was ahead had shifted right. (Source: nytimes.com)
2. Map:
(Sources: nytimes.com. The Guardian has terrific “arrow maps” as well. There is no paywall at theguardian.com)
3. Hispanic counties have long been Democratic strongholds in Texas. Yet this year, all but one of the of the state’s majority-Hispanic counties shifted to the right. And eight of the 10 counties Trump flipped were majority Hispanic. (Source: nytimes.com)
4. Map:
(Source: nytimes.com)
5. Voter turnout in this year’s presidential election is expected to be close to the record high set in 2020, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Associated Press and the University of Florida Election Lab. Votes are still being counted in some states, but those tabulated so far and expected totals show a range of turnout across states. Records set since 1980 are expected to be surpassed in 10 states. Most of the battleground states are on track to break records. Participation in Wisconsin was a percentage point higher than the high mark set in 2004, when 3 in 4 eligible voters cast their ballots. In Michigan and Arizona, turnout surpassed their 2020 numbers by two percentage points. In multiple states, strong early voting, including mail and early in-person voting, set the stage for high overall turnout. Michigan saw more early voting this year than in 2020, when concerns about the coronavirus pandemic pushed many states to loosen requirements for mail voting. Many other states came very close to their 2020 early-voting totals. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
The clearest message of this election is that people really, really, really hate inflation, and they punish incumbents who preside over it. Democrats might justly protest that this is unfair — while Biden did gobs of inflationary deficit spending, so did Trump, and the president certainly didn’t cause the pandemic-induced supply-chain bottlenecks that caused prices to rise worldwide. But that’s the risk you take when running for the office: You will get unearned credit if the economy booms, and unearned blame if it craters. Some of that blame rubbed off on Harris. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
7. Voters across party lines shifted to the right on immigration. During President Biden’s term, political turmoil, criminal violence, climate change and the economic ruin wrought by the coronavirus pandemic in many countries fueled migration at a scale not seen since World War II. Beyond the factors driving migrants out of their home countries, the U.S. job market was a powerful draw, with unemployment at its lowest level in decades….But Republicans, Democrats and independents interviewed by The Times blamed the Biden administration for failing to acknowledge the chaos at the border and promptly take aggressive steps to address it. Karen Bobis, 25, a registered independent who is originally from the Philippines, said that she had cast a ballot for Mr. Trump because of his stance on illegal immigration. While she and other family members had waited years to win approval to immigrate legally to the United States, she said, people without permission were walking right into the country. (Source: nytimes.com. Ed Note: Our view is that two “issues” — inflation and immigration — made a Harris victory all but impossible)
8. Republicans seized control of the Senate after picking up seats in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio and beating back challenges in Florida, Nebraska and Texas. Republicans had been favored to win a majority in the chamber; now it’s only a question of how big that majority will be. Early Wednesday, Democrats were still defending seats in three other battleground states that President Biden won by less than 3 percentage points: Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The New York Times chart of the U.S. Senate elections results is here. (Source: wsj.com, nytimes.com)
9. Democrats’ dream of blocking a Republican governing trifecta is dwindling down to a handful of West Coast races, as California’s large cache of still-untallied ballots and its notoriously slow count now take center stage in the national political drama. The party had long seen the nation’s two blue bulwarks — New York and California — as the decisive staging ground for its quest to retake the House majority. In the Empire State, it flipped two GOP-held seats, a rare bright spot in an otherwise nightmarish election night for Democrats. But after Republicans ousted two Pennsylvania Democratic incumbents, the GOP appears the slight favorite to keep its narrow majority in the House — an outlook party leaders such as Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican campaign chief, Rep. Richard Hudson, touted on Wednesday as they asserted their party was poised to retain control of the chamber. (Source: politico.com)
10. Donald Trump’s campaign team launched into transition mode barely 12 hours after polls closed — a jarring turn that left exhausted staffers and members of the media scrambling on Wednesday. Huddled in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump’s advisers by midday were hurriedly ironing out transition plans, particularly how to handle a deluge of questions about the people and policies that will shape the second Trump White House. After his election night rout, Trump’s advisers have made clear his top Day One priorities include executive orders on border security and oil drilling, and other measures to promote energy independence. With Congress potentially under full Republican control, Trump’s team is emboldened to push aspects of his America First agenda as soon as he re-enters office. (Source: politico.com)
11. Wall Street has rarely been more excited by an election. U.S. stocks’ capitalization rose by $1.62 trillion on Wednesday, their fifth-best one-day showing ever, following Donald Trump’s decisive election victory. The surge highlights the opportunity that investors, bankers and others in finance are hoping to embrace over four years of tax cuts, deregulation and economic expansion. “Investors are celebrating,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Capital in Chicago. He was among those buying shares of smaller companies, on the bet that Trump’s policies will rev up the economy. The enthusiasm is especially heated in a few areas, investors and bankers said. Banks and other financial companies climbed, with the KBW Bank Index rising 11%. Investors expect regulatory scrutiny will ease in a Trump administration. Some also expect more dealmaking, potentially among smaller and midsize banks. The expected departure of Lina Khan, who leads the Federal Trade Commission and has been a thorn in the side of executives hoping to work out tech acquisitions, was cheered by investors and bankers. (Source: wsj.com)
12. When Donald Trump first started a trade war with China in 2018, Beijing found itself on the back foot and unsure of how to respond. This time President Xi Jinping is better prepared for a fight, even as he has more to lose. Mr. Trump has threatened to put tariffs of as much as 60% on Chinese goods, a level that Bloomberg Economics says will decimate trade between the world’s biggest economies. That’s on top of a range of export controls on advanced technology that the Biden administration has only tightened since Trump left office. In that time, China has taken strategic steps to ensure it’s more resilient and well positioned to strike back. Key to that has been expanding its toolkit, which now includes export controls on critical raw materials, in addition to tariffs on agricultural goods and an entity list that can target key American companies. (Source: bloomberg.com)
13. Ukraine was plunged into gloom and uncertainty after Donald Trump’s victory amid expectations that he is likely to end US military assistance while the Kremlin said its aim of subjugating its neighbour remained unchanged. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, congratulated Trump on his “impressive election victory”, adding: “I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs.” He recalled their “great meeting” in New York in September and said the two had discussed “ways to put an end to Russian aggression in Ukraine”. The consequences for Ukraine of Trump’s second presidency are likely to be difficult, however, at a time when Russia is advancing on the battlefield at the quickest rate since 2022. Without US military assistance, Ukraine stands to lose further ground in Donetsk oblast, the scene of fierce fighting since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion nearly three years ago, as well as in many other frontline areas. Russia’s foreign ministry said Moscow would seek to work with a future Trump administration but added that it was “focusing on achieving all the set objectives of the special military operation” – the Kremlin’s term for the war. “Our conditions are unchanged and are well known in Washington,” it added. (Source: theguardian.com)
14. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a snap election after divisions over how to revive the lackluster economy triggered the breakup of his fractious three-party ruling coalition. The crisis came to a head with Scholz’s shock dismissal of Finance Minister Christian Lindner late Wednesday, saying that the chairman of the pro-business FDP party had refused a proposal to suspend rules limiting new government borrowing. Scholz called for a confidence vote in January, with a goal of pulling forward next year’s federal election to March from September. The turmoil comes on the heels of the reelection of Donald Trump in the US, which has raised the prospect of a new transatlantic trade war and has forced a reassessment of Europe’s defense relationship with Washington. Germany is also struggling with a stagnating economy that has seen a lengthy retreat in its manufacturing sector. (Source: bloomberg.com)
15. Eurointelligence:
On the day Donald Trump was elected, the German coalition collapsed, a decision that condemns the country to a political vacuum that could last for 8 or 9 months. If you want to know how Europe reacts to Trump, this is your answer: no statesmanship, no coordination, and pettiness. Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, put it in a nutshell when she said that this was a bad day for Europe. She was not referring to Donald Trump, but to the small-mindedness of a German political system interested only in itself.
Olaf Scholz yesterday fired Christian Lindner as finance minister. The decision marks the formal end of the three-party coalition. Lindner was fired after refusing to accept Scholz’s order to declare a state of fiscal emergency that would allow the government to bypass the rules of the debt brake. Scholz went on national TV to declare he wants to set aside money to support Ukraine, and for an increase in defence spending that has now become necessary after the victory of Donald Trump. He also said he would not accept a trade-off with social policies. This will be the theme of the election campaign - and the new dividing line in German politics. (Source: eurointelligence.com)
16. Wolfgang Munchau:
The Brics+ account for some 35-40 percent of global trade, yet they are at the mercy of the US because most of their trade is in US dollars. This is even true for trade flows within the Brics+ region. The French economist Jacques Sapir has argued that the Brics+ are on course to shift some 80 percent of that portion of the trade away from the US dollar within the next five years. This will have a huge impact on the balance of global financial power. Some 60 percent of global foreign reserves are currently held in dollars. With the new payment system, the Brics+ could be on course to overtake the dollar within five years, Sapir has calculated. I am more cautious about such projections, but Sapir is right about the trend. The Brics+ do not need a single currency to make themselves (in)dependent from the US dollar. All they need is 21st century technology. (Source: eurointelligence.com)
17. Pakistan’s government is taking the country in an increasingly authoritarian direction in a bid to fend off any challenge from the party of jailed opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, political experts and government critics said. New legislation in recent days has consolidated the government’s power after a shock election result earlier this year in which candidates backed by the country’s former prime minister took the most seats. Government officials have said the new laws are meant to bring stability, and accuse Khan, whose party has called repeated protest rallies over his imprisonment, of spreading chaos. The coalition government, led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, last month curbed the powers of the courts. This month it tabled a new law allowing for the detention of people who have committed no crime. X, the platform formerly called Twitter, which was used by Khan’s party to dispute the election, was banned days after the vote and remains blocked in the country. (Source: wsj.com)
18. Ireland will hold a general election on 29 November, the prime minister, Simon Harris, announced late on Wednesday, as polls show his centre-right party Fine Gael and coalition partner Fianna Fáil in position to win a fourth term. The country has been on election footing for the past month after the taoiseach confirmed he preferred to hold an election this year. “It is my intention to seek the dissolution of the Dáil [Irish parliament] on Friday, and I hope we have polling day on 29 November,” Harris told the broadcaster RTÉ, with the president to approve the date as a formality. (Source: theguardian.com)
19. News Items’s morbid obsession update:
Evergrande Life Assurance Co. Ltd., the insurance arm of the beleaguered developer China Evergrande Group, is at the center of a new storm as a number of former senior executives have reportedly lost contact during mounting investigations into its financial mismanagement and ties to the collapse of its parent company’s property empire. Liang Dong, its former chairman, Zeng Songbai, the former general manager, and chief actuary Liu Zhanzhong could not be reached. Caixin learned from sources that several other former executives have been taken away by the authorities. Zhu Jialin, the insurer’s former chairman, was under investigation in September 2023. Since then, a number of current and former executives of China Evergrande Group and its subsidiaries have been swept up by investigators, as they look into whether the embattled conglomerate broke the rules over how funds can be used, sources with knowledge of the matter told Caixin. (Source: caixinglobal.com)
Quick Links: This year ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest on record, finds EU space program. Californians forced to flee as ferocious wildfires destroy homes and buildings. L.A. Times coverage of the wildfires is here. Asian leaders rush to congratulate Trump, from Marcos to Modi. China exports soar past forecast as factories front-run Trump tariff threat. What Trump 2.0 will mean for China’s chip industry.
Political Links: Kamala Harris formally conceded the election to Donald Trump yesterday. Democracy depends on the consent of the losers. Jack Smith considers winding down criminal cases against Trump. With Trump win, focus turns to older Supreme Court justices. US diplomats brace as Trump plans foreign policy shake-up in wider purge of government. Trump did well in New York State. New Jersey might be a swing state now. Tide shifts against criminal justice reform among California voters.
Science/Technology Links: Neuroscientists create a comprehensive map of the cerebral cortex. Study reveals how cancer immunotherapy may cause heart inflammation in some patients. How understudied endometriosis causes pain for hundreds of millions of women.
War: Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says IDF. Trump victory likely to worsen South Korea defense jitters, analysts say. Inexperienced, poorly trained and underfed: the North Korean troops heading to Ukraine. Putin ally boasts his troops are ‘meat’ used to grind down Ukraine. Russian drones are hunting civilians in Kherson.