Donald Trump coasted back into the White House by a wide margin in Tuesday’s presidential election, with the Republican’s bombastic style and extreme policy proposals appealing to more than 70 million voters across all 50 states.
His victory also meant misery for Democrats, and Kamala Harris, who was attempting to become the first woman to become president of the US, but who ultimately fell way short, crucially in the handful of swing states that decided the outcome.
Here are 10 key takeaways from a historic election:
1. Racism and misogyny defeat joy and hope
Harris ran on a platform of joy and new beginnings, but the Democratic presidential nominee was soundly defeated by a convicted felon spouting racial hatred and sexism, including accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood” of America and calling his opponent a “bitch” and “dumb as a rock”. Despite his outpourings of hate and disrespect, Trump looks likely to become the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote since George W Bush in 2004.
2. Democracy at a crossroads
Trump’s return to the White House comes with the promise of vengeance on his perceived enemies, including political opponents and the media. Voters passed on Harris’s much vaunted to-do list in favor of Trump’s agenda of revenge. And while the worst of the president-elect’s wild policy excesses was largely curbed during his first term by so-called “adults in the room”, this time there will be no career professionals to act as guardrails.
3. World order set on fire
Prospects now appear bleak for Ukraine in standing up to Russia as Trump, who has claimed he would end the war there in 24 hours, threatens to terminate US military assistance for Kyiv. A similar fear extends to Gaza, with Trump’s victory seen as a win for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nato allies of the US, meanwhile, fear the next move of a man who has cozied up to adversary dictators including Viktor Orbán, Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, and encouraged Russia to “do whatever the hell they wanted” to countries who were behind on Nato dues.
4. Climate deniers back at the controls
Trump, who has called the climate emergency “a big hoax”, has said he will once again remove the US from the Paris climate agreement and dismantle Biden’s climate agenda, actions experts say could “reverberate for a million years”. His promises to ramp up oil production and burn more fossil fuels – “drill, baby, drill”, as well as weakening regulatory powers or eliminating agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, lead some to believe the US will pose “a major threat to the planet”.
5. Quackery to replace public health policy
Decades of accepted public health practices, including water fluoridation and mandatory childhood vaccinations, could end if Trump delivers on his promise to give Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine denier and opponent of pesticides, “a big role” in his administration. Another assault on the Affordable Care Act is expected as one of a “jumble of healthcare proposals” following the re-election of a president who advocated for humans to take horse worming medicines and inject themselves with bleach during the Covid pandemic.
6. Mass deportation and immigration crackdowns
Voters overwhelmingly backed a signature and long-standing objective of the Trump campaign, namely a massive crackdown on immigration, and the deportation of up to 15 million undocumented immigrants. Trump’s re-election heralds a return to the White House of loyalist henchman Stephen Miller, architect of his first-term immigration ban on Muslims and new, equally extreme proposals including the ending of birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants, and the narrowing of pathways to naturalization.
7. Specter of national abortion ban appears
Several states voted to enshrine abortion protections on Tuesday, but advocates for women’s reproductive health freedom are fearful that the Trump administration will push for a national abortion ban. Trump asserted during the campaign he would veto such a measure, but he has flip-flopped on the issue, and cast a vote in Florida on Tuesday to maintain the state’s draconian six-week ban. Analysts speculate he will use an 1873 anti-vice law that bans the mailing of anti-abortion materials to bypass Congress and prohibit shipping of abortion pills.
8. Supreme court extremism sealed for a generation
Having hand-picked three justices in his first term who helped overturn decades of federal abortion protections, Trump’s re-election and new Senate majority give him carte blanche to lock in the rightwing majority. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas could retire during the next four years and allow Trump to make younger picks to replace them. The next youngest justice, liberal Sonia Sotomayor, is 70, and must stay on the bench for at least another four years to prevent Trump securing a 7-2 conservative supermajority.
9. Billionaires’ bonanza as US edges closer to oligarchy
Elon Musk, the billionaire SpaceX, Tesla and X owner, is likely to reap rich rewards for his sycophantic campaign support for Trump with a key economic role in the White House. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, accused of assisting Trump by blocking his Washington Post newspaper from endorsing Harris, regained his voice on Wednesday with a congratulatory message. And other mega-wealthy Republican campaign donors, including entrepreneur Peter Thiel and hotel heiress Miriam Adelson, can expect huge tax cuts and access to the next president’s ear.
10. Democrats down and out
Harris and the Democratic party received an unexpected drubbing in the presidential and Senate campaigns that leaves them in a dark place, with no clear leader or agenda. It is not yet clear if they will recapture a majority in the House of Representatives, but even success there would be razor-thin. While the next presidential race is not until 2028, there are only two years until the midterms and Democrats must act quickly to rediscover their direction and purpose.
