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WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said Elon Musk and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency" — which is not, despite the name, a government agency. The acronym "DOGE" is a nod to Musk's favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin. Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside the government to offer the White House "advice and guidance" and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to "drive large scale structural reform, and cre...
RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas (AP) — Jorge Bazán's family has lived on the U.S.-Mexico border for generations and voted for Democrats as long as he can remember. He broke the family tradition this year and voted for Donald Trump because he doesn't trust the Democratic Party's economic policies. "I think they forgot about the middle class," said Bazán, who works for the utility company in Rio Grande City, seat of the most Hispanic county in the nation. "People are suffering right now. Everything's very expensive." The South Texas region — stret...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A relatively trouble-free presidential election was good news for those working to restore faith in the system. Less encouraging was a flood of misinformation that sought to undermine trust in voting and sow chaos, something experts say is likely to get worse in the years ahead. The most significant test for officials on Election Day was a series of bomb threats reported in five battleground states, some of which forced polling places to be evacuated temporarily. The day otherwise played out like most other election days, w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. presidents usually at least pay lip service to being leaders of the free world, at the helm of a mighty democracy and military that allies worldwide can rally around and reasonably depend on for support in return. Not so under President-elect Donald Trump, a critic of many existing U.S. alliances, whose win of a second term this week had close European partners calling for a new era of self-reliance not dependent on American goodwill. "We must not delegate forever our security to America," French President Emmanuel M...
A federal judge on Thursday struck down a Biden administration policy that aimed to ease a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens. The program, lauded as one of the biggest presidential actions to help immigrant families in years, allowed undocumented spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens to apply for a green card without first having to leave the country. The temporary relief from deportation brought a brief sense of security to some 500,000 immigrants estimated to benefit from the program...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will host President-elect Donald Trump for a traditional postelection meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday, the White House said Saturday. Such a meeting is customary between the outgoing president and the incoming president, and is meant partly to mark the start of a peaceful transfer of power under America's democracy. But then-President Trump, a Republican, did not host Biden, a Democrat, for a sit-down after the 2020 election, when Trump lost his reelection bid. Trump sought the presidency again f...
WASHINGTON (AP) — While inflation and immigration emerged as the dominant themes in this year's presidential race, another issue was prominent in the minds of voters for both major candidates: the stakes for democracy. Half of voters identified democracy as the single most important motivating factor for their vote. That was higher than the share of voters who answered the same way about inflation, the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, abortion policy or free speech, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters n...
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Monday named former New York congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency as he continues to build out his future administration with loyal supporters. Zeldin, a Republican who mounted a failed bid for governor of New York in 2022, will "ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses,'' Trump said in a statement. Zeldin also will maintain "the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Rep. Tom Cole won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Oklahoma on Tuesday. He defeated Democrat Mary Brannon and an independent. This will be Cole's 12th term in the U.S. House representing the 4th Congressional District, which includes 13 counties in south-central and southwest Oklahoma and the state's two largest military installations: Fort Sill and Tinker Air Force Base. A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, Cole serves as chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. The Associated Press d...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Rep. Josh Brecheen won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Oklahoma on Tuesday. Brecheen, a first-term congressman, defeated Democrat Brandon Wade, a union leader from Bartlesville. Brecheen is a rancher from Coalgate and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation. Oklahoma's sprawling 2nd Congressional District stretches across most of eastern Oklahoma, from the Red River border with Texas to the Kansas state line. Brecheen replaced Markwayne Mullin, who is now Oklahoma's junior U.S. senator. The Associated Press d...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Republican Rep. Frank Lucas won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Oklahoma on Tuesday. The longest-serving member of Oklahoma's congressional delegation, Lucas secured reelection in June when he received more than 73% of the vote in a three-way Republican primary, since no Democrat or independent ran for the seat. First elected in a special election in 1994, the rancher from Cheyenne, Oklahoma, currently chairs the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and is the longest-serving member of the House A...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump won Oklahoma and its seven electoral votes on Tuesday, defeating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. A Democrat has not won the presidential race in Oklahoma since 1964, and Trump was heavily favored to win. The last time a Democrat won one of Oklahoma's 77 counties in a presidential race was in 2000 when Al Gore won nine counties in the eastern part of the state during his loss to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner at 8:00 p.m. E...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters defeated a measure to add abortion rights to the Florida state constitution on Tuesday but sided with abortion-rights advocates on ballot measures in Maryland and New York. Results were still pending in seven other states with abortion measures on the ballot. Most voters supported the Florida measure, but it fell short of the required 60% to pass constitutional amendments in the state. Most states require a simple majority. The result was a political win for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that will keep in place the s...
A costly campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Florida failed Tuesday as voters in dozens of states weighed more than 140 measures appearing on the ballot alongside races for president and top state offices. Florida was one of several states deciding high-profile marijuana measures and was among 10 states considering amendments related to abortion or reproductive rights. About two dozen measures are focused on future elections, including several specifically barring noncitizens from voting. Other state measures affect wages, taxes, hou...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Faced with a sweeping rejection by American voters, Kamala Harris conceded the presidential election to Donald Trump on Wednesday and encouraged supporters to continue fighting for their vision of the country. The Democratic vice president said the battle would continue "in the voting booth, in the courts and in the public square." "Sometimes the fight takes a while," she said at Howard University, her alma mater, where she had hoped to make a victory speech after the election. "That doesn't mean we won't win." Harris' d...
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump spent his first day as president-elect receiving congratulatory phone calls from his defeated opponent, world leaders and President Joe Biden as he began the process of turning his election victory into a government. Trump was keeping a low profile, staying out of the public eye after addressing supporters in Florida during the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Vice President Kamala Harris called Trump to concede the race and to congratulate him, while Biden invited the man he ousted from the White H...
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Donald Trump is set to visit Dearborn, Michigan — the nation's largest Arab-majority city — on Friday, according to a local business owner who first insisted the former president call for peace in Lebanon before hosting him. Metro Detroit is home to nation's largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large chunk of them living in Dearborn. The city — which President Joe Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin — has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden administration's handling of the Israel-Ha...
PHOENIX (AP) — Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump's comment that he would protect women whether they "like it or not" shows that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women's rights "to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies." "I think it's offensive to everybody, by the way," Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the Western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada. She followed up those remarks at her rally in Phoenix: "He simply does not respect the freedom of w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Top House Republicans called on the White House to produce all documents and internal communications regarding President Joe Biden's statement earlier this week in which he appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump. White House press officials altered the official transcript of Biden's statement, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two U.S. government officials and an internal email obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The lawmakers said they q...
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will host rallies within 7 miles of each other Friday night in the Milwaukee area as part of a fevered final push for votes in swing-state Wisconsin's largest county. Milwaukee is home to the most Democratic votes in Wisconsin, but its conservative suburbs are where most Republicans live and are a critical area for Trump as he tries to reclaim the state he narrowly won in 2016 and lost in 2020. One reason for his defeat was a drop in support in those Milwaukee s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Next week's presidential election isn't just a referendum on Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. It's also a measure of the influence the world's richest man wields over American democracy. Elon Musk, the South African-born tech and business titan, has spent at least $119 million mobilizing Trump's supporters to back the Republican nominee. His social media platform, X, has become a firehose of pro-Trump propaganda. And he's playing a starring role in Trump-style rallies in critical battleground states. All the while, he's c...
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump zeroed in on the Sun Belt on Saturday as they embarked on one last weekend quest to sway every undecided voter in the battleground states. They pitched rival agendas on the economy — and more — that each insisted is what Americans want. "We have overcome every attack, every abuse and even two assassination attempts," Trump said at a rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, outside Charlotte. "And now it all comes down to this." Later, Trump headed to Virginia, which isn't...
NEW YORK (AP) — Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on "Saturday Night Live" in the final days before the presidential election, playing herself as the mirror-image double of Maya Rudolph's version of her in the show's cold open. The first lines the candidate spoke as she sat across from Rudolph, their outfits identical, were drowned out by cheers from the audience. "It is nice to see you Kamala," Harris told Rudolph with a broad grin she kept throughout the sketch. "And I'm just here to remind you, you got this." In sync, the two said s...
LITITZ, Pa. (AP) — Donald Trump gave a profane and conspiracy-laden speech two days before the presidential election, talking about reporters being shot and suggesting he "shouldn't have left" the White House after his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden. In remarks Sunday that bore no resemblance to his standard speech in the campaign's closing stretch, the former president repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and resurrected old grievances about being prosecuted after trying to overturn his defeat four years ago. Trump i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Kamala Harris promised Tuesday to "put country above party and above self" in the closing argument of her presidential campaign, delivering her message from the same site where Donald Trump fomented the Capitol insurrection, to emphasize the sharp choice voters face. One week out from Election Day, the vice president used the address from the grassy Ellipse near the White House to pledge to Americans that she would work to improve their lives while arguing that her Republican opponent is only in it for himself. Trump "has s...
