Trump Wins Presidential Election

Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, November 6, 2024…

• Donald Trump has been elected the 47th President of the United States. Although a handful of states have not been called, the former president clinched the victory with his win in Wisconsin. 
• Democratic representative Adam Schiff won the US Senate seat long held by the late Dianne Feinstein on Tuesday night. 
• A number of statewide ballot measures were decided on Election Night, although the outcome of some are still up in the air.

Donald Trump Wins The 2024 Election

Former President Donald Trump has been elected president again, according to a race call by the Associated Press.

It’s a stunning return to power after the former president falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged and stoked the Jan. 6 attack on the capital. He is the first convicted felon to win the White House.

Republicans say Trump won the election for one simple reason. Voters felt that they were better off four years ago than they were today. “Voters have really short memories,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who helped lead Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in 2016. “And while I think everyone is appalled by what happened on January 6, they’re also appalled by what they have to pay for eggs today. People think about inflation every single day when they’re buying gas, when they’re going to the grocery store.”

It’s unclear what a second Trump presidency will men for the state of California.

Adam Schiff Will Be California’s New US Senator

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff easily defeated former L.A. Dodgers star Steve Garvey. Although millions of ballots are likely yet to be counted, the Associated Press declared Schiff the winner over his Republican opponent shortly after polls closed Tuesday night.

Schiff, 64, was first elected to represent Los Angeles in 2000 when he defeated a Republican incumbent. He also vastly outraised his Republican opponent in this year’s election, a political newcomer with little experience raising campaign dollars. The 75-year-old Garvey never really got any momentum against Schiff, whose national profile rose during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Schiff actually won two elections Tuesday — one to fill out the remaining months of the late Senator Dianne Feinstein’s term, the other for a full six-year term beginning in January 2025. The outcome means that after having two women representing California in the U.S. Senate for decades, the state will have two male senators for the first time since 1992, with Schiff joining fellow Democrat Alex Padilla in the upper chamber of Congress.

Some California Propositions Decided On Election Night

California voters are deciding the outcome of 10 state propositions, including measures that deal with criminal justice, rent control, the minimum wage and investments in schools and climate resilience.

With more than 9 million votes counted Wednesday morning — marking roughly 48% of total ballots cast — three measures had earned enough support to be declared winners by the Associated Press.

One of the winners is a measure toughening criminal penalties for some nonviolent crimes. Proposition 36 will reverse key parts of a decade-old voter initiative that reduced penalties for drug possession and low-level thefts and diverted thousands of people from prison. Proposition 36 came largely in response to concerns over retail theft and the fentanyl crisis, despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to convince Californians the problems could be handled without rolling back Proposition 47, the 2014 law.

A constitutional amendment to protect the right of same-sex couples to marry also succeeded. As of early Wednesday morning, 62% of votes counted were in favor of the measure. Proposition 3 will remove language defining marriage as “between a man and a woman” that was placed in the state constitution after voters passed Proposition 8 in 2008.