Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has won reelection to Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District, the Associated Press reports. Her victory gives the Democrats 201 House seats to Republicans’ 212 as the final votes are tallied to determine which party will control the House with 218 votes.

Gluesenkamp Perez was first elected to the Senate two years ago when she won a close race for a seat that hadn’t been held by a Democrat in more than a decade.

Now that he has been re-elected, Donald Trump has a number of cabinet positions to fill – but his administration won’t include either former UN ambasssador Nikki Haley or former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, Trump said on Truth Social.

As Real Clear Politics reports, it’s looking increasingly likely Trump may nominate Richard Grenell as his secretary of state. The former US ambassador to Germany and previous acting director of national intelligence is seen as a Trump loyalist, although Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty and Florida senator Marco Rubio are also reportedly under consideration.

If you’re curious what Donald Trump’s decisive victory says about the current fault lines in American politics, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe has reported on Trump’s victory among Latino and Hispanic voters.

Here’s more:

The raucous early morning celebration in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood was of a magnitude not seen since the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died eight years previously. In the immigrant-saturated suburb of Westchester, too, Latinos partied beyond daybreak as Donald Trump’s return to the White House was confirmed.

Wednesday morning’s revelry in south Florida reflected a stunning victory for Trump in the previously solid blue, Hispanic-majority county of Miami-Dade that had not been won by a Republican presidential candidate in more than 30 years.

His victory was fueled largely by the support from Latino and Hispanic voters, particularly Latino men, that was repeated in county after county in swing states elsewhere as the Democratic party’s blue wall crumbled and the former president was elected to also be the next.

In Pennsylvania, hordes of Puerto Ricans who saw their homeland demeaned as a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally barely a week before, flocked to give him their vote.

As it appears increasingly likely that Republicans will control the presidency, the Senate and the House, Democratic governors across the United States are drawing up plans to “Trump-proof” their states.

California governor Gavin Newsom has drawn perhaps the most attention after tweeting a reaction to Donald Trump’s election-night victory. Newsom has already called for the state legislature to hold a special session before Trump’s inauguration.

But Newsom is not the only Democratic governor preparing for Trump’s second administration. Illinois governor JB Pritzker has spent the days since the election combing through Project 2025, and tells the Chicago Sun Times: “You come for my people, you come through me.”

Meanwhile, Massachusetts governor Maura Healey told MSNBC that her state’s law enforcement will not assist in mass deportations if Trump orders them.

More protesters are gathering in cities across the US to denounce Donald Trump’s re-election. Although widespread, the protests are decidedly smaller than many that occured following the president-elect’s first victory in 2016.

Here’s a sense of where demonstrations are taking place:

Seattle

Portland

Denver

Thousands of people gathered outside Trump Tower in New York today to protest against Donald Trump’s re-election as president, while more gathered in Washington DC in response to fears that the new administration could further threaten abortion rights after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022.

Here’s footage of the events:

The Women’s March holds DC protest of Project 2025 architect

Although all the votes are not yet counted in the tally for which party will control the House of Representatives, it’s looking likely that Republicans will have a majority in the chamber. What’s less clear is who will lead the party. Although current speaker Mike Johnson is seeking another term, Politico reports that some conservatives are looking for ways to signal their opposition to the current leader in a secret ballot next week.

In lighter news, New Jersey senator-elect Andy Kim spent election night awaiting the results of his race in the hotel that his family lived in for several weeks after they moved to the state. Kim’s win on Tuesday night will make him the first Korean American to serve in Congress.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency employee has been fired after she instructed her team to avoid dispatching aid to houses with Donald Trump signs following Hurricane Milton.

The Guardian’s Joanna Walters reports:

A employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has been fired from her job and is being investigated because she told a disaster relief team she was directing in Florida after Hurricane Milton to avoid homes displaying election campaign signs supporting Donald Trump, conduct that the agency head on Saturday called “reprehensible”.

Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the federal agency, posted on X: “More than 22,000 Fema employees every day adhere to Fema’s core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors.”

She continued: “Recently, a Fema employee departed from these values to advise her survivor assistance team not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump. This is a clear violation of Fema’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”

For the full story, click here:

Here are some images coming through the newswires of Saturday’s protests across New York City led by various advocacy organizations in response to Donald Trump’s re-election:

Trump campaign announces leaders of inauguration committee

With Donald Trump’s re-election, the supreme court is once again in play. During Trump’s first administration, the president-elect appointed three justices, which ultimately created the conservative majority that overturned Roe v Wade.

As he returns to office, Trump could appoint new justices – especially if the aging conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito retire. Senate Democrats are also currently debating whether to rush to replace liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is 70, although they may struggle to confirm a replacement before Joe Biden leaves the White House.

The US presidential election is already having international reverberations – from the war in Ukraine to global trade. One issue on many voters’ minds: the war in Gaza.

Here’s Jason Burke with more about how the US elections could keep Benjamin Netanyahu in power until 2026:

Benjamin Netanyahu is set to stay in power in Israel until elections due in 2026 and possibly longer, analysts and officials now believe, after a tumultuous week in which the 75-year-old veteran politician successfully fired his defence minister and was boosted by the results of the US election.

Netanyahu’s newly reinforced position could lead to further intensification of Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, and prolong the conflict in Gaza, critics fear – although the incoming US president Donald Trump has said he wants to swiftly end both wars.

Many observers have been surprised by the political resilience of Netanyahu, who is blamed by most Israelis for the failures that allowed Hamas to launch its bloody attacks into Israel last October, killing around 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages.

More than two months after the deadline to sign presidential transition paperwork passed, federal transition officials tell Politico that they expect Donald Trump’s incoming administration will sign the agreement with the General Services Administration. The GSA coordinates the transition between incoming and outgoing presidential administrations, including by providing security clearances, briefings, access to federal facilities, documents and personnel. The agreements coordinating the transition, which were due 1 September, mandate that the incoming president agree to an ethics plan and limit and disclose private donations.

As Politico reports, “rejecting help from GSA could have helped shield the federal government’s access to [the Trump team’s] materials. It also would have allowed them to accept unlimited sums of money for the transition without disclosing the identities of its donors.”