BONUS: Biden's Speech At White House, Trump's Victory, Administration Transition
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In her concession speech, vice president cma haras promised a peaceful transition of power, a bedrock of american democracy, that her opponent and president elect Donald trump threatened in twenty and twenty. But Harris also promised this.

while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuelled this campaign.

Trump is on track to win the country's popular vote, the first republica do so in two decades. His party controls the senate and may take the house so he'll assume power come january with fewer political ways to check a leader who I said that he be a dictator, but only for his .

first day in office. Every one of burst from M, P, R. news.

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This morning, president biden made his first public comments since the results following months of division and polarization on the campaign. He spoke about unity.

I know for some people, it's a time for Victory to state the obvious. For others, the time of loss campaigns are contest of competing visions. The country chooses one or the other, and we accept the choice the country may.

I've said many times, you can't love your country only when you win. You can't love your neighbor only when you agree. Now, as a transition begins .

and is continue to splice the demographics, the electorate, this year, black voters and latinos were down as a share of that. Meanwhile, White voters went up compared to twenty twenty. That's the largest single voting group the country, and democrats don't typically win the majority of them.

That included Harris this year, although he was slightly up with that voting base. Meanwhile, trust record margin with latinos or republican, specifically with latino men, was something Harris could not overcome, whether trump turned out new latte ino voters or convince committed voters to effect from democrats is a question mark uga lops helps answer. He's in the director races and ethnicity research at the pew research center.

On the one hand, there are many new first time voters for that s because we have so many new lethal being able to vote for the first time they've come of age. I've enter adult. But IT also looks like there's been a shift among latinos.

And this is something to going on for sometime. It's not new to this election, but we've been seeing truck do Better with that. You voters in twenty twenty compared to sixteen and also now looks like in twenty twenty four compared to twenty.

Here's what Lopez how to say about how some ers may have waited up their decision.

That was really the economy, the rise of inflation, Prices for a food and and other good housing Prices as well, which lactate OS continue to point to. And they point to Donald d trump is being the Better candidate, or at least of h they were split, and more than h. Harris were trump or the Better candidate on economics, on immigration policy, for example, you'll find about whether you know, say, to improve the situation of the border, you we need to have an increase in the importation to people who are in the country illegally. But at the same time, you find that the majority of want a path with citizenship or some sort of support for those who are in the country living here.

are already already. We've talked a little about women voters on this podcast, and here is hopes they turn out in record number for her. A majority women did vote for Harris, but not more women than those that typically vote democrat. Fact, he got a smaller proportion of women than president did in we hear from debby walls, who directs the center for women and politics at Rogers university, for more on the gender gap.

We ve seen this gender gap in the difference between the way men and women vote since about nineteen and eighty. But there is a lot of variation among women. Women are not monolithic. And so you want to look at the different sort of slicing through the different demographic groups to really see and understand the women's vote. So fifty seven percent of White college uh educated women voted for Harris um women, White women without a college degree, thirty five percent. And in fact, when you look at all of the different groups of voters, men, women, uh by race and ethnicity and college and education level, the one group that actually improved for, uh, common Harris, uh, is those White college educated women. Joe biden got fifty four percent of that vote, uh, Hillary clinton got fifty one percent kala Harris got fifty seven percent SHE.

fifty seven percent of college educated women. But that jumped way up when you look at black women, eighty nine percent voted for Harris. And up when you looked at leta, they voted at sixty percent for Harris on why he thinks women voted the way they did.

I think what happened that we are seeing across the board has to do in large part with economics class and a sense that the economy was primary even though the abortion issue was there and IT really resonated for a lot of women um and was clearly a motivator in the midterm elections. IT appears that in this election cycle, this rejection of where things were with the economy, women who are feeling as men were that the economy wasn't working for them, uh, and that they were looking for change.

Harris also lead on centers and self described moderate republicans appealing to conservative voters who couldn't deal with trump retorted, but that didn't seem to materialize. And mccarthy says IT was a rejection of traditional politics and legacy institutions. Rd large, he's the editor of modern age, a conservative review, and he talked about something he calls creative destruction and how that appeal to voters.

While an economics, creative destruction is what happens when an entrepreneur, a new firm, enters the market and discovers that the existing market relationships, the old firms that had been providing goods and services to people, we're not providing goods and services that were a high of quality or that we're insufficient demand for those businesses to stay in, in business. So basically, it's said when a new competitor shows that the old competitors were inefficient and were unsatisfactory to the consumer base. And in politics, I say basically that, uh, donal trump has been a kind of new disruptive product or force that shows that a lot of our other institutions and political leaders have lost the trust of the public.

Now trump has made some major promises on the campaign trail, from mass deportations of millions of people, to ending the war in ukraine, to urging civil servants and replacing them with partisan loyalists. Mp s. White house correspondent us mahal d reports on steps of the bite, and White house has been taking to future proof a few of its key policies.

One big thing is that biden has said he would make sure all remaining funds for ukraine allocated by the end of his term, leaving no money for the next president's discretion. And then also this summer, nature took on a larger role in coordinating military support in training for ukraine. This is something that previously had largely been spearheaded by the united states.

And then I think one really interesting thing is that just last month, the g seven announced a new plan to provide additional support for ukraine via fifty billion dollar loan. The united states is going to provide a good chunk of that. And the goal is to get that money out the doors, much of IT as possible. Ahead of a knock augury day, biden's administration .

was also thinking about that promise to get rid of civil servants, you know, the non political government workers who make the government work.

I mean, during the final weeks of trump hs first term in twenty and twenty, he issued an executive order creating a new class of federal workers known as schedule f. These people would be exempt from the country's traditional merit based civil service program, and democrats saw this as a deliberate attempt to hire and fire people, not based on their expertise, but on their political loyalty.

So when biden came in, one of the first things he did was resigned that exactly order. This past spring, they issued a rule to make IT very difficult to overhaul the federal workforce for ideological reasons. And this is key because once a rule is on the books, a president cannot just come in and change the existing rule via executive order.

So a new trump administration would have to propose a new rule. And that is a tedious regulatory process that could take months, maybe even years, get held up in courts. You know, IT is so possible for the trump administration to repeal the rule, but IT is more difficult.

A homer, legally, of the by an administration, is the big climb ill? The inflation reduction act that was passed in twenty two republicans .

have already talked about responding elements of the law, specifically the tax credits for people who want to electric vehicles could go up or the incentives to build electric charging infrastructure. I M, there's not a whole lot that the band White house could do to protect this, but they've been trying to tot the bills popularity and inspiring manufacturing projects in republican congressional and districts, hoping that that will somehow protect the bill from being repealed. But what of is what IT happens?

Names already being floated for key positions in the next administration. One independent candidate, Robert f. Canada junior, is someone trump's, he'll let, quote, go wild on health.

Kennedy is aiming for a big role in public health, although he has no public health or medical degrees and he has traffic in misleading or outright false conspiracy. There is including that wifi causes cancer and saying that chemicals in the water turned children, trends, gender, alcohol. Stephen skip spoke to canada yesterday, and he briefed on that conversation with M.

P. R. Science desk corresponded pahang today. Is this something .

that the administration is definitely going to do recommend against that?

The straw. okay. So canada gave his reasons. He claimed that .

florida affects neurological development and lowers IQ and children, in addition to being good for your teeth, which is wise in the drinking water. What does the science say about this?

yeah. So Steve, as you mentioned, floride has been added to public water systems for a long time since the nineteen forties. And the main reason is that that prevents cavities.

Now for all of this decades, it's it's had its detractors too. It's long been known to sustain teeth in the an image. And amy at high levels.

And more recently, some studies have lives high levels affordable with lower IQ that's at levels of florida are twice what's recommended for drinking water. And it's not clear that there's any risk to lower floride levels, which have clearly been useful in preventing cavity. So there is a scientific discussion around I Q and high levels of floria that's happening. But Kennedy also said that florida in drinking water causes arthritis, cancer, other diseases. And those claims are just not part of the of debate rate now.

Now there's another topic that we discuss in yesterday's interview, r fk. And I talked about vaccines. How quickly will you act on federal support for vaccines or research on vaccines?

I will work in immediately on that of hope. You one of my priority is the action that americans, of course, we're not not going to take magazines away from anybody. Um we are gna make sure that s have a good information right now, this science, so that the safety, particularly as huge deficits and they were going to make sure that I was a scientific that is there done and that people can make in foreign choices about their vaccinations and their children's actinia.

okay. So he just wants to. Information out there, which sounds fine, but is viewpoint on this is the information shows that vaccines generally are unsafe. What do we make of that?

Yeah exactly. Um as you're saying, what he's doing here is on the one hand, saying that they need to we just want more information on the other hand, he's chAllenging the safety of vaccines, which has long been established relative to the risks that they protect against. You know Kennedy is a known vaccine skeptic.

He's called cov of vaccines a crime against humanity pushed claims that vaccines cause autism over and over. That is not true. IT is disproven.

Of course, president electron will also be the commander in chief of the army and the navy republican represented Michael walls of florida on house committees on military and intelligence matters. We heard from him about what changes he thinks could be on the horizon for the defense establishment under a new .

trumpet administration. We still have a pentagon that cannot audit itself despite years and years of of trying to the basics of understanding where every tax dollar goes. They just over and over again, cost twice as much, deliver half as much and take choices on uh as originally plan. And there is a whole su of new technologies from silicon valley elsewhere ah that are really chomping at the bit to help with our defensive security issues.

The reelection of former president downtown is also a historic first, the first time a convicted felon will be president of the united states, which raises questions about the future of the outstanding lawsuits in criminal cases against him. Mp s national justice corresponding Carry Johnson has been reporting on the two federal cases brought by special council just smith.

There's a long standing view inside the justice department. Both were republican, and democratic administrations have followed this view. IT says a sitting president cannot be edited or face criminal trial.

The reasoning there is that would be too much of a burden that that would be unconstitional tional and would undermine the work of the executive branch. A trust attorney general bill bar and house majority leader's Steve skills are calling on this justice department to drop the dc case against trump. The writing is on the wall, bill bar says. And people have considered these allegations against trump about election interference, but the voters rejected them resoundingly.

Okay, so IT looks like the justice department will be winding those cases down before the another outstanding question is still whether or not trump will face sentencing over his criminal case in new york. One more thing though, before we go, the twenty twenty four presidential election maybe over, but maybe you're taking a break from election stuff for a while or maybe you can stop scrolling either way.

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P, R. We're here to unpack what is going on everyday. Give you facts, give you context, data and also fact. Those in power. And that's IT for this bonus episode of up first for thursday, november 7.

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This week on our podcast here and now anytime have you had a frustrating conversation about politics with someone you disagree with lately. Most americans have, according to a pew survey from before the election. So i'm going to guess that number has only gone up. We're kicking off a series on finding common ground called conversations across the divide. Listen now on here and now anytime, whatever you get your post.