Kamala Harris concedes defeat to Donald Trump as US House remains up for grabs

The 2024 presidential election is over, but the path to Inauguration Day on 20 January is just beginning.

The votes have to be certified in the states, the Electoral College has to meet and then Congress counts the vote.

President-elect Donald Trump has won enough electoral votes to claim the presidency, even though not every state has finished counting its ballots.

The slowest states generally are those that rely primarily on mailed ballots, such as Arizona and California.

In addition to Trump's decisive win over Vice President Kamala Harris, Republicans also took back the US Senate, building a solid majority in that chamber that confirms federal judicial nominations.

Here's what to know about the election and what happens between now and the presidential inauguration.

Donald Trump supporters who were charged with storming the US Capitol are now expecting pardons from the incoming American president, who has lauded them as "patriots" and "political prisoners".

More than 1,500 people have been charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 assault on Congress which sought to disrupt certification of Democrat Joe Biden's 2020 election victory.

"I am inclined to pardon many of them," Trump, whose first term as president ended under the cloud of the attack, said at a CNN town hall, one of a number of times he made the pledge during his 2024 bid to retake the White House.

"I can't say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control," he said.

Trump has repeatedly played down the violence of January 6, even going so far as to describe it recently as a "day of love."

More than 140 police officers were injured in hours of clashes with rioters wielding flagpoles, baseball bats, hockey sticks and other makeshift weapons along with Tasers and canisters of bear spray.

The assault on the Capitol followed a fiery speech by then-president Trump to tens of thousands of his supporters near the White House in which he repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 race.

Several Capitol riot defendants have already seized upon Trump's election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris to ask that their trials or sentencing be put on hold.

Christopher Carnell, a 21-year-old from North Carolina, asked that a status hearing in his disorderly conduct case be delayed in light of Trump's "multiple clemency promises."

Carnell, his lawyer said, "is expecting to be relieved of the criminal prosecution that he is currently facing when the new administration takes office."

Judge Beryl Howell denied the request.

Another defendant, Jaimee Avery, asked that her sentencing on Friday for trespassing convictions be rescheduled to a date after January 20, 2025 -- the day Trump will be sworn in as the 47th US president.

"President-elect Trump, who played an integral role in the events of January 6, 2021, has repeatedly publicly stated that he will pardon January 6 protestors should he win the presidency," her lawyer said in a court filing.

"It would create a gross disparity for Ms Avery to spend even a day in jail when the man who played a pivotal role in organizing and instigating the events of January 6 will now never face consequences for it."

Judge Christopher Cooper denied Avery's request to delay her sentencing.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directed the military to carry out a smooth transition to President-elect Donald Trump, with a reminder to the force of its obligation to follow the lawful orders of the next commander-in-chief.

While such memos are rare, it was not the first time the military's top civilian leader has pressed the force on its duty to the Constitution regarding a changeover of control under Trump.

However, in the context of the incoming president’s suggestion that he may use federal forces at the border, and Project 2025 plans to force out career civilians and fill positions with Trump loyalists, the Biden administration has taken unusual steps both to try to insulate those civil servants and to remind the military of its own sworn oaths.

“As it always has, the U.S. military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next Commander in Chief, and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command,” Austin wrote in his letter to Defense Department personnel.

“The U.S. military will also continue to stand apart from the political arena; to stand guard over our republic with principle and professionalism; and to stand together with the valued allies and partners who deepen our security.

"America’ s Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Guardians swear an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States’ — and that is precisely what you will continue to do,” Austin wrote.

Donald Trump's Republicans are projected to pick up another US Senate seat and appear to be retaining their hold on the House of Representatives, putting them on track to control both chambers of Congress next year.

Several media outlets projected that Republican Dave McCormick would defeat Democratic Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, giving Trump's party at least 53 seats in the 100-seat chamber next year.

That margin could climb as high as 55 seats if Republicans win close races in Arizona and Nevada, which remain uncalled.

In the battle for the House, Republicans were edging closer to victory.

Republicans had secured 209 seats, putting them just nine short of a majority in the 435-seat chamber.

Democrats would have to win 23 of the 31 remaining uncalled races to take a House majority and maintain a toehold on power in Washington.

A final result for Tuesday's election may not be known for some time, as 10 of the outstanding races are in California, which typically takes several days to count ballots.

With control of the Senate, Republicans will be in a position to confirm Trump's personnel and judicial appointments, though they will still be short of the 60 votes needed to quickly advance most legislation.

If they control the House as well, they would be able to help Trump deliver on campaign promises like cutting taxes and dramatically restricting immigration.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is "ready" to hold discussions with Donald Trump, as he congratulated him on his victory in the US presidential election.

"I take this opportunity to congratulate him," Putin said in remarks to the Valdai forum in Sochi.

Asked whether he was open to holding talks with Trump, the Russian leader said: "Ready."

Argentina's libertarian President Javier Milei will meet with US President-elect Donald Trump next week in the United States, a government source said on Thursday.

Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier won a fourth term in Washington, beating Republican Carmen Goers in a district made up of a mix of wealthy Seattle exurbs and central Washington farmland.

The 8th District seat had always been held by the GOP before Schrier, a paediatrician, took office in 2019. She survived a series of somewhat close races since then before facing Goers this year.

Schrier has combined progressive stances, such as protecting abortion rights, with an emphasis on securing highway money or funding for speciality crop research facilities. The Washington Farm Bureau endorsed her this year.

Goers, a commercial banker, said she was running to tamp down inflation, stop further regulation of American businesses, support law enforcement and cut back on crime. She also promised to "go to war with the Department of Education", saying that instead of learning reading, writing and math, children are being "caught in the culture wars of the progressive left".

Africa's main public health body said it is seeking assurances that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's administration will provide the funding and mpox vaccines promised by his predecessor.

In September, U.S. President Joe Biden pledged $500 million and 1 million vaccine doses to an mpox response plan led by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which is battling an mpox outbreak on the continent.

While mpox cases continue to spread on the African continent, donors have been slow to translate their promises into money and vaccines needed to accelerate the response, according to Africa CDC.

Asked if Trump's recent electoral victory could impact U.S. support for African healthcare, Africa CDC Director John Kaseya said he would push the new administration to honour existing promises.

"As we start to discuss with some of the officials ... we'll continue to talk to them and to engage them to fulfil their commitment," Kaseya told reporters.

"If they don't do that, the mistrust that we have today in Africa will lead to a major issue between the U.S. and the continent."

Trump recently said he would let anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. make decisions on U.S. healthcare policy.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had an "excellent" phone call with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, she said in a post on the social media platform X.

They discussed defence and Ukraine, trade and energy. "Looking forward to strengthening EU-US ties and working jointly to address geopolitical challenges," she said. 

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she had a "very cordial" phone call Thursday with US election winner Donald Trump, who has threatened to slap steep tariffs on the neighboring country.

"We talked about the good relationship that there will be between Mexico and the United States," Sheinbaum said on social media.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, acknowledged that the Kremlin took note of Trump’s comments on resolving the war in Ukraine but remarked that the incoming U.S. president “exaggerated” how quickly he could accomplish it, as reported by Al Jazeera.

“If the new administration is going to look for peace, not for the continuation of the war, it will be better in comparison with the previous one,” Peskov stated.

Democratic candidate Kamala Harris had previously cautioned that “Putin would eat Trump for lunch,” attempting to highlight concerns about her rival’s diplomatic abilities.

When asked about her remark, Peskov responded with a lighthearted quip: “Putin does not eat people."

Biden continues his address urging Americans to lower the political temperature after Donald Trump's sweeping election win, saying he would ensure a "peaceful and orderly" transition to the Republican.

"Something I hope we can do, no matter who you voted for, is see each other, not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature," Biden said in an address to the nation from the White House.

Biden has begun his first national address since Trump won the election by promising to ensure a peaceful transition of power and commending his Vice President Kamala Harris for leading an “inspiring campaign."

“I assured him [Trump] I would work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition. That’s what the American people deserve,” Biden stated from the White House Rose Garden.

He described Harris as a steadfast “partner” and “public servant.” Reflecting on her campaign, Biden added, “Everyone got to see something that I saw early on: character.”

“She and her entire team should be proud of the campaign they ran,” he concluded.

The leader of Yemen's Houthi rebels criticised Donald Trump for supporting Israel on Thursday, saying the US president-elect would fail to end the Middle East conflict in his second term.

Abdul Malik al-Houthi, whose group is aligned with Iran, said that a series of normalisation deals between Arab countries and Israel brokered by Trump's administration during his first term did not help bring the conflict closer to an end.

"Trump failed in the project of... 'the deal of the century' despite all his arrogance, haughtiness, recklessness and tyranny, and he will fail this time as well," Houthi said in his weekly speech.

US President-elect Donald Trump is likely to return to the issue of tariffs in negotiations with China, as well as consider tax cuts and new sanctions, his former Treasury Secretary said in an interview Thursday.

"I think that tariffs do need to be used to get counterparties back to the table, especially China, which is not living up to all of the agreements they made in the Phase One trade agreement," Steven Mnuchin told CNBC.

He was referring to a 2020 trade deal that followed a truce in a tariff war between Washington and Beijing.

The agreement saw China pledge to boost purchases of American products and services by at least $200 billion over 2020 and 2021. But the target was not met amid the pandemic.

Mnuchin added Thursday that he would recommend Trump use tariffs in a "strategic way" to ensure there is not widespread inflation.

Donald Trump's election victory spells immediate doubt for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, with President Joe Biden's administration expected to sprint in its final days to ensure -- insofar as possible -- long-term US support.

Trump, who won an overwhelming victory in Tuesday's election, has in the past voiced admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and scoffed at the $175 billion in US assistance committed for Ukraine since Moscow's 2022 invasion.

The 78-year-old tycoon has repeatedly boasted that he can end the war in 24 hours, without explaining how.

His aides have mused about conditioning aid to Kyiv to force concessions, with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance once bluntly saying he did not care what happened to Ukraine, seeing the country as strategically insignificant compared with the global US rivalry with China.

With 10 weeks to go until Trump takes over, the Biden administration is looking to push out the more than $9 billion of remaining funding appropriated by Congress for weapons and other security assistance to Ukraine, officials said.

The Biden team is also looking for structural ways to put European allies in greater charge of assistance to Ukraine before Trump returns, diplomats said.

In a pre-emptive "Trump-proofing" measure, NATO -- the transatlantic alliance that has been criticized by the president-elect -- has already agreed to take over from the United States in coordinating aid to Ukraine.

As Democrats pick up the pieces after President-elect Donald Trump's decisive victory, some of the vice president Kamala Harris's backers are expressing frustration that Joe Biden's decision to seek reelection until this summer — despite long-standing voter concerns about his age and unease about post-pandemic inflation as well as the U.S.-Mexico border — all but sealed his party's surrender of the White House.

“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Harris’ unsuccessful run. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”

Biden will leave office after leading the United States out of the worst pandemic in a century, galvanizing international support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion and passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will affect communities for years to come.

But having run four years ago against Trump to “restore the soul of the country,” Biden will make way after just one term for his immediate predecessor, who overcame two impeachments, a felony conviction and an insurrection launched by his supporters. Trump has pledged to radically reshape the federal government and roll back many of Biden's priorities.

“Maybe in 20 or 30 years, history will remember Biden for some of these achievements,” said Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University. “But in the shorter term, I don’t know he escapes the legacy of being the president who beat Donald Trump only to usher in another Donald Trump administration four years later.”

Donald Trump's electoral victory in the United States has injected new energy into Brazil's hard right and stirred hopes that former President Jair Bolsonaro can mirror his return to power despite legal obstacles to running for office in 2026.

Although analysts say it is a long-shot, Bolsonaro's backers are pushing to get him amnesty after an electoral court ruled him ineligible for public office until 2030 due to his baseless attacks on Brazil's voting system in the last presidential race.

Bolsonaro, an anti-establishment firebrand who was dubbed the "Trump of the Tropics" when he was elected in 2018, thanked God for the Republican's victory on Tuesday, which he touted as improving his chances of returning to the presidency.

"Trump's victory will inspire conservatives worldwide and reinforce the movement in Brazil to re-elect Jair Bolsonaro as president in the 2026 elections," said Valdemar Costa Neto, head of Bolsonaro's right-wing Liberal Party (PL).

Party officials hailed Trump's victory as part of a global trend including the election of right-wing libertarian Javier Milei as president of Argentina last year and Brazil's recent municipal elections confirming a more conservative electorate.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that ties between the US and Europe must not be lost after Donald Trump's election victory.

"We do hope that America will become stronger. This is the kind of America that Europe needs. And a strong Europe is what America needs. This is the connection between allies that must be valued and cannot be lost," Zelensky said in Budapest at a meeting of European leaders.

Hezbollah welcomes any effort to stop the war in Lebanon but does not pin its hopes for a ceasefire on a particular U.S. administration, Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi said on Thursday when asked about Donald Trump's election victory.

"It might be a change in the party who is in power, but when it comes to Israel, they have more or less the same policy," Moussawi told Reuters. "We want to see actions, we want to see decisions taken," he said.

Iranians, like many around the world, are divided on what Donald Trump's next presidency will bring: Some foresee an all-out war between Tehran and Washington, particularly as other conflicts rage in the region. Others hold out hope that America's 47th president might engage in unexpected diplomacy as he did with North Korea.

But nearly all believe something will change in the U.S.-Iran relationship.

“Trump will use tougher levers against Iran," warned Ahmad Zeidabadi, a political analyst. “Iranian officials will keep rejecting him and that could make him escalate his pressure.”

And while Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state, has repeatedly expressed his own disgust with Trump, Iran’s new reformist president has kept the door open to talks with Trump to seek relief from international sanctions to buoy a cratering economy . The Iranian rial, in a free fall for years, hit its lowest value against the dollar on Wednesday before slightly recovering.

Thousands of migrants traveling together in a caravan in Mexico are grappling with their next steps after former U.S. President Donald Trump, who ran on an anti-immigration platform, was propelled to victory for a second term.

After hearing Trump had won, many migrants in the caravan of about 3,000 people which started in the southern city of Tapachula on Tuesday, felt less hopeful about their chance at a new life in the United States.

"I had hoped (Kamala Harris) would win, but that didn't happen," said Valerie Andrade, a Venezuelan migrant traveling with the caravan from Chiapas to Oaxaca in southern Mexico.

Andrade, along with her husband, and like over 7 million other Venezuelans, left their crisis-ridden country seeking better prospects.

Trump, 78, clinched Tuesday's election after a campaign that promised large-scale deportations and a return to fast-tracked deportations to Mexico.

His proposed immigration policies also include ending birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday sent a telegram to Donald Trump congratulating him on being elected to be the next U.S. president, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Lebanon's Speaker of the House Nabih Berri commented on the reasons why US President Donald Trump received a substantial portion of the Lebanese and Arab vote in Michigan, saying, "It's because of Joe Biden's policy, as he stood by watching the killing of children in Gaza and Lebanon."

In response to another question about the "promises" made by the Republican president, he added, "He signed a written pledge to ceasefire in Lebanon immediately upon his victory, at Hassan Abbas’s restaurant," referring to a Lebanese eatery visited by Trump during the campaign.

Pro-Israel Republican Abraham Hamadeh, the son of a Syrian immigrant will win his US House race for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, a safe Republican district, against Democratic nominee Gregory Whitten, CNN projects.

Hamadeh has strongly aligned himself with Donald Trump, pledging to support the former president’s border wall and make border security a priority. He has also echoed Trump’s unproven claims regarding the 2020 election.

A former Army intelligence officer, Hamadeh previously served in the Maricopa County prosecutor’s office. According to his campaign website, he is the son of immigrants, with his family having fled to the United States from Syria and Venezuela.

US elections are an opportunity to review the "wrong approaches" of the American government, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Thursday according to state media, after Donald Trump won the presidency on Wednesday.

Former President Donald Trump's return to the White House could mean tougher enforcement of U.S. oil sanctions against Iran, which he initiated in 2018 after exiting a nuclear pact between Tehran and global powers.

"We had bitter experiences with various U.S. governments' past policies and approaches. Elections are an opportunity to review the wrong approaches of the past," Baghaei said.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in September that Tehran is ready to end its nuclear standoff with the West, which accuses it of seeking capacity to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Outgoing president Joe Biden attempted to revive the nuclear deal with Iran in negotiations but failed to reach a new agreement. Trump has not made clear whether he might reopen the issue.

"What is important for Iran will be how we evaluate the actions of the U.S. government,"