Election Highlights: Trump Chooses Lead Campaign Adviser for White House Chief of Staff
President-elect Donald J. Trump named Susie Wiles as his chief of staff, turning to his top political aide to fill the critical post when he returns to office. President Biden, in his first remarks since Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss, encouraged supporters to “keep the faith.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday named Susie Wiles, the Florida strategist who has run his political operation for nearly four years, as White House chief of staff for his incoming administration. She will be the first woman to hold the title.
In choosing Ms. Wiles, Mr. Trump turned to an aide he knows well and who has worked closely with him, understands how he operates, is close with his family and to whom most of his current team is loyal. In addition, she has helped deal with the lawyers on his various criminal and civil cases.
The appointment came in the late afternoon, hours after President Biden urged Americans to accept the election of Mr. Trump and vowed an orderly transfer of power that would honor the Constitution and respect the choice that voters made.
Republicans have inched closer to control of the House of Representatives, with three victories in Pennsylvania districts. If Republicans win enough seats to capture the majority in the House, they would control of both chambers in Congress, presenting Mr. Trump with an easier path to carrying out sweeping new proposals.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrat in the House, told rank-and-file members on an internal call that there were enough uncalled races that Democrats could still be in charge next year, so the party was not conceding, according to people familiar with his remarks.
The extent of Mr. Trump’s Senate majority has not yet been settled — swing-state races remain uncalled in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona — but it is clear that his sway with Republicans all but ensures the chamber will help him build the government he wants.
Mr. Biden’s remarks about a smooth transition starkly contrasted with the actions of Mr. Trump four years ago, when he refused to concede defeat, made false claims about voter fraud, and encouraged his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while the electoral votes were being certified.
“The American experiment endures,” Mr. Biden said during brief remarks in the White House Rose Garden. “We’re going to be OK, but we need to stay engaged. We need to keep going, and above all, we need to keep the faith.”
Mr. Biden, who had repeatedly called Mr. Trump an existential threat to democracy, acknowledged the pain of his supporters, saying that “setbacks are unavoidable.” But even as his own political career comes to an end, Mr. Biden said they should not stop fighting for the causes they believe in.
“Giving up is unforgivable,” the president said.
Here’s what else to know:
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Trump’s agenda: The set of policies Mr. Trump laid out during his campaign is more far-reaching than what he enacted in his first administration. If he follows through on his campaign trail talk, he would make the government more partisan, further cut taxes while imposing punishing tariffs on foreign goods, expand energy production, pull back from overseas alliances, reverse longstanding health rules, prosecute his adversaries and round up people living in the country illegally.
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Praise from Putin: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia lavished praise on Mr. Trump during a conference in Sochi, Russia, and added that Mr. Trump’s stated desires to improve ties with Russia and end the war in Ukraine “deserve attention.” A close ally of Mr. Putin had signaled that the Kremlin saw an opening for a tighter bond with Mr. Trump.
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House control edges toward G.O.P.: Republican victories in Pennsylvania, including flips scored by Rob Bresnahan Jr., the chief executive of an electrical contracting company, and Ryan Mackenzie, a state legislator, put the party closer to holding both chambers of Congress. Republicans are eight seats away from securing a majority, while Democrats need to win 21 out of the 28 races in play to take control. Follow our live tracker.
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The full Pennsylvania count: Nearly all in-person and mail-in votes appear to have been reported in Pennsylvania, but counties have several more days to report on provisional ballots, which are counted if — and only after — the registrations of the voters who submitted them have been confirmed. The New York Times is waiting for more information on provisional ballot numbers before calling the Senate race, even though other news outlets have called it for David McCormick, the Republican candidate.
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Trump health policy: Mr. Trump has never revealed his “concepts of a plan” for the Affordable Care Act, but his party’s performance on Election Day could allow him to transform the 2010 law and remake the nation’s health care system. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Mr. Trump has suggested would have a “big role” in his second administration, has also laid out potential public health measures he would oversee if given the chance.
Chris Cameron contributed reporting.
A wave of racist text messages summoning Black people to report for slavery showed up on phones across the United States, prompting the scrutiny of the F.B.I. The N.A.A.C.P. said that messages were received in nine states, and attorneys general in two other states reported the same on Thursday, two days after the presidential election.
The F.B.I. said in a statement that it was “aware of the offensive and racist text messages” and that it was coordinating with the Justice Department and other federal authorities.
The texts, which began as early as Wednesday morning, were reported across the South, and from New York to California. The office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the messages had arrived in phones of middle school, high school and college students in New York City and its suburbs. In a statement, Ms. James called the messages “disgusting and unacceptable.”
Some examples of the messages were shared by recipients and reviewed by The New York Times. They followed a pattern: addressing recipients by name, telling them they had been selected to “pick cotton” on a plantation and ordering them to show up at a specific time to be picked up by slave handlers. Some included a reference to the president-elect, Donald J. Trump.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Steven Cheung, said in an email that the “campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages.”
Mr. Trump stoked racism throughout his campaign in speeches that included false accusations against immigrants and inflated crime figures. He demeaned the intelligence of his opponent, a Black woman; repeatedly amplified a lie that Haitian immigrants were eating neighbors’ pets in Ohio and held a rally near the end of his campaign at Madison Square Garden that was rife with bigotry and misogyny.
The messages hark back to the most painful past for Black Americans. “Our executive slave owners will come get you in a brown van, be prepared to be searched down once you’ve entered the plantation,” one version said.
Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., said in a statement that the messages reflected how racist groups had been emboldened after Mr. Trump’s victory, and represented a sharp increase in “vile and abhorrent rhetoric.”
“These actions are not normal,” he said. “And we refuse to let them be normalized.”
The N.A.A.C.P. said people had received versions of the message in Alabama, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. They seemed to circulate heavily on college campuses, but were not limited to colleges, said Alicia Mercedes, a spokeswoman for the N.A.A.C.P. The University of Southern California said in a statement that students on its campus had received hateful messages, and the Ohio attorney general’s office also said it was investigating reports there.
Among other schools targeted were Fisk University, in Nashville, and Howard University in Washington, D.C., two historically Black universities. Howard is the alma mater of Vice President Kamala Harris and hosted her campaign’s watch party on Tuesday night and her concession speech on Wednesday.
E.J. Hunter of Chicago said that her daughter, a freshman at Howard, was at home when she received the message on Wednesday afternoon, as she prepared to watch Ms. Harris’s concession speech. Ms. Hunter immediately wondered how the sender got her daughter’s full name.
“Seeing this triggered every ounce of mama bear in me, to want to protect my child,” she said. “I know Kamala said we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work, but I didn’t think it was going to be, literally, on Day 1.”
At Spain Park High School in Hoover, Ala., at least two students received the messages, said Monique Norwood, a parent whose 14-year-old daughter got the text on Wednesday.
“When she read it to me, my mouth dropped,” Ms. Norwood, a retailer, said, adding that the texts terrified her daughter. Ms. Norwood offered a message to the president-elect.
“You were saying, ‘Let’s Make America Great,’ yet we have these things going on where children are being targeted,” Ms. Norwood said. “There’s no reason a 14-year-old should receive a message like that. Nobody should receive a message like that.”
Around 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning, less than two hours after the presidential race was called, Monèt Miller, a publicist in Atlanta, was still waking up when she saw the message on her phone, complete with her first name and the initial of her last name.
Ms. Miller, 29, said she wondered if the message had originated from someone she knew. The message felt, she said, like “something to make me feel cautious as a Black woman in America.”
Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.
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