Here Are the States That Voted for Labor Rights—and, Bizarrely, Trump

Despite victories for Donald Trump across the country, several states that went red also chose to raise the minimum wage and ensure paid sick leave for their workers.

In Missouri, where Trump captured 58 percent of the voters, the same number of Missourians voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $13.75 per hour starting in 2025 and to $15 per hour starting in 2026.

Alaskans also appear to have voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2027 while securing paid sick leave for workers. Fifty-six percent of Alaskans supported the measure as of Wednesday morning, with 76 percent of voters reported. Meanwhile, Trump won the state and Democratic Representative Mary Peltola lost her House seat.

Similarly, in Arizona, where the presidential race has still yet to be called, voters shot down a ballot measure to reduce the wages of tipped employees nearly three to one. In Nebraska, where Trump handily beat Kamala Harris, voters approved a measure to ensure paid sick leave by similar numbers, with 74 percent voting in favor of allowing workers to accrue paid sick time hours at both large and small companies. Nebraska’s union man, independent candidate Dan Osborn, however, did not win. The Senate candidate, who led a strike against Kellogg’s in 2021, lost to Republican incumbent Deb Fischer Tuesday night.

Strangely enough, similar ballot measures in Arizona and Massachusetts had opposite results. While Arizonans voted down the proposal to “pay up to 25% per hour less than the minimum wage” for tipped workers in Proposition 138, Massachusetts voters appear to have voted down their Question 5, which would have increased the minimum wage for tipped workers. This decision means that Massachusetts workers will continue to make a subminimum wage for tipped work, rather than be brought up to the state’s minimum wage of $15 an hour by 2029. At the same time, Massachusetts residents may have voted to give ride-share drivers the right to join a union.

Though most of California’s ballot measures are too early to call, the results as of Wednesday morning are disappointing. Californians voted to essentially keep slavery legal by voting down Proposition 6, which would have amended the state constitution to end involuntary labor for people in prisons and jails. Moreover, the state also most likely will strike down a proposal to increase the minimum wage.

Meanwhile, Harris won over union members with 57 percent of their vote, compared to Trump’s 39 percent, according to the Associated Press, after she picked up endorsements from most major unions this fall.

Though the results for workers are a mixed bag, it’s clear that Americans care deeply about the economy and their material conditions and that populist proposals that better people’s working lives can win, even in red states.

Now that he will be returning to the White House, Donald Trump is going to make the federal cases against him disappear.

Trump is now the first convicted felon to become president, and so he has the authority to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland specifically to investigate Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and lead the January 6 insurrection, as well as his mishandling of classified documents. Trump has already threatened to not just fire Smith, but have him deported. Though deporting Smith would be hard, given that he’s a natural-born citizen, it’s still easy for Trump to get rid of all the cases against him.

Trump is certain to appoint an attorney general who will not only dismiss cases against him but protect him from any new cases and target his enemies. Among the possible names being discussed is Judge Aileen Cannon, who already dismissed Trump’s classified documents case on the grounds that the appointment of Smith was invalid. Trump said he would consider appointing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to the role, who not only has his own legal cases against him but also tried to overturn the 2020 election results.

The charges Trump faces in Georgia for overturning the 2020 election results in that state will also go away, and the sentence for his felony conviction in New York over his hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels is delayed at the very least. The protection of the office of the president will also shield Trump from the civil judgments and penalties against him, such as the fraud judgment against him in New York and E. Jean Carroll’s defamation cases against him.

The Justice Department won’t just be headed by a Trump loyalist, but it will also be filled with a right-wing legal army set to bulldoze any obstacle or measure of accountability against the president, whether that means firing civil servants who object to Trump’s outlandish decrees or ensuring that the conservative fever dreams in Project 2025 are implemented.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity already put many of the cases against Trump in jeopardy, but now that he’ll be entering the Oval Office again, the president-elect will consider himself bulletproof. Trump will eagerly be counting the days until he is sworn in January 20, 2025, when he can be a “dictator on day one” with few, if any, consequences.

Donald Trump is already musing about repainting the walls of the federal government post-inauguration—and it appears to involve allowing notorious vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. free rein over the nation’s health policies.

Delivering his first speech after being declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election, Trump promised a cheering crowd that Kennedy’s name would have a place in his second administration.

“​​He’s going to help make America healthy again,” Trump said as the crowd began to chant “Bobby.”

“He’s a great guy, he really means it, he wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him go to it,” he continued. “I just said, but, Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold—oil and gas—we have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia.”

“Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby,” Trump added.

During an interview with NBC News’s Dasha Burns on Monday, Trump refused to promise that he wouldn’t ban vaccines, instead outlining his intentions to talk to Kennedy and “talk to other people” and make a decision. “He’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” Trump said of Kennedy.

During the same interview, Trump signaled that he would be open to removing fluoride from all public water systems—a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association.

Last week, Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick insisted that vaccines are “not proven” and shared that he had a more than two-hour conversation with Kennedy, a notorious vaccine conspiracy theorist who has been promised “control” of several federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, under a second Trump administration.

Lutnick claimed that Kennedy—who has admitted that his brain has been eaten by worms and who had to apologize for tying vaccine conspiracies to what happened in Germany during the Holocaust—has plans to strip even long-standing vaccines from the market.

Vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The jabs are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox, a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Donald Trump’s campaign lackeys, took aim at someone who has turned out to be one of the only people in the country interested in holding the former president accountable.

“To Jack Smith and your team: It is time to look forward to a new chapter in your legal careers as these politically motivated charges against President Trump hit a wall,” Graham wrote in a post on X early Wednesday.

“The Supreme Court substantially rejected what you were trying to do, and after tonight, it’s clear the American people are tired of lawfare. Bring these cases to an end,” the South Carolina Republican wrote. “The American people deserve a refund.”

While Smith’s election interference case is expected to continue in the short term, President-elect Trump has previously vowed to have Smith canned on his first day in office, and even threatened to deport him. That kind of fascistic rhetoric didn’t seem to scare off any voters Tuesday, so now we’ll just wait to see if he was kidding.

Whoever Trump appoints as attorney general, upon entering office, will sink that case as well as Trump’s classified documents case, which Smith has appealed after Judge Aileen Cannon tossed it out in July. Trump might even appoint Cannon as attorney general (she previously appeared on a short list for the spot), giving the Trump-appointed judge the chance to obliterate that case yet again.

In another post on X, Graham toasted ousting the Democrats, who he claimed wanted to “pack the Supreme Court”—something that Trump is very likely to attempt during his next four years in office.

Donald Trump has won the majority of white women voters for the third straight time. 

Even after destroying abortion rights, even after a judge went to painstaking lengths to clarify that Trump raped E. Jean Carroll, and even as the Harris campaign targeted the imaginary “silent majority” of women hiding their political views from their husbands, 52 percent of white American women showed us who they are: Trump supporters.

National exit polls show that Trump easily carried white women’s vote, as white men too were 59 percent for Trump. For comparison, Black men and women went 20 percent and 7 percent for Trump, respectively.

There was so much liberal hand wringing over Harris’s perceived issues with Black male voters. Black men were too sexist, too uneducated, and were seen as a real vulnerability for her chances. “This election has taught me that there is a true intellect deficiency amongst our Heterosexual Black Men. It’s a sad reality,” one viral tweet on X read. A bit earlier, Barack Obama delivered an entire speech blaming Black men for their reluctance to back Harris. 

And yet Harris won three-quarters of Black men, while a much larger, much more powerful group of voters (white women) rejected the party begging for their votes for the third time in a row.

The Harris campaign tried, with good reason, to convince white women that their future was at stake. Trump is all but guaranteed to oversee a further rollback in reproductive rights, and the president-elect has also openly flirted with a federal ban on abortion. 

And yet that was not a winning message for white women. A recent Times/Siena showed that the majority of white women, like their white male counterparts, saw inflation and the economy as their top voting issue. Abortion was second, and immigration was third. To be sure, there is a notable age split here: Gen Z women only went 36 percent for Trump, women aged 30 to 44 went 41 percent for Trump, women aged 45 to 64 went 48 percent for Trump, and women over 65 backed the former president 45 percent.  

At a dinner this month, Trump taunted one of the pro-Harris affinity groups. “There’s a group called ‘White Dudes for Harris,’” he said, “but I’m not worried about them at all, because their wives and their wives’ lovers are all voting for me.”

Democrats banked on white women being more conscious voters than white men, more fatigued by the years of hateful and incendiary rhetoric from Trump. They conjured up an image of white women voting in secret droves for the first woman president. It just cost them another election.

On Tuesday, Arizona voters chose to expand access to abortion and enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. 

Arizonians passed the Arizona Abortion Access Act, or Proposition 139, which establishes the right to an abortion until viability, which is usually considered to be around 24 weeks. The measure also creates exceptions after fetal viability to protect the life, or physical or mental health, of the pregnant person.  

Earlier this year, Arizona politicians undid a near-total abortion ban, repealing a Civil War–era abortion ban.  Prior to voters taking to the polls, the state had a far more restrictive 15-week abortion ban on the books. 

Seven states chose to protect or expand abortion access this election (eight states if you include Florida, where a majority of voters passed a pro-abortion ballot measure but did not meet the required 60 percent threshold).

One bit of damper on this good news: In states like Arizona, where abortion rights have been expanded, state Supreme Courts will ultimately, and frighteningly, have the final say. 

Donald Trump’s victory speech after winning the presidential election early Wednesday morning was darkly triumphant.

The president-elect thanked his supporters, including billionaire and world’s richest man Elon Musk.

“Oh, let me tell you, we have a new star. A star is born. Elon. No, he is. Now he’s an amazing guy. We were sitting together tonight. You know, he spent two weeks in Philadelphia and different parts of Pennsylvania campaigning,” Trump said, before going off on a tangent about Musk’s “beautiful, shiny white” rocket.

Trump has said that he wants to put Musk in charge of government efficiency. Musk has claimed, with no evidence, that $2 trillion in waste could easily be cut from the federal budget, an act that would undoubtedly cause severe consequences for the American people.

“He’s, he’s turned out to be a good choice. I took a little heat at the beginning, but he was I knew I knew the brain was a good one, about as good as it gets,” Trump said.

Trump also credited “fantastic people” like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with helping him win. Kennedy’s role in the administration will be worrying, as Trump plans to give a major public health role to the anti-vaccine activist.

“[Kennedy] came out. And he’s going to help make America healthy again. And now he’s a great guy and he really means it. He wants to do some things, and we’re gonna let him go to it. I just said, ‘But Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold, oil, and gas. We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby,’” Trump said, perhaps in reference to Kennedy’s environmental activist past against fossil fuels.

Trump proudly looked back at his first term as a roadmap to his second.

“This is the most important job in the world. Just as I did in my first term, we had a great first term, a great, great first term. I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept. We’re going to keep our promises. Nothing will stop me from keeping my word to you, the people. We will make America safe, strong, prosperous, powerful, and free again,” Trump said.

Those promises include mass deportations, taking revenge for every slight against him, including for the many legal charges against him; implementing parts of Project 2025 (despite his denials); imposing extreme tariffs likely to cripple the economy; and many other disastrous acts. The next four years will be difficult for many Americans, depending on how many checks on the president’s power there will be this time, if any.

Despite his many scandals, Republican Tim Sheehy has defeated Democrat Jon Tester and flipped Montana’s only blue Democratic Senate seat—delivering an even stronger Senate majority to Mitch McConnell.

Sheehy leads Tester 52.9 to 45.4 percent, according to the Associated Press, which called the race on Wednesday morning, with 85 percent of votes reported.

The news is a major win for Republicans, who now hold a 10-seat majority in the Senate, with six races remaining to be called. Trump won the state in 2016 and 2020 and yet again this year.

Sheehy’s campaign was one disaster after the next. You might remember Sheehy’s disparaging comments about Native Americans and young women, or his mysterious story about a gunshot wound he received in battle.

In August, a local news outlet released recordings in which Sheehy made several racist remarks about the Crow Reservation at private fundraisers last year. In one clip, Sheehy called an event with the Native community “a great way to bond with all the Indians out there, while they’re drunk at 8 a.m.” Sheehy acknowledged the comments were insensitive—but refused to apologize despite Native leaders’ demands. Native voters make up about 6 percent of Montana’s electorate, and played a large part in voter mobilization efforts.

Sheehy then attracted even more ire from his state’s voters when he called women under 25 “single-issue” voters who are “indoctrinated” on the topic of abortion. “That’s all they want to talk about. They are single-issue voters. “It’s all about pro-choice, pro-choice,” Sheehy whined at a meet and greet last year.

And just days before the election, Sheehy admitted there are no medical records to back up his story that he was shot in combat in Afghanistan. A former national park ranger went public stating that in reality, Sheehy shot himself at the Glacier National Park in 2015.

While Sheehy campaigned on being a Navy Seal and successful businessman, he is additionally being sued by his former employees for allegedly scamming them out of millions, while at the same time losing his company $77 million.

But big business came in to save the day for Sheehy. Twelve billionaires gave more than $1 million to help boost the Republican. These included members of the Walton family, organizations linked to Charles Koch, and the founder of the Jimmy John’s sandwich chain. Additionally, the CEO of the private equity group Blackstone Group donated $5 million alone to a group that funneled money into efforts to defeat Tester. Blackstone not so coincidentally owns the Wyoming oil and gas pipeline company Tallgrass Energy, of which Sheehy’s brother is the president.

All of Sheehy’s strange stories, coupled with Montana’s rapidly changing demographics, ultimately weren’t enough to catapult Tester to victory over the Republican and his billionaire friends.

Donald Trump was elected president of the United States early Wednesday morning, making him the first convicted felon who will be sworn into office.

Trump beat Kamala Harris after he won Wisconsin, putting his total number of votes in the Electoral College at 277, surpassing the 270 required to clinch the presidency. Harris earned a total of 224 electoral votes. 

The president-elect has promised to be a dictator “on day one,” close the U.S. borders, and enact the largest mass deportation scheme in U.S. history, which could lead to millions of people across the country—including families and children—being displaced and forced out. 

Trump enthusiastically made racist attacks against undocumented immigrants the centerpiece of his grievance campaign. For months, he painted a false trend of “migrant crime,” touting a fake correlation between undocumented immigration and rates of violent crime. He spread lies about legal immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets and foreign gangs violently overtaking apartment buildings, and falsely claimed that hundreds of American towns and cities had been “invaded and conquered” by immigrants. 

Trump has promised to address inflation by imposing extreme tariffs on all foreign goods, which market experts say will all but demolish the American economy. While Trump promised to lower costs, companies are already preparing to hike prices to offset the economic turmoil caused by his tariffs. Consumers are currently enjoying the lowest inflation rates in four years.

Trump has made scores of other “day one” promises, including banning transgender athletes from sports teams that match their gender identity, repealing Joe Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, and cutting funds to schools teaching “critical race theory.” While not all of these goals are realistic, they present an image of what Trump plans for his second term in the White House. 

His forthcoming administration promises the likes of billionaire technocrat Elon Musk, anti-vaxxer and whale decapitator Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and even far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer in its ranks.

Trump has called his political opponents “vermin,” and those who disagree with him “the enemy within.” He called Democrats “evil,” “sick,” and “vicious” while feigning outrage over their “divisive” and “disgusting” rhetoric. Trump has threatened to turn the U.S. military on American citizens and imprison anyone who prevented him from taking office. 

In the last six months, a 78-year-old Trump has shown significant cognitive decline, delivering rambling, incoherent diatribes in lieu of stump speeches. He appeared tired, slurred his words, confused subjects, and strayed so far off topic that his campaign had to invent a term to spin the verbal diarrhea: the weave. While attacking Harris, who is more than 10 years his junior, over her mental fitness, he has refused to share his own medical records. 

While Trump’s victory casts many aspects of American life into utter chaos, it will also do the same to his many ongoing legal battles, which are likely to draw to a close, at least for now.  

Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felony charges in his hush-money case earlier this year, was tentatively scheduled for sentencing on November 26. His attorneys had requested that their client’s conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity for “official acts,” and want to see the charges against Trump dropped or have some evidence omitted in a new trial. Presiding Judge Juan Merchan is expected to make a decision on that request on November 12. He may choose to follow through with his sentencing, which will likely be appealed. 

While special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case is expected to continue moving forward in the short term, Trump has promised to fire Smith on his first day in office, and even threatened to deport him. Even if he doesn’t, whoever Trump appoints as attorney general, upon entering office will sink that case. The same fate is likely for Trump’s classified documents case, which Smith has appealed after it was tossed out by Judge Aileen Cannon in July. 

Trump’s election interference case in Georgia, where he was indicted as part of a sprawling conspiracy to overturn the state’s election results, has been delayed until December, and will probably be stayed until he leaves office in 2028. 

Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania in the 2024 general election, the Associated Press projects.

The win gives Trump Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes, giving him a grand total of 267 electoral college votes—a measly three votes away from the 270 needed to win back to the White House. Pennsylvania was a must-win state, and Kamala Harris, who has 214 electoral votes, is now all but guaranteed to lose.

The former president and convicted felon has already pulled off victories in the battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia. Results in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada have yet to be announced.

Trump is the only Republican to win Pennsylvania since 1988, as the former president also narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton there in 2016 by just over 44,000 votes. This time, Trump is leading by 193,937 votes, according to the AP’s count thus far. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the state by just over 81,000 votes.

This story has been updated.