Donald Trump scored a decisive victory in a deeply divided nation. And in so doing, the Republican president-elect exposed a fundamental weakness within the Democratic base and beat back concerns about his moral failings, becoming the first U.S. president with a felony conviction.

Trump won over frustrated voters with bold promises that his fiery brand of America-first economic populism and conservative culture would make their lives better. He will be tested immediately, however, and there are reasons to believe his plans for mass deportations and huge tariffs may hurt the very people who enabled his victory.

Donald Trump has gone from convict to the 47th president of the United States. It’s a comeback unlike any other in American history. How did it happen?

Why Trump won so convincingly—and why Kamala lost so fully—are themes we’ll cover over the coming weeks. But for now, enough from us.

Somehow, after livestreaming for six hours, we have a packed Front Page on this historic day beginning with our Eli Lake on How Trump Won.

How Substackers are covering Donald Trump’s win

In a twist, what looked like the closest election in living memory is over, quickly and decisively: Donald J. Trump will be the 47th president of the United States.

Here’s how Substackers across the political spectrum are covering the news.

The results

William Kristol and Andrew Egger: Well, here we go again.

Bari Weiss and Oliver Wiseman: The red wave that wasn’t in 2022 came crashing down tonight.

Mehdi Hasan: Trump triumphed on Tuesday. Unlike in 2016, he is also on track to win the popular vote—the first Republican to do so since 2004.

William Kristol: Donald J. Trump will be our next president, elected with a majority of the popular vote, likely winning both more votes and more states than he did in his two previous elections.

Joshua P. Hill: Republicans will control the Senate. The House of Representatives is still technically a toss-up, but it doesn’t look good for the Democrats.

Jesse Singal: One of the only blessings of last night was that the scale of Kamala Harris’s defeat was so devastating that there won’t be much room for if-not-but-for-ing.

Jessica Reed Kraus: Running on just three hours of sleep but fueled by the undeniable energy in Palm Beach—an energy that reflects all we’ve achieved together as a nation.

Deborah Copaken: I just … what the fuck just happened?

Bari Weiss and Oliver Wiseman: Every pollster and pundit said the same: It was gonna be a squeaker. Too close to call. We wouldn’t know for days, maybe even weeks! That’s not how it went down. Not at all.

Mehdi Hasan: Trump not only won; he won big and won fast.

Peter Savodnik: For the past eight years, the Republican Party has been having an honest conversation about the real things that ail us: inflation; the hollowing out of rural America; the rise of China; the housing crisis; the opioid crisis; the chaos at our southern border; free speech; and the decline of American power.

John Ganz: Trump’s campaigns had a clear mythos: a story about what America is and was and where it is going. No Democratic candidate that’s run against him has been able to articulate an opposing vision.

Erick-Woods Erickson: Despite Tony Hinchcliffe’s controversial comments about Puerto Rico, a shocking 45% of Hispanic voters voted for Donald Trump, with a majority of Hispanic men backing a Republican for the first time ever.

Nate Silver: Trump received 27 percent of the vote in the Bronx yesterday, roughly three times as much as his 10 percent in 2016 or Romney’s 8 percent in 2012. The Bronx, which is only 8.6 percent non-Hispanic white. The Bronx, which used to break my congressional models because it was so Democratic.

Dana Loesch: Yes, Republicans finally learned how to build a proper coalition after all this time. No, I don’t know what becomes of Democrats now.

Mehdi Hasan: [F]or me, the moment Harris lost this election came on Oct. 8, in an interview on The View, when she was asked if she would have done anything differently than Biden over the past four years. Her answer? “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

Chris Cillizza: For all the talk about democracy and creeping fascism […] this election affirmed a very simple fact: People care about the economy—and their own financial well being—the most. Full stop.

Andrew Egger: She needed to run away from Biden to escape the voters’ wrath at his term. But she also needed to run toward him as her only defense against Republican charges that she was too far to the left: After all, that was how she’d positioned herself in 2020 before she joined his ticket. In a polarized, doom-and-gloom electorate, both moves likely cost her more voters than they gained her.

Wajahat Ali: I know there will be a lot of blame going around. It was Biden! It was Harris! He should’ve stayed in the race! He should’ve resigned sooner! It was Gaza! But I think the answer was clear: a majority of us in the United States of America believed things were headed in the wrong direction and that the economy was bad even though President Biden improved upon the disaster that he inherited from Trump.

Jesse Singal: Orange Man Bad has just failed, entirely, as an argument, or at the very least it has proven puny in the face of other factors.

Qasim Rashid: Democrats need to pick a lane that actually appeals to people on the left. This campaign wasn’t it.

Johanna Maska: America elected President Trump because a lot of people felt the economic pinch of inflation and they believed Trump would fight for them. They want him to fight for more manufacturing, for American jobs, for peace worldwide. And Democrats’ messaging didn’t resonate with enough Americans this time around.

Now what?

William Kristol: I’ve sometimes quoted John McCain’s wonderful comment, something he used to say with deadpan irony: It’s always darkest . . . before it turns pitch black.

Andy Borowitz: I have plenty to say about last night’s dumpster fire but today I want to take a break from jokes. Many of you are in pain and I don’t want to make light of that.

Nate Silver: For now, I don’t have the answers. But I do know this is a problem the party should have been prepared for, because there was plenty of evidence for it in polls and election data, evidence that was unskewed and denied at every turn. Maybe the first move should be going out to a diner in Queens.

Jessica Reed Kraus: This is only the beginning of something spectacular—a hard-fought revival.

Sharon McMahon: I know today is a heavy day for many of you. And for others, it’s an exciting moment. No matter which side you’re on, there’s something I hope we can remember. And that is that hope does not arrive, unbidden, on the back of a silvery bird, deposited on our doorstep during the night. Hope was a choice. Hope was fought for. Hope rose from the ring, bloodied and broken, to fight again.

A.M. Hickman: If nothing else, patriotism is about to be “in” again.

American institutions are much stronger than many observers have come to believe. But Trump, much more experienced than he was at the outset of his first term in office and emboldened by a much more resounding victory, will test American democracy in a more serious way. Over the next four years, we will, as I argued in these pages in the week before the election, see a clash between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.

And yet, it is time to admit that, in purely electoral terms, the argument that democracy is on the ballot simply does not seem to work. The reason for that is not just that people care more about pocketbook issues like inflation or that incumbents have in general had a bad run of late. It’s that they don’t trust Democrats on the issue of democracy much more than they do Republicans. According to one exit poll in Pennsylvania, three out of four voters in the state believe that democracy in the United States is threatened; among those who do, it was Trump, not Harris, who had the edge.

Afraid of partisan rancor, nonprofits are biting their tongues, with divisive politics hindering public policy engagement by social service organizations. This is one of our findings in a new study we conducted on behalf of Independent Sector – a coalition of nonprofits, foundations and corporate giving programs.

Although the law bars charitable nonprofits from endorsing political candidates, charities are allowed to engage in at least some advocacy, lobbying and public affairs work tied to issues that are relevant to their own work. For example, a food pantry can hold an event about food insecurity in its neighborhood. Or the executive director of a homeless shelter can lobby elected officials about proposed zoning changes that would interfere with a planned expansion.

Nonprofit advocacy involves attempts to influence government policy. This may include some lobbying, along with information-sharing activities, such as sponsoring events to raise public awareness of an issue, conducting research, or educating the public about policies that affect an organization.

We, scholars who research nonprofits, spoke with a diverse sample of nonprofit leaders to learn about their organizations’ policy engagement.

It’s not because we told you what to think. It’s because we did the basic job of journalism: We held up a mirror to reality.

No one could have predicted the exact shape of last night. But by and large, Free Press subscribers weren’t shocked by the results.

That’s not because we told you what to think. It’s because we did the basic job of journalism: We held up a mirror to reality.

Free Press readers saw last night coming because our Peter Savodnik traveled the country to meet the politically homeless Americans in “The Great Scramble.” And to Flint, Michigan, and to East Palestine, Ohio, to meet those who were used as political symbols—only to be abandoned by those who claimed to champion them.

At the same time, I think the legacy corporate media outlets can do a poor job of educating the public on the stakes of elections, whether it’s because they regularly publish op-eds from misinformation-spewing demagogues, succumb to lazy both-sides narratives, or make editorial decisions that serve the monetary interests of their billionaire owners.

By supporting an independent journalist, you’ll not only fund the type of coverage you find important, but more of your money will go to actual journalism. Whenever you subscribe to a corporate media outlet, a sizable portion of that money goes toward either a private equity fund, a rich billionaire owner, or a shareholder dividend payment. But when you subscribe to your favorite independent newsletter writer or podcaster, your money goes directly toward paying their rent or putting food on their table.

We are in for a new chapter of Trump’s career, and a new chapter in the American presidency.

Donald Trump didn’t steal the 2024 election. He has won it — clearly and comprehensively.

Democrats warned that Trump and his supporters are prepared to hijack democracy. Now they must ruefully acknowledge another reality: The Trump movement, no matter how much this appalls opponents, is a powerful expression of democracy.

Vice President Kamala Harris may have been an imperfect candidate — the postmortems are vigorously underway on Wednesday morning — but she delivered the essential Democratic argument perfectly well: The Trump Era was something to be scraped off the national shoe.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris didn’t have to care about those relationships this election. Instead they turned to Joe Rogan and Call Her Daddy. Instead they sought out social-media-friendly photo ops. The winning candidate, in fact, made a point of sticking it to the legacy media, even joking that he wouldn’t mind if the reporters at his rally got shot first during an assassination attempt. Those comments were reported in the mainstream press, but they were most talked about on social media. In fact, it was really happening mostly on X, since the largest social platforms—Facebook, Instagram, and Threads—preferred to suppress political discourse and just leave it to Elon.

The media system needs a place that celebrates independence in every sense of the word; it needs a network that martials the power of the internet not to empower new rulers who favor different politicians, but to usher in new rules that return power to the people.

We hope to keep building it with you.