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--:-- Leila Fadel: In her concession speech, Vice President Kamala Harris promised a peaceful transition of power, a bedrock of American democracy, that her opponent and president-elect Donald Trump threatened in 2020.
--:-- Leila Fadel: But Harris also promised this. While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.
--:-- A Martinez: Trump is on track to win the country's popular vote, the first Republican to 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 flippantly said that he'd be a dictator, but only for his first day in office.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm Leila Fadel, that's A Martinez, and this is a special bonus episode of Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from BetterHelp. It's only human to ask others for advice, like turning to your barista, hairdresser, or a taxi driver for life advice. But when you're looking for help about relationships, anxiety, depression, or other clinical issues, they may not have all the right answers.
--:-- A Martinez: Instead, get guidance from a licensed therapist online with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash NPR for 10% off your first month.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from 15 bucks a month.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: This morning, President Biden made his first public comment since the results. Following months of division and polarization on the campaign, he spoke about unity.
--:-- President Biden: I know for some people, it's a time for victory, to state the obvious. For others, it's a time of loss. Campaigns or contests of competing visions. The country chooses one or the other. We accept the choice the country made.
--:-- Leila Fadel: 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.
--:-- President Biden: Now, as the transition begins, analysts continue to splice the demographics of the electorate this year. Black voters and Latinos were down as a share of that electorate. Meanwhile, white voters went up compared to 2020.
--:-- Leila Fadel: That's the largest single voting group in the country, and Democrats don't typically win the majority of them. That included Harris this year, although she was slightly up with that voting base.
--:-- Mark Hugo Lopez: Whether Trump turned out new Latino voters or convince committed voters to defect from Democrats is a question.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He's the director of race and ethnicity research at the Pew Research Center.
--:-- Mark Hugo Lopez: On the one hand, there are many new first-time voters for Latinos because we have so many new Latinos being able to vote for the first time. They've come of age, they've entered adulthood, but it also looks like there's been a shift among Latinos.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And this is something that's been going on for some time. It's not new to this election, but we've been seeing Trump do better with Latino voters in 2020 compared to 16, and also now it looks like in 2024 compared to 2020.
--:-- Mark Hugo Lopez: Here's what Lopez had to say about how some Latino voters may have weighed up their decision.
--:-- Mark Hugo Lopez: It was really the economy, the rise of inflation, prices for food and other goods, housing prices as well, which Latinos continue to point to. And they point to Donald Trump as being the better candidate, or at least they were split on whether or not Harris or Trump are the better candidate on economics on immigration policy for example you find that about one of Latinos say to improve improve the situation at the border we need to have an increase in deportation to people who are in the country illegally
--:-- Leila Fadel: But at the same time you find that the majority of Latinos want a pathway to citizenship or some sort of support for those who are in the country living here already illegally.
--:-- Debbie Walsh: We've talked a little about women voters on this podcast and Harris's hopes they turn out in record numbers for her.
--:-- Leila Fadel: A majority of women did vote for Harris, but not more women than those that typically vote Democrat.
--:-- Debbie Walsh: In fact, she got a smaller proportion of women than President Biden did in 2020.
--:-- Leila Fadel: We heard from Debbie Walsh, who directs the Center for Women and Politics at Rutgers University, for more on the gender gap.
--:-- Debbie Walsh: We've seen this gender gap and the difference between the way men and women vote since about 1980. 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.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So 57 percent of white college-educated women voted for Harris. Women, white women without a college degree, 35 percent.
--:-- Debbie Walsh: And in fact, when you look at all of the different groups of voters, men, women, by race and ethnicity and college and education level, the one group that actually improved for Kamala Harris is those white college-educated women.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Joe Biden got 54 percent of that vote. Hillary Clinton got 51 percent. Kamala Harris got 57 percent.
--:-- Daniel McCarthy: Harris also leaned on centrist and self-described moderate Republicans appealing to conservative voters who couldn't deal with Trump's rhetoric.
--:-- Leila Fadel: But that didn't seem to materialize.
--:-- Daniel McCarthy: Daniel McCarthy says it was a rejection of traditional politics and legacy institutions writ large.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He's the editor of Modern Age, a conservative review, and he talked about something he calls creative destruction and how that appealed to voters.
--:-- Daniel McCarthy: Well, in economics, creative destruction is what happens when an entrepreneur, a new firm enters a market and discovers that the existing market relationships, the old firms that had been providing goods and services to people, were not providing goods and services that were of high enough quality or that were insufficient demand for those businesses to stay in business.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So basically it's when a new competitor shows that the old competitors were inefficient and were unsatisfactory to the consumer base.
--:-- Daniel McCarthy: And in politics, I say basically that Donald 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.
--:-- Asma Khalid: NPR's White House correspondent Asma Khalid reports on steps the Biden White House has been taking to future-proof a few of its key policies.
--:-- Asma Khalid: So one big thing is that Biden has said he would make sure all remaining funds for Ukraine will be allocated by the end of his term, leaving no money for the next president's discretion.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And then also this summer, NATO took on a larger role in coordinating military support and training for Ukraine.
--:-- Asma Khalid: This is something that previously had largely been spearheaded by the United States.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And then I think one really interesting thing is that just last month, the G7 announced a new plan to provide additional support for Ukraine via a $50 billion loan.
--:-- Asma Khalid: The United States is going to provide a good chunk of that. And the goal is to get that money out the door as much of it as possible ahead of an inauguration day.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Biden administration was also thinking about that promise to get rid of civil servants you know the non-government workers who make the government work I mean during the final weeks of Trump first term in 2020 he issued an executive order creating a new class of federal workers known as Schedule F.
--:-- Asma Khalid: These people would be exempt from the country's traditional merit-based civil service program.
--:-- Asma Khalid: And Democrats saw this as a deliberate attempt to hire and fire people, not based on their expertise, but on their political loyalty.
--:-- Asma Khalid: So when Biden came in, one of the first things he did was rescind that executive order.
--:-- Asma Khalid: This past spring, they issued a rule to make it very difficult to overhaul the federal workforce for ideological reasons.
--:-- Asma Khalid: 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.
--:-- Asma Khalid: So a new Trump administration would have to propose a new rule, and that is a tedious regulatory process.
--:-- Asma Khalid: They could take months, maybe even years, get held up in courts.
--:-- Asma Khalid: So, you know, it is still possible for the Trump administration to repeal the rule, but it is more difficult.
--:-- Asma Khalid: A hallmark legislation of the Biden administration is the big climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, and that was passed in 2022.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Republicans have already talked about rescinding elements of the law, specifically the tax credits for people who want to purchase electric vehicles could go up or the incentives to build electric charging infrastructure.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I mean, there's not a whole lot that the Biden White House could do to protect this, but they've been trying to tout the bill's popularity in spurring manufacturing projects in Republican congressional districts, hoping that that will somehow protect the bill from being repealed.
--:-- Asma Khalid: But we'll have to see what happens.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Names already being floated for key positions in the next administration. One time independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is someone Trump says he'll let, quote, go wild on health.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Kennedy is aiming for a big role in public health, although he has no public health or medical degrees, and he has trafficked in misleading or outright false conspiracy theories, including that Wi-Fi causes cancer and saying that chemicals in the water turn children transgender.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Our co-host Steve Inskeep spoke to Kennedy yesterday, and he briefed on that conversation with NPR Science Desk correspondent Ping Huang today.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Is this something that the administration is definitely going to do, recommend against fluoride?
--:-- Ping Huang: Yes, that's something that the administration will do.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Okay, so Kennedy gave his reasons. He claimed that fluoride affects neurological development and lowers IQ in children, in addition to being good for your teeth, which is why it's in the drinking water.
--:-- Ping Huang: What does the science say about this?
--:-- Ping Huang: Yeah, so Steve, as you mentioned, fluoride has been added to public water systems for a long time, since the 1940s, and the main reason is that it prevents cavities.
--:-- Ping Huang: Now, for all of those decades, it's had its detractors too. It's long been known to have stained teeth and damage enamel at high levels.
--:-- Ping Huang: And more recently, some studies have linked high levels of fluoride with lower IQ. That's at levels of fluoride that are twice what's recommended for drinking water.
--:-- Ping Huang: And it's not clear that there's any risk to lower fluoride levels, which have clearly been useful in preventing cavities.
--:-- Ping Huang: So there is a scientific discussion around IQ and high levels of fluoride that's happening.
--:-- Ping Huang: But Kennedy also said that fluoride in drinking water causes arthritis, cancer, other diseases. And those claims are just not part of the open debate right now.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Now, there's another topic that we discussed in yesterday's interview. RFK and I talked about vaccines.
--:-- Ping Huang: How quickly will you act on federal support for vaccines or research on vaccines?
--:-- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: I will work immediately on that. It will be one of my priorities to make sure that Americans, of course, we're not going to take vaccines away from anybody. We are going to make sure that Americans have good information right now.
--:-- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The science on vaccine safety, particularly, has huge deficits in it. And we're going to make sure that those scientific studies are done and that people can make informed choices about their vaccinations and their children's vaccinations.
--:-- Ping Huang: Okay, so he just wants to get information out there, which sounds fine. But his viewpoint on this is the information shows that vaccines generally are unsafe.
--:-- Ping Huang: What do we make of that?
--:-- Ping Huang: Yeah, exactly. As you're saying, what he's doing here is on the one hand saying that they, you know, 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.
--:-- Ping Huang: You know, Kennedy is a known vaccine skeptic. He's called COVID vaccines a crime against humanity, pushed claims that vaccines cause autism over and over. That is not true. It is disproven.
--:-- Ping Huang: Of course President Trump will also be the commander of the Army and the Navy Republican Representative Michael Waltz of Florida serves on House committees on military and intelligence matters.
--:-- Michael Waltz: We still have a Pentagon that cannot audit itself, despite years and years of trying. 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 twice as long as originally planned.
--:-- Michael Waltz: And there is a whole slew of new technologies from Silicon Valley and elsewhere that are really chomping at the bit to help with our defense and security issues.
--:-- Kerry Johnson: The reelection of former President Donald Trump 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 and criminal cases against him.
--:-- Kerry Johnson: NPR's national justice correspondent, Kerry Johnson, has been reporting on the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
--:-- Kerry Johnson: There's a longstanding view inside the Justice Department. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have followed this view. It says a sitting president cannot be indicted or face criminal trial.
--:-- Kerry Johnson: The reasoning there is it would be too much of a burden that it would be unconstitutional and would undermine the work of the executive branch.
--:-- Kerry Johnson: Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise are calling on this Justice Department to drop the D.C. case against Trump.
--:-- Kerry Johnson: The writing is on the wall, Bill Barr says, and people have considered these allegations against Trump about election interference, but the voters rejected them resoundingly.
--:-- Kerry Johnson: Okay, so it looks like the Justice Department will be winding those cases down before the inauguration.
--:-- Kerry Johnson: Another outstanding question is still whether or not Trump will face sentencing over his criminal case in New York.
--:-- Leila Fadel: One more thing, though, before we go, the 2024 presidential election may be over, but maybe you're taking a break from election stuff for a while, or maybe you can't stop scrolling.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Either way, do not stress about where to go for reliable information in the next few months and beyond.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Across the NPR network, we're going to be working to explain the biggest stories and fact-check so you can keep a grip on what's happening.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And if that sounds very valuable to you, please help make it possible. Go to donate.npr.org to get started.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And if you're already a supporter, we're taking this moment to say thank you.
--:-- Leila Fadel: If you're not, the link, again, is donate.npr.org.
--:-- Leila Fadel: We're here to unpack what is going on every day, give you facts, give you context, give you data, and also fact-check those in power.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And that's it for this bonus episode of Up First for Thursday, November 7th.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm Leila Fadel. And I'm A Martinez.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This bonus episode of Up First was edited by Lisa Thompson and produced by Katie Klein.
--:-- Leila Fadel: It was made by the Morning Edition and Up First teams along with the entire NPR newsroom.
--:-- Leila Fadel: It was also made in collaboration with our engineering and studio teams.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Join us again tomorrow.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: Shop plans today at mintmobile.com slash switch.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from PAKA. Everyone's got that one hoodie they practically live in. But the Paka hoodie? It's on another level.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: And that's it for today.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Thanks for listening to this special episode of Up First.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: We'll be back with more news and analysis tomorrow.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Thanks again for listening.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: We'll see you tomorrow.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This is Leila Fadel, and I'm A Martinez, and this is Up First.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Thanks for listening.
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