AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Trump receives congratulations and an invitation to the White House as Biden nudges on transition

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump spent his first day as president-elect receiving congratulatory phone calls from his defeated opponent, world leaders and President Joe Biden as he began the process of turning his election victory into a government.

Trump was keeping a low profile, staying out of the public eye after addressing supporters in Florida during the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Vice President Kamala Harris called Trump to concede the race and to congratulate him, while Biden invited the man he ousted from the White House four years ago to an Oval Office meeting to prepare to return the keys.

“President Trump looks forward to the meeting, which will take place shortly, and very much appreciated the call,” said Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung.

Biden’s chief of staff later Wednesday nudged the Trump team to sign the required federal agreements necessary to begin an orderly presidential transition, a White House official said.

___

Harris says nation must accept election results while urging supporters to keep fighting

WASHINGTON (AP) — Faced with a sweeping rejection by American voters, Kamala Harris conceded the presidential election to Donald Trump on Wednesday and encouraged supporters to continue fighting for their vision of the country.

The Democratic vice president said the battle would continue “in the voting booth, in the courts and in the public square.”

“Sometimes the fight takes a while,” she said at Howard University, her alma mater, where she had hoped to make a victory speech after the election. “That doesn’t mean we won’t win.”

Harris’ decisive defeat shattered hopes that she could rescue Democrats’ chances after President Joe Biden’s reelection effort stalled and she replaced him at the top of the ticket.

She trailed in every battleground state to Trump, a Republican whom she described as an existential danger to the country’s foundational institutions. And Trump appeared on track to win the popular vote for the first time in his three campaigns for the White House — even after two impeachments, felony convictions and his attempt to overturn his previous election loss.

___

Control of the US House hangs in the balance with enormous implications for Trump’s agenda

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House majority hung in the balance Wednesday, teetering between Republican control that would usher in a new era of unified GOP governance in Washington or a flip to Democrats as a last line of resistance to a Trump second-term White House agenda.

A few individual seats, or even a single one, will determine the outcome. Final tallies will take a while, likely pushing the decision into next week — or beyond.

After Republicans swept into the majority in the U.S. Senate by picking up seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana, House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted his chamber would fall in line next.

“Republicans are poised to have unified government in the White House, Senate and House,” Johnson said Wednesday.

President-elect Donald Trump, who won the Electoral College and the popular vote against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, has consolidated growing power around his MAGA movement, backing newcomers to Washington and setting the stage for his own return to the White House.

___

With Trump’s win, some women wonder: Will the US ever see a female president?

Voters had the chance this election to break the highest glass ceiling in American politics by electing Kamala Harris the nation’s first female president. Instead, they returned Donald Trump to the White House, a comeback that relied on significant — even somewhat improved – support among women.

Some female voters on Wednesday mourned the missed opportunity to send a woman to the Oval Office and wondered when, if ever, it might happen.

“I am just aghast,” said Precious Brady-Davis, a Black transgender woman who’d just won a two-year term on a Chicago-area water management board — but her joy in that was tempered. “I am disappointed in my fellow Americans that, once again, we did not elect a qualified woman to the presidency.”

Those who supported Trump — like Katherine Mickelson, a 20-year-old college student from Sioux Falls, South Dakota — said the race came down to values and to issues like the economy, not gender. Even Harris herself sought her place in history without dwelling on her gender.

“While I think a lot of women would like to see a female president, myself included,” Mickelson said, “we aren’t just going to blindly vote for a woman.”

___

Abortion rights amendment’s passage triggers new legal battle in Missouri

WASHINGTON (AP) — Abortion rights advocates prevailed on seven ballot measures across the U.S. in Tuesday’s election and lost on three.

The losses are the first on statewide reproductive rights ballot measures anywhere in the U.S. since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, a ruling that struck down the nearly 50-year nationwide right to abortion, proving that abortion opponents can win on ballot measures.

There were firsts on the other sides, too: Three amendments call for rolling back abortion bans, including one in Missouri that bars it at all stages of pregnancy with exceptions only under limited circumstances to save the life of the woman.

Here’s a look at takeaways from the results.

Missouri is the most populous state where a ballot measure could roll back a current ban on abortions at all stages of pregnancy.

___

China is bracing for fresh tensions with Trump over trade, tech and Taiwan

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The first time China faced Donald Trump in the White House, there was a trade war, a breach of protocol involving Taiwan’s former leader, and a president-to-president bromance that turned sour.

As President-elect Trump prepares to start his second term in office, China is bracing for unpredictability in its ties with the United States and renewed tensions over trade, technology and Taiwan.

Perhaps the biggest consequence for China — if Trump stays true to his campaign promises — is his threat to slap blanket 60% tariffs on all Chinese exports to the U.S.

Tariffs like that would be a blow to China’s already unstable economy, which is suffering from high youth unemployment, a lengthy property slump and government debt. A 60% duty on Chinese imports could shave off 2.5 percentage points, or about half, of China’s projected economic growth, according to an analysis published earlier this year by UBS.

During Trump’s previous term in office, the U.S. imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion of Chinese products. That brought Beijing to the negotiating table, and in 2020 the two sides signed a trade deal in which China committed to improve intellectual property rights and buy an extra $200 billion of American goods. A research group a couple of years later showed China had bought essentially none of the goods it had promised.

___

Plea deals revived for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others

WASHINGTON (AP) — A military judge has ruled that plea agreements struck by alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants are valid, voiding an order by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to throw out the deals, a government official said Wednesday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the order by the judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, has not yet been posted publicly or officially announced.

Unless government prosecutors or others attempt to challenge the plea deals again, McCall’s ruling means that the three 9/11 defendants before long could enter guilty pleas in the U.S. military courtroom at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, taking a dramatic step toward wrapping up the long-running and legally troubled government prosecution in one of the deadliest attacks on the United States.

The plea agreements would spare Mohammed and two co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, the risk of the death penalty in exchange for the guilty pleas.

Government prosecutors had negotiated the deals with defense attorneys under government auspices, and the top official for the military commission at the Guantanamo Bay naval base had approved the agreements.

___

European climate agency says this will likely be the hottest year on record — again

CHICAGO (AP) — For the second year in a row, Earth will almost certainly be the hottest it’s ever been. And for the first time, the globe this year reached more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming compared to the pre-industrial average, the European climate agency Copernicus said Thursday.

“It’s this relentless nature of the warming that I think is is worrying,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.

Buontempo said the data clearly shows the planet would not see such a long sequence of record-breaking temperatures without the constant increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving global warming.

He cited other factors that contribute to exceptionally warm years like last year and this one. They include El Nino — the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide — as well as volcanic eruptions that spew water vapor into the air and variations in energy from the sun. But he and other scientists say the long-term increase in temperatures beyond fluctuations like El Nino is a bad sign.

“A very strong El Nino event is a sneak peek into what the new normal will be about a decade from now,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist with the nonprofit Berkeley Earth.

___

Canada orders TikTok’s Canadian business to be dissolved but won’t block app

TORONTO (AP) — Canada announced Wednesday it won’t block access to the popular video-sharing app TikTok but is ordering the dissolution of its Canadian business after a national security review of the Chinese company behind it.

Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said it is meant to address risks related to ByteDance Ltd.’s establishment of TikTok Technology Canada Inc.

“The government is not blocking Canadians’ access to the TikTok application or their ability to create content. The decision to use a social media application or platform is a personal choice,” Champagne said.

Champagne said it is important for Canadians to adopt good cybersecurity practices, including protecting their personal information.

He said the dissolution order was made in accordance with the Investment Canada Act, which allows for the review of foreign investments that may harm Canada’s national security. He said the decision was based on information and evidence collected over the course of the review and on the advice of Canada’s security and intelligence community and other government partners.

___

Thousands ordered to evacuate as powerful wind-fed wildfire burns homes in Southern California

CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) — California was lashed by powerful winds Wednesday that fed a fast-moving wildfire, which destroyed dozens of homes and forced thousands of residents to flee as forecasters warned of the potential for “extreme and life-threatening” blazes.

Northwest of Los Angeles, the Mountain Fire exploded in size and prompted evacuation orders for more than 10,000 people as it threatened 3,500 structures in suburban communities, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo, according to a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom. The area east of the Pacific coast city of Ventura will receive federal assistance after a request from Newsom was granted, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday.

The blaze was burning in a region that has seen some of California’s most destructive fires over the years. A thick plume of smoke rose hundreds of feet into the sky Wednesday, blanketing whole neighborhoods and limiting visibility for firefighters and evacuees. The fire grew from less than half of a square mile to 16 square miles (62 square kilometers) in little more than five hours.

Ventura County Fire Captain Trevor Johnson described crews racing with their engines to homes threatened by the flames to save lives.

“This is as intense as it gets. The hair on the back of the firefighters’ neck I’m sure was standing up,” he said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon.