| | | | Mostly faithful Electoral College cements Trump's win | | The Electoral College results: 304 for Donald Trump, 224 for Hillary Clinton and six "faithless electors" who voted for other candidates -- two ditching Trump and four abandoning Clinton. Only Hawaii is left to go. That means Trump easily crossed the 270 threshold and will become the next president of the United States once a joint session of Congress officially certifies the electors' votes on January 6 and Trump is sworn in on January 20.
About those faithless electors: Two ditched Trump in Texas, where one voted for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and one for former Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Four abandoned Clinton in Washington state. Three supported former Secretary of State Colin Powell. One voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, a Native American activist who's been involved in the North Dakota pipeline fight.
The first response from Team Trump came from Vice President-elect Mike Pence: | | | Obama diagnoses Clinton's loss: President Barack Obama argued Democrats suffered stinging electoral losses in last month's vote because they failed to campaign in hard-hit rural areas. "You've got a situation where they're not only entire states but also big chunks of states where, if we're not showing up, if we're not in there making an argument, then we're going to lose," Obama told NPR. "And we can lose badly, and that's what happened in this election." | | New push for Senate committee on Russian hacking | | From CNN's Manu Raju and Ted Barrett: Top Republicans and Democrats are quietly maneuvering to force a vote on the Senate floor establishing a new committee to investigate the Russian cyberattacks on the US political system, a move that could put GOP leaders who oppose the idea in an awkward spot just as Donald Trump comes into power.
But in a sign of the hurdles ahead for the proponents of the new panel, two key swing votes -- Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine -- are pushing back on the bipartisan efforts to create the committee. "The Senate Intelligence Committee (along with the Intelligence Committee in the House) is best positioned to continue our investigations into the increasingly brazen and aggressive cyberwarfare emanating from Russia and China," Collins told CNN in an email Monday. | | | Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici captured this remarkable photo of the scene where a gunman shot and killed the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, at a photo gallery in Ankara, Turkey. The gunman shouted "Do not forget Aleppo!" as he opened fire. | | North Carolina set to repeal controversial 'bathroom bill' | | Outgoing North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory called a special session of the state's legislature for Wednesday to repeal the controversial "bathroom bill" -- which blocked cities from passing anti-discrimination laws based on sexual orientation and required transgender people to use public restrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates. The Charlotte Observer's Jim Morrill and Steve Harrison have all the details.
Why now? This is a direct response to Charlotte's move this morning to repeal the ordinance that led state lawmakers to pass House Bill 2 in the first place. The Charlotte measure -- which protected LGBT people from discrimination by businesses and allowed transgender people to use the bathroom matching their gender identity -- will be repealed only on the condition that state lawmakers repeal the "bathroom bill," too, by December 31.
The ultimate cost for North Carolina of the "bathroom bill": Canceled expansion plans from PayPal and Deutsche Bank that would have added hundreds of jobs to the state; canceled NBA and NCAA events -- and McCrory's job, which he just narrowly lost to Democrat Roy Cooper. | | "James Comey cost her the election." -- Former President Bill Clinton, discussing Hillary Clinton's loss with the weekly Bedford and Pound Ridge Record-Review. | | | Eyeing VA overhaul, Trump mulls veterans secretary post | | | From CNN's Jeremy Diamond: President-elect Donald Trump may be preparing to ring in the drastic shakeup of the Department of Veterans Affairs he promised during his campaign for president. The incoming president is "not inclined" to keep the department's current secretary, Bob McDonald, in his administration, a senior transition official told CNN on Monday. Instead, Trump is considering several potential successors who would align more with the sweeping VA overhaul Trump championed on the campaign trail as he railed against what he called the "most corrupt" and "most incompetently run agency in the United States." | | Repealing Obamacare will hit Trump voters hardest | | Analyzing Gallup data, The Wall Street Journal's Dante Chinni reports that Donald Trump's pledge to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law would hit working-class and graying America hard -- and rural middle America harder than big cities. Chinni writes: "If Mr. Trump keeps his campaign promise to scrap and replace the [Affordable Care Act], communities that gave him some of his biggest margins would likely see the biggest impact. That reality may be behind Mr. Trump's expressed interest in holding onto at least parts of the law, particularly provisions that bar insurers from denying insurance on the basis of pre-existing conditions and which allow people to keep their older children on parents' plans."
What are Trump-supporting Obamacare enrollees thinking? Vox's Sarah Kliff went to rural Kentucky and asked. She writes: "I kept hearing informed voters, who had watched the election closely, say they did hear the promise of repeal but simply felt Trump couldn't repeal a law that had done so much good for them." (Those voters weren't dumb, Kliff writes. Reporters and health care industry officials, too, thought the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Obamacare's individual mandate meant it was here to stay.) | | Obama grants clemency to 231 individuals | | | From CNN's Allie Malloy: President Barack Obama on Monday granted clemency to 231 individuals, the largest single day act of his presidency and bring his total while in office to 1,324. Obama granted 153 commutations, bringing the total number of commutations while he's been in office to 1,176, including 395 life sentences. A majority of the commutations involved drug-related charges. Obama also granted pardons to 78 individuals, doubling his previous number of pardons for a total of 148. | | | Vincent Viola, a New York businessman, Wall Street billionaire and NHL owner, is President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of the Army. ... Trump is casting doubt on Russian hacking now, but he called it a "big problem" in 2014. ... Languishing Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is going back to his job hearing appeals cases on the D.C. Circuit Court. | | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Check out Five Things for Your New Day, CNN's morning newsletter. Give us five minutes, and we'll brief you on all the news and buzz people will be talking about. | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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