By: Ashmar Mandou
Former President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, a stunning outcome for most who believed Harris would take the White House. According to CNN projections, Trump won in all battleground states, which included Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Trump received 292 electoral votes, according to AP and CNN. “We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible,” Trump said early Wednesday morning, adding that he would take office with an “unprecedented and powerful mandate. Trump became the first president in more than 120 years and the second ever to lose the White House and then come back to win it again, after President Cleveland in 1892. Exit polls showed Trump making huge gains with Latino voters, bolstering his margins in rural areas. In his second term as President, Trump has vowed to carry out mass deportations, extend the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, and to impose universal tariffs on foreign imports.
Several elected officials shared their discontent in the aftermath of the elections including Congressman Delia Ramirez, who once again secured her seat this election. “Today is a dark day for many of us: a day that may bring us feelings of despair, anger, and fear about what comes next. Over the last eight years, many of us have organized and engaged our communities to reject Donald Trump, Project 2025, and the politics of dehumanization and hate that they represent. And, yet, here we are, facing a second Trump presidency. The coming weeks and months are going to demand so much of us. I know that the antidote to despair is action, and there will be plenty to do. Our work to defend democracy cannot and must not end on Election Day. As we enter the last stretch of this presidential term and the 118th Congress, we need to take all the action we can to protect our people, communities, and democratic institutions from the retribution and violence Trump has promised. We need to learn from this moment. I’ve consistently said that we need to earn people’s votes. We need to give people something to vote for, not just something to vote against. For many Americans, we came up short of that mark.”
Aside from the most-anticipated race, Illinois voters made their voices heard in the Cook County State’s Attorney race with retired Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke winning the seat which opened for the first time in 16 years. O’Neill Burke won with 64.8% of the vote, compared with 30.8% for Republican Bob Fioretti, a civil rights attorney and former Chicago alderman. “This is a really large county, and we have gone to every single corner of this county over the last 16 months, and one thing became more apparent to me each and every day—and that is there is much more that unites us than divides us,” O’Neill Burke said. “We all want to live in a community where we do not have a mass shooting on a regular basis. We all want to live in a community where people and businesses thrive when they are unencumbered by being victimized. We all want to live in a community where children can go outside and play—regardless of what ZIP code you live in. We all want that.”
Voters also agreed with civil penalties for election worker interference gaining 88 percent of the votes, with 60 percent of the votes residents of Illinois agreed to create a new tax bracket, and with 72 percent voted “yes” to expand reproductive health coverage.
