Live updates: Trump wins election, Harris concedes

Bets were hedged, upsides conjured and insurance policies crafted. But ultimately, most hoped it would not happen.

Ukraine and its NATO allies have had for months to entertain the idea of a Donald Trump victory, juggling conceits of a strongman US president who might be a yet tougher ally, a dealmaker who might bring a favorable peace, or fresh eyes who might see a new end to a fatiguing war.

This was but a comforting fiction: The road ahead for Kyiv is extremely stark. There should be no enduring mystery about what a Trump presidency means for Ukraine. Trump has said he would end the war "in 24 hours," but not how. He also said that "Zelensky should never have let that war start," and dubbed him "one of the greatest salesmen I have ever seen" who gets $100 billion on every visit to Congress.

As of this morning, the fact these statements are wild exaggerations ceased to really matter. They became the warped lens through which the president-elect of the United States will perceive the largest conflict in Europe since the Nazis.

Trump may appoint a cabinet that mildly adjusts the pace or tone of his instincts, but in the end he wants out. It doesn't matter that strategically Ukraine's war has so far provided the Pentagon with a comparatively cheap means of degrading its second greatest adversary at no cost to American life.

It is an anathema to two of Trump's first term dislikes: costly US military engagement abroad, and upsetting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin's initial response — that US-Russia relations could not get any worse than they are now under President Joe Biden — surely belies glee. The year ahead was for Russia, according to most analysis, a careful gamble. Moscow has been positioning forces on the hilltops around Ukraine's military hubs in the Donbas — near Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, Chasiv Yar — to enable this winter the punishing squeeze of Kyiv out of the Donetsk region.

Putin played these recent cards hoping Trump would win, on the sure bet he would remain a man of instinct — isolationist and distrustful of America's long-term alliances.

Read more about what could happen in Ukraine under a Trump presidency.

Donald Trump's election victory will return him to the White House , but both his allies and detractors have made clear his second time around will look nothing like the first.

With the Republican Party now entirely his, its anti-Trump figures banished for good, Trump will enter the Oval Office with both the experience of having done the job before and a wealth of resentments over how he believes the system failed him.

Figures who once hoped to act as stabilizing forces — including a string of chiefs of staff, defense secretaries, a national security adviser, a national intelligence adviser and an attorney general — have abandoned Trump, leaving behind a string of recriminations about his character and abilities.

They've been replaced by a cohort of advisers and officials uninterested in keeping Trump in check. Instead of acting as bulwarks against him, those working for Trump this time around share his views and are intent on upholding the extreme pledges he made as a candidate without concern for norms, traditions or law that past aides sought to maintain.

Trump's axis of influence has shifted greatly since he left office. While his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were once prominent campaign surrogates and senior White House staffers, they've since stepped away from the daily churn of politics. She has made clear she has no plans to return to the West Wing, and while Kushner has been involved in the transition efforts, sources said he was unlikely to leave his private equity firm.

Instead, Trump has found himself relying on people such as Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk and Susie Wiles throughout his third run for the White House.

Read more about a reimagined Trump White House.

More than two years after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the nationwide right to an abortion, voters in 10 states cast ballots on whether to cement reproductive rights in their constitutions.

Measures to protect abortion access will pass in , where citizens effectively voted to overturn their state's bans. Abortion rights supporters are hopeful this will lead to a widespread increase in access to reproductive care in those states.

Similar measures will pass in Colorado, New York, Maryland, Montana and Nevada, cementing or expanding current abortion access.

Measures to protect abortion failed in , where the procedure is banned six weeks into pregnancy, and South Dakota, where it is banned, except to save the life of the mother.

, an amendment cementing the state's ban on abortions after 12 weeks will pass, while a competing amendment to codify the right to an abortion will fail, CNN projects.

Learn more about how Americans voted on abortion in these 10 states.

Republicans will win the US Senate majority, CNN projects, shifting the balance of power in Washington and putting the chamber in position to boost Donald Trump's presidency.

With several races still to be declared, Republicans now have 52 seats in the chamber and will assume control under a yet-to-be chosen Republican leader when the new Congress convenes in January.

The new GOP Senate will be in a position to back Trump's agenda and to resume the ex-president's significant reshaping of the judiciary with scores more conservatives.

The Senate takeover was a big success on election night for Republicans, while the destiny of the House of Representatives, where the GOP is trying to defend its narrow majority, remains up in the air.

It could take a week or more before control of the House officially determined. With some races still yet to be called, Republicans have 209 seats and Democrats have 191. Either party needs 218 seats to have a majority.