Trump’s return to the White House through Pittsburgh’s eyes

In Baldwin High School teacher Katie Temme's class on Wednesday, most students were surprised at the difference between Donald Trump's and Kamala Harris' electoral votes of 292 to 224 by afternoon.

"It was really surprising to see just how overnight it went so quickly to Trump because I was not at all expecting it to be that much of a landslide for Trump," said Alex Funk, a 17-year-old student at Baldwin.

And the landscape after the landslide?

"Personally, I don't support Trump, but I have seen a lot of stuff like, 'Oh, the world is ending or oh, this is election fraud or whatever,'" said student Alisha Katel. "And on both sides, you can't really just say that sort of stuff because it just raises false info and false concerns."

For weeks, students had looked at polling data in different states to make their own predictions, most of which were wrong. The students did not anticipate the voting patterns in swing states, nor that the results would be announced within hours of the last polls closing.

Many students in her class were concerned about what a Trump administration might mean for women's rights, health care, education and gun violence. Several were concerned about increased fear-mongering and the spread of misinformation as the country transitions into a new administration.

Baldwin student Jackson Presto was happy with the results — though not with the country's divisions.

"If I'm on the right, if I go to someone that's extreme left and I tell them I'm, like, a Republican, they just won't want to be friends with me," he said. "They automatically just think bad things about me just because I have beliefs about different policies that ultimately are not going to end the world."

On Wednesday, conversations like those in Baldwin's classrooms and halls were everywhere — energized by the day's news, but in no way new.

In the months prior to the general election, PublicSource reporters explored its potential implications across our community. The Democracy & Doubt series probed the uniquely fractious election's funding sources , economic arguments , environmental implications , campus reverberations , classroom lessons , health divisions and more.

Early Wednesday, the presidential race was called in favor of Trump, the Republican former president whose campaign platform included mass deportation, enhanced fossil fuel production and reduced regulation, lower federal spending and an end to education about diversity, among other priorities.

"It's the greatest country, and potentially the greatest country in the world by far and right now we're gonna just work very hard to get all of that back," Trump said while declaring victory early Wednesday morning. Later he added: "We're gonna be paying down debt. We're gonna be reducing taxes. We have, we can do things that nobody else can do."

Democrat Harris, now vice president, conceded later.

Republicans also secured a majority in the U.S. Senate, won three Pennsylvania row offices and performed well in General Assembly races. Politicians, business leaders, advocates, students, teachers, voters and non-voters alike began to weigh the implications and the emerging landscape of government that will shape the next few years, and perhaps beyond.

Jennie Sweet-Cushman, a political science professor at Chatham University, watched the red wave roll in on Tuesday night without too much surprise.

If Harris supporters are surprised by the outcome, she said, there's a reason for that. "It's easy for something like that to happen where you don't realize what's going on in Republican America, because you don't have the same reality."

She noted an information divide between liberal and conservative Pennsylvania and America, stemming from the fact that the two groups now learn about the world from very different sources. "So all of the things that [Democratic-leaning] people are watching very closely ... that reality is one thing and the Republican reality is something entirely different."

To Sam DeMarco, the leader of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County, the red tide demonstrated the power of "the middle-class working families who have grown tired of the tired message that there is something wrong with them and that it can only be fixed by compelling them to abandon traditional values and common sense."

In a statement, he cast Republican Dave McCormick's vote edge over incumbent U.S. Sen. Bob Casey as the removal of "the last of the old dynasty of politicians." The Associated Press had not yet declared a winner in the race as of early Wednesday evening, but McCormick held a 32,000-vote lead as uncounted votes dwindled.

DeMarco, a county council member elected at-large, is sparring with Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato over whether to raise property taxes. Innamorato has argued, among other things, that the county needs more revenue to fulfill matching requirements for federal funding that covers much of its human services work.

Innamorato on Wednesday said in a statement that she would "double down" on her "Allegheny for All" agenda, naming aid for unhoused people, environmental protection and building the regional economy, among other priorities.

A Democrat and leader of the local progressive movement that began its rise after Trump's 2016 win, Innamorato said she would "accept the outcome of the election," but pledged to defend democracy against "any group that attempts to erode it." Democrats said throughout the campaign that Trump is a threat to democracy, citing his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Avalon Sueiro, president of the Carnegie Mellon University Democrats, exited her class about democracy and history on Wednesday still in shock from the election results. She said campus morale felt low and that she has "lost so much faith in the American people."

"We as a country should value human rights above everything else," she said. Instead, many voters "were willing to value the economy above human rights," she said, calling it "maddening and incredibly disgusting."

Still aglow from attending McCormick's election night party were Anthony Cacciato, president of the Carnegie Mellon University College Republicans, and JJ Glaneman, co-president of College Republicans at Duquesne University.

Cacciato welcomed the GOP's economic emphasis.

"In the last four years, people have seen their economic prospects drastically diminish and seem out of sight, especially for young people," he said. "The outcome of that frustration was the results last night."

Glaneman said he's preparing to get "dirty looks" from classmates for his political views, but hopeful and excited about the future.

"I think we're going to have a very good economy, peace, safety and security," Glaneman said. "It just felt like we were a part of something great."

The one shared sentiment was surprise.

Pre-election volunteer work left Abby DiLoreto, president of the Chatham University Democrats, feeling like part of a generation that was "united." Then she hosted an election night watch party on her campus and encountered more Trump supporters than she had ever seen at her college.

"I think it really just came down to the people who weren't talking about who they were voting for," DiLoreto said. "I think the consensus of everyone I've talked to is that we have each other, we're gonna be OK, but we're pretty scared."

Pat Francis, press secretary for the Pitt College Democrats, felt "a shaken confidence in the moral character of the nation," following Harris' loss to "what I believe to be unspeakable evil."

Young people will be disproportionately affected by climate change, and the election result offers no promise of a slowdown in global heating.

"I see a lot of uncertainty in climate policy going forward," said Fred Kraybill, an East End climate hawk who heads the political committee for the local chapter of the Pennsylvania Sierra Club. "It was not the result that we were hoping for."

He expressed fears that Trump would gut the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act, which earmarked $370 billion for clean energy projects nationwide.

"The Republican Party will not do anything about climate change in my opinion, and they continually act like it's not real," he said.

The Biden Administration passed some of the most sweeping climate legislation in American history and showed some willingness to reign in fossil fuel interests, most notably with an order earlier this year that temporarily halted the export of American natural gas abroad, citing concerns over greenhouse gas emissions.

By contrast, Trump, in his first term, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord. He's expected to do that again, roll back climate rules, and approve liquified natural gas export projects while urging extractors to "drill, baby, drill," as he said on the campaign trail — a major win for Pennsylvania's natural gas industry.

Some state climate initiatives could also be frozen.

Climate advocates were hoping to flip the state Senate blue, which could have increased the likelihood of passing Gov. Josh Shapiro's climate legislation , announced earlier this year. Instead local Democratic challenger Nicole Ruscitto, of Jefferson Hills, lost her bid to oust Republican incumbent Devlin Robinson , of Bridgeville, and the Senate remains under Republican control.

Policy that would increase the state's renewable energy targets would also need Republican backing to pass, although climate advocates are hoping that increasingly competitive technologies and prices will aid in Pennsylvania's adoption of renewables moving forward.

"Clean energy technologies [like solar and wind] will continue to outcompete fossil fuels in the coming years, and there has been significant growth across the U.S.," wrote Rob Altenburg, director of the Energy Center at PennFuture, on Wednesday.

If 'drill, baby, drill' is a position, it's also an example of what Penn State Abington professor Lonnie Golden characterized as a platform that's more campaign sloganeering than economic policy.

Trump ran as a businessman and pro-business candidate, favorable to some of Western Pennsylvania's economic pillars — domestic manufacturing and energy. He didn't offer a detailed balance sheet of his economic intentions.

"I'll say off the bat, they're not fleshed out proposals," said Golden, who studies labor and human resources, and whose work often involves looking at the intended and unintended impacts of economic proposals. "It's mostly around how do I get people to vote for me."

Included in Trump's economic agenda: Eliminating taxes on tips and overtime wages — but also cutting the national debt. "What happens if we don't have income tax on overtime?" Golden asked. "[The U.S.] Treasury loses a source of income and it won't be made up in other sources."

Trump has also called for imposing a new 20% tariff on imported goods, with a higher rate of 60% for goods coming from China — but also pledged to rein in inflation. "A tariff means if a good is imported there's a price increase that consumers pay," Golden noted.

Western Pennsylvania has continued to diversify its industry as it reinvents itself out of the steel industry collapse. "We've been diversifying our industry for decades now," Golden said.

Diversification has meant employment, but now the continued automation of labor threatens jobs in the region and beyond.

"I'm interested in improving job equality, work pay, benefits, rewarding work and I'm not really sure that's where the national discussion is going to go," Golden said.

Instead, Trump emphasized "novelty over substance," he said.

"The environment is, let's just wing it and let the chips fall where they will," Golden said. "As a campaign strategy, it sort of worked."

Another strategy: Some Republicans bet big on anti-trans ads and campaign promises .

Trump pledged to eliminate federal funding for gender-affirming care, including via Medicaid and Medicare. He also said he would terminate hospitals providing gender-affirming surgeries from Medicaid and Medicare, and threatened school districts "with severe consequences" if they promote gender transition to students — something experts say isn't happening in K-12 schools.

Pre-election, experts and people with lived experience anticipated anti-trans health policies if Trump won. Now that he has, some Pittsburgh-area providers are fielding panicked calls from patients who are rushing to receive gender-affirming care and reproductive care ahead of any policy decisions that could restrict access at the federal level.

Dr. Sheila Ramgopal said staff at the Allegheny Reproductive Health Center are struggling to man the phones.

"All the patients are obviously freaking out about access," said Ramgopal, an obstetrician and gynecologist, and the CEO of the center, which accepts Medicaid for a variety of gender-affirming and reproductive services , including surgery, hormone therapy and abortion. "Everyone is calling to get an IUD or to schedule their surgery for a hysterectomy or tubal [ligation]."

Ramgopal doesn't expect "an acute change" in federal policy over the next several months after Trump's inauguration. "But it's reasonable and normal for people to freak out," they added.

Research shows that anti-trans policymaking is increasing suicidality among trans and nonbinary young people. Some Pittsburgh advocates are offering free mental health resources for community members who are bracing for a second Trump term.

Staff at the QMNTY Center , a safe haven for LGBTQ+ people on the North Side, brought in three therapists Wednesday to help those who may be experiencing grief, despair and even suicidality due to the election results. They also put out a spread of food for community members, who began arriving as soon as the doors opened at noon.

"To be honest, I'm pissed the fuck off," said Dena Stanley, founder and executive director of TransYOUniting , which jointly operates the center with Proud Haven . "But I can't let my emotions get the best of me because we have a whole community that we have to figure out how we're going to protect."

Stanley, a Black trans woman, was up most of election night, taking calls from scared community members and strategizing with other LGBTQ+ organizers.

"We should have been [better] prepared for this," she said. "We have two months to figure out how to keep us safe, because it's going to be epic violence for our community on levels that we haven't seen since the [1950s]."

Pittsburgh and Allegheny County lawmakers have passed LGBTQ+ sanctuary legislation to protect access to gender-affirming care in the region , but those protections won't apply to actions required by state and federal laws.

Naiymah Sanchez, 41, a Black trans woman and advocate in Philadelphia, recalled a time when gender-affirming care was largely inaccessible to trans people, forcing some to pursue dangerous black-market procedures. When Sanchez was 17, she received unregulated silicone breast injections, which caused cancer years later.

Sanchez, a senior organizer at the ACLU of Pennsylvania , feared a return to "a time where we have to take extreme measures to feel comfortable in our own skin, to have the access [to care] that we need, that we are deserving of."

She doesn't want young trans people to lose hope.

"You are safe here in Pennsylvania," she said. "And there are people who will fight. There are people fighting so that you can have a better day tomorrow."

PublicSource reporters Charlie Wolfson, Eric Jankiewicz, Lajja Mistry, Quinn Glabicki and Venuri Siriwardane, editorial intern Spencer Levering, and managing editor Rich Lord contributed.