The New South Wales police has won its legal challenge against a protest planned to blockade coal exports in Newcastle, with the judge citing the interruption to the port as an “imposition”.

Organised by a group called Rising Tide, the protest would have involved activists paddling into the Port of Newcastle on kayaks and rafts to stop coal exports from leaving Newcastle for 30 hours.

The group called the protest the “People’s Blockade of the World’s Largest Coal Port” and was planned to take place in late November. The four-day “protestival” was expected to attract 5,500 demonstrators and was scheduled to take place alongside the blockade, and include music performances from John Butler and Angie McMahon.

Police launched a challenge against the organiser’s Form1 application – which would protect them from prosecution while blocking the waterway – in the supreme court last week. They cited safety concerns, the interference with other members of the public’s right to use the space, and the disruption to the coal industry.

Last year, the organiser’s held the same protest for the same amount of time. The police accepted the organiser’s Form1 application to blockade the port for 30 hours.

However, during this protest, the group continued to blockade the port beyond the agreed deadline, leading to 109 arrests. This drew international media attention, with a 97-year-old church minister among those charged.

Justice Desmond Fagan sided with police and issued a prohibition order, saying the evidence showed it was “highly likely, to the point of near certainty” that the protesters had planned to stay beyond the agreed deadline again to draw maximum attention to their cause.

In his judgement, he also expressed safety concerns for the participants and said the impact on others was “excessive”.

“A 30-hour interruption to the operations of a busy port is an imposition on the lawful activities of others that goes far beyond what the people affected should be expected to tolerate in order to facilitate public expression of protest and opinion…,” Desmond said.

If the activists decide to still carry out the blockade despite the prohibition order, they will not be protected from prosecution.

Police assistant commissioner Dave Waddell told the court during the proceedings that if this happened the police would arrest the protesters as soon as they entered the channel.

Neal Funnell, the lawyer for Rising Tide, had argued during the proceedings that the organiser’s had put adequate safety precautions in place, and that the organisers had planned to advise protesters to leave the water once the 30-hours was up to avoid arrest.

The organiser’s had planned to blockade the port for 50 hours, but revised this down to 30 hours during the police’s legal challenge.

Rising Tide had organised the protest to demand the government immediately cancel all new fossil fuel projects and end all coal exports from Newcastle by 2030.

They were also calling for the government to tax fossil fuel export profits at 78%, and to put that money towards community and industrial transition away from fossil fuels.

The mood was calm and sober on the Howard University campus as people waited to hear vice-president Kamala Harris’s concession speech on Wednesday afternoon. An area that is usually the central hub of campus life, the Yard, was mostly filled with Harris campaign staff, media and members of the public.

Harris appeared about 25 minutes after her scheduled time and opened with a message on unity, building community and coalitions. “My heart is full today,” Harris said. “Full of heart for my country, and full of resolve.

“Hear me when I say that the light of America’s promise will always burn bright. As long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”

Harris encouraged young people to acknowledge their power and to believe in the impossible. “At this time, it’s necessary that people not become complacent,” she added, “but to commit to organizing and mobilizing.” Harris encouraged her supporters to embrace “the light of optimism” and of service.

“Hear me when I say that the light of America’s promise will always burn bright. As long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”

Harris’s supporters expressed shock, grief and disillusionment as they reflected upon the harrowing hours since the election was called for Republican candidate, Donald Trump. Instead of feeling galvanized to build resistance movements, voters said that they needed time to rest and reset before thinking of next steps after the election.

“It revealed to me the heart of us as a nation,” 47-year-old Janeen Davis, a county government employee said. “It’s taking my pride away. Being an Indigenous person, it hits me hard. Our democracy is built upon our Indigenous ancestors … and so much has been torn from the Indigenous community, and so now that that’s at stake, it’s like there’s nothing left.” Davis said that she was in fear of political violence from Trump supporters if his opponents resist his presidency now. “My personal opinion is because of how the transition happened last election,” Davis said. “The best thing that we can do is be still right now.”

Patricia McDougall, a 63-year-old staff member at Howard University, said that she felt sad. She believed that, had she won, Harris would have supported immigrants and helped fight for women’s reproductive rights. “As an immigrant myself [from Belize], I feel bad about the people who are going to be left behind,” McDougall said. “I thought that she was going to move the needle and help people.”

As an ambassador for the United Nations, McDougall expressed anxiety about Trump’s foreign policy moves in the future, adding that his “mouth destroys him.

“We are all on edge to see what he’s going to do and how he’s going to do.”

Davis was similarly concerned that Trump’s presidency may spell disaster for foreign relations. Since exit polls revealed how divided the electorate is, Davis warned: “A divided nation can’t stand, so it’s going to make us more susceptible to outside threats.”

Despite her defeat, voters said that they were proud of Harris and her campaign team for what they accomplished in the months since inheriting Joe Biden’s campaign after he dropped out of the race during the summer. Nadia Brown, a political science professor at Georgetown University and a fellow Howard University alumna, had watched the election results pour in from the campus on election night. Returning to the scene after Harris’s crushing defeat was sobering, but she was in a place of acceptance and didn’t feel sadness.

For Brown, she said that the election results posed “larger questions to ask around what the Democratic party needs to do to maintain the core voting bloc”. She observed that the concerns of young people and progressives who opposed Israel’s war on Gaza where more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since last October were not taken seriously. Brown also called into question the Democratic party’s strategy, saying: “The base was not shored up before moving to swing voters, which were the Republicans who were never Trumpers.”

Looking toward the future, Brown said that the Democratic party must reconsider its outreach strategy. “Black women in particular did a great job. I have no regrets or hard feelings about the way that Black women showed up,” she said. “But now it’s how [does the party] reach some of the other folks.”

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Democrats across the country were left in disbelief and searching for answers as they confronted the reality of another Donald Trump presidency.

Trump’s victory was announced early on Wednesday morning, marking a significant political comeback that has sent shockwaves around the world.

As Kamala Harris’s chances of winning dwindled, the vice-president decided not to address her supporters gathered at Howard University in Washington DC on Tuesday night, instead scheduling an address for 4pm ET on Wednesday.

In the meantime, Democratic operatives and strategists and others filled the void, expressing their disappointment and already beginning to pick apart what went wrong for Harris and the Democratic party.

The Democratic pollster Paul Maslin argued that Harris did as well as she could have, given the environment and circumstance. Harris “did a really good job”, Maslin told Politico, but ultimately “this race was unwinnable”.

“Trump, rightly or wrongly, his persona and his fundamental attack line against the condition of the country, the Biden-Harris administration and frankly the Democratic party, was in the end unbeatable,” he said.

CNN’s national political correspondent Alex Thompson noted that a former adviser to Joe Biden criticized the Harris campaign, asking: “How do you spend $1bn and not win?”

Others, Thompson said, have suggested that Biden should have exited the race sooner.

He said one longtime Democratic operative told him the party “sleepwalked into disaster” on Tuesday night, adding that “swapping the pitcher in at the sixth inning wasn’t enough, and that Kamala Harris did as good of a job as she could have done”.

Mark Longabaugh, a veteran Democratic strategist who previously advised Senator Bernie Sanders, also said Harris was handed the reins “too late”, adding that it was a “tough environment” according to Politico.

The moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, Kristen Welker, also mentioned the potential impact of the timing of Biden’s decision to step down after the presidential debate and not before.

“There was so much discussion, even over the summer, about potentially having an open primary and having that fight play out within the Democratic party,” Welker said. “So I think it’s one of the big questions moving forward.”

Others, such as Lindy Li, a senior Democratic official in Pennsylvania, are questioning whether the outcome would have been different if Harris had chosen a different vice-presidential candidate, such as the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro.

Li argued to Fox News that the moderate Shapiro would have conveyed to American voters that Harris is not the “San Francisco liberal” Trump portrayed her to be. “But she went with someone actually to her left,” Li said, referring to the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, whom Harris chose as her vice-presidential pick.

Li also criticized the Harris campaign for not distinguishing Harris enough from Biden, a point that has been echoed by other operatives and commentators in the last few weeks.

Some pointed to Harris’s appearance on the talkshow The View, when she was asked if there was anything she would have done differently than Biden and responded: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

Those comments were quickly seized upon by the Trump campaign and Republicans, who used it as an opportunity to try to tie Harris to Biden’s unpopularity and blame her for the administration’s challenges related to immigration, inflation and more.

On MSNBC on Tuesday night, the commentator Joy Reid expressed disappointment at white women in North Carolina for not coming out to vote for Harris and contributing to the Democrat’s loss in the swing state.

“In the end, they didn’t make their numbers, we have to be blunt about why,” Reid said. “Black voters came through for Harris, white women voters did not. That is what appears happened.”

In the run-up to election day, Van Jones, a CNN contributor and former Barack Obama adviser, had criticized the celebrity appearances at the Harris campaign’s rallies, arguing that they were not the best use of supporters’ time.

“I don’t think people understand, working people sometimes have to choose: am I going to go to the big, cool concert and pay for babysitting for that, or am I going to figure out a way to get to the polls?” Jones said. “I don’t like these big star-studded events.

“I don’t want people going to concerts. I want people out there knocking on doors, I want people out there fighting for this thing,” he added. “I’m just nervous, nervous, nervous.”

David Sirota, who was a senior adviser for Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, described Tuesday night as a “very bad night”.

“Some of us spent years warning Dems to take working-class politics more seriously & to not tout neocons,” he said. “We did so in hopes of avoiding this & yet we were vilified as traitors by Dem elites & liberal pundits.

“There’s a lesson here.”

Another former Sanders staffer, Jeff Weaver, told Politico that the Democratic party now needed to “re-establish its relationship with the working-class people”.

As of Wednesday morning most Democratic lawmakers remained silent about the election outcome, perhaps waiting until Harris addresses the nation, which she is expected to do on Wednesday afternoon.

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Ursula von der Leyen’s decision to miss the Cop29 climate summit is “a fatal signal” and raises questions about Europe’s commitment to the climate crisis, observers have said.

The European Commission confirmed on Tuesday that its president would not attend the UN climate talks in Baku, which start on Monday. “The commission is in a transition phase and the president will therefore focus on her institutional duties,” a spokesperson said.

Also skipping the “world leaders’ climate action summit” on Tuesday and Wednesday are France’s Emmanuel Macron and the outgoing US president, Joe Biden. The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, cancelled his participation due to a head injury, Reuters reported. The leaders of China, South Africa, Japan and Australia are expected to miss the talks as well.

Mohammed Chahim, a Dutch socialist and the vice-chair of the European parliament’s delegation to the Baku talks, described von der Leyen’s absence as “regrettable”, but said it did not imply a lack of EU commitment.

He said: “The climate crisis does not wait for ideal conditions to act, and neither can we. After the re-election of [Donald] Trump, the EU must now take a stronger leadership role, both to sustain momentum and to counterbalance the US stance.”

Michael Bloss, a German Green MEP, also in the delegation, said it was “a fatal signal” that Europe’s most powerful woman, along with other leaders, had chosen not to attend.

Referring to Azerbaijan’s strongman president, Ilham Aliyev, Bloss said: “By leaving the stage to autocrats like Aliyev, we risk turning the conference more and more into a greenwashing spectacle for self-promotion rather than genuine climate action.”

Von der Leyen is preparing for her second term in office, expected to begin on 1 December after European parliament hearings with her top team conclude.

The commission will be represented at Cop29 by its climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, and the energy commissioner, Kadri Simson, and a team of negotiators.

WWF said von der Leyen’s non-attendance was disappointing. Shirley Matheson, a climate specialist at the charity, said her absence, along with other world leaders, raised “serious questions” about European and international commitment to fighting the climate crisis. “We cannot afford for climate action to move down on Europe’s agenda,” she added.

Von der Leyen has attended every high-level Cop meeting since she became commission president in 2019. In her successful pitch for re-election by MEPs, she highlighted the importance of Europe’s role in international climate talks: “I want Europe to remain a leader in international climate negotiations.”

The head of the UN environment programme said last month that “huge cuts” in carbon emissions were needed to steer the world off a path of catastrophic temperature rise, in a report urging countries to act at the climate summit in Baku.

Sven Harmeling, head of climate at the Climate Action Network Europe, said he did not see von der Leyen’s non-attendance as “not showing interest”, but added it was important she ensured the EU “is able to speak up and convey its ambition for climate leadership”.

“Stronger EU participation is always important to signal leadership, but for me it really comes down to how they use diplomatic channels,” he said, highlighting the bloc’s role at the G20 summit in Brazil on 18-19 November, where leaders of the world’s largest economies will discuss financing the climate transition.

On Wednesday, the commission said: “Our leadership is demonstrated by our consistent actions domestically and internationally. We are always a leading voice for ambition at Cops and that will not change this year.”

Celebrities have shared their disappointment and anger over Donald Trump’s re-election as president.

The Republican’s Tuesday victory over opponent Kamala Harris sent shock waves throughout Hollywood after the Democratic candidate ran a campaign filled with A-list names including Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Bruce Springsteen and Julia Roberts.

The Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay expressed frustration with how the past year has been handled by the Democratic party. “Who would have guessed lying about Biden’s cognitive health for 2 yrs, refusing to do an open convention for a new nominee, never mentioning public healthcare & embracing fracking, the Cheneys & a yr long slaughter of children in Gaza wouldn’t be a winning strategy?” he wrote. He later added: “It is time to abandon the Dem Party.”

Rapper Cardi B, who had appeared at a rally for Harris, shared an Instagram video of herself watching the results with the caption: “I hate y’all bad.” When asked if she would appear at Trump’s inauguration during an Instagram live, she said: “I’m sick of you! Burn your fucking hats, motherfucker. I’m really sad. I swear to God I’m really sad.”

In a lengthy Instagram post, Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis wrote that it would be “a return to a more restrictive, some fear draconian time” and that minority groups will now be more afraid. “But what it really means is that we wake up and fight,” she wrote. “Fight for women and our children and their futures and fight against tyranny, one day at a time. One fight at a time. One protest at a time. That’s what it means to be an American.”

Actor John Cusack, who has long been politically outspoken online, wrote: “The fact that the country would choose to destroy itself by voting in a convicted felon rapist and Nazi is a sign of deep nihilism. To put it mildly.”

Christina Applegate, star of Dead to Me and Married … with Children, conveyed her upset over the effect the result will have on women. “My child is sobbing because her rights as a woman may be taken away,” she wrote. “Why? And if you disagree, please unfollow me.”

The Wire actor Wendell Pierce congratulated Harris for running “a great campaign” and warned of what will now happen under Trump. “Elections have consequences,” he wrote. “The Supreme Court will be changed for a generation. I’ll never see a moderate court again in my lifetime.” He also criticised Trump’s “racism, misogyny, xenophobia”.

Author Stephen King shared the following: “There’s a sign you can see in many shops that sell beautiful but fragile items: LOVELY TO LOOK AT, DELIGHTFUL TO HOLD, BUT ONCE YOU BREAK IT, THEN IT’S SOLD. You can say the same about democracy.”

Duncan Jones, director of Moon and son of David Bowie, posted that he was feeling “very Brexity” while expressing pessimism over the millions who voted for Trump. “I think we may have overestimated the goodness in people,” he wrote.

Singer Ethel Cain called the situation “bleak” and had a strongly worded message for Trump voters. “If you voted for Trump, I hope that peace never finds you,” she wrote. “Instead, I hope clarity strikes you someday like a clap of lightning and you have to live the rest of your life with the knowledge and guilt of what you’ve done and who you are as a person.”

The British author Philip Pullman simply wrote: “Goodbye, America. It was nice knowing you.”

Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

We’ve just witnessed an extraordinary, devastating moment in the history of the United States. In 2016, we promised that our coverage of a Donald Trump administration would meet the moment – and I think it did. Throughout those tumultuous four years we never minimised or normalised the threat of Trump’s authoritarianism, and we treated his lies as a genuine danger to democracy, a threat that found its expression on 6 January 2021.

Now, with Trump months away from taking office again – with dramatic implications for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the health of American democracy, reproductive rights, inequality and, perhaps most of all, our collective environmental future – it’s time for us to redouble our efforts to hold the president-elect and those who surround him to account.

It’s going to be an enormous challenge. And we need your help.

Last week, Guardian US media columnist Margaret Sullivan spelled out in black and white the threat to a free press from another Trump presidency.

“Trump,” she wrote, “poses a clear threat to journalists, to news organisations and to press freedom in the US and around the world.” He has, for years, stirred up hatred against reporters, calling them an “enemy of the people” and referred to legitimate journalism as “fake news”.

Kash Patel, a potential Trump pick for FBI director or attorney general, has said, “We’re going to come after people in the media” and Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump presidency, includes plans to make it easier to seize journalists’ emails and phone records.

We will stand up to these threats, but it will take brave, well-funded independent journalism. It will take reporting that can’t be leaned upon by a billionaire owner terrified of retribution from a bully in the White House.

If you can afford to help us in this mission, please consider standing up for a free press and supporting the Guardian today from just £1 or $1.

The work starts now.

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham has sent an ominous message to special counsel Jack Smith as Donald Trump was on the precipice of being announced as the winner of the 2024 election.

Early on Wednesday morning, mere moments before Trump took the stage in West Palm Beach, Florida, to give his victory speech, Graham posted a note on X “to Jack Smith and your team”.

“It is time to look forward to a new chapter in your legal careers as these politically motivated charges against President Trump hit a wall,” Graham wrote.

“The supreme court substantially rejected what you were trying to do, and after tonight, it’s clear the American people are tired of lawfare. Bring these cases to an end. The American people deserve a refund.”

The US attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 to determine whether Trump should face criminal charges stemming from investigations into the former’s president’s alleged mishandling of national security materials and his role in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.

Smith charged Trump last year in Florida over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, and in Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

With the election mere months away, Trump’s legal team tried to stall the proceedings as much as possible.

Their case was aided in July, when the supreme court conferred broad immunity on former presidents and narrowed the scope of the prosecution.

Smith and his team detailed their case against Trump in a 165-page filing that was unsealed in October, in which they argued that Trump should not be entitled to immunity from prosecution. In the filing, federal prosecutors said that Trump “resorted to crimes” in a failed bid to cling to power after losing the 2020 election and that he is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.

The charges filed by Smith and his team were not the only one vexing Trump since leaving office in 2021. When he takes office in January, Trump will be the first convicted criminal to win the White House and gain access to the nuclear codes.

In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush-money payment to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels. Sentencing was originally scheduled on 18 September, but delayed to 26 November after a request from Trump for it to be postponed until after the election. It’s unclear if the date will stand.

Since the unsealing of Smith’s case in October, Trump has spoken publicly about how he would immediately fire Smith if he were re-elected.

In a conversation with the conservative podcast host Hugh Hewitt, who asked whether Trump would pardon himself or fire the special counsel, Trump said: “Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy … I would fire him within two seconds.”

Releases of European beavers, Castor fiber, both controlled and unofficial, mean that this aquatic mammal is now again a part of the British landscape, returning 400 years after being wiped out by human hunting. The public is generally enthusiastic and environmental campaigners say there are gains for many forms of river life as a result. The retention of water in the landscape leads to a reduction in flooding and can protect against droughts.

However, not everyone is so impressed – particularly landowners and foresters, who complain of damage to carefully regulated watercourses and tree felling.

In Germany, where beavers made a comeback decades ago, scientists say biodiversity has been dramatically increased by beavers, but the same divide still exists. Only 25% of the general public found beavers annoying, but 75% of farming and forestry folk said beavers made them angry.

And in Britain, too, beavers are feeling this backlash from some of those that live closest to them and manage their river habitat. Government licences to remove them in England are being granted. Some animals are captured and relocated, while a smaller number are killed.

The German scientists believe that the best way to protect beavers is to educate the landowners and the foresters, so that they realise their gains from their activity are greater than the losses.