For the overwhelming majority of Black voters, a political nightmare is becoming a reality: Donald Trump secured enough Electoral College votes to win the 2024 presidential election, according to the Associated Press.

With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency.

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, many Black voters were at least hopeful, buoyed by polls showing that Vice President Kamala Harris enjoyed a consistent lead nationally and a narrow advantage in most battleground states.

Harris supporters such as former U.S. Capitol police officer Harry Dunn said that the country couldn’t afford another Trump presidency. Dunn was on duty when Trump acolytes laid siege to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won. 

“People have been on the phones all day, making sure they’re getting out there to vote,” Dunn told Capital B on Election Day. “And making sure that we get her elected, so that we can turn the page on this and get back to some sense of normalcy going forward.”

But when the race was called for Trump early Wednesday morning, it was clear that normalcy might not return anytime soon.

A second Trump administration would likely be friendly to the notorious Heritage Foundation manifesto known as Project 2025, a combination that could be disastrous for Black communities.

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, Trump had been spewing racism and misinformation to his followers, causing D.C. metro-area residents such as Dunn to second-guess leaving the safety of their homes when the polls closed after dusk. Dunn worries about the cruelty that Trump has unleashed. It’s a reality that has pulled into focus the stakes of the contest.

On Wednesday afternoon, Harris addressed a crowd at her alma mater, Howard University, to officially concede the race. To chants of “Kamala” and Beyonce’s Freedom playing in the background, the Vice President told her supporters that “the outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for. But hear me when I say: The light of America’s promise will always burn bright.” 

“Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars,” she added. 

Harris confirmed that the Biden administration would afford the Trump transition team something that his administration did not extend to them in 2020: a peaceful transition. “Anyone who seeks the public’s trust must honor it,” she said. “We must accept the results of this election.”  

“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” she added, noting her campaign’s fight for “freedom, opportunity, fairness, and dignity of all people.”

The following day, President Joe Biden delivered a six-minute speech, his first appearance on camera since Trump’s victory. The president said he spoke with Trump and ensured a “peaceful and orderly transition,” because that’s what the people deserve. 

Biden also set out to assure the American people that the U.S. election system “is honest, it is fair, and it is transparent. And it can be trusted, win or lose.” 

“Setbacks are unavoidable,” he said about his political party’s defeat, “but giving up is unforgivable.”

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Project 2025 seeks to dismantle the civil rights agenda of the past half a century, Omar Wasow, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, told Capital B. 

A Trump White House shaped by it, he continued, could create a political future where it’s not out of the question that Black communities and other vulnerable groups rely on something like a Green Book to help them navigate a hostile country.

“And to be clear, we’re already seeing versions of this,” Wasow said. “If you have a transgender kid, you’re thinking about where you can live. If you’re pregnant, you might be thinking about where you have to travel to get an abortion without getting prosecuted.”

Propelled not by Black voters but by his overwhelmingly-white base, Trump had become even more unhinged, increasingly leaning into vile threats. Over just the past several weeks, he’s said that Harris is “dumb as a rock” and that former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who endorsed Harris, is “a deranged person” who ought to have guns “trained on her face.” 

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“I just think that [this race] is important, not only for the kids’ future, but for women’s also. I think that it’s important for the women’s rights that we’re fighting for,” Shiney Pittman, a New Orleans native, told Capital B on Election Day, referring to the anger that many women feel as Republican leaders turn back the clock on reproductive rights. “I always vote, no matter what’s going on around me — no matter if I live in a Republican state.”

It all came down to the “Blue Wall” states

Awaiting the results on early Wednesday, Black Americans across the country were white-knuckling: There was a laser focus on the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — and specifically on the urban centers of Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee.

But Harris didn’t seem to enjoy the margins in these critical cities that President Joe Biden had in 2020.

That anxiety only compounded what had been a nerve-racking Election Day. Bomb scares briefly interrupted voting at two polling places in Union City, a majority-Black area located right outside of Atlanta.

While the FBI and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that these were just hoaxes, possibly perpetrated by Russian operatives, Black voters were still worried about the simmering threat of political violence.

“I think that it’s impossible to have witnessed the climate leading up to this election and not have concerns about the direction of this country,” Janai Nelson, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told Capital B, noting that the Jan. 6 insurrection continues to loom large in many people’s minds.

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Sekou Franklin, a political scientist at Middle Tennessee State University, echoed some of these thoughts.

He said that he feared that Trump, by repeatedly lying that Democrats had rigged the vote, was whipping into a frenzy white nationalist groups such as the Proud Boys.

“There’s been some signaling that he’s done to these groups, which he also did in 2020,” Franklin told Capital B. “Now, whether or not that’s going to break through and force political violence depends upon a lot of the factors,” he added. “Historically, political violence has been a mainstay of American politics,” he said.

On Election Day, Trump spread lies on social media that there was voter fraud in majority-Black Philadelphia. Additionally, throughout this election cycle, conservative leaders sought to use disinformation as a means to suppress Black voter turnout.

This fraud narrative fueled the “stop the steal” and “stop the count” rhetoric in 2020 and ultimately led to the assault on the Capitol.

Even so, Harris, Democrats, and civil rights organizers worked tirelessly during the campaign to keep voters informed about the state of the election.

There were so many groups countering disinformation, especially Black women groups such as Win With Black Women and Higher Heights, Sharon Austin, a political scientist at the University of Florida, told Capital B. Those groups mounted social media campaigns to help disseminate correct information.

Austin added that these efforts will be just as valuable in the days and weeks ahead, as Trump likely spins a tale.

“We know that that’s what he is — who he is,” Austin said.

Staff writers Adam Mahoney and Aallyah Wright contributed to this report.

This story has been updated.