Election 2024: Trump prepares for second term; Judge halts Jack Smith's election interference case

Several local boards of elections in Maryland received bomb threats this evening, according to a state elections administrator.

“Safety is top concern- but we WILL resume canvassing tomorrow,” official Jared DeMarinis wrote on X after elections buildings were evacuated today. “Cowardly threats whether from abroad or not shall not deter us. You have failed. Our democracy is strong, our staff is strong, our mission will be accomplished. Every vote counts, count every vote.”

Gov. Wes Moore said his office is "closely working with state and local officials" on the bomb threats.

"It is imperative that we continue to provide a safe space for those overseeing our election processes as we finish counting every ballot," he added in a thread on X. "Threats like this have no place in our state or in our democracy, and we will work to hold those involved accountable.

Democrat Jacky Rosen wins re-election to the U.S. Senate in Nevada, NBC News projects.

With her victory, Rosen defeated Republican Sam Brown and held on to an important seat for her party. While NBC News has projected Republicans will hold the majority in the upper chamber, the number of races left to be called leaves the size of their majority unclear.

Although the margins are often close, Republicans haven’t won a Senate race in Nevada since 2012.

See the latest results here.

In an article in the Harvard Crimson today, Pratyush Mallick, the student president of the university's Institute of Politics, called on the IOP to abandon its nonpartisan principles in the wake of Trump's victory.

"When democracy itself is under attack, nonpartisanship is not the hill to die on. And it certainly should not be used as an excuse to platform election deniers and those who seek to dismantle our democracy. People and rhetoric that enable violent, authoritarian, and oppressive governance have no place at an institute for civil political disagreement like the IOP," Mallick wrote.

"My time in IOP leadership has been defined by a desire to navigate a space where both major political parties can find common ground. Nonpartisanship should not suppose moral equivalence between those upholding democratic norms and those actively tearing them down," he added.

Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez wins re-election to the U.S. House in Washington's 3rd congressional district, NBC News projects.

A centrist who occasionally bucks with her party to side with Republicans, Gluesenkamp Perez defeated Republican Joe Kent in a closely-watched rematch after she narrowly beat Kent during midterms two years ago, obtaining 50.1% of the vote to his 49.3%.

See the latest results here.

Tech mogul Elon Musk briefly joined Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Musk, who campaigned for Trump in the final weeks of the 2024 race, was not scheduled to be on the call but walked into the room and greeted Zelenskyy, according to the source. He was not part of a substantive conversation between the two leaders, the person said.

Read the full story here.

Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty issued an order today in a court case about the Biden administration’s contact with social media companies requesting the removal of certain content, seemingly mocking Harris’ now famous line “what can be, unburdened by what has been” in his memo.

In the memo, the Louisiana-based Doughty rules that the plaintiffs of the case, which made its way up the appellate process to the Supreme Court and got remanded back to Doughty’s court, can collect limited jurisdictional discovery following the Supreme Court’s decision, in order to cure weaknesses in their case.

“Charged with this mandate, we now ‘consistent[ly]’ ‘proceed[]’—burdened by what has been,” Doughty wrote in the order.

The judge additionally referenced a looming “regime change,” noting Trump and his allies will soon be in control of the agencies currently listed as defendants in the case.

Vance, rocketing to the nation’s second-highest perch after just two years in elected office as a senator, has publicly offered at least two issues that he would like to take on in his new role.

In an NBC News interview at the start of his campaign, Vance said he’d like to be given “some influence” over border policy — perhaps also meant as a knock on Harris as the campaign tried to fault her for what it characterized as weaknesses in the Biden White House’s immigration policies. 

Vance also said he would also like to take on a leading federal voice on the issue of addiction and substance abuse — a topic the senator has long been vocal about in his public life.

Zijie Li was arrested on a trespassing charge at Mar-a-Lago yesterday, according to the Palm Beach Police Department.

Li, of El Monte, California, had been issued a trespass warning in July for “attempting to enter Mar-a-Lago in an effort to speak with the former President," police said. 

"After being issued the trespass warning, it is documented that Li has come into the town of Palm Beach 4 additional times, driving up to the north check point but not attempting to enter Mar-a-Lago,” police added in the probable cause affidavit.

Walz vowed to protect his state from Trump’s “hateful agenda” while delivering remarks in Eagen, Minnesota, this afternoon. 

“The other side spent a lot of time campaigning and talking about and promising that they would leave things up to the states. Well, I’m willing to take them at their word for that,” said Walz, who was Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate on the Democratic ticket and whose second term as governor ends in 2027.

Read the full story here.

Vance is back on Capitol Hill today, where he is giving his son's Cub Scout group a tour, according to a spokesperson for the vice president-elect.

When he left his office, Vance ignored shouted questions from reporters about the administration transition.

A heightened police presence, including a high-tech robot dog, has been in place at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence since he won the election.

Walz said despite his disappointment in the outcome, he's "never felt more inspired" and "more fired up about what's possible." He also joked saying he's ate a lot of food while on the campaign trail, seemingly jabbing at Vance for his viral donut shop visit.

"I’ve gotten to see whole lot of America over the last three months more than I ever thought I was see. I’ve made many new friends. I’ve learned a lot of new things. I ate way too much local food, but I can order donuts people," he said.

In his address, Walz also reassured his supporters that he fight the Trump agenda and that he will continue to ensure protections for his state, referencing gun safety and reproductive rights as examples.

“The agenda we heard from the other side in this campaign was very different from the one we know is right for our state and our country. We’ve already seen the damage a president can cause when he’s in it for himself, not the American people,” he said.

Independent Sen. Angus King wins re-election in Maine, NBC News projects.

King defeated Democrat David Costello and Republican Demi Kouzounas.

He was elected as Maine’s first independent senator in 2012 and previously served as the state's governor from 1995 until 2003.

See the latest results here.

Republican Jeff Hurd wins the House seat in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District by defeating Democrat Adam Frisch, NBC News projects.

Hurd will occupy the seat currently held by Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who opted to switch to Colorado’s 4th Congressional District. In doing so, Boebert, who won her race this week, avoided a rematch with Frisch, a former Aspen City Council member whom she narrowly defeated in 2022 by just 546 votes.

See the latest results here.

As he addressed a crowd in Minnesota, Walz expressed disappointment in the outcome of the election, saying that "it's hard to lose."

"It’s hard to lose, it’s hard to understand, while so many of our fellow citizens, people that we have fought so long and hard for, wound up choosing the other path," he said. "It’s hard to reckon with what that path looks like over the next four years. So if you’re feeling deflated, discouraged today, I get it."

Ahead of her husband's remarks, Gwen Walz spoke to Minnesotans and expressed her dissappointment in the election results, saying that Harris would have made a "remarkable president."

"I understand how we’re all feeling today, and trust me, I’ve taken on many a battle and fallen short many a time and losing stings, and it’s OK to feel sad and scared and a little surprised," she said.

She urged that she will not give up the fight, saying, "We have no choice but to keep the faith."

The FBI said today that it was aware of another fake video that uses the agency's name to make false claims about "an attempt to poison 20 electors in Texas, Missouri, and Oklahoma with anthrax spores."

"Election integrity is among our highest priorities, and the FBI is working closely with state and local law enforcement partners to respond to election threats and protect our communities as Americans exercise their right to vote," the agency said in a statement. "Attempts to deceive the public with false content about FBI threat assessments and activities aim to undermine our democratic process and erode trust in the electoral system."

The new announcement follows a string of recent election-related videos the FBI said were fake.

Millions of Americans risk losing subsidies next year that help them pay for health insurance following Trump’s election win and Republicans’ victory in the Senate.

The subsidies — which expire at the end of 2025 — came out of the 2021 American Rescue Plan, and increased the amount of assistance available to people who want to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. The American Rescue Plan also broadened the number of people eligible for subsidies, extending them to many in the middle class.  

The looming expiration date means that the incoming Congress and next president will need to decide whether to extend them — something Trump and Republicans have already signaled they don’t support, said Chris Meekins, a health policy research analyst at the investment firm Raymond James.

Read the full story here.

Today, Tim Walz's daughter, Hope Walz, called out people who have been sending hateful messages to her in a post on TikTok, saying she does not want the Trump administration to fail and that it was never supposed to be sides pitted against each other.

"This campaign was so clearly for all Americans. Whether you voted for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump or Jill Stein, or somebody else, or didn’t vote at all, it was always about making the lives of the American people better and making a better world for everyone," she said.

She emphasized that she is glad to be on the Democratic side, but that she doesn't want the new president to fail, saying that "when an administration succeeds, in the eyes of the American people, America succeeds."

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice on Friday charged an Iranian man and two New York residents in murder-for-hire plots targeting then-candidate Donald Trump and others.

Iran’s government directed these actors to “target our citizens, including President-elect Trump, on U.S. soil and abroad,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a news release.

The department said the plot was part of Iran’s efforts to exact revenge for the death of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani during the Trump administration.

Read the full story here.

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., said today that the losses the Democrats experienced from the Latino population is "nothing short of a catastrophe for the party."

“We have to seriously reckon with the results of the election,” and if the failures of the party in this election “is not a wake-up call, then I’m not sure what would be.”

According to NBC News exit polls, Harris finished the race with a narrow majority of Hispanic voters at 53% and Trump finished with 45%. This percentage marked a record high for a Republican presidential nominee.

A Jan. 6 rioter who was the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories suggesting he was a plant who worked with law enforcement was sentenced to eight years in prison yesterday, among the longest prison sentences given in connection with the U.S. Capitol attack.

Zachary Alam, who wore a red “Make America Great Again” hat under a black and tan fur-lined hat on Jan. 6, 2021, was often at the front of the mob during the attack and entered the building through a broken window. Once he was inside, he assaulted officers and smashed windows leading into the House Speaker’s Lobby just before another Trump supporter was shot, prosecutors said. He was convicted of eight felonies and several misdemeanors in September after a jury trial.

At his sentencing hearing in a federal courtroom in Washington, Alam said he believed then in his heart that what he did on Jan. 6 was right, even though he knew it was against the law. Alam said Thursday that he and his fellow rioters fought and cried and bled and died for what was right and that sometimes you needed to break the rules to “do the right thing.” He also said “several good things” came out of Jan. 6, because, in his mind, it exposed the FBI.

Alam, this time wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, once again echoed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

Read the full story here.

Republican Dave McCormick spoke to supporters and claimed victory in the Pennsylvania Senate race against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey. NBC News has not yet projected a winner in the race.

Special counsel Jack Smith has asked the judge in Trump’s election interference criminal trial to hit pause on the process and give him a month to formally request how to move forward — likely the first step in ending the prosecution.

In a filing on Friday, Smith said that “as a result of the election” the prosecution “respectfully requests that the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance.”

The Justice Department has a long-standing policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. The DOJ had begun assessing how to end the cases against Trump after he won the election, sources told NBC News this week.

Trump was indicted in the case in August 2023, but significant delays have kept it from going to trial. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.

Read the full story here.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is backing Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in the race for Senate majority leader, giving Cornyn his first public endorsement.

"Nobody has done more to win back the majority than he has," Hawley said in a statement. "He tirelessly raised millions of dollars for competitive Senate races, including mine."

Cornyn raised nearly $33 million this election cycle for Republican Senate candidates, a source familiar with his political operation said. 

Punchbowl News first reported the endorsement. Hawley noted Cornyn’s support for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which would reauthorize a program that compensates those exposed to radiation from uranium mining or nuclear bomb testing and is one of the Missouri senator’s top legislative priorities.

The Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick, has filed a lawsuit challenging an estimated 15,000-20,000 provisional ballots in Philadelphia.

McCormick's campaign asked a judge to allow them to challenge provisional ballots that may have defects, such as those lacking signatures, or ballots that were submitted by voters who previously submitted defective absentee ballots, such as those without signatures or so-called secrecy envelopes.

McCormick spokesperson Elizabeth Gregory noted to NBC News that The Associated Press called the race for him yesterday and said McCormick "is honored to have earned the support of Pennsylvanians all over the commonwealth, and looks forward to serving them in the United States Senate."

NBC News has labeled the race too close to call, with McCormick taking 49% of the vote to Sen. Bob Casey's 48.5%, and 98% of the ballots counted.

Casey spokesperson Maddy McDaniel said in a statement that the number of provisional ballots expected from Philadelphia and its suburbs, which she said favor the Democratic senator, show the race is too tight to be called.

"With more than 100,000 ballots still left to count, we will continue to make sure Pennsylvanians’ voices are heard," she said.

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., officially announced today that he will run for chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Hill committee that works to elect Republicans to the Senate.

As of now, Scott is running unopposed.

“Two years of a Republican agenda is good, but four years of success under Donald J. Trump is even better,” Scott said in a news release. “That means the entire four years of his presidency will create low inflation, secure borders, and safe streets leading to a generation of American prosperity! With Donald J. Trump in the White House and Republicans leading the U.S. Senate, we will protect our majority in 2026 and create opportunities for all Americans.”

In the statement, Scott also noted that he’s been endorsed by outgoing NRSC Chair Steve Daines, R-Mont.; GOP Conference Chair John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

At the end of his first term in office, Trump sought to install Kash Patel, a hard-line MAGA loyalist, as deputy CIA director. But the head of the agency at the time, Gina Haspel, a career intelligence officer, threatened to resign in protest, and the appointment was scuttled.

Now, four years later, Patel is considered a possible pick for CIA director or another high-level national security post in a second Trump administration. And there likely will be no one to stand in his way this time.

Patel is one of several fiercely loyal political allies Trump is considering to oversee the country’s national security. In his first term, Trump frequently clashed with his deputies and top officials, whom he came to view as insufficiently loyal to his agenda. 

Read the full story here.

Wall Street dealmakers and corporate leaders expect the floodgates to open on merger and acquisition activity after Trump takes office in January.

And he’ll likely have congressional help. Trump defeated Democratic candidate Harris, and Republicans claimed a majority of the Senate in elections this week. That red wave is expected to spell loosening regulations on deal-making, with plenty of pent-up demand.

“We know kind of where the world is headed in a Trump environment because we’ve seen it before,” Jeffrey Solomon, president of TD Cowen, said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday. “I think the regulatory environment will be much more conducive to economic growth. There will be lighter and targeted regulation.”

Read the full story here.

As Trump begins to build out his administration, Biden addressed the nation for the first time since the election where he aimed for unity after a grueling campaign for Harris. NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports for "TODAY."

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced the appointment of Yechiel Leiter as the new ambassador to the United States.

Leiter was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and is a historian of philosophy, rabbi and former chief of staff to Netanyahu when he served as finance minister.

Leiter replaces Ambassador Mike Herzog, a retired general and brother of Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Leiter's son, Maj. Moshe Yedidya Leiter, died while fighting in Gaza last November.

The Biden administration is making plans for a possible surge in border crossings ahead of a Trump presidency, according to two U.S. officials and exchanges between immigrants on WhatsApp groups. NBC News’ Julia Ainsley has more on the potential increase at the border.

The Philippine ambassador to the U.S. urged Filipinos who are in the country illegally to leave voluntarily to avoid deportation after Trump takes office.

“My advice is for them not to wait to be deported,” the ambassador, Jose Manuel Romualdez, told reporters. “Because I can see that the administration of President Trump is really going to be very strict with the immigration policy that he intends to put in place.”

LONDON — Few have expressed glee at Trump’s election win like Europe’s far right.

In the president-elect, these ascendant insurgents across the pond see a key ally, someone who shares their mix of authoritarianism, populism and extreme hostility to immigration.

“We have big plans for the future!” posted Hungary’s Prime Minister Vikor Orbán, an influential Trump friend and ally, calling it “a much needed victory for the World!”

Asked what these “plans” were, András László, a lawmaker in Orbán’s Fidesz party, told NBC News yesterday that his leader had left it “deliberately vague.” It would broadly involve a “continuation” of their first-term partnership, he said, “to help persecuted Christians around the world, and to promote policies and solutions to stop illegal immigration.”

Read the full story here.

Black men had been perceived as a voting bloc ripe for Trump to attract after many expressed concerns a year ago about Biden’s re-election efforts. An NBC News poll at that time showed that at least 20% of Black men would support Trump — an alarming number for Democrats.

Harris took over from Biden, who stepped aside under pressure in July. In the end, however, the poll from November 2023 held true: 78% of Black men selected Harris in Tuesday’s presidential election, according to the NBC News National Exit Poll. That figure was below Biden’s 2020 mark of 80%. 

For one Black pollster, the reasons behind Harris’s performance is not complicated. Alvin Tillery, a professor of political science at Northwestern University and founder of the super PAC Alliance For Black Equity, said the Harris campaign used failed strategies to engage Black men, “even after all the talk about how critical it was to get their vote.”

“It was political malpractice,” Tillery said.

Read the full story here.

Trump has carried Nevada over Harris in the presidential race, NBC News projects.

Trump lost the state’s six electoral votes in both of his previous runs for the White House. But those defeats against Hillary Clinton and Biden were both by less than 2.5 percentage points, and Trump and the Republican Party have made significant strides with Latino voters and other voting blocs key to the state since then.

While Nevada elected a Republican governor in 2022 — Trump-endorsed Joe Lombardo — Democrats managed to hold on in other close races up and down the ballot, a recurring theme in recent years. But Trump’s victory is a breakthrough for the GOP in a state that Democrats have mostly dominated of late. Republicans hadn’t won the presidential contest there since 2004.

Trump made Las Vegas a frequent stop on the campaign trail, repeatedly promoting his “no tax on tips” pledge, in a state where a significant number of residents work for tipped wages in the entertainment and hospitality industries. Trump announced the proposal at a Las Vegas campaign rally in June.

Read the full story here.

With the glaring exception of the presidential race, North Carolina Democrats had a good 2024 election.

While Harris lost to Trump in the battleground state by more than 3 percentage points, Democrats won nearly every other statewide race that was on the ballot Tuesday.

Read the full story here.

Republicans are gearing up to lock in their remake of the judiciary under Trump and a new Senate majority, including potentially installing several more conservative Supreme Court justices.

Having already picked three Supreme Court justices in his first term — who were critical in overturning abortion rights — Trump will have appointed a majority of the court if he lands two more.

Read the full story here.