Elon Musk addresses former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, using bullet-resistant glass.
In the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump is projected to win the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina, shrinking Kamala Harris' possible paths to victory. CNN has yet to project a winner, and both Trump and Harris each need at least 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Vote counting is still underway in key states, including in the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Meanwhile, Republicans will win control in the Senate, a flip that shifts the balance of power in Washington.
Russia's embassy in the United States has denied accusations of Moscow's interference in the US presidential election after authorities said hoax bomb threats to polling stations appeared to originate in Russia. The FBI confirmed Tuesday that bomb threats to polling locations in several states likely stemmed from Russian email domains. Though the FBI said none of the threats were determined to be credible, they forced the temporary closure of several polling places.
US intelligence last month assessed that Russian operatives were behind a fake video purporting to show someone destroying mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania in late October. The Russian embassy in Washington said the US accusations were "slanderous and baseless." The embassy said it did not receive any evidence in its contacts with US officials or even any requests regarding the story being promoted in the press, and accused US authorities and media of "hysterics" over alleged Russian disinformation related to elections.
Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly denied any electoral interference by Moscow, saying the allegations were "absolutely unfounded." CNN has reported that a spinoff of the Russian "troll factory" that targeted the 2016 US presidential election appeared to be at the heart of a disinformation campaign trying to sway Western and especially US audiences, according to a joint investigation with researchers at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.
Remaining absentee ballots are beginning to be processed and counted in Detroit, with some ballots being brought into the city’s counting center. City election workers had been waiting for a final batch of 4,500 ballots to be delivered. A portion of those ballots are now in the convention center where votes are being counted, while other ballots from that tranche are still undergoing signature verification before they can be tabulated.
Trump praised tech billionaire Elon Musk as a "super genius," speaking to supporters early Wednesday morning. Trump told his supporters that Musk's Starlink satellite service helped save "a lot of lives" during Hurricane Helene, which devastated the southeastern United States in October. Trump then described Musk to the audience as "a character, he's a special guy, he's a super genius. We have to protect our geniuses, we don't have that many of them."
In October, when Trump told reporters he asked for the communications access, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had already announced that 40 Starlink satellite systems were in place, with an additional 140 on the way. Musk's Starlink is a government contractor, and Musk has been a stalwart supporter of Trump.