The Breaker Times

As of 1:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, federal cybersecurity officials have not identified any major national-level disruptions affecting the security of U.S. election infrastructure, Cait Conley, senior advisor to the director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters in a briefing.

“As of now, as expected, we are seeing the routine types of Election Day disruptions and localized pockets across the country,” Conley said.

Conley encouraged Americans to seek out their state and local election officials for accurate updates about their individual communities.

— Ashley Capoot

Charlie Kirk, a staunch Trump supporter and founder of pro-Trump activist group Turning Point Action, wrote in a post on X that voter turnout has been disappointing, in an apparent effort to rally followers to vote.

“Turnout is mixed and not where we want it to be,” Kirk wrote. “We need more people to vote. We can’t let turnout flatline. Text everyone you know. Make more noise. We need more.”

— Ece Yildirim

The 2024 election cycle is officially the most expensive of all time, according to data firm AdImpact, which tracked nearly $10.9 billion in total political ad spending.

The cycle exceeds the previous benchmark set in 2020, when election ad spending totaled about $8.5 billion.

A massive chunk of this cycle’s spending — $2.2 billion — came in the last two weeks alone, AdImpact found. The top ad spender in that time was the Democratic-aligned Future Forward PAC, which burned through more than $170 million, and the top market was Philadelphia, where more than $106 million was spent.

As in 2020 and 2016, Democrats have outspent Republicans on the presidential election. But unlike those races, Florida was not the top ad spending recipient in the final 60 days of the 2024 cycle.

In fact, it dropped off a cliff: The Sunshine State saw less than $1 million in ad spending in the past two months. That’s as strong an indicator as any of how competitive the parties see the state, which went to Trump in the past two cycles and has seen a recent surge in GOP voter registration.

Trump’s proposed 10% to 20% tariffs on all imports and 60% to 100% on imports from China would cost American consumers $78 billion in annual spending power, according to National Retail Federation CEO Matt Shay, who appeared Tuesday on CNBC’s “Money Movers.”

“We know that foreign countries, our trading partners, would retaliate, and that would drive further negative impact on inflation,” Shay said, calling a potential second Trump administration “very challenging for the American economy.”

“Ultimately, tariffs are taxes on American consumers,” Shay said.

— Ece Yildirim

A second Trump administration is more likely to bring volatility to the oil market, according to Goldman Sachs.

Trump could tighten sanctions on Iran, reducing supply from the Islamic Republic and putting upward pressure on prices in the short term, the investment bank told clients in a Monday note.

Over the medium term, however, a second Trump administration could heighten trade tensions through tariffs, putting downward pressure on global oil demand and prices, according to Goldman.

“Conceptually, the impact of a potential second Trump term on oil prices is ambiguous,” Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby, vice president of commodity research at Goldman Sachs, told clients in a note Monday.

Vice President Harris is unlikely to ramp up sanctions against Iran if she wins the election, Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told clients in a note last Thursday.

Several of Trump’s senior advisors have shown strong support for Israel striking Iran’s nuclear and energy facilities, Croft said. Harris would likely focus on winding down the war in the Middle East, she said.

Oil prices are trading about 1% higher today as the U.S. votes.

— Spencer Kimball

President Joe Biden has tried again and again to find a way to deliver on his campaign promise to forgive the student debt of millions of Americans.

Biden’s first plan to do so was squelched by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2023, after the justices ruled that the president did not have the power to wipe away $400 billion in consumer debt without prior authorization from Congress.

Shortly after, the president directed the U.S. Department of Education to start working on a new debt cancellation program, which has become known as Plan B. That policy is already tied up in the courts after a barrage of Republican-led legal challenges similar to the ones waged against Biden’s previous effort.

The Biden administration has been fighting the GOP efforts, and if Vice President Harris wins the presidency, she is expected to continue doing so.

A Trump administration, on the other hand, would likely retract the Education Department’s projects to forgive student debt and no longer defend the lawsuits against it, according to author Mark Kantrowitz, who writes extensively about student financial aid policy.

“If Trump wins, he will abandon the defense of Plan B,” Kantrowitz told CNBC.

— Annie Nova

Trump refused to answer a question about a Florida ballot measure that would roll back the state’s six-week abortion ban.

“Just stop talking about that,” Trump told a reporter after casting his vote in Palm Beach.

Trump dismissed the question while standing next to former first lady Melania Trump, who expressed strong support for abortion rights in her recently released memoir.

Donald Trump said in late August that he would vote against the ballot measure, shortly after signaling that he might vote in favor of it.

— Kevin Breuninger

Elon Musk and his pro-Trump America PAC were supposed to host a virtual town hall at 12 p.m. ET, according to the group’s website, but neither Musk nor the organization have promoted it on Tuesday.

This comes after Musk’s town hall on Monday night faltered due to technical difficulties, first, with a livestream and then with a Spaces session that was initiated then canceled on his social media platform X.

“Instead of a town hall Q&A tonight, I recommend listening to this discussion about the election I had today with Joe Rogan,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Monday.

— Ashley Capoot and Lora Kolodny

Musk, owner of social media platform X and Republican megadonor, posted Tuesday on the platform that “the cavalry has arrived,” in terms of men’s voter turnout.

“Men are voting in record numbers,” Musk wrote. “They now realize everything is at stake.”

In response to Musk’s post, Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller wrote, “Call every guy you know. Tell them to vote and save civilization itself.”

Early voting data and polling has shown a widening gender gap this election, with men leaning to Trump and women breaking for Harris.

— Hayden Field

Rudy Giuliani arrived at the Florida polling station where Trump was voting in a 1980 Mercedes-Benz that he previously was ordered to surrender to two Georgia voters for defaming them, the Financial Times reported.

The Mercedes, which was previously owned by actor Lauren Bacall, was ordered to be forfeit by Giuliani to satisfy a $146 million judgment, along with his Manhattan apartment, a collection of luxury watches and sports memorabilia signed by New York Yankees sluggers Joe DiMaggio and Reggie Jackson.

On Monday, a lawyer for the election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea’ Moss, told Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Liman that Giuliani had emptied the contents of his apartment without notifying the lawyer.

Liman ordered Giuliani, who represented Trump during the 2020 campaign’s aftermath, to court to explain the missing property, which is subject to forfeiture.

Giuliani had falsely accused Freeman and Moss of ballot fraud at a vote-counting location in 2020, saying the mother and daughter passed each other USB flash drives like “vials of heroin or cocaine” as part of a scheme to defraud Trump of an election victory.

— Dan Mangan

An array of Election Day stickers from around the country: (Top row L-R): California, New Hampshire, Virginia; (Middle row L-R): Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Arizona; (Bottom row L-R): Georgia, Washington and Nevada.

Trump is projecting confidence after casting his vote in Palm Beach, Florida.

In remarks to reporters, Trump said he has heard that he and other Republican candidates are “doing very well.”

“The conservative lines, the Republican lines, are pretty long,” said Trump, who was flanked by former first lady Melania Trump.

Wearing a blue suit without a tie and a red “Make America Great Again” hat, Trump added, “It just seems that the conservatives are voting very powerfully.”

“I feel very confident,” he said.

Asked if he has any regrets about the campaign he ran, Trump said, “I can’t think of any.”

— Kevin Breuninger

Former Obama administration economist Jason Furman, now a Harvard Kennedy School professor, is confounded by Trump’s new threat to enact 25% tariffs on Mexico if the country does not impose harsher border restrictions.

“It’s just nuts,” Furman exclaimed on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” adding that the new tariff proposal “would hurt our businesses and our jobs.”

“I don’t get it. There’s no argument for this,” Furman said.

“This isn’t like a master negotiator using the tariff,” Furman said. “This is someone asking American people to pay over and over and over again.”

Furman endorsed Harris in a letter with hundreds of other economists in September.

— Rebecca Picciotto

The New York Times “Needle,” which freaked out Hillary Clinton supporters in 2016, and dismayed Trump supporters in 2020, might not move much even as the votes roll in tonight.

The Needle, a speedometer-like graphic that represents the statistical likelihood of a presidential candidate winning, needs data from computer systems maintained by Times engineers — who are currently on strike.

The Times’ Election Analytics team said, “We will only publish a live version of the Needle if we are confident those systems are stable.”

“If we are not able to stream the Needle’s results live, our journalists plan to run its statistical model periodically, examine its output and publish updates in our live blog about what they see,” the team wrote.

— Dan Mangan

Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered to appear in federal court in New York City on Thursday to explain why personal property of his that two Georgia election workers have been authorized to sell off to satisfy a fraction of a $146 million defamation judgment against him is missing.

The order came on Monday, shortly after a lawyer for the workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea’ Moss, notified Manhattan U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Liman in a jaw-dropping letter that Giuliani and his lawyer “have refused or been unable to answer basic questions about the location of most of the property.”

Giuliani “apparently emptied the contents of” his New York apartment a month ago, without telling the women’s lawyer.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., last year found the former New York mayor and top federal prosecutor liable for defaming the women by falsely accusing them of committing ballot fraud during the 2020 presidential election, when he was Trump’s top election lawyer. A jury later said he should pay them $146 million in damages.

— Dan Mangan

Twenty states, including the District of Columbia, have put National Guard troops on state active-duty or prepare-to-activate orders to provide election support, NBC News reported.

The number, which is likely to grow, translates to about 350 troops across both categories.

The troops are mostly available to provide cyber, law enforcement or general support for the election.

— Kevin Breuninger, Courtney Kube, NBC News, and Mosheh Gains, NBC News

Trump Media & Technology shares popped more than 12% as Americans headed to the polls Tuesday.

It is the latest swing for shares of the company, which operates Truth Social and is majority-owned by Republican nominee Trump. Some investors have seen the stock as a way to bet on the former president’s reelection odds.

Shares of the stock rallied more than 110% in October alone, marking its first positive month since March. The stock has gained another 10% since the start of November.

Vote-scanning machines are down in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, causing some complications for morning voters in a deep red county of the major swing state.

The Pennsylvania State Department said it is “in contact” with the county officials and is working to clear up the technical difficulties.

In the meantime, voters at the affected precincts are casting paper ballots, which are being stored in a secure location to be scanned once the machines are up and running.

In 2020, Trump won Cambria County by roughly 37 points against Joe Biden.

A couple of other instances of technical difficulties have been reported in other states, which have caused some voting delays, but the issues do not appear to be connected.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Florida has led the country in disenfranchising citizens with felony records. But Donald Trump, the only former president ever to be found guilty of criminal charges, should have no trouble casting his ballot in the Sunshine State.

That’s because Trump was convicted in New York.

Under Florida law, an out-of-state felony conviction makes a person ineligible to vote only if they would also be ineligible in the state where they were found guilty.

Trump on May 30 was convicted by a New York jury of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money scheme to pay porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence ahead of the 2016 election.

A New York law passed in 2021 allows for convicted felons to register to vote if they are not incarcerated. It also restores the voting rights of convicted felons upon their release from incarceration.

On Sept. 6, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan ruled that Trump will not be sentenced in the hush money case until Nov. 26 — three weeks after Election Day.

Trump traveled back to Florida on Tuesday, and he is expected to cast his ballot near his Mar-a-Lago home in West Palm Beach.

— Kevin Breuninger

Trump 2024 senior economic advisor Stephen Moore and Former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina joined CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to share their expectations for the presidential race and discuss the candidates’ plans for the economy and businesses.

“This is the closest race I have seen since 2000, and I think anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen tonight is drunk,” Messina said.

Moore said he is “not a big fan” of Trump’s highly contested universal tariffs plan and claimed that while he thinks he would implement “very stiff tariffs on China,” these proposals will be more akin to “negotiating tactics” with other countries.

— Ece Yildirim

As of 9:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday, federal cybersecurity officials have not identified any significant national-level incidents affecting the security of U.S. election infrastructure, Cait Conley, senior advisor to the director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters in a briefing.

“We are tracking instances of extreme weather and other temporary infrastructure disruptions in certain areas of the country, but these are largely expected, routine and planned-for events,” Conley said.

— Ashley Capoot

Many investors worry how the markets may react based on who is elected president on Election Day, but experts at top financial advisory firms tell clients not to make any sudden moves in reaction to uncertainty.

In the long term, markets generally tend to do well, no matter who occupies the Oval Office.

Investment research company Morningstar recently evaluated how the S&P 500 has performed starting Nov. 1 in the past 25 U.S. presidential elections. Forward one-year returns were positive for 10 of the 13 elections where Democrats won, and in nine of the 12 contests where Republicans won, the firm found.

Forward four-year returns were positive for Democrats in 11 out of 12 terms, compared to Republicans who had positive returns in nine out of 12.

“Presidential elections historically have not been nearly as important to markets as most people think,” said Mark Motley, portfolio manager at Foster & Motley in Cincinnati, which is No. 34 on the 2024 CNBC Financial Advisor 100 list.

— Lorie Konish

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, just voted at a polling site in Cincinnati.

Accompanied by his wife, Usha, and his children, Vance cast his ballot at St. Anthony of Padua Maronite Catholic Church.

“I of course voted for Donald Trump and myself. So did my wife,” Vance told reporters after voting.

“I feel good. You never know until you know, but I feel good about this race.”

— Kevin Breuninger

“The stock market’s at an all-time high. We have great economic growth. The unemployment numbers are around 4%, and the economy’s doing quite well after Covid,” SkyBridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci said, making the case for Harris.

The former Trump White House official joined Strive Asset Management’s Vivek Ramaswamy on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to debate Harris’ and Trump’s economic records.

— Josephine Rozzelle

President Joe Biden declared victory in Boeing machinists’ approval of a new labor deal, ending a 53-day strike that halted most aircraft production at a top U.S. exporter and military contractor and dented the last jobs report before Tuesday’s presidential election.

The deal “was achieved with the support of my economic team, including Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard,” Biden said in a statement.

“Over the last four years, we’ve shown collective bargaining works. Good contracts benefit workers, businesses, and consumers—and are key to growing the American economy from the middle out and the bottom up,” he said.

The new Boeing contract for its 33,000 unionized machinists, mostly on the U.S. West Coast, includes 38% raises over four years, a $12,000 signing bonus and a deal with the company that it builds its next aircraft in one of the unionized factories in the Seattle area. Workers go back on the job as early as Wednesday, though the company isn’t out of the woods with several delayed aircraft programs including the late-arriving Boeing 747s that will serve as the next Air Force One airplanes.

— Leslie Josephs

Trump will host an exclusive election night dinner at Mar-a-Lago for club members and his top political donors, a source who received an invitation confirmed to NBC News.

The dinner is scheduled to take place after the Republican presidential nominee casts his vote in person. He then plans to call in to several tele-rallies, a person familiar with the planning told NBC News.

In the late afternoon, Trump will huddle with an inner circle of advisors, friends and donors, another source told NBC News.

When the race results start becoming more clear, the former president then plans to leave the resort and go to the Trump-Vance watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Bernie Marcus, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and a major supporter of Trump’s political career, has died at 95, the company confirmed.

Marcus led the Home Depot for more than two decades, both as its first CEO and as chairman of the board. His net worth at the end of his life topped $11 billion, according to Forbes. The company now boasts more than 2,300 locations and employs more than 500,000 people.

Marcus was an outspoken supporter of Trump and other Republicans. His philanthropic vehicle, the Marcus Foundation, donated $10 million to the pro-Trump Preserve America PAC in the 2020 election. His family foundation gave $7 million to a pair of pro-Trump super PACs in the 2016 election.

In the 2024 cycle, Marcus said he preferred Trump’s Republican primary rival, Nikki Haley.

— Kevin Breuninger

Pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning said he thinks that Pennsylvania and Nevada will be too close to call on Wednesday morning, and that the general public will not know the results of the presidential election until “either late Friday or early Saturday.”

“If Trump loses either [Georgia and North Carolina], it will be a Harris victory. If Trump wins either Pennsylvania or Michigan, it will be a Trump victory,” Luntz said.

Other metrics that Luntz is “watching keenly” are the Latino vote in Nevada and Arizona, whether conservative older women will vote slightly more for Harris than they normally do for a Democratic candidate, younger women who are “more pro-Harris than any Democratic group,” and whether or not today’s polls will see a record-setting turnout, which would be “good news for Trump.”

— Ece Yildirim

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy joined CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning to talk about his expectations for tonight. McCarthy claimed polls are underestimating support for Trump in Wisconsin, and laid out how he thinks Harris is faring in Pennsylvania.

— Ece Yildirim

Harris and Trump tied the midnight race in Dixville Notch, an unincorporated community in a small New Hampshire township where there are six registered voters this year.

Three of those voters went for Harris while the other three went for Trump. The polls opened at midnight and closed at 12:07 a.m. ET.

Since 1960, Dixville Notch voters have followed the tradition of submitting their votes in person in a wooden box just after midnight, before the results are announced minutes later.

Though the Dixville Notch result is not a predictive measure, the tradition has kicked off Election Day events for decades of night owls.

This year, the Harris-Trump tie happens to mirror the dead-heat race that polls have been reporting over the past several months. In 2020, President Joe Biden received all five of the Dixville Notch votes cast before winning the overall race.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group are trading higher this morning as investors make some of their final bets on the former president’s company in his final hours in the race against Harris.

The DJT stock was up roughly 9% at one point before the market opened.

The meme stock tends to fluctuate, but over the course of the election, it has often been viewed as a proxy gauge for Trump’s chances at a second presidential term.

Wall Street analysts listed it as a stock to watch going into Election Day.

Read the full story here

— Fred Imbert and Rebecca Picciotto

Trump closed out his campaign on Monday with four rallies in three swing states: Two in Pennsylvania, plus one each in North Carolina and Michigan.

On Election Day, the only officially announced event is the Trump-Vance watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.

— Kevin Breuninger

More than 77 million Americans have already cast their ballots by mail or in person, according to NBC News’ tally of the early vote.

That’s far less than in 2020, when more than 100 million Americans voted early. But those results came in the middle of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, when many Americans avoided public gatherings and states had greatly expanded absentee and early voting rules.

Trump criticized early voting in 2020 — a stance that may have helped President Joe Biden clinch several key swing states.

While Trump has at times waxed nostalgic about single-day voting in the 2024 cycle, both his campaign and Harris’ have mostly encouraged their supporters to vote as soon as they can.

NBC’s data, provided by TargetSmart, show Democrats slightly leading Republicans in the early vote tally, 41% to 39%.

Among the seven key battleground states, more registered Democrats appear to have voted early in three — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — while registered Republicans lead in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia.

What it all means for the final result is far from clear.

While early vote figures are often viewed as a signal about certain voters’ enthusiasm or expected turnout, it’s hard to predict how many more voters will show up on Tuesday. It is also difficult to know ahead of time whether a party’s early vote share is “cannibalizing” its Election Day turnout.

An NBC analysis found that among early voters in 2024 who did not vote in 2020, Democrats outpace Republicans in Pennsylvania, and female Democrats are the biggest group of new voters in the state.

In Arizona, however, there were more Republican new voters than Democratic ones, and male Republicans led the way.

— Kevin Breuninger

After storming Pennsylvania on Monday, Harris’ Election Day schedule is relatively sparse — at least for now.

The only item on her agenda is an election night watch party at Howard University, her alma mater in Washington, D.C.

The campaign will hold an event at “the Yard,” the main quadrangle on campus.

Walz and his wife, Gwen Walz, are also set to participate in a political event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, NBC News reported.

— Kevin Breuninger