The Times of Israel is liveblogging Wednesday’s events as they unfold.
Campaign aides on both sides sanguine as first votes counted
Senior Donald Trump and Kamala Harris advisers are both projecting confidence as polls begin to close in the US.
“He feels great,” aide Corey Lewandowski says of Trump, speaking at the former president’s watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida. “We are ready, when the election is called, to begin the transition to put this country back on track.”
Trump’s campaign sees its easiest path to the nomination running through Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
“Donald Trump has momentum,” he argues.
Earlier, senior Harris campaign adviser Stephanie Cutter told MSNBC that the vice president was better at staying on message in the closing weeks of the race
“I’m not going to make any predictions,” Cutter said. “But I do think that we finished very strong. And if you were making your decision in the last couple weeks of this campaign, I think, you know, by significant margins, people were deciding for Vice President Harris.”
Trump wins West Virginia, leads in Florida, but battlegrounds still tight
Republican candidate Donald Trump is projected to win West Virginia as voting ends there, bringing his electoral vote count to 23.
The state also votes Republican Jim Justice to the Senate, replacing moderate Democrat Joe Manchin.
In the battleground state of North Carolina, the presidential race is still too close to call, but Democrat Josh Stein is projected by Fox News to win the race for the governor seat, beating out controversial Trump-backed Republican candidate Mark Robinson.
Tallies in Florida give Trump a sizable lead over Democrat Kamala Harris.
He also has the edge in Georgia and South Carolina, where vote-counting is at much earlier stages, while Harris leads in Virginia.
Iraqi group claims fresh drone attacks on Israel
An Iran-backed militia in Iraq claims to have fired drones at Israel in a pair of statements.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq says it fired drones at an unspecified site in “the southern occupied territories,” apparently referring to Israel’s south.
The group also says it attacked a “vital target” in Haifa.
Earlier, the Israeli military said it downed two drones fired from Iraq, including one that entered Israeli airspace in the Arava Desert, close to Ramon Airport.
The second drone was shot down before entering Israeli airspace, the military said.
Those attacks were also claimed by the Iraqi group.
There are no reports of drone attacks in Israel since then and no sirens have been activated.
First projections give Trump Kentucky and Indiana; Harris takes Vermont
The first statewide polls in the US have closed, with Republican candidate Donald Trump projected to win Kentucky and Indiana, and Democrat Kamala Harris snagging Vermont.
The projections give Trump 19 electoral votes to Harris’s three.
Voting tallies are still too close to call in the key states of Georgia, Florida as well as in Virginia and Florida, where some polls have closed.
In Vermont, Senator Bernie Sanders is projected to retain his seat.
Polls are set to close in North Carolina in 25 minutes.
Pro-Netanyahu channel says protests ‘failed,’ noting low turnout
A news station seen as heavily supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says protesters “failed emphatically” to repeat the 2023 demonstrations that forced the premier to walk back his first attempted firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, noting the significantly smaller turnout.
“Hundreds, maybe thousands of protesters indeed went out into the streets, after millions of cell phones got text messages calling on them to take to the streets,” Channel 14 says in its coverage of the protests. “There were a few protests in various places, the largest among them on the Ayalon [highway] in Tel Aviv.”
Indeed, the number of protesters to show out appears to have paled in comparison to March 2023, though there are no crowd numbers from organizers or officials.
On the Ayalon, all protesters have now been removed from both sides of the Tel Aviv highway, according to media reports, though detritus from the rallies, including bonfires set by demonstrators, is still being cleared before traffic can resume.
First polls close, hours extended in some states
Polls in a few Indiana districts across the state and polls on the eastern side of Kentucky are the first to close in the nation.
The first large poll closing comes at 7 p.m. Eastern US time (2 a.m. in Israel). That closure includes most of Florida, all of Georgia and Virginia, among others, though some polls in Georgia will stay open for up to 45 extra minutes due to bomb threats that shut down ballot boxes and other issues.
Some areas of the key swing state of Pennsylvania, where polls are set to close at 8 p.m., will remain open for up to two hours due to delays.
In Kentucky, a judge has declined to grant a two-hour extension of voting hours in Kentucky’s most populous county after problems with electronic poll books led to delays at some precincts.
Election officials in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, said delays involved loading poll books to include the 113,000 early voters who cast ballots before Election Day.
Despite the scattered delays, no major issues have been reported in the nationwide election.
Shifting tone, US official says Gallant firing ‘concerning,’ questions PM’s motives
After initially avoiding criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Biden administration shifts to questioning the premier’s motives.
“We have real questions about the reasons for Gallant’s firing and about what is driving the decision,” a US official tells The Times of Israel.
Critics in Israel accuse Netanyahu of firing Gallant for narrow political considerations related to coalition politicking rather than putting the nation’s security first. Netanyahu claims Gallant was insubordinate.
Three hours ago, a White House National Security Council spokesperson sufficed with a statement hailing Gallant and pledging to work with his successor.
But the US official speaking to The Times of Israel now is less diplomatic.
“The surprising decision to fire Defense Minister Gallant is concerning, especially in the middle of two wars and as Israel prepares to defend against a potential attack from Iran,” the official says.
Over the past year, Biden officials speaking to The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity have shared their belief that some of Netanyahu’s key decisions relating to the prosecution of the war against Hamas have been motivated by his reliance on the support of far-right coalition partners in order to remain in power.
Cops use ‘skunk’ water to clear part of Tel Aviv highway, drag protesters away
Police have used high-powered streams of foul-smelling “skunk” water to disperse protesters on the southbound side of the Ayalon highway.
According to the Ynet news site, relatives of hostage Matan Zangauker are among those blasted with the water.
In the other direction, mounted officers encircle several dozen protesters remaining on the road, dragging them onto waiting buses one by one in front of a large media scrum. Earlier, a water cannon was used to put out bonfires on the road, but was not aimed at the protesters.
Protesters yell “Where were you in Beit Lid?” at the police, referring to the lack of arrests at a military court stormed by a right-wing mob in July, after reservists were taken there on suspicion of sodomizing a Palestinian inmate.
Police have yet to announce any arrests in Tel Aviv.
The protests in Tel Aviv and elsewhere appear to have been smaller than those that erupted when Gallant was fired in March 2023, but still far exceeded crowd size limits set by the Homefront Command due to the threat of rocket fire.