Election officials are cautiously declaring victory after no reports of major cyber incidents on Election Day.

“After millions of Americans voted, we have no evidence any foreign adversary was capable of preventing Americans from voting or changing vote tallies,” Christopher Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said in a statement Wednesday.

But the long shadow of 2016, when the U.S. fell victim to extensive Russian interference, has those same officials on guard for potential attacks as key battleground states tally up remaining ballots.

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Agencies that have worked to bolster election security over the past years are still on high alert during the vote-counting process, noting that the election is not over even if ballots have already been cast.

“I think while it’s fantastic that yesterday was quiet, that tells you that the work is paying off. But we know the nature of the threats in the cybersecurity landscape don’t go away, and you don’t get to say, ‘Oh, we’re good.’ You see the commitment and the effort and that has to continue,” Election Assistance Commission Chairman Benjamin Hovland, who was nominated by President TrumpDonald John TrumpAides tried to get Trump to stop attacking McCain in hopes of clinching Arizona: report Officials warn delayed vote count could lead to flood of disinformation New Trump campaign lawsuit targets late-arriving Georgia mail ballots MORE, told The Hill on Wednesday.

Election officials at all levels of government have been hyper-focused on the security of the voting process since 2016, when the nation was caught off-guard by a sweeping and sophisticated Russian interference effort that included targeting election infrastructure in all 50 states, with Russian hackers gaining access to voter registration systems in Florida and Illinois.

While there was no evidence that any votes were changed or voters prevented from casting a ballot, the targeted efforts created renewed focus on the cybersecurity of voting infrastructure, along with the improving ties between the federal government and state and local election officials.

In the intervening years, former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson designated elections as critical infrastructure, and Trump signed into law legislation in 2018 creating CISA, now the main agency coordinating with state and local election officials on security issues.

“It’s like night and day,” Edgardo Cortés, who served as the Virginia commissioner of elections four years ago, told The Hill on Wednesday. “In 2016 the level of coordination was almost nonexistent except in the immediate run-up to the election.”

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“The election yesterday went very well, the lead-up to yesterday and yesterday itself went very well, and I think it’s a reflection of the ongoing effort that state and local election officials have put into election security, and the coordination that has developed at all levels of government,” said Cortés, who now works as an adviser to the election security team at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

In advance of Election Day, CISA established a 24/7 operations center to help coordinate with state and local officials, along with social media companies, election machine vendors and other stakeholders.

Hovland, who was in the operations center Tuesday, cited enhanced coordination as a key factor for securing this year’s election, along with cybersecurity enhancements including sensors on infrastructure in all 50 states to sense intrusions.

“On Election Day, we were able to — in a time where we are so conscious about misinformation and disinformation being one of the biggest threats — be able to drill down and see what is happening in a place, get factual information very quickly, and be able to report that out before something snowballs,” Hovland said.

Top officials were cautiously optimistic Wednesday about how things went.

Sen. Mark WarnerMark Robert WarnerOfficials warn delayed vote count could lead to flood of disinformation Warner wins reelection in Virginia Live updates: Democrats fight to take control of the Senate MORE (D-Va.), the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it was clear agencies including Homeland Security, the FBI and the intelligence community had “learned a ton of lessons from 2016.”

“That has included lots of coordination and sharing, including with private industry and social media companies, helping states and localities harden their systems, and focused intel collection to detect threats so they could be countered,” Warner, who was elected to a third term Tuesday, said in an emailed statement.

He cautioned that “we’re almost certain to discover something we missed in the coming weeks, but at the moment it looks like these preparations were fairly effective in defending our infrastructure.”

A major election security issue on Capitol Hill over the past four years has focused on how to address election security threats, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when election officials were presented with new challenges and funding woes.

Congress has appropriated more than $800 million for states to enhance election security since 2018, along with an additional $400 million in March to address pandemic-related obstacles.

But Democrats and election experts have argued the $800 million was just a fraction of what’s required to fully address security threats, such as funding permanent cybersecurity professionals in every voting jurisdiction, and updating vulnerable and outdated election equipment.

“Election officials get a tremendous amount of credit on what they did with the limited amount of resources they had,” said David Levine, a former Idaho election official who’s now an elections integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy.

“Having regular, consistent funding that election officials can rely on could be really critical to helping ensure the integrity and security of our elections going forward,” he added.

Threats from foreign interference have not disappeared, and threats to elections will almost certainly continue as votes are tallied, and into future elections.

A senior CISA official told reporters late Tuesday night that the agency was watching for threats including disinformation, the defacement of election websites, distributed denial of service attacks on election systems and increased demand on vote reporting sites taking systems offline.

“The attack surface for disinformation and other foreign interference efforts extends well into the next month or two,” the official said. “There is no spiking the football here. We are acutely focused on the mission at hand. We are aggressively looking for any activity that could interfere with the election, and that is going to be our mission for the foreseeable future.”

With Election Day coming only weeks after Director of National Intelligence John RatcliffeJohn Lee RatcliffeFederal official says voting security remains strong as polls begin to close Hillicon Valley: Officials express confidence in voting security amid early technical glitches | Unidentified robocall told millions to ‘stay home’ ahead of Election Day: report | QAnon’s danger rises with divisive election Unidentified robocall told millions to ‘stay home’ ahead of Election Day: report MORE and other federal officials announced that Russia and Iran had obtained U.S. voter data and were attempting to interfere in the election process, the threats were only underlined. 

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“When you look at what we’ve seen, I don’t anticipate any of those threats going away any time soon, but we’ve seen what we’re doing is working, and we need to keep doing that and keep improving,” Hovland said.

Partisan politics and stalled negotiations over another COVID-19 relief bill are impeding progress toward much needed infrastructure bills, lawmakers said Thursday.

“We’ve got to do more, and the only way to do more is to get politics out of infrastructure once again,” Rep. Rodney DavisRodney Lee DavisGOP Rep. Rodney Davis fends off Democratic challenger in Illinois Democrats projected to retain House majority Live updates: Democrats seek to extend House advantage MORE (R-Ill.) said at The Hill’s “America’s Agenda: Infrastructure” event. “Unfortunately, that’s what killed any long-term infrastructure bill that we could’ve passed to address our crumbling roads and bridges.”

Davis, a four-term lawmaker and the top Republican of the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on highways and transit, said he witnessed “bipartisan cooperation in the past” for legislation like the Highway Reauthorization Act, but months-long pandemic relief negotiations are worsening relations between the two parties are having an effect on issues like infrastructure.

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“We saw the Highway Reauthorization becoming a partisan bill for the first time in my congressional career, and it’s disappointing,” he told The Hill’s Steve Clemons.

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Rep. Sam GravesSamuel (Sam) Bruce GravesLawmakers say infrastructure efforts are falling victim to deepening partisan divide The Hill’s Morning Report – Sponsored by Facebook – Trump, Biden blitz battleground states Hillicon Valley: Big Tech hearing the most partisan yet | Rubio warns about foreign election interference | Trump campaign site briefly hacked MORE (R-Mo.),the ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee who also spoke at the event, expressed a desire to see a standalone bill for the aviation industry.

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“Right now in the middle of this pandemic, we have an aviation crisis going on too, so that has to be a priority,” he said. “We need to get it done and we need to get it done right away. Unfortunately, politics are playing a role in that process, so it’s kind of hung up in these negotiations when it comes to the overall COVID relief.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellSenate control in flux as counting goes forward in key states NC governor says ‘let the process work’ as Tillis declares victory in close Senate race Democrats projected to retain House majority MORE (R-Ky.) has said he does not want infrastructure legislation considered as part of a potential coronavirus relief package.

Del. Eleanor Holmes NortonEleanor Holmes NortonLawmakers say infrastructure efforts are falling victim to deepening partisan divide The Hill’s Morning Report – Sponsored by Facebook – Trump, Biden blitz battleground states Hillicon Valley: Big Tech hearing the most partisan yet | Rubio warns about foreign election interference | Trump campaign site briefly hacked MORE (D-D.C.), who’s head of the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, said infrastructure projects are uniquely suited to aid the economy in the pandemic.

“What would give our economy more of a kick than an infrastructure bill now?” she said. “You can do infrastructure without close quarters, one of the few kinds of work you can do now.”

Norton criticized Republicans who voted against the $1.5 trillion Moving Forward Act, an infrastructure bill that included projects designed to address climate change. The bill also would provide funding for roads and bridges, while requiring states to adhere to carbon emission decreases and other climate mitigation measures in order to receive funding.

“Every Republican in the House voted against our bill,” she said. “They were largely opposed to the environmental sections, yet we are in a time when everyone is focused on climate change and it would be a fundamental error not to begin to take some steps on environmental issues.”

The White House threatened to veto the Moving Forward Act, saying it should eliminate or reduce environmental reviews and arguing it wouldn’t provide enough resources for rural America.

Davis said that the divided behavior of the House is “not good for how our country should govern,” but he predicts that progress on infrastructure bills can be made after the election.

“I’m optimistic that once we get through this whole election, we come back in the lame duck session, that it’s good common sense policies like this that politics will frankly be pushed aside and this will be pushed through.”

The number of COVID-19 cases is increasing in 75 percent of the country as the U.S. approaches a “critical phase” of the pandemic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials said Wednesday.

“Unfortunately we’re seeing a distressing trend here in the United States,” Jay Butler, the CDC’s deputy director for infectious diseases, said at a media briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta.

The U.S. has confirmed more than 8.1 million cases of COVID-19, though the actual number is likely much higher. 

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Experts warned all year the U.S. would likely see a surge in cases in the fall and winter as the cold weather forces people to spend more time indoors.

It appears that surge may be here, with the U.S. confirming nearly 60,000 cases a day, nearing the record high set this summer during the wave in the South. 

“I recognize that we are all getting tired of the impact that COVID-19 has had on our lives. We get tired of wearing masks, but it continues to be as important as it’s ever been, and I would say it’s more important than ever as we move into the fall season,” Butler said, noting that people will likely be gathering over the holidays. 

CDC Director Robert Redfield also attended the briefing and warned that the U.S. is “approaching a critical phase” in the pandemic.

Until a vaccine is available, Americans should continue following public health recommendations, including wearing masks and practicing social distancing, he said.

Butler said he is optimistic there will be one or more COVID-19 vaccines available for distribution by the end of the year but added that the supply likely would be limited. The vaccine would initially be reserved for people at highest risk for serious illness, including the elderly. 

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The public briefing was the first the CDC had held since August. 

Experts have worried about political interference within the CDC by the Trump administration as the agency presents an outlook of the pandemic that is not in line with the president’s rosier predictions. Trump said recently that the U.S. is “rounding the turn” on the pandemic, a statement that is demonstrably false as the U.S. approaches a new high in daily COVID-19 cases. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a Trump appointee, defended the CDC’s response Wednesday, arguing the pandemic is too big and damaging to handle alone. 

“I think some of the people who comment are — not having actually lived in or led in this organization during this type of a crisis — failing to appreciate that,” he said. 

The frustration within the CDC among career officials has grown so high that Butler reportedly told co-workers that he was worried people might die “because of what we were forced to do,” referencing the agency’s watered-down guidance on attending worship services during the pandemic.

Asked about Butler’s comments Wednesday at the briefing, Azar demurred.

“I’m not going to talk about my discussions internally here within CDC,” he said.

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Stocks rallied Tuesday as voters cast their ballots, rising for the second straight day in the face of uncertainty.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with a gain of nearly 555 points Tuesday, rising roughly 2.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite rose 1.9 percent, and the S&P 500 rose 1.8 percent.

The market’s strong Election Day comes after stocks closed with solid gains Monday, shaking off Wall Street’s worst week since March ahead of a potentially tumultuous week. The Dow closed with a gain of 423 points Monday, rising 1.6 percent, while the Nasdaq gained 0.4 percent and the S&P rose 1.2 percent.

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Stocks have skyrocketed in value since President TrumpDonald John Trump Chris Wallace condemns Trump claims that he won the election ‘Squad’ member Rashida Tlaib wins reelection in Michigan Biden campaign blasts Trump victory claim as ‘outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect’ MORE was elected almost exactly four years ago and have largely recovered the losses taken during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump, unlike his predecessors, has tied himself closely to the success of the stock market and claimed without evidence that his election defeat would trigger a crash. While Wall Street traders say the market is likely to steam ahead under either Trump or Democratic nominee Joe BidenJoe Biden Chris Wallace condemns Trump claims that he won the election Biden campaign blasts Trump victory claim as ‘outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect’ Bipartisan lawmakers condemn Trump for declaring victory prematurely MORE, extended uncertainty about the result of the presidential race or violence in its aftermath could rattle investors.

The week ahead also holds a flurry of other potentially market-moving events unrelated to the election.

The Federal Reserve’s policymaking committee will meet Wednesday and Thursday and will be capped off with a press conference with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. New data on weekly jobless claims will be released Thursday, the October jobs report will be released Friday and a slew of major publicly traded companies will be announcing their third-quarter earnings throughout the week.

–Updated at 4:09 p.m.