President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. this week urged a group of civil rights activists to remain quiet about plans to overhaul policing until after two Senate runoff elections in Georgia next month, saying that Republicans would try to distort their position on the issue to win those races.
“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police,” Mr. Biden told the Black representatives of several interest groups, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Intercept. “We’re not. We’re talking about holding them accountable.”
Mr. Biden made the comments as he prepares to travel to Georgia next week to campaign for Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the two Democrats who would give Mr. Biden’s party a slim majority in the Senate if they won the Jan. 5 runoffs.
The remarks came during a sometimes contentious, closed-door session on Tuesday in which the civil right leaders pressed Mr. Biden to pick more Black nominees for his cabinet and for other top White House posts.
On the issue of policing reform — a subject about which many groups had been wary of Mr. Biden given his history of pushing for tough criminal justice laws when he was a senator — the president-elect suggested that the activists tread carefully.
“I also don’t think we should get too far ahead of ourselves on dealing with police reform in that, because they’ve already labeled us as being ‘defund the police,’” he said. “Anything we put forward in terms of the organizational structure to change policing — which I promise you, will occur. Promise you. Just think to yourself and give me advice whether we should do that before Jan. 5.”
An official for Mr. Biden’s transition, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with the president-elect, downplayed the significance of the conversation.
“President-elect Biden is the same person behind closed doors that he is public; honest, direct and realistic about the challenges facing our nation the day he is sworn in,” the official said. “As he made clear throughout the campaign, he believes in supporting bold and urgent reform to our criminal justice system while continuing to support law enforcement’s mission to keep our communities safe.”
Mr. Biden’s warnings on the “defund” slogan echo those of other Democrats, including former President Barack Obama.
On an episode of the Snapchat show “Good Luck America” this month, Mr. Obama said, “If you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it’s not biased and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan, like ‘defund the police’.”
“But, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” he added.
During the meeting Thursday, Mr. Biden also defended his choice of Tom Vilsack, a white man, to run the Department of Agriculture, despite the pressure from several of the civil rights groups to nominate Representative Marcia Fudge of Ohio, who is Black. Mr. Biden nominated Ms. Fudge to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., told Mr. Biden that nominating Mr. Vilsack “could have a disastrous impact on voters in Georgia” because of an incident in which Mr. Vilsack fired a popular Black employee when he served as the department’s secretary during the Obama administration.
Mr. Biden dismissed the concerns and said people would soon hear more about Mr. Vilsack’s record.
In a series of blistering responses to a lawsuit from Texas asking the Supreme Court to overturn President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victories in four key battlegrounds, those states asked the justices to reject what they called an affront to democracy and the rule of law.
“The court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” a brief for Pennsylvania said.
“Let us be clear,” the brief said. “Texas invites this court to overthrow the votes of the American people and choose the next President of the United States. That Faustian invitation must be firmly rejected.”
Briefs from the other three states Texas seeks to sue in the Supreme Court — Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — filed their own rejoinders, comprehensively critiquing Texas’ unusual request to have the Supreme Court act as a trial court in examining supposed election irregularities.
The briefs collectively said Texas was in no position to tell other states how to run their elections, adding that its filing was littered with falsehoods.
“Texas has not suffered harm simply because it dislikes the result of the election,” lawyers for Pennsylvania wrote, “and nothing in the text, history, or structure of the Constitution supports Texas’s view that it can dictate the manner in which four other states run their elections.”
The responses from the four states targeted by the Texas suit came the same day Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, filed his own brief accusing Texas of inconsistency.
The Constitution, Mr. Yost wrote, “means today what it meant a month ago.”
The filing put Mr. Yost at odds with more than a dozen states with Republican attorneys general who have lined up in support of Texas’ suit.
In recent cases, Mr. Yost noted in his brief, red states had argued that state legislatures have the last word in setting election procedures under a clause of the Constitution that says states shall appoint presidential electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” In the new case, Texas has asked the Supreme Court to override such legislative determinations.
Mr. Yost called for consistency. “Precisely because Ohio holds this view about the meaning of the Electors Clause, it cannot support Texas’ plea for relief,” he wrote.
“Texas seeks a ‘remand to the State legislatures to allocate electors in a manner consistent with the Constitution,’” Mr. Yost wrote, quoting from Texas’ filings. “Such an order would violate, not honor, the Electors Clause.”
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday tapped several members of former President Barack Obama’s administration — including Mr. Obama’s chief of staff and national security adviser — to serve in the White House and his cabinet, adding to the ranks of advisers with whom he has longstanding relationships.
Mr. Biden announced that Denis McDonough, who was Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, will be his nominee for the secretary of Veterans Affairs. Susan Rice, who was the national security adviser when Mr. Biden was vice president, will become the director of his Domestic Policy Council, overseeing a large part of the new president’s agenda.
The selections underscore an unmistakable theme that has emerged in the past several weeks: For all the talk that Mr. Biden is abiding by a complicated formula of ethnicity, gender and experience as he builds his administration — and he is — perhaps the most important criteria for landing a cabinet post or a top White House job appears to be having a longstanding relationship with the president-elect himself.
Mr. Biden has worked with the former aide he wants to be secretary of state since their time at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1990s. He knows his choice for Pentagon chief from the retired general’s time in Iraq, where Mr. Biden’s son Beau, a military lawyer, also served on the general’s staff. John Kerry, his climate envoy, is an old Senate buddy.
It is a sharp contrast to President Trump, who assembled a dysfunctional collection of cabinet members he barely knew. After an initial honeymoon, they spent their time constantly at risk of being fired. With nearly half of Mr. Biden’s cabinet and many key White House jobs announced, his administration looks more like a close-knit family.
But there are risks in Mr. Biden’s approach, which departs sharply from Abraham Lincoln’s famous desire for a “team of rivals” in his cabinet who could challenge one another — and the president.
Relying on advisers and cabinet officials steeped in old Washington — and Mr. Biden’s own worldview — lends an air of insularity to his still-forming presidency at a time when many Americans are expecting fresh ideas to confront a world that is very different from the one that the president-elect and his friends got to know when they were younger.
Mr. McDonough is a comfortable choice for Mr. Biden at the scandal-plagued V.A. Mr. McDonough has a background in national security affairs, having served at the White House as the deputy national security adviser before becoming Mr. Obama’s chief of staff. In both roles, he worked closely with Vice President Biden. Politico reported earlier on his selection.
Ms. Rice is well known for coordinating Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, first as ambassador to the United Nations and later as national security adviser, a period when she clashed with the Republican-led Congress over the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Those clashes may have doomed her hopes of being able to be confirmed as secretary of state, a position for which she was considered by Mr. Biden. Her position at the White House Domestic Policy Council does not require Senate confirmation. (Ms. Rice was also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times for three years. Her last column for The Times was published Dec. 1, 2020.)
In a statement announcing her appointment, Mr. Biden’s transition team said that she “knows government inside and out and will carry through the president-elect’s vision of a newly empowered Domestic Policy Council and turbocharge the effort to build back better.”
Staff aides to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, have informed other congressional leaders that it is unlikely that the majority of Republicans could support compromise provisions addressing liability protections and state and local government funding in a $908 billion stimulus deal being hammered out by a bipartisan group of moderates.
Their warning reflected the deep resistance among several Republicans for another large round of federal relief. For months their reluctance has helped to stymie agreement on an economic recovery plan to help struggling businesses and individuals amid the pandemic. Mr. McConnell and Republicans have been particularly resistant to providing billions of dollars to cash-strapped state and local governments, a top Democratic priority that would receive $160 billion under the moderates’ emerging outline.
That package is likely to contain some form of limited liability protection to businesses, schools and hospitals, which most Democrats have dismissed as a nonstarter, but the shield could be temporary and not as sweeping as the one that Mr. McConnell has demanded, which prompted the private skepticism.
The potential Republican antipathy for the compromise that was conveyed by Mr. McConnell’s staff was first reported by Politico, and was relayed on condition of anonymity by a senior Democrat familiar with the conversation. Mr. McConnell’s office declined to comment.
“My view is that the best thing that could happen is the pieces of this that everybody agrees on, take that out — take the funding for state local governments out — and pass the rest of it,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, told reporters, offering a suggestion Democrats have panned.”
The bipartisan group is still struggling to finalize its agreement, let alone produce legislation that could be voted on in the coming days.
With just a handful of days before the end of the 116th Congress and a number of critical programs established in previous coronavirus legislation set to expire, lawmakers agree that both chambers should not leave Washington until they reach consensus on both an omnibus government spending package and a pandemic aid deal.
The Senate is expected to approve a one-week stopgap bill before funding lapses on Friday, intended to buy additional time for negotiators on both issues. But the timing of the vote was unclear as of Thursday afternoon.
Top Democrats have signaled support for the bipartisan discussions, led by a handful of moderate lawmakers in both chambers, as a possible avenue for a final agreement. But in doing so, Democrats also rejected a proposal from Mr. McConnell to remove the provisions related to state and local government and liability protections and focus on approving funding for schools, education and small businesses.
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, presented Ms. Pelosi on Tuesday with a $916 billion alternative, but she and other Democrats rejected it given that it failed to revive lapsed federal supplemental jobless payments. Instead, it would include a round of $600 stimulus checks, half the amount initially approved earlier this year.
Morocco has agreed to begin normalizing relations with Israel, becoming the fourth Arab state this fall to do so, the White House announced on Thursday.
Morocco now follows Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates in agreeing to set aside generations of hostilities toward the Jewish state as part of a campaign to stabilize the Middle East and North Africa — and, in doing so, is cementing a major foreign goal for President Trump as he nears the end of his administration.
“We finally had a breakthrough four months ago, and we’re continuing to push the region forward,” Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, told reporters.
“Now we have peace sprouting in the Middle East,” Mr. Kushner said. “The fruits of these efforts have become very apparent, but we also believe there is a lot more fruit to come.”
Under the agreement, Morocco will restore full diplomatic relations and formalize economic ties with Israel, Mr. Kushner said, as well as allow planes over its air space and direct commercial flights from Tel Aviv.
He said more than one million Israelis are descended from people who originally lived in Morocco.
The White House also announced that the United States would recognize the disputed Western Sahara territory as a sovereign part of Morocco. Last month, the leader of a pro-independence group in Western Sahara declared war on Morocco, shattering a three-decade-long cease-fire and threatening a full-blown military conflict in the disputed desert territory in northwest Africa.
“This will strengthen America’s relationship” with the Moroccan kingdom, Mr. Kushner said.
This could be one of the final diplomatic deals negotiated by the current administration before Jan. 20, when President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes office. And while Mr. Biden has vowed to reverse some of Mr. Trump’s contentious foreign policy moves, he has also indicated that he will continue to uphold the so-called Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and two Arab states, the United Emirates and Bahrain. In August, Mr. Biden praised the deal as a “historic step to bridge the deep divides of the Middle East.”
Former officials have previously suggested that if Arab states like Oman and Saudi Arabia move to normalize ties with Israel, a Biden administration might urge them to insist on Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.
The Trump administration had hoped Saudi Arabia would join the push for normalizing relations with Israel. Mr. Kushner said “that notion was unthinkable” before Mr. Trump took office in 2016.
So far, however, Saudi Arabia has insisted that more progress was needed on peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Democrats have struggled for years to win over voters in rural America, ceding that powerful voting bloc to the populist pitches of Republicans as farm income fell and corporate agriculture conglomerates pushed small family operations aside.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s selection of Tom Vilsack to be Agriculture secretary — a reprisal of his role in the Obama administration — appears unlikely to solve that problem, according to critics of the pick. While the choice of Mr. Vilsack is in keeping with Mr. Biden’s tendency to fill cabinet roles with experienced hands and loyal allies, the selection has been met with disappointment by some farm groups and progressives who hoped to see someone more diverse in the job.
Mr. Vilsack served for eight years as former President Barack Obama’s Agriculture secretary, a time when there was sweeping consolidation in the farm sector. He has faced particular criticism for the fading fortunes of Black farmers, who have long complained of discrimination when it comes to land and credit access.
“While Black farmers had legislative successes during the Obama administration, far too little was done during his tenure to address the long legacy of discrimination against Black farmers,” John Boyd Jr., president and founder of the National Black Farmers Association, said in a statement.
Mr. Vilsack was also at the center of a firestorm during Mr. Obama’s first term. In 2010, he hastily fired Shirley Sherrod, a Black Agriculture department official, after a conservative blogger released a misleading video clip that appeared to show her admitting antipathy toward a white farmer. He later apologized and tried to rehire her.
Many progressive groups had hoped that Mr. Biden would select Representative Marcia Fudge, a Democrat from Ohio, to lead the U.S.D.A. However, Ms. Fudge, who is Black, was tapped to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Some rural groups did praise Mr. Vilsack on Thursday.
Patty Judge, a co-founder of Focus on Rural America, noted that Mr. Vilsack helped promote healthy food in schools and expand biofuels during his previous stint.
“Rural economies can rely on his smarts and even keel to provide a stark contrast to the Trump and Perdue years, and put us on the right path on day one,” said Ms. Judge, who was Iowa’s Agriculture secretary during Mr. Vilsack’s tenure as governor of the state.
Small farmers have expressed concern about Mr. Vilsack’s ties to “Big Agriculture.” During the Obama years, he hired people with ties to Monsanto to work for the department. He also clashed with progressives who believed he was too lenient about labeling for genetically engineered food — earning the derisive nickname “Mr. Monsanto.”
Since leaving office, Mr. Vilsack has been a lobbyist, working as chief executive of the U.S. Dairy Export Council.
Although Mr. Biden flipped several states that President Trump won in 2016, it is questionable whether Mr. Vilsack will help him make inroads outside of the cities and suburbs in farm states.
Joel Greeno, president of Family Farm Defenders in Wisconsin, said he was “extremely disappointed” with the selection of Mr. Vilsack, arguing that he, “believes in corporate Ag and multinational corporations.”
“If team Biden wants to create positive changes, dinosaurs like Vilsack need to go,” Mr. Greeno said.
Attorney General William P. Barr has told others that he plans to remain in his post through the end of the Trump administration, setting aside his deliberations about stepping down by the end of the year, according to a person told of his decision.
Mr. Barr had been weighing whether to leave this month, but President Trump — already angry over Mr. Barr’s refusal to help overturn the election’s results — was said to be irritated with Mr. Barr’s contemplation of an early departure, according to the person.
People close to Mr. Barr previously said that he wanted to step down because he felt that he had accomplished the work he had set out to complete during his tenure, and that his plans were unrelated to Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election outcome. They also said that Mr. Barr was wary of the tensions and problems that can pop up when one administration hands off to the next.
Last week, Mr. Barr broke weeks of public silence in the wake of the election when he acknowledged that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could have changed the result of the election. Mr. Barr’s comments were a striking repudiation of Mr. Trump’s increasingly specious claims of voter fraud and a departure for the attorney general, whose tenure has been marked by a willingness to implement the president’s political agenda at the typically independent Justice Department.
If Mr. Barr were to step down, the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, would be in line to take over as the head of the department.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is facing intensifying pressure from Democratic lawmakers, progressives and tribal leaders to select Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico as interior secretary.
On Thursday, a group of more than 100 female leaders, including Native women, activists and celebrities, released a letter asking Mr. Biden to choose Ms. Haaland, who would be the first Native American cabinet secretary.
“Representative Haaland will be a strong steward of our precious natural resources and will return to the practice of science-based decision-making,” the letter said. “Additionally, she will work to honor the treaties between the federal government and tribal nations.”
The letter — which was organized by the actress Marisa Tomei, the progressive advocacy group We Stand United and Allie Young, a Native American activist with the group Protect the Sacred — is the latest attempt to sway Mr. Biden’s choice for secretary of the interior, which oversees public lands and controls the federal agencies most responsible for the government’s relationship with the nation’s Indigenous people.
Already, more than 50 House Democrats have implored Mr. Biden in a separate letter to select the congresswoman, a Democrat. Tribal leaders and environmental activists have also voiced their support for Ms. Haaland.
More broadly, Ms. Haaland is a favorite for the position among progressive groups, including the Sunrise Movement, which was created by young climate activists and has championed the Green New Deal.
Julia Walsh, the campaign director for We Stand United, said her group helped organize the letter alongside Native women to show that “there is a lot of support for Deb, and it’s not just Indian country.”
“We really think she could be a transformative force in that department,” she said.
In addition to Native American leaders and activists, celebrities including Mandy Moore, Amy Schumer, Rosario Dawson and Cher also signed the letter. The letter will be delivered to the Biden transition team, Ms. Walsh said.
Ms. Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, made history in 2018 when she and Sharice Davids of Kansas became the first two Native American women elected to Congress.
But Ms. Haaland’s relative lack of policy experience has given some Biden advisers pause. Other names that have been floated for the post include Michael L. Connor, who was a deputy interior secretary under the Obama administration and is also Native American, and Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, who is retiring from Congress.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is facing pressure from congressional Democrats to cancel student loan debt on a vast scale, quickly and by executive action, a campaign that will be one of the first tests of his relationship with the liberal wing of his party.
Mr. Biden has endorsed canceling $10,000 in federal student debt per borrower through legislation, and insisted that chipping away at the $1.7 trillion in loan debt held by more than 43 million borrowers is integral to his economic plan. But Democratic leaders, backed by the party’s left flank, are pressing for up to $50,000 of debt relief per borrower, executed on Day 1 of his presidency.
“I’ve got people with $130,000 in student debt. What’s $10,000 going to do for that person?” asked Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina in an interview. Mr. Clyburn, who speaks with Mr. Biden frequently, added that he did not think that what Mr. Biden proposed during the campaign “goes quite far enough.”
More than 200 organizations — including the American Federation of Teachers, the N.A.A.C.P. and others that were integral to his campaign — have joined the push.
The Education Department is effectively the country’s largest consumer bank and the primary lender, since 2010, for higher education. It owns student loans totaling $1.4 trillion, so forgiveness of some of that debt would be a rapid injection of cash into the pockets of many people suffering from the economic effects of the pandemic.
Many economists, including liberals, say higher education debt forgiveness is an inefficient way to help struggling Americans who face foreclosure, evictions and hunger. The working poor largely are not college graduates — more than 70 percent of currently unemployed workers do not have a bachelor’s degree, and 43 percent did not attend college at all, according to a report by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said he hoped the two parties could find common ground on the issue. He introduced a bipartisan bill that would allow employers to contribute up to $5,250 tax-free to their employees’ student loans, which was included as a temporary provision in the coronavirus relief law this spring.
Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control organization backed by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, called on the Biden administration on Thursday to swiftly enact executive orders that would regulate the tracking of homemade firearms, require background checks for virtually all gun sales and mandate dealers notify the F.B.I. when they complete gun sales before completing a background check.
Mr. Bloomberg’s group has for years been the largest player in gun control politics, outspending the gun rights powerhouse, the National Rifle Association, in both the 2018 and 2020 elections.
John Feinblatt, Everytown’s president, worked closely with President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. when Mr. Biden, while vice president, was deputized to address gun violence after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
But the Obama administration waited months before a Senate vote to put in effect universal background checks failed. Much of the rest of President Barack Obama’s gun control agenda fell by the wayside.
But Mr. Feinblatt said gun safety politics has shifted since Mr. Biden was vice president.
“There’s an entirely different environment where people know that gun safety is a public health crisis,” Mr. Feinblatt said this week during an interview.
Everytown’s suite of proposed executive actions leans heavily on bolstering the federal regulation of gun transactions. But like the Obama administration proposals, any executive actions that Mr. Biden takes are likely to face steep opposition and legal challenges from gun rights activists.
So-called ghost guns, purchased in parts and later assembled by their owners, are not tracked by federal law enforcement agencies. Everytown proposes Mr. Biden’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reclassify ghost guns as firearms, requiring them to carry serial numbers and be traced like other guns — essentially eliminating their appeal as untraceable weapons.
The group is also requesting that the agency tighten its definition of what constitutes a firearms dealer who is required to comply with federal background checks. President Trump and previous administrations have left it to sellers to determine for themselves if they are full-time dealers, leaving untold thousands of guns to be sold at gun shows and online without federal checks. The Everytown proposal would have the agency set the limit at five guns sold per year to be required to conduct background checks before sales.
Everytown is also asking the Justice Department to require gun dealers to notify the government before a gun is delivered to a buyer when a background check has yet to be completed. Currently, guns can be transferred if a federal background check is not completed within three business days. The group is also asking the Biden administration to create a gun violence task force to put in effect gun control measures across federal departments.
Other liberal groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, have released their own proposals for executive actions they would like Mr. Biden to take once in office.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice for surgeon general, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, had a central role in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s decision in March to cancel this year’s national basketball tournaments — one of the earliest and most culturally significant signs that the virus would upend ordinary life in America.
The work of Dr. Murthy, a member of the association’s powerful Board of Governors who was surgeon general during part of the Obama administration, offers a view into how he approached the pandemic’s initial threat in the United States, and how he might help shape the federal government’s response under Mr. Biden.
A newcomer to the insular world of college athletics, Dr. Murthy proved a cautious, deliberate expert who was wary of making drastic decisions prematurely, interviews with more than a dozen people who participated in the N.C.A.A.’s meetings suggest. But they said that as the tournaments approached and more data and scientific research emerged, Dr. Murthy was a forceful and effective champion of measures that had been unthinkable to most of society only days or weeks earlier.
Indeed, it was Dr. Murthy who urgently told board members that they risked fueling a deadly crisis if they allowed the tournaments to proceed as scheduled.
“He was instrumental in convincing the board that the time to act was now,” said Kenneth I. Chenault, a former chairman of American Express who sits on the N.C.A.A. board.
But board members like Mr. Chenault said that it was plain that Dr. Murthy understood the cultural and financial repercussions of a decision like canceling the basketball tournaments, which generate hundreds of millions of dollars.
President Trump and his proxies continue to apply political pressure across multiple channels, challenging the results of the election and placing roadblocks in the way of the incoming administration, even as all 50 states and Washington, D.C., have certified the results of the presidential election.
With almost no available legal path for the Trump campaign to contest the outcome of the election, the president took to Twitter again on Thursday to malign the 2020 election in no uncertain terms. There is no evidence of widespread fraud, a conclusion shared even by Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department.
Another tweet echoed comments from Wednesday that directed the Supreme Court to “overturn” the election results even after the court, in a one-sentence order, declined a request by Pennsylvania Republicans to do so. On Thursday Mr. Trump said the court “has a chance to save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States.”
Despite the top court’s disinclination to help him, Mr. Trump has enjoyed the support of a host of influential Republicans who have continued to entertain his challenges.
Republican attorneys general in 17 states joined in a brief filed to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, supporting a lawsuit to delay the certification of the presidential electors in four battleground states the president lost.
A day earlier, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who argued several cases before the Supreme Court before he was senator, agreed to take up the president’s cause in any remaining cases aimed at invalidating election results should the court agree to hear them.
While surrogates of the president forge ahead with what legal experts have described as an increasingly desperate strategy in the courts, officials loyal to the president have sought to stonewall the transition of power in other contexts.
Across several agencies, transition meetings have been held up or limited by Trump appointees who have reportedly inserted themselves between career civil servants and President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s transition teams in ways that several federal officials said had hampered the transition process.