Six GOP-led states join Texas bid to overturn Biden’s election

31 min readDec 12, 2020

President-elect Joe Biden has selected Denis McDonough to lead the V.A. and Susan Rice as the director of the Domestic Policy Council, putting a premium on personal relationships as he selects his team.

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‘Seditious abuse of the judicial process’: States targeted by Texas’ election suit denounce it.

Here’s what you need to know:

Biden warns ‘defund the police’ slogan could hurt Democrats in Georgia runoffs.
Biden adds to the ranks of advisers with longstanding relationships by picking McDonough and Rice.
McConnell aides privately warned that Republicans are unlikely to support the bipartisan stimulus proposal.
Bloomberg’s gun control group calls for a raft of executive actions from Biden.
Morocco joins a list of Arab nations to begin normalizing relations with Israel.
Barr is said to be planning to stay on as attorney general until the end of Trump’s term.
Biden faces rising pressure to pick Representative Deb Haaland for interior secretary.

Get email alerts with live updates about the U.S. presidential transition.

Biden warns ‘defund the police’ slogan could hurt Democrats in Georgia runoffs.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will travel to Georgia next week to campaign for two Democratic Senate candidates.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times

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.

— Michael D. Shear

‘Seditious abuse of the judicial process’: States targeted by Texas’ election suit denounce it.

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.

Officials with the transition also formally announced that Tom Vilsack, who was Secretary of Agriculture during all eight years of Mr. Obama’s presidency, will return to the role in Mr. Biden’s administration. Mr. Biden’s friendship goes back decades with Mr. Vilsack, who endorsed his first presidential bid more than 30 years ago.

The transition also confirmed that Mr. Biden will nominate Katherine Tai to become the U.S. trade representative and Representative Marcia Fudge to serve as secretary of housing and urban development.

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.

Susan Rice, who was the national security adviser when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was vice president, will become the director of his Domestic Policy Council.Credit…Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

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. And while every president brings in a coterie of longtime advisers, few have had the longevity of Mr. Biden’s nearly five decades in Washington, and prized so much the relationships he developed along the way.

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.

Part of those responsibilities included Mr. McDonough working on behalf of military families, a role that helped convince Mr. Biden that he was the right person to run the sprawling agency that manages health care and other benefits for veterans. Politico reported earlier on his selection.

As a member of the national security staff, Mr. McDonough made frequent trips to meet with members of the military, according to a person familiar with the discussions who requested anonymity to speak about private conversations. Mr. McDonough also worked with Robert A. McDonald, the former Veterans Affairs secretary, on improving care for veterans in the wake of devastating reports of long waits to see doctors.

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 №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.

Bloomberg’s gun control group calls for a raft of executive actions from Biden.

Michael Bloomberg during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in February. The Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety group is asking President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to issue executive orders on gun safety.Credit…Brittainy Newman/The New York Times

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.

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.

Barr is said to be planning to stay on as attorney general until the end of Trump’s term.

President Trump has been critical of Attorney General William P. Barr for his refusal to try to overturn the results of the election.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

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.

Biden faces rising pressure to pick Representative Deb Haaland for interior secretary.

Representative Deb Haaland in 2018 became one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress.Credit…Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, via Getty Images

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.

“We strongly urge you to appoint Congresswoman Deb Haaland to lead the department of the interior,” the letter said. “Representative Haaland will be a strong steward of our precious natural resources and will return to the practice of science-based decision-making. Additionally, she will work to honor the treaties between the federal government and tribal nations.”

The president-elect, the letter said, has a “historic opportunity to appoint a Native woman of integrity, vision and of true public service.”

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.’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.

Read the full article about Dr. Murthy’s work inside the N.C.A.A. as the coronavirus gained footholds in the United States.

Trump leans on his allies in his last-ditch attempts to overturn election results.

In his final days in office, President Trump and his surrogates are continuing to try to force legal challenges to the election.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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.

— Zach Montague, Maggie Haberman, Jeremy W. Peters and Linda Qiu

As Trump disputes election results, Republicans target voting by mail.

Absentee ballots constituted nearly half of the votes cast in the 2020 election.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Republicans are shifting their focus from legal challenges to overturn election results in battleground states to efforts that would limit or undermine the future use of the vote-by-mail ballots that so infuriated President Trump.

Absentee ballots constituted nearly half the votes cast in the 2020 election. And registered Democrats cast nearly eight million more mail ballots than Republicans in states that record voters’ party affiliation, according to the United States Election Project. The experiment in mass voting by mail has been viewed by election experts as a remarkable success, one that was less prone to errors than expected and had almost no documented fraud.

And yet the specter of imagined voter fraud is the stated rationale for efforts to curb voting-by-mail.

This week in Georgia, Republican state senators promised to make getting and casting mail ballots far more difficult. On Tuesday, they pledged to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, require a photo ID to obtain a ballot, outlaw drop boxes and scrap a court agreement to quickly tell voters about signature problems on ballots so that they could be fixed.

Michigan Republicans have signaled that they want to review a 2018 ballot initiative — approved by two-thirds of voters — that authorized no-excuse absentee balloting as well as same-day registration and straight-ticket voting.

In Pennsylvania, Republicans are preparing for the legislative session that convenes on Jan. 11 and are seeking co-sponsors for bills to stiffen identification requirements for mail ballots, tighten standards for signature matching and, in one case, to repeal the law that allows anyone to vote absentee without an excuse.

And Republicans in Texas, which already has some of the nation’s toughest restrictions on voting by mail, have filed bills in advance of next month’s state legislative session that would crimp officials’ ability to distribute absentee ballot applications and even make it a felony to offer to help a voter fill out a ballot.

Chinese Embassy retweets Trump’s false claims of election fraud, then backtracks.

The Twitter account of the Chinese Embassy in the United States on Wednesday shared a post by President Trump falsely claiming that the Democrats “cheated” in the election and that the results should be overturned — only to undo the retweet hours later and claim that its account had been hacked.

The disputes and legal battles in the aftermath of the election have been a fixation for Chinese state news outlets, who have heralded the polarization as evidence of American decline. But the initial retweet on Wednesday appeared to be the first time that an official Chinese social media account had directly amplified Mr. Trump’s inaccurate claims about election fraud.

The embassy’s subsequent attempts to distance itself from the post showed the precarious position that China has tried to occupy during the transition: not provoking Mr. Trump, who has continued to try to punish China during his final weeks in office, while hoping for a reset with president-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Chinese officials did not acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory for several days after the election was called, and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, did not send his congratulations to him until more than two weeks afterward.

Mr. Trump has introduced a slew of new measures against China recently, including sanctions and a travel ban on Chinese officials this week. On Thursday, China struck back by announcing that U.S. diplomatic passport holders would no longer be able to enter Hong Kong and Macau without visas.

Mr. Trump’s tweet was the latest in the president’s long string of false claims about the election. After claiming that the Democrats had acted inappropriately, Mr. Trump wrote, “How can a Country be run like this?”

Chinese state-backed newspapers have gleefully asked similar questions. “So-called US-style democracy has descended into a joke,” a front-page headline in one paper read after the election.

But hours after the embassy shared the post, it disappeared from the account. Shortly after, the embassy tweeted that it had been hacked, adding, “For clarification, the Embassy didn’t do any retweeting on Dec. 9.”

It was not the first time that official Chinese Twitter accounts had stepped back after appearing to revel in the American electoral chaos. Last month, People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, mocked a tweet from Mr. Trump falsely claiming that he had won the election, adding “HaHa” and a laughing face emoji. The tweet was later deleted.

WASHINGTON — Texas’ effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory has prompted a legal war between the states, as Supreme Court filings poured in on Thursday.

Six fellow Republican attorneys general asked the court to let them join Texas’ Ken Paxton in challenging the outcome in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Paxton and the others joined President Donald Trump at a private lunch in the Cabinet Room. Trump has also asked to join Texas as a plaintiff in the effort to nullify 10.4 million votes in states he lost.

Paxton filed the lawsuit late Monday and by Thursday afternoon, 21 states — including four led by Republican governors — had filed objections with the Supreme Court arguing that it would be unconstitutional, unfair and outrageous to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters who cast ballots under procedures they’d been told were perfectly valid.

Texas’ allegation is that the governors or courts in the four states at issue had unlawfully expanded mail-in voting, usurping a power reserved solely for legislatures. Paxton, who co-chaired Lawyers for Trump for the president’s reelection campaign, asked the court to let the legislatures substitute their choice of electors for the 62 collected by Biden as a result of winning more votes in each of those states.

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Since Republicans control those four legislators, that would presumably turn Trump’s decisive ouster into a court-ordered victory and a second term.

“Texas’s request to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters who reasonably relied upon the law at the time of the election does great damage to the public interest,” Pennsylvania argued in a response filed Thursday afternoon. “Nothing in the text, history, or structure of the Constitution supports Texas’s view that it can dictate the manner in which four sister States run their elections, and Texas suffered no harm because it dislikes the results in those elections.”

The Supreme Court has not decided whether to hear the case yet.

Constitutional scholars and experts in election law view Texas’ arguments as outlandish.

But Paxton got reinforcements on Thursday when the attorneys general of Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah — all Republicans — asked the court’s permission to join Texas as a plaintiff. All six were among the 17 GOP-controlled states that filed a friend of the court brief supporting Texas’ allegations on Wednesday.

“The joining states agree with Texas: the defendant states exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify unlawfully enacting last-minute changes and ignoring both federal and state election laws, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election,” Paxton’s office said.

States are nearly evenly divided: 20 states and the District of Columbia filed a motion opposing Texas’ lawsuit, including three led by Republican governors, Maryland, Vermont and Massachusetts. Ohio, also led Republicans, filed a separate objection.

Georgia, whose governor and attorney general are both Republicans, pressed back hard in its response to the Texas lawsuit.

“The novel and far-reaching claims that Texas asserts, and the breathtaking remedies it seeks, are impossible to ground in legal principles and unmanageable. This Court has never allowed one state to co-opt the legislative authority of another state,” Georgia’s filing reads. Then, prodding the justices to see the Texas claims as farcical, it adds: “How many votes must be in question for a state to mount a challenge? What state election laws can another state challenge and what laws are off limits?…. Can this Court bind Congress should it decide to accept Electors challenged by a disgruntled state?”

Ohio attorney general David Yost — also a Republican — separately urged the court to see that Texas’ request twists the meaning of the Constitution’s “Electors Clause,” which empowers legislatures to decide how electors are chosen.

Ohio agreed that courts and governors could, in theory, go too far interpreting or implementing legislative edicts but argued, “The courts have no more business ordering the People’s representatives how to choose electors than they do ordering the People themselves how to choose their dinners.”

Paxton and Trump have gotten sharp pushback from within their party.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Austin, a conservative Republican who served two years as first assistant attorney general in Texas, issued a scathing denunciation of Paxton’s lawsuit Thursday, calling it a “dangerous violation of federalism” that would set “a precedent to have one state asking federal courts to police the voting procedures of other states.”

A number of House Republicans intended to file a friend of the court brief siding with Texas. Roy said he could not in good conscience sign on because it “is inconsistent with my beliefs about protecting Texas sovereignty from the meddling of other states.”

Paxton, appearing on Fox Business News, asserted that the only way to protect American democracy and ensure that the will of voters is respected is to invalidate millions of votes, an argument that struck critics as Orwellian.

“Whether it’s Donald Trump or whether it’s Joe Biden, I just want to make sure that the right person gets elected, based on what the voters did in this country,” he said.

Sen. John Cornyn, who served as Texas attorney general before his election in 2002, opposes Paxton’s lawsuit.

“It’s a little frightening to think about the implications” if states can challenge each others’ internal policies, he told Texas news outlets on a weekly call.

Election procedures are controlled state by state. The rules changes that Texas and its allies are challenging now, five weeks after Election Day, were upheld in state courts before Election Day.

“While Texas waited to see the results, millions of voters relied on the settled rules. Those voters should not be punished for not choosing Texas’s preferred candidate, and Texas should not be rewarded for its unreasonable delay in bringing this action,” Pennsylvania argued in its Supreme Court response.

Allegations of fraud in Texas’ complaint have been tossed out of dozens of state and federal courts for lack of evidence.

Of the 18 GOP-controlled states trying to overturn the outcome in the four states Trump lost, many implemented similar voting rules in response to the pandemic, making their argument hypocritical in the view of University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck.

“The factual allegations Texas makes in its filings are both preposterous on their face and have been soundly discredited by every court that has considered similar allegations to date,” he wrote in an analysis for NBC News. “The notion that it is appropriate for one state to sue another because of dissatisfaction with the results of the election in that state is not just offensive; it is belied by at least one prior case in which the court refused exactly that relief. And allowing Texas to bring a suit like this would inevitably open the floodgates — to California suing Texas over its environmental regulations; to New York suing Florida over its Covid-19 response; and so on.”

17 states and Trump join Texas request for Supreme Court to overturn Biden wins in four states

BY TODD J. GILLMAN

“Texas proposes an extraordinary intrusion into Wisconsin’s and the other defendant States’ elections,” that state wrote in its response filed Thursday afternoon. If Texas’ legal theory is upheld, “New York or California could sue Texas or Alabama in this Court over their felon-disenfranchisement policies. Garden-variety election disputes would soon come to the Court in droves.”

Michigan’s 53-point response includes a point by point refutation of all purported irregularities Texas listed in its complaint, from claims that more votes were cast in Detroit than shown on the rolls (untrue) to a claim that the secretary of state lacked authority to mail applications for absentee ballots without voters asking (allowed under a 2018 state law and ratified in court in the course of this election.)

“The claims against Michigan explicitly center on allegations that state or local officials violated state law,” Michigan noted, arguing that no court would recognize the standing of a private citizen of Texas to sue Michigan on such a basis.

Their counterpart in Georgia, Chris Carr, who chairs the Republican Association of Attorneys General, has likewise blasted the Texas challenge, calling it “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong about Georgia.”

The co-chairs of the Democratic Attorneys General Association, Maura Healey of Massachusetts and Aaron Ford of Nevada, also took Paxton to task.

“This latest lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General, which seeks to undermine the will of voters in states that are not Texas and that will have absolutely no impact on the outcome of the election, is meritless and desperate,” they said in a joint statement.

The remedy that Texas and Trump seek would require the Supreme Court to invalidate millions of ballots cast by voters who followed the instructions given them by state and local elections officials. Disenfranchising voters after the fact on such a massive scale would be unprecedented.

“This is beyond laughable, it is so ridiculous,” said Domingo Garcia, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens and a former city councilman and state legislator from Dallas. “What makes this so hypocritical is that this desperate grandstanding move is coming from one of the most corrupt politicians not just in Texas, but the country. The move reeks of a blatant attempt to get a presidential pardon.”

Paxton is the subject of an FBI investigation into allegations by former senior staffers that he used the attorney general’s office to benefit a campaign donor. He also has been under indictment for more than five years on state criminal charges involving securities fraud, though presidents can only issue pardons for federal crimes.

All 17 states that joined Paxton’s bid at the Supreme Court are represented by Republican attorneys general: Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.

Trump’s guests at lunch, according to the White House, are attorneys general from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas and Utah, along with Indiana’s attorney general-elect. Arizona did not join the amicus filing but in a separate motion, asked the Supreme Court to rule quickly to end any uncertainty hanging over the election.

Biden collected 7 million more votes than Trump nationally. The Electoral College meets Dec. 14 — that is, next Monday — to certify the results. Biden’s electoral margin is 306–232, the same margin Trump collected in the 2016 election and described as a landslide.

Elizabeth Thompson of the Washington Bureau contributed to this report.

Six GOP-led states join Texas bid to overturn Biden’s election

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